12.30.2007

Cold Frame

When I read this post by Ottawa Gardener (who got 3 feet of snow) I realized that I had no excuse not to go out and brush the 4-6 inches of snow off my cold frame and peek inside. Despite all that I didn't check on it until yesterday when most of the snow had melted off of it.
Amazingly, everything was still alive. Nothing worth harvesting, but still alive! I'm getting some ideas on how to make it work better next year. It might help if I actually get around to reading Four-Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman. The pictures are of my remaining lettuce plant(s) and my spindly little scallions.
~Sarah

Green Thumb Sunday 12-30-07

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Flowers for my birthday! My grandparents sent me this lovely basket of flowers for my 21'st birthday. The above picture is the front and the one below is the back. It's pretty from all sides! Thanks Grandpa & Grandma!
Happy GTS to everyone else.
~Sarah



Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

12.26.2007

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I probably won't post until after New Year's celebrations are over with, so enjoy your holiday gatherings, and don't lose sight of the Reason for the Season.
Sarah

12.23.2007

Green Thumb Sunday 12-23-07

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My African Violet very kindly decided to bloom in time for GTS. I'd had it in my room, and it was starting to die, so I moved it downstairs. It's either getting more attention or more neglect - I'm not sure which one. Anyway, it seems to be getting just what it needed.
Happy GTS, and Merry Christmas!
~Sarah

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

12.16.2007

Green Thumb Sunday 12-16-07

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I'm late with my GTS post again; but it's still Sunday for 4 more minutes. On Saturday I finally got around to my bi-annual cleanup of my Wandering Jew. I didn't expect to have much still alive, but was pleasantly surprised.
Before
After
Happy GTS~
Sarah
Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

12.10.2007

Green Thumb Sunday 12-9-07

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Sorry this GTS post is so late. I meant to do it yesterday, but didn't get around to it. Since everyone's been posting pictures of Christmas Cactus I thought I'd do the same. The one on the left is a Christmas Cactus and the one on the right is a Thanksgiving Cactus. Or Easter Cactus. I'm not really sure. It just blooms when it wants to, regardless of it's name.








Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

Happy GTS!
~Sarah

Blogger OpenID 'Feature'

Chigiy over at The Gardeners Anonymous Blog posted recently about Blogger's new comment feature which won't allow people using other publishing services to leave comments with their URL in them. I was not aware of the change, so thanks for blogging about it!

Since I like to visit my commenter's blogs, I've changed my comment setting to Registered Users (includes OpenID). So, if you have an account with Google/Blogger, AOL/AIM, LiveJournal, TypeKey or WordPress you can leave comments and have a link to your blog. If your blog is not hosted by any of the above options, you can use the Any Open ID option. Unfortunately, this means that you can no longer comment anonymously if you don't have a blog or Google account. If you would like to contact me, I'll be adding an 'email me' link soon.

EDIT: In playing around a little more, I discovered that the 'anyone' option has OpenID and allows anonymous comments.

Farewell~
Sarah

12.07.2007

Garden Bloggers: Old & Young

Kathy at Cold Climate Gardening asked Why Don't More Older Gardeners Blog ? It seems to have sparked a lot of discussion, along with the question where are the under 30 gardeners? Being under 30 myself, (I'll be 21 in a couple weeks) I started running through my list of friends and trying to recall if any of them enjoyed gardening. What I came up with was that the friends who go to college don't have time for gardening, while the ones who don't go to college tend to have more interest in and time for gardening. It doesn't seem to make much difference if their parents are gardeners - it appears to be more of an individual thing.

As long as I'm blogging about young gardeners, I figure I might as well share my journey to becoming a garden blogger. Up until my family moved in January 2005, I didn't do a lot of gardening. I did have two little beds though; one was a perennial/annual, and the other focused more on herbs.

After we moved, I still didn't have much interest in gardening - I kind of wanted my own flower bed, but in my opinion (at the time) all the good spots had been taken by my Mother and Sister. You'll be glad to know my opinion has since been revised. I did tend to a couple of tomato plants and some garlic from the old house. The tomatoes were a success, but the garlic was too old. That fall, my Grandma offered us some plants, and I asked for a few figuring now I would have to have my own space. That was how the perennial garden got started. I planted a bunch of pinks, and the few bulbs I brought with from the old house.Also that fall, we got an note in our newspaper box from 'The Plant Lady' who was having her annual sale. We went, and I got Valerian, Yarrow, Bee Balm, and some seeds from her. Next I needed a garden space. I chose the area under the tree, and my Dad helped (ok, he did most of the work) me dig up the area.

The next July (2006) I finally decided to keep a garden journal. I don't really remember why, but I'm thinking it had something to do with needing an excuse to buy a really cool Cars notebook. The notebook was a good idea, because that year my seed collecting hobby took off full swing. If it had seeds, I gathered 'em. My experience up to that point had been limited to garlic, Cosmos, Calendula, Cleome and Salvia. As a result, I grew the same plants over and over since I knew I could get seeds from them. The previous year I had grown and saved seeds from an heirloom tomato; that was how I got started growing and saving tomato seeds.

By Spring of 2007, I had picked up Patricia Lanza's Lasagna Gardening Books at the library and the veggie garden we'd been talking about became a reality. In April I started this blog with hopes of eventually connecting with other gardeners. I now enjoy reading many many many gardening blogs, and interacting through comments.

As for why older gardeners don't blog, I came up with a few answers;
  1. They don't have/know how to use the internet
  2. They're too busy
  3. They aren't aware that blogging is something they can do.
Well, that's my 2 cents worth.
~Sarah

12.02.2007

Tomato Experiment

I got the idea for my experiment from this book; 1,112 Down-to-Earth Garden Secrets. Unfortunately the book has been discontinued, however when I Googled the title, several places came up where it can be bought used. I used the idea on page 17 - here's an excerpt:

"For each plant...prepare 1/2 gallon wax coated milk carton. Completely open the carton and slice the corners halfway down. Fold down the flaps you created and secure them with rubber bands. When plants {started in peat pots or newspaper pots} have two or three leaf pairs, move them to these cartons. Remove all but the top pair of leaves and cover the stem with potting soil. The stem sends out roots where the leaves used to be."
When the plants have several more pairs of leaves, the process of removing the leaves is repeated. Then you fold up the flaps, tape them in place, and add more soil. The folks who sent in this tip start their tomatoes on April first, and set them out right after memorial day.

I started two Mrs. Benson heirlooms with this method. First, I made the newspaper pots on page 12. Since we buy don't buy milk in 1/2 gallon cartons, I used 1 quart non-dairy creamer containers. I folded the flaps over twice to make them stay down better. I also discovered that the rubber bands around celery worked really well for holding the flaps down. When my garden beds were finally ready to be planted, I put one plant in the veggie garden and the other in a container made for growing tomato plants. The one in the garden did extremely well, and grew much faster and stronger than the rest of the plants. The one in the container did well, although I frequently forgot to water it.

Summary: I am very pleased with the way my experiment turned out, and am planning to start as many vegetables as I can this way next Spring. Here are some links for makeing your own newspaper pots:
Link 1
Link 2
Link 3
Link 4
They're all a little different, so pick the one that works best for you!
Here are some pictures of the tomatoes.


Green Thumb Sunday 12-2-07

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These are our Indoor plants. The shelf/bench is new, and Mom just finished staining it. The hanging plants are hung from a curtain rod.
Plants from left to right: Parsley, Zerbina Wandering Jew, Mother-in-Law's Tongue, Pothos, Thanksgiving Cactus, Aloe, Mother-in-Law's Tongue.

This one is a little hard to do from left to right, but I'll give it a try. Basil, Lemon Balm, Coleus, Jade plant, Catnip, Amaryllis, Christmas Cactus, and the pot on the floor is our herb pot. I might have missed a few plants, but the list above contains all the ones in the picture.
Happy GTS~
Sarah

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

12.01.2007

Blotanical

I've been very busy lately working on making Christmas presents. (Check my other blog for more details.) I will try to keep up with GTS posts, but that will be about all until January. While you're waiting for me to stop being so busy, check out Blotanical.
It's a garden blog directory (formerly Garden Blog Directory) that just got a 'makeover'. Besides listing garden blogs by location, it now has several new features; you can check out the most popular blogs, and read the '100 most recent posts from the gardening blogosphere'. There's also a cool feature called 'my plot'. It works like a profile where you can list favorite garden plants, write a mini biography, make a list of favorite blogs and all sorts of other fun stuff! Have fun!
~Sarah