Spring Chores

Tuesday was a nice, warm, sunny, busy day. I spent the morning re-planning the vegetable garden. Baker Creek Seeds sent me two free packets of seeds, and I had to work them into the garden plan. After lunch, I planted my snap peas - I bought an heirloom variety from Lowes. I covered them with chicken wire to keep the birds and chippies from eating the seed, and covered the wire with heavy plastic to help warm the soil faster.
While I was out looking around the veggie garden, I noticed that the chippie had dug a hole right outside the fence again. I filled it in with dirt, and placed a large rock over it.

While inspecting my bulb garden, I noticed that there was a lot of gravel in it. We think that when the gravel for the driveway was put down, the leftovers got dumped in the side yard. I spend a few afternoons every year picking out the bits of gravel.
After picking gravel out of the garden, I trimmed the Russian Sage plants. The one on the side of the house looked really healthy, so I cut it down pretty low. I left the one that we moved a bit taller; partly because of the wind, and also because my Mom lopped off the top of it after it was moved.

After coming inside, I promptly came down with a cold. Due to my cold and the weather, I haven't been able to get back out to see how things are growing. From inside, it looks like my garlic is growing an inch every day.

Most of my seedlings are growing well, and I should have the last flat started in the next few days.

~Sarah

Updates On Miscellaneous Plants and Gardens

Looking back through my posts I realized there are a few things I've neglected to mention, so here's a list of all the things I should have mentioned, but didn't.

• The Repels-All seemed to keep the critters away for several weeks. I have not had time to re-apply it, so I'm still having to put up with chippie holes in my garden. They don't dig far, just enough to make an indentation. I found a hole outside my garden and I fill it in with rocks and pebbles every day. If I ever get to Lowes, I'm going to get some expanding insulation and fill in his hole for good!

• I have two container garden tomatoes; one has 2 or 3 plants that didn't fit into my garden plan and the other has one of my experiment tomatoes. They have both grown well, but I have to water them every day as they dry out very quickly. Somehow I ended up with a Calendula plant in one of them. It doesn't get much sun since the tomatoes are so bushy, but I'll leave it there and see what happens.
• Back in July I mentioned I was going to try and root some Basil and Lemon Balm. The Basil was a huge success! I took the cuttings on July 5'th and planted them 6 days later on the 11'th. I'm still working on the Lemon Balm, but have finally gotten some to root.
  
• Our herb container garden is doing well, except for the Lovage. I think it's getting to much shade from the Fennel and Pineapple Sage.
• I bought 2 Clematis plants to climb the lattice and make it look a little nicer. They seem to be doing well.
  
• My Brandywine Tomatoes have gotten blossom end rot for the second year in a row. I don't think I'll grow quite as many next year. I've been giving them more water, fertilizing and cutting off runners and some of the larger leaves in an effort to get more calcium to the tomatoes. It seems a little bizarre since Brandywines are supposed to be the easiest heirloom tomato to grow. On the other hand, the Mrs. Benson tomatoes have had no problems and are producing much larger fruits than I expected.

Farewell~
Sarah

Revenge of the Chippies

The chippies had their revenge while I was on vacation. The garden was dug up in numerous places. If they don't stop soon, I may have to take more drastic action, so chippies, beware!

In spite of the chipmunks, everything is growing well. The tomatoes are nearly as tall as I am, and starting to ripen. The beans are pretty much done, as is the zucchini. The lettuce, scallions and radishes are growing slowly, possibly from all the shade the tomato plants provide. The peppers are very large with multiple fruits on each plant (my family's never grown peppers very successfully before) so I'm excited about that. Several of the peppers have been bored into; the peppers seem ok though, so I'm going to leave them and see what happens. The Spicy Basil plant keeps growing and I've got enough to make pesto again; this time I'm going to try a slightly different recipe - it calls for zucchini. Should be an interesting culinary adventure.

My perennial garden died while I was gone. I'm not sure if it was from a lack of water or if the soil is just to rocky there. I planted some Coleus there last week, and it seems to be ok so far.

The flower bed is doing well, although not as well as I'd hoped. It rained today so maybe that will perk things up a little. I've been able to save a few seeds, but the plants are not growing very fast. I finally got around to planting my Pennyroyal - it wasn't doing very well in the container. The Horehound isn't doing very well either. Since it's part of the mint family I don't want to plant it in the garden and then spend all spring pulling it out. I found an old (clean) paint can and am going to put some holes in the bottom for drainage, plant the Horehound in it, and then 'plant' the paint can.

That's pretty much all the news. I spent today working on my plant files. I keep an index card for every plant I grow, and some of the ones my Mom and sister grow. At last count I had nearly 45 cards. Hopefully by the end of the week I'll have gotten around to organizing my pictures and I can get them up on the internet.

Farewell for now ~
Sarah

It's Raining, It's Pouring...

The rain started yesterday, and has continued today. Just what the flowers and veggies need. Everything (including the weeds) is getting a good soaking. This quote seems to fit me perfectly: "God made rainy days so gardeners could get the housework done." (Author Unknown) Since I'm stuck inside it's the perfect time to do the cleaning that has been neglected, update this blog, update my online photos and organize the rest of my digital pictures.

On Tuesday I figured out why the Japanese beetles I'd seen in my flower garden weren't doing much damage; they're feasting on the Japanese Maple tree. I set up a Japanese beetle trap and it seemed to be attracting them. It should solve the problem; if it doesn't I'm doing some research on the internet for other ways to deal with them.

In the vegetable garden: Dad put the chicken wire around the bottom of the fence to keep the critters from squeezing through and enjoying my vegetables before I can. Mom and I decided it would be way to much work to try and mow the paths, so we decided to kill the grass and put down some mulch. It's a little like lasagna gardening: I started with a layer of wet newspaper to kill the grass. Then I put down a layer of straw and soaked it well with the hose. The straw should keep the paths from getting muddy and slippery once the grass dies. We haven't decided on a mulch yet, and will probably wait until next year to put it down. The straw should work until then. It's not done yet - I ran out of newspaper - but hopefully it will be done by the time I go on vacation next week.

Farewell ~
Sarah

Chipmunks & Squirrels & Critters - Oh My!

Sunday afternoon - I went to water the vegetable garden, and it looked as if the little critters decided to play tag in the dirt. My Dad said he saw a squirrel taking a 'dirt bath' earlier in the morning. Needless to say, I'm not very happy and have declared war on any critter that invades my garden. We went to Lowes this afternoon and bought a spray called Shot Gun (R) Repells-All by Bonide that should repel the critters; it smells strong enough to keep humans away, so why not little critters? I sprayed it along the fence this evening. If that doesn't work I'll try spraying it on the bricks around the beds.

The Sevin seems to have worked - the insect damage to the plants appears to have stopped. The carrots are finally coming up, as is the lettuce. The second lettuce planting went in today so we can have continual harvests. This is also called succession planting in Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening book. I'm also succession planting the radishes, and the scallions.

Mom got her parsley and chives planted tonight, and we also planted the space around one of the trees. I'll take some pictures tomorrow.

Farewell for now ~
Sarah

Where but in a garden do summer hours pass so quickly?

I finally got around to taking some pictures of my gardens! Hopefully I can get some pictures posted this afternoon. The vegetable garden is doing well. All the tomatoes seem to have survived, and the beans and radishes are coming up. So far the carrots, lettuce, and scallions haven't come up. I went to the local farm market last Friday and bought 6 pepper plants, 1 zuchinni,
1 basil, 1 horehound, and 1 chive plant. I also bought 2 varieties of cleome for my flower beds- Rose Queen and White Queen.

The hardest part of gardening is waiting for the harvest. Right now I'm watering every day and fixing the parts of the garden the chipmunks dig up. If they start going after my plants I'm going to declare war on them. I also started fertilizing my tomatoes today. I used Miracle-Gro (R) Water Soluble Tomato Plant Food on my container garden tomatoes last year and was very pleased with the results. I fertilize every 14 days, as instructed on the label.

All my flower beds are doing very well. I am having some trouble with the 4 o' clocks, but I think they'll be ok. The bee balm started spreading this year, and even though I pulled up quite a lot, it's still taking up a lot of space. That's what makes gardening fun, you never know what will come up where.

Farewell~
Sarah