Strawberry Beds

We have a garden bed full of strawberry plants with plans to plant more this year. We’ve been disappointed to find that most of the strawberries that are ready to pick have been partially eaten by the birds! My mother-in-law has over a hundred strawberry plants. Her answer to this problem has been to pick them before they are ripe and let them ripen in the kitchen. This works, of course.

However, I just found a brilliant idea on Pinterest!

Paint pebbles to look like strawberries and place then in your strawberry beds. It will fool the birds! I will definitely be doing this when I return home this summer!

You can find the actual instructions for painting strawberry rocks here.

Creative Gardening Ideas

I found this idea on Pintrest yesterday. So clever! I have several pallets lying around. I might just try this one!
Photo Credit: Sprittibee

 And here is another clever idea. Milk Crate Gardening! This would be space saving and if you could suspend the crate somehow or place it on the edge of a stone wall or something, you could grow vine plants right out the side! We purchased a half dozen “milk crate” from Wal-Mart last fall on clearance for $0.50 a piece. I may re-purpose a couple of them!

Source: comoneighborhoods.wordpress.com via Melissa on Pinterest

And, here’s a clever idea for watering your container gardens/ houseplants:

My garden is growing nicely. My Seeds of Change Green Arrow Peas have not done as well as hoped, but they are slowly growing, so hopefully all those seeds I planted won’t be a total waste. They took over three weeks to come up.  I planted them around February 20. They are just now about six inches tall! No blooms yet. My herb garden is looking beautiful and my lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower are all doing really well. Oh, and my strawberry patch has strawberries!

I’ll be planting my tomato seedlings, cucumbers, squash plants, eggplants, and pumpkin seedlings soon. And I still need to get the front bed tilled up and get the bush beans planted.

I  wish I had a current photo. Maybe I’ll be able to share some soon. Oh, and you can find a lot more creative gardening ideas on my Back to the Garden page on Pintrest!

Planting Vegetables in the Shade

We live on a mountain. We have lots of really big trees. That means we have a lot of shade. I did some research about which plants do well grown in partial shade and here is the list I found:

1. salad greens
2. arugula, endive, and cress
3. broccoli
4. cauliflower
5. peas
6. beets
7. Brussels sprouts
8. radishes
9. Swiss chard
10. leafy greens
11. beans

I am hoping to plant beans in our front flower bed (which doesn’t get a whole lot of sunshine) with a border of cabbage and beets. Maybe it will even look pretty!

Some of these plants do well in containers, too. Salad greens, broccoli, beets, and more can all be grown in large containers.

Container Gardening and Vertical Gardening

Photo Credit

I have utilized both container gardening and raised bed square-foot gardening over the last three or four years with good results. This year, I am stepping it up a notch.

I have twelve raised beds which I will be planting. In addition to those, I plan to plant as many containers full of vegetables as possible. Last year I did my cherry tomatoes in large pots and five gallon buckets. I think I had about eight of them. They did really well. This year I want to try container gardening with:

1. Tomatoes
2. Cabbage
3. Sqaush (grown up a make-shift trellis)
4. Herbs
5. Potatoes
6. Sweet Potatoes

To utilize even more space in my raised beds, I plant to nail some 2 x4’s into an arch at the end of some of my beds, string a grid patter with twine onto the arch and grown cucumbers and beans upright.

I have also seen different plants grown in hanging pots or upside down in recycled soda bottles (like a Topsy Turvy thing, but free). I’m wondering what I could grow like that? Sounds like a fun experiment.

Have you had any luck with vertical and/ or container gardening?

My Garden Plans 2012

I had a good garden last year. Here are my goals for this year:

Vegetable Garden

1. Tomatoes – 24 plants (or more)
2. Okra – 32 plants
3. Potatoes – I’d like to plant enough to grow 100 pounds of potatoes
4. Yellow Squash – 12 plants
5. Zucchini Squash – 6 plants
6. Sweet Peas – 6 packets of seeds (4 – 4 x 4 raised beds, seeds planted about 6 inches apart)
7. Cucumbers – 12 plants
8. Cabbage – 70 plants
9. Bush Green Beans – 7 – 20 ft rows
10. Kale – 15 plants
11. Turnip or Rutabaga – 20 plants
12. Eggplant – 6 plants
13. Corn – 50 x 10 ft row
14. Broccoli – 16 plants (spring) and 16 plants (fall)
15. Lettuce – 16 plants (spring) and 16 plants (fall)
16. Pumpkins – 2 plants
17. Spaghetti Squash – 4 plants
18. Winter Squash – 4 plants
19. Cantaloupe – 4 plants
20. Watermelon – 4 plants
21. Peppers – (Bell, Pablano, Habenero, Banana)  15 – 20 plants
22. Beets – 30 plants
23. Sweet Potatoes – 5 plants
24. Raddish  and Carrots – 4 x 4 raised bed

Something I am working harder at this year, is succession planting. I was excited to find Seeds of Change seeds at Wal-Mart and discovered a sweet pea – Green Arrow Shell Peas – which are a bush type pea rather than a vining pea. In years past I have planted only vining sweet peas, but my vertical space is limited. Planting bush peas means I can plant more, hopefully enough to can and freeze some!

Also, I have yet to have luck with corn. However, this year, I am planning (hopefully) to plow up a nice plot in our front yard, despite the kids saying, “Mom! Do you know where we live???” – and plant the entire thing with corn, which, in the past, I have only planted a handful of corn seeds and none of them have done well.

 

Herb Garden

1. Rosemary
2. Thyme
3. Oregano
4. Cilantro
5. Dill
6. Basil
7. Chives
8. Mint
9. Sunflowers

These are some of the herbs I use the most and the ones I have had the most luck with in the past. I may try planting a few more exotic things like Stevia, Pennyroyal, and Soapwort. Aside from my outdoor herbs, I’d like to try some potted herbs in the kitchen window. I have not had much success with starting herbs from seeds, but the herbs I have planted from transplants into the garden have been coming back every year and the rosemary and oregano are still green, lush, and beautiful after our mild winter. Every year I had to them.

I also have had no luck with onions or garlic. I am sure I will try again. I just never seem to get large bulbs, which is disappointing when I pull them up for harvest. I need to do more research into how to grow them.  Any suggestions?
Fruit

And finally, I am attempting to grow a few fruits in addition to our young fruit trees. One thing I wish I could go back in time and do over again would be this: Plant an orchard that first spring when we bought our house nine years ago. Fruit trees take sooo long to produce a good crop. We have an apple tree or two, a peach tree, and a nectarine tree. My blueberry plants and fig trees have all died and we lost one of our peach trees last winter.

I have started Ground Cherry Seeds. I am wondering if this is a perennial? Also, wanting to try planting blueberry bushes again. In the fall last year we planted  male and female kiwi plants and a Concord grape vine. I hope they come back to life this spring! I plant to try starting some kiwi from seed this spring, too. I have a currant bush that looks like it may have died. We’ll see. We cut out most of our blackberry bushes because they were taking over the back yard. I may try transplanting some of the stragglers that are bound to show up and train them on a line.

And I want to plant some more fruit trees. Along with a hedge of blueberry bushes, if we ever get around to it.

 

Preparing to Plant Seeds

I love this time of year. When the weather warms up just enough that you know spring is coming and the itch to dig in the dirt and grow something gets under your skin.

In the past I have used yogurt cups, egg cartons, butter dishes, and more to start my seeds in. This year I am almost exclusively using old cans and old butter dishes. In fact, now I am kicking myself for not saving every can I’ve used in the last six months. This isn’t nearly enough for what I have planned.

So, I’ve been scrounging around trying to find any empty container that will suffice for seed starting. Every year I start my seeds in my favorite room in the house – my sun room. For a few months out of the year the room is crowded with two tables full of seeds and the windowsills fill up, too.

The down side is… my beautiful room isn’t quite so lovely with all the seed packets and garden clutter. (Actually, the room needed to be straightened up a bit when I took this photo. )

Side note: See my darling dragonfly lights? We found them at Target!

I have LOTS of seeds!

The upside is… this room has the most sunshine in the house and warms up beautifully everyday if I keep the doors closed. Kind of like a green house. Wish I had one of those!

 

 

Last Year’s Garden – 2011

I was so proud of my garden last year. For the first time my tomato plants did not get blight and grew so big and beautiful! Some of the plants were five feet tall! I had 17 of them in all. Plus, I grew squash, cucumbers, strawberries, radishes, potatoes, peppers, and herbs. I didn’t get everything planted that I had wanted to grow, but everything I planted did fantastic. I am hoping for another (even better) year.

I never had a chance to post the photos, so here are a few photos of some of my plants: (wish the photos were better quality – the garden looked much nicer in person, despite the weeds!)

I started these tomato plants from seeds I purchased from Baker Creek Seed Company!

 

My squash ended up with a fungus, but it didn’t seem to affect the production too much.

The basil did nicely.

Mulching kept most of the weeds at bay all summer. There were a few stragglers.

I wish I had more photos of ripe fruit, the harvest vegetables, and my other plants. Oh well, I’ll try to remember this year to take more/ better photos!

I’ve had this mint plant for several years now. And the oregano, too:

And in honor of Bare Face Day, here is a photo of me in the garden, working with no make-up.

Yes, I took the photo of myself, hence my weird posture.

Time for Starting Seeds

It’s that time of year again. Actually, I’ve been putting it off for a couple of weeks now. I plan to plant my peas in the garden tomorrow. I usually shoot for Valentine’s Day for Pea planting. So, today I went to our local Wal-mart to check out the selection of seeds and was thrilled to find that Seeds of Change has a display of organic seeds! I mean, I’ve ordered from their catalog before! The display wasn’t huge, but it has all of the most common seeds you would want to order. For $2.00 a packet!

I still have plans to order a few seeds from my favorite seed company – Baker Creek Seeds. You can download their amazing 196 page 2012 catalog here. I would love to be able to visit their farm and village during Festival time. I appreciate the fact that the couple who owns the company are Sabbath keepers, too.

I spent some time this morning planning what to plant and where to plant. In the spirit of the Victory Garden, I am planning to not only utilize my 12 (4 x 4) raised beds in the back yard and my large containers, but I am planning to plant my front flower bed with bush beans and cabbage, another flower bed with squash and pumpkins, plant an old stump with melons, and if I can get my husband to agree, I’d like to plant a 10′ x 25′ or 10′ x 50′ space in the front yard with corn. At the suggestion, my children were like, “Mom, do you know what neighborhood we live in???” Meaning, I assume, that we live in a nice neighborhood and who wants to see corn growing in the front yard? It doesn’t bother me. I am a farm girl at heart. I have 1 1/2 acres to my name. Most of it is sloped on the mountain or shaded by huge oak trees. I can’t plant corn any where else. So why not join the Front Yard Garden Movement?

Fungus Fighter

Molasses is great for fighting fungus and disease in your garden. At the first sign of trouble, mix up this recipe:

Fungus Fighter

1/2 cup of molasses

1/2 cup of powdered milk

1 tsp. baking soda

1 gallon warm water

Mix the molasses, powdered milk, and baking soda into a paste. Place the mixture into the toe of an old nylon stocking, and let it steep in a gallon of water for several hours. Then strain, and use the liquid as a spray for your garden every two weeks throughout the growing season.

Source: Great Green Book of Garden Secrets by Jerry Baker

Gangly Seedlings

If the annual seedlings you started indoors begin to look weak and gangly before it is time to set them out, try making a cold frame or window greenhouse to give them sunshine and fresh air.

Source: Great Green Book of Garden Secrets by Jerry Baker

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