Fall Garden

We are running a little behind on starting a fall garden, but we live in Texas, so I guess we have a little extra time then those further north. Our first frost doesn't hit until December usually.

There aren't as many fun options for fall gardens, but hey, better then nothing. We are going to try carrots again, they didn't do so well in the summer. Also, Lettuce and maybe some onions. It will be our first fall garden, so we'll just have to see how it goes!

I've been doing a little bit of research...here are some sites I've been searching around on.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organic-Gardening/Fall-Gardening-Best-Fall-Garden.aspx

http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/plantanswers/fallgarden/fallindex.html

No more cucumbers

Last night I walked outside to enjoy the rain and noticed that my cucumbers were looking pretty sad. Probably, just that time of the season when they stop producing. We haven't had a cucumber in about a week, we were having about 5-6 a week before. So, I got out the garden gloves and trying to pull the dead/dieing stuff off the trellises and leave the pretty stuff. I ended up pulling all of them down. It was too hard to untangle them from each other.

The jalapenos and bell peppers are still doing great!! We are getting about 10-15 jalapenos a week and 3-4 bell peppers every 2 weeks or so.

Last night Aiden and Robert were looking at the garden and Robert pointed out the different peppers to Aiden. Robert said, "That's a Bell Pepper" and Aiden said, "That's a Dr Pepper." LOL too cute. Then Robert would say, "That's a jalapeno" and Aiden would say, "Chile". He definitely has a mind of his own. :)

We also still have beautiful bean stalks with no beans. Who knows.

Bugs and More Bugs

So, our organic garden went not so organic last week. I sprayed it with bug spray. We had an infestation of aphids and Rollie Pollies and I couldn't get rid of them with just the soap and water mixture.

Really all that's growing right now is the peppers. And man do we have peppers. Robert goes out to the garden and pulls about 20 off the plants per week. The cucumbers are starting to slow down, but we still have about 1-2 a week of those too.

The beans stalks are still growing, but we have yet to see a bean...it's probably too hot.

Oh, Yeah, we still could feed the world with all the basil we have :) If you need basil, you know where to find it!!!

Our strawberry plant is loving the hot weather and growing like crazy, but not producing anything.

We'll be out there this weekend, cleaning up and checking on everything.

Sad Day

I went out to the garden today because the squash plant was looking a little sad. Come to find out the squash plant is sad, because something has been eating it. :( I think it's aphids. So, Robert pulled out the sulfur and sprinkled some on i, don't think it will work for aphids, but it's a good start. Now to research how to get rid of the millions of bugs... off to google.

We still have tons of basil, tons of peppers growing and cucumbers.

Front garden and Jalapenos

So, I noticed that I don't think that I ever posted on our progress in the front yard. WOW.

We finally pulled up the Monkey Grass that was in the front yard. They were bigger then your head, REALLY, Huge! My brother came over one weekend and Robert and he pulled them up.

Then, we planted Hibicus and Caladium bulbs. It took the Caladiums a month or two to grow, but finally are looking good. As I was pulling out the drive way this morning I took a moment to enjoy the front yard and took a couple of pictures.

This is a weeks worth of Jalapenos... I'm taking them to work to hand out because 1.) they don't go with a low fat bland diet, 2.) Robert's out of town and won't enjoy them for a couple of weeks and we will have more by the time he gets home. I also need to chop done the basil while he's gone.

Cucumbers, Squash and Basil oh my

What I pulled from our garden this morning:

3 Large Cucumbers

1 Large Squash

I also chopped back the basil. Robert usually does this, but since he's out this week I didn't want the flowers to keep growing and making the basil bitter, so I chopped them all off. (Which is almost a weekly thing)

Garden week??

Everything seems to be growing well. We now have jalapenos growing (20 at last count), 4 cucumbers, multiple squash, 3 Roma-Grape Tomatoes, beans are blooming, lettuce is growing, and all that jazz! The only thing is that I've had to move some plants around b/c our squash was taking over the garden. This was crowding the bell peppers (which aren't growing yet) so I moved them up. Let's hope they survive.

Let me take you on a tour of our back yard gardens...

One of the side gardens in the back yard with Elephant Ears, Caladiums, Monkey Grass and a few flowers.

Cucumbers are growing like crazy. We currently have only 3 or 4 cucumbers growing, but we have lots of flowers. Also, in this garden are carrots, pepper plants and marigolds.

Our pretty Hibicus Tree (I killed the last one, b/c I planted it in the ground and then was too lazy to dig it up, so it didn't survive the winter. This one will stay in the pot and go in the garage during winter)

This little garden is mainly Nana's creation. It has flowers, a mini rose bush and those orange flowers that grow tall and I can't remember what they are called.

The Veggie Garden.

Squash, squash and more squash.

Bean Stalks, we have bean flowers, but no beans yet.

Middle of the garden, peppers, lettuce, marigolds, LOTS OF BASIL. (Robert cuts the basil about once to twice a week and it still is growing flowers and getting larger!)

Jalapenos!

Tomatoes.

We finished out this side of the back yard garden a couple of weeks ago. It still needs more stones to finish it out completely, but looks great! This is all flowers. (Please ignore the dirt in the grass, we are growing more grass!)

Day 37 or something like that!

After my failed attempts at taking pictures of the garden, Robert got out (after the rain) and took pictures for me!!



Here's our garden at day 37!

Side garden with pepers, little bitty carrot sprouts and cucumbers.

Basil!

Squash, that is squashing the parsley.

We have 4 tomatoes, lettuce is still growing, beans are looking better (they were getting a little brown), squash is blooming, we have basil tons of basil, and parsley is still looking good. Oh, and our cucumbers are starting to bloom, and so are the peppers, carrots are still there, and so is the garlic (although we can't tell how either of them is doing)!

And did I mention we have TONS of basil, so if you need any, just come over!

Tomatoes

We have 4 Tomatoes!! I came in last night super excited and told Robert, "We can make a Salad!!"

Right now are tomatoes are still very green and very small and our lettuce is still growing, but still very small. So I guess we could have a mini-salad.


Last year I planted tomatoes, and had huge tomato plants, but never a tomato.

I tried to get pictures of our garden and future salad, but I am sometimes pretty camera stupid and that was the case this morning. I took about 10 pictures and then Robert said something about the wrong lens and then made fun of the fact that I didn't even have a card in the camera. (You would think a camera that smart would tell you there isn't a card)

Robert said he will take pictures tonight of all our blooms and tomatoes :) I'll post them!

Blooms

Our veggies are blooming, which means veggies soon. We have flowers on the tomatoes, squash and cucumbers. However, none of the peppers are blooming, I'm not quit sure why that is, but I guess we will wait and see.

:(

Only 2 of my Thyme plants in our indoor plant sowing box have made it. I think it is due to all the rainy days the last couple of weeks and the fact that we really don't get much sun inside the house, because our house faces North. Hum, have to figure out for next year were to put our plant sowing box. So, I planted the 2 surviving Thyme plants last night.

Our Hibiscus adventure was put on hold with all the rain on Saturday. Sunday, while Robert was out taking graduation pictures with our niece and nephew I attempted to pull up one of the monkey grass plants. No success. So, I gave up and decided that I will have to have Robert pull up the monkey grass, which I'm sure he's excited about!

Roses

Nana bought me some rose bushes, Red and White Roses. We have a pink rose bush that sits in the garden that sits in front of one of the living room windows. We are thinking about putting the 2 new bushes in front of the other 2 windows.

Spicy Mixture

I made the Oil/Soapy/Spicy mixture this weekend and sprayed the plants. Let's see if the bugs still come around.

Garden Day 15

Flowers mean veggies are coming. YAY!!

Beans, the white stuff is the soapy/oil/chili spray I put on the plants.

Garlic

Inside plants, probably need to be planted outside soon.

Busy, Busy

We have the Camp Rosales Garage Sale this weekend, so not much gardening is going to happen. Although, I'm thinking about asking Robert for some Hibiscus plants for Mother's Day for the front yard.

We currently have 4-5 monkey grass plants in the front yard that are each bigger then your head. They are HUGE!! We really don't like the way they look and they take up a lot of room. We want to pull those up, put them somewhere else (who knows where that will be) and put Hibiscus plants there.

A couple of years ago I pulled one of the Monkey Grass plants out of the front and put it around our front tree. It took a while to get the plant out of the ground, then I somehow cut it into 4 parts. It looks good now, but wow it was a challenge.

Day 12

The new bricks are in and the plants are growing like crazy!

New Look

I put in the bricks along the fence part of our garden last night. I feel better about it now. There were already weeds/grass coming from the neighbors yard. I had to do it by hand, I thought I could use a hoe or some kind of tool, but I disturbed less by hand. The only things I disturbed was the garlic cloves we planted on Saturday (I put them back and they had no growth yet) and some lettuce along the back of the garden. The lettuce will most likely dry once it gets hot, so that isn't a big loss and we have more lettuce in other places.

I also went to Mike's Garden Center yesterday and bought some mint. I was overly excited and the plant guy looked at me strangely, but I'd been looking for mint or mint seeds for a month now. I planted that in our tomato baskets.

Now, it's just sit and wait. We don't have any blooms yet, so no veggies soon, but you just wait!

Day 8

Our garden at day 8 is amazing. The bean sprouts seem to have come up over night (left side of garden) and really started growing. It's been pretty rainy so we haven't been watering at all. Sunday morning I went out and we had a ton of mushrooms sprouting up. They were gone this morning so that is hope that nothing under the dirt is routing away from all the rain (this can really happen with Squash)

Also, Saturday we planted Cucumbers, Jalapenos and Garlic in the side garden. (I didn't get pictures of these for some reason.) We put a few garlic cloves in the new garden near the back to keep pests from our neighbors yard. Hopefully, the garlic won't make too many things taste like garlic, but Robert would like that. (We don't worry about Vampires in our house, because Robert LOVES garlic.) I have to get some kind of fencing stuff to keep the dogs (Diego) from trampling my plants. (That's his personal walk through)

I also planted more basil in the top of the tomato plants. We are going to have LOTS of basil this year.

Overall, Pretty exciting!! We are going to clip some of the basil and parsley and put it in the fridge for kitchen use and then see how well it grows back. The parsley has taken off and looks really good.

This weeks project is to get the dirt away from the fence so the fence doesn't rout. We have lots of bricks left over from when our house was built. I'm going to try my best to not disturb anything and pull the dirt back and put the bricks in. Why didn't we think of this before...Hum...

Bugs

We have pests eating our leaves already
....HUM....So, I found a recipe for a soap/pepper mixture that says it will keep a variety of pests away.

Mix one teaspoon of liquid dishwashing detergent with one cup of vegetable oil. Shake vigorously to emulsify and add to a quart of tap water.

Steep three tablespoons of dry, crushed hot pepper in 1/2 cup hot water (covered) for half an hour. Strain out the particles of peppers, and then mix solution with the liquid detergent formula. Good for a number of insects on both indoor and outdoor plants.

Use at 10-day intervals as an all-purpose spray.

Note: Test on a single plant first, because it may cause tip burn.

Note: Apply to plants outdoors. Do not use on windy days. Avoid breathing fumes, which can be irritating to nose and eyes. You can substitute hot Tabasco sauce or Louisiana hot sauce for hot pepper.

I'll give this a couple of days and maybe go out and get some diatomaceous earth to put around the garden and on any pests we see.

Strawberries

Well, we have 1 strawberry growing. This plant was saved from last year in the garage during the winter and didn't produce much last year. Currently, it has 2 Strawberries on it! Maybe we will have enough for a smoothie this year. :)

NOTE: Shortly after taking this picture a toddler ran over and picked the Strawberry and tried to eat it. So, now 1 very small Strawberry right now.

Sprouts

Things are sprouting up already!!


These are the indoor seeds we started on Tuesday. After 3 days they are already sprouting. It's Thyme and Tarragon. We have to wait another couple of days before we put them outside.



The little sprouts in front of the sign is, you guessed it, Lettuce. The bigger green behind the sign is basil. Lettuce is supposed to be a cooler weather plant, so it might die away in a couple of months. These were planted last weekend (Saturday)

Then we have Bean Sprouts!! These were planted last weekend (Saturday) I told Robert this morning, "What if we got magic beans and we have bean stalks that go into the sky...?" He asked me another question about pesticides or something, not even excited about going to meet giants in the sky.

Nothing we can eat yet, but we are working on it!! I'm sooooo excited!

Bird Feeders

In honor of Earth Week...

Sunday afternoon Aiden and I made some bird feeders out of milk and apple juice cartons. I would personally suggest the milk carton over apple juice carton, because the apple juice carton was almost impossible to cut through.

We made one for us and then one for our neighbors across the street. I spray painted their's blue and then wanted Aiden to paint some stuff on it with other paint colors, but he wanted to take it over. So that's what we did.

It really wasn't hard to do.

• take a milk carton - clean it out (leave the cap on to help keep water out when it rains)
• cut out 2 holes about fist size - I used an exacto knife
• punch a couple of holes in the bottom (helps water build up in the bottom) - I used a small screw driver
• punch two holes in the top of the carton, place wire or twine in holes to hang the bird feeder - I used covered wire.
• make holes for twigs under the fist size holes
• paint (if you want to)
• shove twigs in the holes - this was probably the hardest part, trying to get the hole small enough so the twigs would stick straight out, otherwise the twigs hang down
• Put seed in, hang it up! DONE

This is our finished bird feeder. I didn't have time to take a picture of the other one we made. Aiden was in a big hurry to get it to his friend. :) Too cute.

We've been watching to see if any birds have been interested. Finally, this morning Robert saw a couple of birds eating out of it. When we let the dogs outside, Lola goes and sits under it, waiting for the birds. (She thinks she's a bird dog, loves to chase birds, guess we can't have an inside bird for a while) The dogs don't stay outside too long, so hopefully she won't scare the birds off.

Also, I found this website of things to do with a milk carton - evidently they sit in land fills forever, so if you don't recycle them the never go away. Or you can make crafty garden things out of them! http://www.plantea.com/milk-jug.htm

New Garden

We got the garden done this weekend!!

We went to Home Depot Saturday morning and bought bricks, dirt, plants and more. Then, came home and got to work. Poor mom and Robert did most of the work, I helped out when I could, but they didn't want me lifting and doing much. Lisa and I had fun planting in the afternoon.

We planted: Squash, Bell Peppers, Jalapenos, Basil, Parsley, Marigolds, Beans, and Lettuce (although it's not Lettuce time of year, but we are going to try anyway.) We also have some seedlings going inside to plant after they start sprouting (Tarragon, Thyme and Oregano).

We still have last year's garden. I really, really want to try cucumbers again, but am scared of all the cucumber horror stories. I might try some cucumbers and train them (Sounds funny) but you can train their vines on a wire or wire fencing so that they don't take over your house. With the cucs, I'm going to plant more jalapenos (keep away those bugs that eat cucs), garlic (can make the cucs garlic flavor, but also keep away aphids, which killed my cucs last year)

We also got two hanging baskets for Tomatoes and I am looking for mint to put in the top of the hanging baskets, but everyone seems to be out of mint. I'm going to try Mike's this week to see if they have any mint. Mint is supposed to keep away bugs that like tomatoes and give your tomatoes better flavoring!

I'm also in search of French or Mexican Marigolds. They are supposed to be smellier and keep more insects away.

Lastly, we will be buying ladybugs again this year! So fun last year. Might plant some geraniums, and cilantro to keep them around!!

Here are some pics of our new garden!

Sunday night I woke up and thought about how the dirt sitting on the fence wasn't such a good idea. I'm going to put brinks back there so it doesn't eat away at our fence. Will also help as a barrier from our neighbors grass and stuff.

Lettuce and Beans were started from seeds, we will see how that goes, that's a first for us.

Tomato hanging baskets, planning on planting plants on the top to help the tomatoes grow and to keep the dirt in the pots.

PS: I forgot to add that my mom and Robert did most of the work!! Lisa and I planted the plants, but they did all the back-breaking work. Aiden and Paul helped, too!