The Beginning of a Great Tomato!

First , I would like to say I am so happy that my artichoke I purchased from Tasteful Gardens last Spring survived a very cold winter in my dirt basement. I am looking forward to some yummy artichokes this year.

Tomato Tips!

If you want abundant and tasty tomatoes, you have to give them a loving beginning when you plant them, and they will make you very happy!

1.) Always pull off the lower few leaves of the tomato plant, and then you need to dig a hole deep enough to plant your tomato up to the lower leaves that are left. Too many people only plant them to the top of the dirt provided in the pot they are purchased in. Unfortunately, this container is a temporary home, and it has not provided room for their wandering roots. A tomato needs a strong stem and root system to provide you with great fruit.

2.) Furnish the tomato a nice basis of nutrition and protection.

a.) In the hole add a fish head (can be guts, lobster or shrimp shells), for calcium.

b.) Add 1/2 cup of bone meal for phosphorus which will make more blossoms, more

blossoms bring more fruit, and a bonus of calcium.

c.) To prevent blossom rot add 3 or 4 crushed egg shells which adds calcium.

d.) Aspirin will give the tomatoes immune system a head start, so add a few.

e.) Now throw in a handful or two of a slow release fertilizer like 4-6-4.

3.) Now you can place your tomato in it's new home and if you want to protect it from fungal disease, then dust it with a bit of RootZone, place it in the hole and gently cover with top soil and pat it in place.

4.) Now you need to water your newly planted tomato deeply and start thinking about what kind of cool trellis you can come up with to support all of those yummy tomatoes. I can't wait!

Easter Sunrise, What a wonderful time to think about the renewal of the earth!

Yes, I have already begun planting yummy lettuces, and they are already so beautiful with splashes of color!

The Garlic chives give so abundantly all summer, and arrive so early in the spring!

Mr Gnome and his Mushroom side kick are gleeful over the emergence of all of this parsley!

I ate on this Swiss Chard all Winter, and now it is living in a pot happy to be outside!

My new babies awaiting their turn to play in Gerties Garden!

I am truly happy, and looking forward to the new challenges that Spring puts forth. This is only the beginning, yet I already have wonders emerging from last year. The cycle of life is a wonderous thing!

Recap and New Beginnings

We have here some of the fall abundance from my garden last year being watched over by my lumberjack nutcracker. I just finished my last butternut squash just weeks ago and it was so sad, but yummy!

My cat Calypso loves laying by the peppers on my walkway, which is weed free now and has new pea gravel I put down last week!
This was my lower garden with the wattle fencing which my squashes loved! You can see the patch of corn at the back of the garden on the left. The deer decided to make a bed there, so I didn't even get one ear of corn! (ignore the date on the pic, batteries died, and I forgot to reset the date.. oops)

Close up of some of my pumpkins and butternut!

Spring is here and I am so excited to have already begun my adventures in Gardening after a very long, very cold winter. I have posted some photo's from last year to inspire. First we have a few of the canned items I put away from my harvest. I made garlic dill pickles, canned tomatoes with garlic and basil, and pickled some jalapeno's. I had such an abundance that I was able to share at Christmas the fruits of my labors. The jalapeno peppers were absolutely awesome! I also froze a lot of my pepper crops to enjoy throughout the winter. (I do apologize again for a few of the pictures have incorrect dates due to battery recharges on my camera, and forgetting to reset the dates. 2/1 was actually in July. :O)

My fairy eggplants were absolutely beautiful!

The wattle fencing worked wonderfully to house an abundance of cucumbers throughout the summer.

I really had lots of luck with the sunflowers this year as well. The birds were very happy, and I got to enjoy their sunny disposition for months!

This was my new lower garden which housed pumpkins, spaghetti squash, okra, beans, zucchini and yellow squash, and lots of vining morning glories.

This is the front Wattle fencing with some cucumbers hanging happlily, even in August. I also had mint running around like crazy and a hummingbird vine that brought a lot of beneficial bugs and birds to visit.

This is what I have dubbed as pepper row. And wow, did I have lots of peppers. I grew jalapeno's, banana peppers, serrano, pablano, and a vast variety of green peppers. This area is along my walkway and I discovered the gravel was very beneficial in growing peppers. They like the drainage and heat provided from the gravel, and the piggies didn't bother to poke their noses through the fence to try and eat them.

This year I am already enjoying lettuces, cilantro, parsley, turnip greens, swiss chard, and arugula that actually survived the winter, and came back in full force to greet me.

I will be posting more often, as well as showing stages of plantings, tips, and recipes. My next post will show the abundance I am already enjoying, and plans for this year's garden!

I'm still standing!

Hello All, and I hope your summer is as action packed as mine has been. So, I have taken a moment to update my blog so you can see how my garden grows.

Remember the Fennel my neighbor gave me a few months ago?

Tasteful Garden

Before Artichoke

Hello all, just a brief touching base and shameless advertisement!!

I wanted to order some artichoke plants, so I got them from Tasteful Garden! I also got Horseradish as well. I wanted to show the progress of my lovely delushious plants!!

Artichoke now!

Okay, so I love my Artichokes! A bit advice when growing them in the SouthEast section of the country. First, slugs love them, so sprinkle a little red pepper flakes around them to prevent this glutenous behaviour. Make sure you have chosen a spot where they can get about 4 feet tall and several feet wide, like an overgrown zucchinni plant. Then plant at least 1 plant per consumer, as I know I can eat lots!! When fall rolls around, dig up your plant and store it in some peat moss in your garage or basement, and pull out and plant next year. This should give you 5 years of crops from this one plant! Amazing eh?

Also pics of my Horseradish I got from Tasteful Garden.

Okay, Horsey is the dark green bugger fighting it out with my truly over zealous varigated mint. The mint thinks it's winning, but I do tend to help horsey out by plucking a mint here and there and tossing to the piggies to freshen their breath! I am interested to see which prolific plant prospers!!

Ta Ta! Teresa/Gertie

Wahoo for Wattle!!

This is sure a work in progress! With the help of two fellow Wattlers, we managed to cut down quite a few Mimosa trees that were taking over my garage, (along with tons of honeysuckle and other various weeds). The limbs from these trees were from 9 ft to 15 ft long, and quite subtle, making them perfect weaving material. I love the wonderful curve they have helped me to produce in the wattle fence.

I believe my cucumbers, peas, and nasturtiums will thoroughly enjoy their adventurous climb in and out of the limbs to the sky. One poor cucumber baby was actually trying to climb in mid air before the wattle was up, and he finally decided to curl his little tendril around his own stem/neck! The poor baby was choking himself! Whew! Got that fence up just in the nick of time.

A Little advice on Wattling a fence. FIRST post placement is very important. Mine are around 3 1/2 - 4 feet apart, which I find is really too far for weaving unless you have boundless access to wattling materials around 15 feet or taller. This "weave" needs to be at least 15 feet, and around 2 to 4 inches at the thickest part and a bit green and pliable. I have corrected this space in my lower garden, and feel it will make finding the weaving materials a bit easier with my posts only about 2 feet apart. I like to be able to weave through at least 3 or 4 posts to get a good strong hold.

Then just start at the bottom and alter each weave as you would with a basket or place mat. Don't fret over thin tops to your materials, just tuck them in where ever you can fit them. I even leave a few limb sprouts at the tops, to tuck in and out as I go. It really adds personality and flair, as well as stability. On the end post to your left (in the pic above), I used honey suckle vines to tie the weave to my tall post to anchor it all together, this worked quite nicely!

THE GARDEN FAIRY!

Okay, at the risk of sounding insane, I think I have a garden fairy! I was taking pictures of my Wattle Fence for this blog, and happened to captured these images. In the first photo, I see to have captured a purple figure with a misty underneath, hovering in the center of my garden, watching me with great joy. The next image, the fairy seems to suddenly become camera shy, and bolts to the right of the garden, causing it's poor lovely purple head to become pointy!

Okay, believer or non-believer, I choose to belive this is my own personal Garden Fairy. Maybe she will bring good fortune to the garden and help us to produce a bountiful yield all summer!

Anyway, until next week, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it!
Have a great week! Gertie

Lasagna Garden

Meet my new lasagna garden.

This will soon be surrounded by a wattle fence, and a lovely natural gate. I am planning beans, corn, various squashes, p-nuts and potatoes in this garden. The fence to the left is my old garden that will soon be my "Mystery Garden". I found it didn't get quite as much sun as needed, so this year my plan was to retire it and use it as a compost bin. Of course, as I earlier stated in a blog, I just so happen to have a mixed bag of orphan seeds that really need a home, thus the "Mystery Garden". However, for today, both plots patiently waiting for new plantings while my upper garden near the deck is receiving new plants on almost a daily basis. .

This plant just in!! My neighbor Rick, grew fennel last year, and it came back this year. He has no clue what to do with it, so he gave it to me!! YES!! Always a place for adopted veggies in my space!

Okay, so I started reading about no dig gardens a few years ago. Not because I am lazy, but because the thought of chopping up all of my lovely worms with a tiller makes me quite sad! During my no dig quest, I stumbled upon lasagna gardening and was quite intrigued! (NO this does not include pasta sauce! ) To lasagna garden simply means to layer your ingredients as you would lasagna. I began last fall with newspapers to kill the grass. This was a bit challenging due to wind and rain, the papers kept escaping all over my yard daily. I then applied a layer of cardboard, which imprisoned the paper quite nicely. After this set for a few weeks, I began layering with grass clippings, leaves, kitchen scraps, manure, and repeated this process. Over the winter I continued to add kitchen scraps, much to the raccoons delight, and this spring did a bit more grass and mushroom compost.

Whew.. now it's time to plant! The nice part is of course, big fat healthy worms, lots of organic matter for my plants, as well as low amounts of weeds. In order to plant you will need to cut out a hole and plug in your plants. With seeds, I spread a bit of dirt around and pat. They will soon dig down and venture below the cardboard for a joyous feast!

Now, so far I really love Lasagna Gardening, BUT, the downside is there as well. I need to be careful that my plants don't get fungus from too much dampness amongst their roots. Also, the photo above shows my row of Chinese cabbage, okay, what used to be my Chinese cabbage. This kind of gardening gives slugs a lot of space to live under leaves and such. So, they have devoured my cabbage, a bit of my artichokes, and even my newly sewn parsley. What to do? I tried the beer method, and not very helpful. I think it just gave them something to wash down their greens with. I searched for the "organic" slug bait, and have found none for sale locally, so I will probably shop online for this, and perhaps that will annihilate these nasty glutenous buggers!!

In the mean time, I pluck the little slimey's and either drown them or squash them. It works to keep the nibbles at bay, but keeps me quite busy! Until next time, Nameste! Teresa/Gertie