Teacher Gifts

Having received a few teacher gifts when I taught gymnastics, I try to come up with teacher gifts that aren't going to wind up in the teacher's next yardsale. Lotions, candles, etc...YUCK.

Garden Update

The 3 tomato plants that I put outside earliest, protected in their wall-o-waters are of course doing the best. I've -also got tomatoes growing in a 5 gallon bucket, a  large dishpan, a make-shift Topsy Turvy, and there's even still one on my kitchen windowsill.


So, tomatoes are a large part of my garden, but I've got lots of other stuff coming along too. Here's the main "Square Foot Garden" section of my horticultural adventure.

I know, you're saying, yep, it's a bunch of green stuff. So, on the left, is a wagon with the 5-gallon bucket and dish pan of tomatoes. They are in the wagon so that in the case of severe weather, I can roll them into the garage for protection. 

Next in from the left are my best tomato plants, some spinach, rosemary, cilantro, a tomato plant that took a lot of abuse in a storm, a bush zucchini plant and some cucumber vines that have a long way to go. The zucchini plant appears to have a female flower forming, if it works the same way as pumpkins, but I haven't done zukes before, so no idea really, and too busy to google. 

The white area in the middle is my compost pile. 

The box on the right has Mint Gone Wild, chocolate mint, an ornamental gourd section, strawberry plants, peas and beans. 

With any luck that  trellis on the right will be fully covered in pea plants. It should have been peas and beans, but oops, I planted bush beans....

Today I finally bought materials for another trellis for the box on the left. The one on the right is 6 feet tall. The new one for the left is going to be 7 feet tall. Tomatoes are crazy.

Next is the Ghetto Garden.  It's next to the shed and behind the dumpster. REALLY prime real estate. This was possibly a sand box area for the last people who owned this house. When we moved in it was a litter box for the local cats. I mulched it with grass clippings for the last couple years hoping it would improve or grow grass or something, but it hasn't really. 

I knew my Giant Pumpkin Plant would need LOTS of room, so I put it over here, knowing that without good dirt, I'm not going to grow any incredibly impressive pumpkins, but I should get some good enough for the kids for halloween. It's had male flowers for a couple months but just finally got a couple female flowers starting to form. I've mulched heavily with grass clippings, hoping that will keep moisture in the sand. At first I wasn't using Miracle Grow. I was just hoping it would grow, but it wasn't growing, so I started putting 2.5 gallons of Miracle-Gro treated water on it every day and it's really taking off. 

Inside the white fence is supposed to be flowers,but it looks to me like weeds. I've decided to just let whatever happens happen in there. The white tube with the flower pot on it is a worm tube composting system experiment.

Beyond the white fence, there is a reusable shopping bag growing potatoes, and a potting soil bag doing the same. Beyond those potato bags is a green plastic tub full of rabbit manure. Gosh, each piece of the Ghetto Garden could be its own blog post. Ok, eventually. 

Next up is my attempt at increasing curb appeal.

 

Some genius put rocks all around this side of the house. Just a bed of rocks. No plants, no big rocks, nothing. This corner was especially ugly. So, I took a random plastic bin that I had scavenged from a trash pile long ago, drilled holes in it, and filled it with potting soil, to make a raised bed. The bin is Sparkly Pink, so I had to camouflage it somehow, and these logs from the historic cottonwood tree did just the trick. 

The pine branch leaning against the wall will hopefully be covered in flowering vines...if the growing season is long enough. 

A neighbor was nice enough to let me take as many of his Hens and Chicks as I wanted, so I took a bunch of them and planted them along the side, along with some other succulents that I bought. 

There's another couple pots of not so beautiful stuff, so I won't bother to show them. Carrot tops are not very exciting!!  

So, that's where my garden stands as of July 6, 2010!

Recycled Basil

I needed fresh basil for a recipe and being the dead of winter, I had to go buy it at the store. They didn't have any small containers of it, only a HUGE container. So, I brought it home, used what I needed and wondered what to do with the rest. It was very fresh, so I decided on an experiment. I sliced a few on an angle through their growth points, and put them in a jar of water. I knew they would root if this was done as soon as they were taken from the plant, but wasn't sure how it would work since they had probably been cut at least a day or so earlier. Maybe even a week! Who Knows?!

One of them grew a root so fast and big that I had to trudge through snow to my shed to get potting soil and a pot for it.

Here is a photo explanation:

The root in the jar picture was over an inch long by the time I planted it--about 5 hours after this photo was taken!

So, I put it in potting soil in a pot the same day that picture above was taken, and now, almost 2 months later, here it is, and this is after making a turkey sandwich with a layer of basil:

 

Now, I just need to get a pretty pot for this free plant!!

Square Foot Garden 2010

This may not look like much, but check out my first SFG post if you want to see what it was 2 years ago!!

Since we didn't eat a bunch of what I grew last year, I decided to only plant my two "real" 4x4 boxes plus some giant flower pots.

Ugh, Nebraska. It's almost June and my tomatoes aren't even in the ground. I planted seeds for everything else today, but my tomato plants ar rin the ground today, before a hail/thunder storm complete with tornado sirens, but thankfully no tornadoes.

Here's how it turned out yesterday, and the trellis withstood the 67 mph wind gusts yesterdat afternoon, so I'd say it's secure.


I try to do things on the cheap.  Have you noticed that about this blog?  So last year I attempted a wimpy, ghetto, string trellis, and it supported some peas and beans but basically sucked. We didn't have nearly enough peas or beans either. Just 1 square of each if I remember right. My kids ate them as fast as they ripened. For a trellis this year I bought the string grid that is recommended in the SFG book. However, it still wasn't going to look very good. and putting up poles to support it was going to be a LOT of work. Then I saw my lattice panels that had a use in Hawaii but hadn't found a use since we moved here. They are 2.5' x8' panels of plastic lattice, with one rigid side each. I wound up experimenting with them until I decided to make the garden extra fun for the kids. I made the tunnel they can crawl under while the vines of cukes, zukes, beans, peas, and ornamental gourds grow over it. It's going to be a mess of vines, but it should be fun! I have 1 more panel of lattice that I haven't decided how to use. I might make some kind of cage for the beans that are on the far side of the box away from the tunnel. With 2 squares each of zukes and cukes, and 4 squares each of peas and beans, plus 1 square of ornamental gourds, we are in for a LOT of vines.

The giant pumpkin isn't going to be trellised. I haven't actually figured out what I'm going to do with it. or where it's going to be planted. It's a whole other post waiting to happen.

 This Flower BED below is also going to be another post.

Square Foot Gardening

When I say this is my 2.5th  year of SFG, I mean that the first year, we moved into this house in July, but were living in a hotel in town in June, so I prepped my soil in June (before we actually closed on the house), and then planted some broccoli, pumpkin and tomato plants in July. I didn't use a grid, or box, just amended existing soil, and hoped for the best.I used info I found online to know how many plants/square.

Here's a picture from that year, 2008:

I know, you're thinking WOW, that's one SEXY garden. Well you see, I planted and then went out of town for a couple months. We came home to that. So, with no watering for 2 months, I still would have  had good broccoli, tomatoes and pumpkins--if we had been here to eat them. That works for me!!  I based what I did on the info I found online about the SFG technique.

The next year, last year, 2009, I bought the SFG book, built  2 boxes, spent a fortune buying the ingredients for Mel's Mix, and planted a mixture of seeds and store bought plants. I planted the 2 4x4 boxes plus the 4x4 patch of ground from 2008. Everything did really well, except my pepper plants were complete failures and the tomatoes had blossom end rot. I grew but didn't eat many of the onions, radishes, beets, lettuce...but they were fun to grow. The broccoli flowered too fast and I missed eating them at the  yummy point. They were so yucky that I fed them to the dogs. The flower pots had potatoes, pansies and nasturtiums. One was supposed to have carrots but that was a big mess.

Here's a pic from a main harvest day, before a big frost/hail was expected:

My next  post will be on my 2010 SFG!

Belated Earth Day post, Recycled seed starting cups

Happy Belated Earth Day. Sorry, I was obsessed with sewing and cleaning yesterday and failed to blog this.


Many years ago, around 8th grade maybe, I volunteered at a traveling daycamp as a Cadette Girl Scout. One of the camp projects was something like this:

So, I've thought for years that egg shells would be great for starting seeds. As a "square foot gardener" I also wanted to try growing seeds in vermiculite.

Here's how I have started my plants for now:

First, rather than buying those special seed starting mini greenhouses, I used the plastic clam shells that baked goods come in from the grocery store. I filled them with vermiculite and spread seeds around. Then I watered and closed the clam shell, gave it a week or two, depending on the seeds and: 

The  nice thing about these clam shells is that you can divide them with paper, and draw a line over the top of the whole thing with magic marker, and label the sections

While those were growing, I prepared my "planters." This winter I saved a few dozen egg shells. I prepared them by poking holes in the bottoms with a pin:

I did this to a lot of them:

Then I filled them with potting soil and transplanted the seedlings from the vermiculite to the egg shells:

Now, to put them in the ground, I'll just squeeze the shell and put in a hole.

In the picture above, you'll see that some of the eggs are topped off with vermiculite. The eggs are growing tomatoes and I want good roots. Knowing that tomato plants put out roots from the stem if buried, I covered them up as high as I could with vermiculite, and am seeing if it makes a difference in plant growth.

Another thing you can see above is that in the back, there's a cardboard egg carton with more seedlings, but not in shells. This is another experiment, also doing the vermiculite top-off experiment.

Before some science teacher comments that there are too many variables to call it an experiment, well, I know. There's no true control group. Luckily, this isn't a science project, it's a kitchen project for my garden, so I'm ok with it not being done "correctly."

The tomato varieties are Bloody Butcher, Yellow Pear, and some sort of hybrid cherry tomato that's supposed to grow so many it looks like bunches of grapes.