Container vs. Garden-Round 3: Peppers

Left-Mariachi Hybrid, Right-Sweet Pepper

Mariachi Hybrid

Sweet Pepper in bed.

Ta daaa!  Peppers!  This post is going to be pretty boring, but I wanted to update everyone on the pepper progress.  The peppers are the one thing this year that has done amazingly well both in the garden bed AND in the containers.  I've gotten multiple peppers from both, despite any neglect in weeding the garden bed or watering the containers.  All in all, I think the lack of needing to weed gives containers a slight advantage over putting them in a garden but these truly are the EASIEST thing to grow.  I have both hot and sweet peppers in both places.  So the take away from this blog post is...if you want to start a garden and start with something easy, get some peppers.

Also, I tried the Burpee Mariachi Hybrid pepper that is supposed to be "high on color and flavor and low on heat!" and holy moly...sucker is HOT.  I'm not a hot pepper fan but I like a teency bit of kick.  Think...restaurant jalapenos.  Those are perfect.  But ones you grow at home always seem to be hotter so I purposely went for a pepper they labeled as "less" hot than a jalapeno.  So apparently I'm a wuss because these suckers are still too spicy for me.  Great flavor though.  As mentioned above, they grow well despite neglect and indeed are beautiful, but boy was I surprised when I put them on my salad, and then realized I'd cut them without gloves on, and then realized I was going out and had to put contacts in.  Queue twenty minute montage of me attempting to put contacts in with ziploc bags on my hands...one of the more frustrating twenty minutes I've had in a good long while but hey, eventually I was successful. 

And now, pretty pictures of a butterfly

Wouldn't want my last post to be gross bugs.  So here, enjoy some pretty pictures of a butterfly.  You're welcome.

Ewwwww

I was out in the garden on Friday and spotted this little dude.

Ewwwww.  Caterpillar thingy?  What is wrong with you!  What's with all the weird little cotton puffball things coming off your back?!

But I let him be.  Today I went back and caterpillar thingy looks like this:

Ewwwww-er.  What in the?!?  From what I can tell the little white cotton puffballs sucked caterpillar dry.  Gerrrrroooooossssss.

I came inside and was thinking I should probably nicely ask a boy to come over and kill the gross caterpillar parasite things so I didn't have to touch it but I wanted to figure out what those disgusting little vampiric buggers were.  Well, good thing I did!  Turns out the pretty green caterpillar (rest in peace) was a tomato hornworm larva and the vampiric buggers are trichogramma wasps.  "Nooo!  No wasps!! I've already got mosquitoes all over my garden!"  Well, turns out these wasps are listed as a beneficial parasite in my garden book.  They're too small to sting people and apparently are so small we usually don't even see them (1/100 to 1/25 of an inch).  They feed on the eggs of insects that are plant eaters but don't harm the actual plants.

So I guess I shouldn't kill the gross little suckers.  Dern.

Container vs. Garden-Round 2: Carrots

So how did the other half of my giant container o' carrots and onions turn out?  Well, the carrots are thankfully at least appearing to still be a work in progress.  They're still pretty puny BUT the greens look very healthy.  Carrot instructions say to try to water a very small amount every day and to try to till or loosen the soil a bit so the carrots have more room to grow.  I promise from here on out to try to give them all the TLC they can handle and see if I can salvage them after the great onion massacre that occurred right next to my poor carrot babies.

At least so far it appears that the container carrots are doing far better than the garden carrots.  They're either thicker or longer or both (insert penis joke I'm too lazy to come up with here).  And just as a reminder, this year I'm trying a cool purple variety of carrot so their color is normal.

Next round: Peppers!

Container vs. Garden-Round 1: Onions

On Monday I did a HUGE weeding of the raised garden bed.  Filled an entire trash can full of weeds and loved every cathartic minute of it.  Just after an energizing jog in the rain I figured "hey! there won't be any mosquitoes out in this downpour...time to WEED!"  I'd been putting off weeding far too long due to this year's terrible mosquito problems.  I would only make it 5 minutes even with bug spray on before I'd have dozens of bites.  So I kind of just gave up and fantasized about creating a perimeter of citronella torches around the garden so I can weed free from fear some day.  But no longer!

So, it was time to do an assessment of the veggies that are done growing.  The peas, beans, broccoli, lettuce, and chard are full-on failures.  They were all decimated by critters (I've seen both bunnies and deer snacking away) before the weeds took hold.

On to the matchup.  There was a clear winner in the onion category, which you will see from this visual...

And as you can see, that winner is Mother Nature.  That stupid wench better be getting a good laugh out of this poor showing.  I got all excited with how quickly the little suckers sprouted and started shooting up happy green onion grass and this is all I get for all my hard work?!?  The garden onions stopped growing sooner but probably has the larger of the onions whereas you can see the container onions still have some greens on top but they're no longer healthy.  I might try a smaller number next year and work on tilling the soil around the onions once a week to see if that helps their ability to expand, but it was pretty disappointing all around.  Screw you mother nature...screw you.  Not a useable onion in the bunch.

Next round: Carrots!

Container eggplants update

Hi all! I know I've been more than a bit negligent about posting but now that my harvests (or lack thereof) are coming in I'm going to try to start posting more updates on how the veggies are doing.

This picture shows you the lackluster results of my container eggplant. They are so small I can't imagine using them in cooking; the largest of the fairy tale eggplants is only about 4 inches. That lovely dark purple veggie next to the fairy tale eggplants shockingly ISN'T an eggplant. It's one of my sweet peppers from the pepper grow bags. I've eaten a few and they were delicious and I love the fun purple color. 

My eggplants appeared to have some sort of microscopic pest bothering it so I sprayed it down with some pest spray and its bouncing back nicely. Well see if it gives another round of veggies that are a bit more useable but I'm not holding my breathe. Happy Monday everyone!

What?! What?! In The...

Containers.  Get your mind out of the gutter all you Tosh.0 fans.  Alright, I know I've fallen down hard on blogging lately, but I'm back from vacation and caught up on all the life stuff so back to it!  This post is the last round of veggie plantings I did right before going on vacation during the last week of May so I can tell you now how they're doing, and I also did some updates on the other containers I planted earlier in the season.

Fairy Tale Eggplant from Burpee

Fairy Tale Eggplant.  This is an eggplant variety I got from Burpee that is made for containers.  It's a smaller marbled eggplant.  I did a very basic planting on this one with rocks in the bottom layer for proper drainage and potting soil.  I also have a black beauty eggplant (the classic large dark purple variety) growing in the raised garden bed so I'm excited to compare the two throughout the summer.  This week I checked and the container has these beautiful purple and white blooms on it so it's going strong!  Actually doing better than the black beauty plant, which has grown but has no buds yet.

Peppers in a Gardener's grow bag

Peppers.  Alright, next up is my peppers!  As you know, I started these bad boys from seeds, they're the only thing I did from seed this year that wasn't simple "sow in ground" and needed to be started in advance of growing season.  One is a mildly hot pepper, the other is a sweet pepper.  Sadly, due to lack of a proper labeling at the seedling stage, I have no idea which one is which.  The idea was that I'd have the hot pepper in the red grow bag and the sweet pepper in the blue grow bag.  Once they start growing actual peppers I'll find out if my guess was right or not!  Generally the hot pepper plants are smaller so I did my guess based on which set of seedlings looked larger overall.  As you can see, for these guys I tried a Gardener's grow bag.  They're about $10 each, can be reused for 2 seasons, and are supposed to provide the perfect amount of moisture retention and aeration for the roots.  Very easy to use and keep their shape pretty well.  The main difference in these is you're supposed to use pre-moistened dirt while filling it.  I just filled and watered the dirt as I went every couple of inches.  We shall see.  The plants are about a month in so far and to be honest, the peppers in the back yard are doing better.  These are doing fine, but no buds yet and the backyard most are budding.  This weekend I'm going to try adding more dirt to them since I think with the watering they're planted a bit shallow now. 

Sweet Potatoes in a Gardener's grow bag

Sweet Potatoes.  Alas, the piece de resistance, my sweet potatoes!  I have high hopes for these bad boys because a) they were expensive since you have to buy tubers, and b) potatoes store really well so I could feast all year round!  As you can see, I did another grow bag for these, it's much larger than the pepper grow bag and is designed for potatoes.  I planted 7 tubers here, and a few in the backyard as well for comparison.  They look quite withered and dying here, but no worries, the directions ensured me that no matter how gross/stinky they are when you get them, they bounce back very quickly once planted.  They insist that you put one tuber in a soda bottle with water inside to see the pretty foliage grow from it...but alas, I was running behind on packing so I neglected to do that.  So far, about a month out from planting now, it appears that only 3 of the tubers really survived in the grow bag.  They're growing, but not much, so I'm imagining my sweet potato project may be a failure.  I've been told they only grow in hotter climates than mine, but the Baltimore/DC area is pretty darn disgusting in the summer so I disregarded the online naysayers.  It's over 100 degrees here today!  I may attempt to move the bag to my driveway to do some real spud frying heat of the bag, but we'll see.

Carrots and Onions!  Looking Good!

Update on Carrots and Onions.  Looking good right?  I'm fairly certain I need to thin the carrots out, but I have yet to research how.  So they may come up all scary and deformed looking.  I'm going to try to check in on them this weekend. 

Peas-pretty much done for this round

Update on Peas-In-A-Pot.  Well they've been in the pot for a while now and in this picture from the beginning of June they are starting to turn yellow and stop producing.  Truth be told, they produced a decent number of pods for one person for snacking but it's not like you could make a meal out of them.  And according to smart gardener its time to plant another pot full peas, so I guess they only produce for a month or so and you keep replanting like lettuce.  Sadly, I may have/did leave the seeds out in the yard and ruined them.  A week after this picture was taken the pot was totally dead.

Strawberries-a little dry on the bottom row

Update on Strawberries.  Well the lazy strategy isn't working out so well.  The plants on the bottom are drying out a lot no matter how often I water them so I've been reduced to using watering bulbs just to try to get water to them.  It seems to be working okay but is far more of a pain in the arse to refill every couple days than if I'd just created the PVC pipe with holes in the center so that water would easily travel down to them.  So alas, laziness did not pay off in the end.




That's all for today folks!  I'm going to try to start doing side by sides of container plants with their garden bed counterparts to show the comparison in how well they're doing.

Wet N Wild

One new thing I'm trying this year is an attempt to take watering out of the garden failure equation.  Last year I definitely killed many plants during the drought by failing to water them often enough.  The best time to water plants is in the morning so they get the water before the soil gets too hot so it doesn't all evaporate before getting to the roots.  At night the opposite problem occurs and it's too cold to evaporate all the water sitting on the plant or the base of the roots, which leads to root rot and mold or mildew.  Of course during a true heat wave you should water your plants every day or at least every other day, but taking the extra 15 minutes in the morning when I have to leave for work at 7:00 AM did not happen.

Watering timer.

Soaker hose packaging.

The project this year started when I got a water timer for my spigot.  I had planned to connect the timer to basic sprinklers but realized for my patio garden I'd also be watering my patio furniture cushions; not a feature I was looking for.  So I started researching other methods and decided on soaker hoses instead of sprinklers. Soaker hoses help try to prevent the problem of having water sitting on the leaves or base of the roots leading to root rot by letting water seep into the ground rather than spraying the whole plant.  You can even bury soaker hoses in the ground to get them right on the roots.  The packaging recommends covering them with mulch because the sun can degrade them but I haven't gotten around to it and for $12 to replace it I figure buying mulch is more expensive anyways and I'm feeling lazy this season on the mulch front.  If they become clogged you remove the endcap and let the water run through like a normal hose.  Also, they supposedly are great for the environment because you need to use far less water when its soaking in straight at the roots slowly.

I ran one basic garden hose to my front yard and one hose to my backyard vegetable garden bed, and attached to those hoses I have soaker hoses.  The 50' soaker hose I got  cost $12, the two spigot water timer was $40, and regular garden hoses range from about $10-$30 depending on how long of a hose you need before you get to the garden where you place the soaker hose.  So all in all, a relatively inexpensive option to take watering out of the equation and save your plants.

I've tried it out for a few weeks and so far I really like it.  You choose how long you want the timer to water for spigot 1 and spigot 2 (I chose 30 minutes each), how often (I chose every four days), and what time of day (I chose 5:30 a.m. for spigot 1 and 6:00 a.m. for spigot 2).  It has a rain delay function where you simply push + to delay the watering cycle from 12 to I believe 48 hours if it happens to rain and your plants don't need it.  It was very, VERY easy to program and I did it in about 5 minutes.  The only recommendation on the soaker hoses is that they don't lay flat after being packaged in a circle for their whole life because unlike a garden hose they're very lightweight so take them out of the packaging and stretch them flat for a few days if you can before trying to place them.

Soaker hose in raised veggie garden.

Soaker hose running past my strawberries to front garden

The hose to my front garden can run right along the side of the house so there is no problem with mowing.  In the veggie garden however, the hose has about ten feet to go between the side of the house and the actual garden where the soaker hose is placed over my lawn.  Thankfully I tend to mow my own lawn but if you have to run the hose over an area where a landscaper may accidentally shred it with a mower you can put up a small border fence to run with the hose so they have to stop and see that there's a hose.  You can easily disconnect it from the soaker hose so it's not disturbed or lift it up and mow under it quickly.  If you're not using a timer you can always simply leave the soaker hose placed in your garden and attach the garden hose to it each time you want to water.

Here's hoping we get a hot summer so I get a good "test" year in for the soaker hose/water timer experiment!

Last of the plantings (and summary of the garden)

That's right, this past weekend I managed to finally get my veggies fully planted.  My apologies on no pretty pictures, I'll post some when I get back from vacation and have time to fix the picture importer (plus, more fun to post pictures of what the plants look like a week or two after planting).  I gave up on doing brussel sprouts because I didn't have great luck with them last year and I'm already taking on a hell of a lot in the garden.  So what did I do to round out my veggie garden?

Well, I tilled my finally area of the raised bed in back and planted a few sweet potatoes (purchased as little roots from Burpee) in half and the other half I put in zucchini and yellow squash.  I did four seeds of each in the hopes that two of each sprout and I'll thin it out.  I don't have high hopes for the sweet potatoes in the back because it's not very well tilled or fertilized where I planted them, but I basically just wanted to at least try with the leftover roots I have and see what they do.  The best looking roots I put in my potato grow bag from Gardener's.  I've been told that this area isn't hot enough for sweet potatoes but I at least wanted to try it out once.

I also got tomato cages around my tomatoes and planted the row of snacking sunflowers in front of my house.  I'm still torn about if I want to tackle another large project of digging out another 4 feet or so in front of them to plant the pretty white and maroon sunflowers.  I got a bit behind on that project so I'm considering just waiting to do them until I see how well the first row of sunflowers does, especially because these are annuals that I will have to redo all the work year after year.

So in summary, here is all the veggies I'm trying: fairytale eggplant, black beauty eggplant, four tomato varieties, zucchini, yellow squash, sweet pepper, mildly hot pepper, bush beans, rainbow chard, purple carrot, red/white/yellow onions, lettuce, spinach, broccoli, peas, and sweet potatoes.  Fruit I currently have: strawberries, blackberries, blueberries and fruit trees: dwarf lemon, dwarf lime, dwarf pomegranate, dwarf banana.  The fruit trees are doing well but won't produce any fruit this year while they grow since I just got them.  I'll be doing a separate post on them later in the season.

What I did the weekend of 5/12/2012

Alright, my bad.  I've been so busy gardening that actually posting took a bit of a back seat!  May is easily the busiest month for gardening, but keep faith; once you get all your veggies in the garden all you have to do is maintenance for the rest of the summer.  Just work hard now and remember the payoff.

So what did I do the weekend of May12th?  A lot.  I dug out the front area for the first row of sunflowers, which was far harder than it needed to be because I never got around to killing the grass first.  Whoops, lesson learned.  So lots of digging off the top layer of grass and then shoveling and breaking up the clods of dirt to aerate and till the soil.  I had started to put the sod in my yard waste recycling bin but realized they'd be far more useful in my compost bin, so that's where they ended up. 

In the backyard raised bed garden I planted four tomato varieties: Fourth of July (early variety that I got from Burpee), and three randoms that I just picked up from Home Depot.  I also planted my black beauty eggplant from Burpee, and five peppers.  The peppers I mixed up as seedlings so they are a mix of sweet and mildly hot, all from Burpee and all from seeds so I'm excited to see how those do compared against my tomatoes that I bought as plants.  I also tilled and planted broccoli, beans and peas, all from seeds.  The broccoli seeds I used were from last year, so I planted way more than they recommended (twice to three times as many) and thank goodness because only four sprouted.  The peas and beans are sprouting pretty heavily and looking good so far.  So either peas and beans are way easier to grow or the "don't use old seeds" advice I hear from everyone is true.

I also took on some more container gardening and got in one of each type of pepper (but don't know which is which) in some pepper grow bags and a fairy tale eggplant that I got as a plant from Burpee.  I'll post more on these in a Container Gardening Part 2 post.

Both eggplants were looking rather run down by the time I got them in the ground but with some watering and rain they both bounced back well so here's hoping they flourish.

The picture upload isn't working right, but I don't have time to fiddle with it and want to get some posts out before I leave for vacation, so I can't caption but below are: 1. beans, they sprouted up pretty quickly  2.  bed with broccoli and peas  3. five peppers and a black beauty eggplant  4. my fairy tale container eggplant. 

Fairy Tale Eggplant

What I'm trying in containers this year-part 1

Well, as all my readers know, I haven't had much success at gardening.  Try as I might at the beginning of the season, by the middle of the season all of my stuff is dead due to neglect, drought, pests, or heaven knows what else.  So I started this blog to try to keep myself accountable and keep track of what I may be doing wrong (or right) so I can do better next time.  All of my prior veggie attempts have been in my backyard garden, so this year one new thing I'm trying is mixing it up by adding some container gardening to compare results.  I'm still waiting on a container eggplant, tomato, sweet potatoes, and for my peppers to grow up a bit, but I realized I'm trying so much in pots this year that I should probably split it into two posts.  So this is the colder weather container gardening I'm doing!  I'll do the other plants in a later post.

Spinach, gourmet, and black seeded lettuce.

Lettuce.  I started this window box at the same time as my seedlings a few weeks ago.  The real goal was to have a small continuous growth of lettuce going year round indoors but I quickly found out that indoors the lettuce was taking FOREVER to grow.  So I moved it outdoors and ta daa, instant salads.  It's a mixture of black seeded simpson, gourmet mix, and baby spinach.  Lettuce you should plant every few weeks during the year because the plants go bitter after a few weeks of maturity (just like us!). 

Peas In-A-Pot.  This is probably the thing I'm most excited about right now; here's the latest photo next to my basil plant at a little under 2 months since planting.  I've never tried peas and they seem to be doing super well!  To get these puppies started I filled the bottom of the pot with about an inch of rocks/pebbles so water drains properly, then about half way with extra topsoil I had, and then finished it off with regular potting soil.  As you can see, a few weeks in they're doing wonderful!  Another thing I've seen on pinterest is putting a coffee filter in the bottom so the soil doesn't drain out when you water the plants.

Strawberries.  I tried these last year and they failed horrible after a few super hot days in a stacking plastic container.  So I went out and got a "true" strawberry pot.  To find out the lack of any special planting I did for these see my prior post on strawberries.  We'll see how these suckers do.  If they all die, I'll be happy to do the special layered PVC pipe ridiculousness, but I'm hoping just 'dirt' will do the trick.

Giant pot of onions and carrots.  I've also never tried onions or carrots so I wanted to test these both in the raised bed AND in a container to see the differences and if they were hard.  So far, all is well in both the container and the garden bed.  With the container I just got the biggest container I could find at Home Depot ($25, what a steal!) and did an inner circle of carrots (the little sprigs there) and an outer ring of 1/3 white, 1/3 red, and 1/3 yellow onions.  As you can see the onions are exploding and the carrots are just liiiiiittle itty bitty in comparison but doing well.

Lilies!

 Also, remember those dead sticks I showed you and how suddenly these little sprouts started appearing out of the pot I pulled them from a few weeks later?  Ta daaaa.  Lilies definitely come back, I'm so excited to see them!  And glad they started sprouting before I decided to re-use the pots!

The great thing about container gardening is that you can move the plant if it's not getting enough sun or is getting too much.  You can also move it closer to the water sources if watering is becoming a problem.  I haven't done it yet on my pots but mulch can be used for container plants too to help them retain moisture.  The only tip I have other than putting a layer of rocks in the bottom before the potting soil (it retains water better than normal dirt) is to do some research on the cost of pots before you just go buy them.  I found that Big Lots was more expensive than Lowe's (shocking) and then that Home Depot was far cheaper than Lowe's, which is usually my go to store.  But the important thing is that even if you're in an apartment you can grow just about anything you want.  There are tons of plants that grow well in containers, and many hybrids from specialty seed companies like Burpee (see my peas in a pot) that are made specifically for containers.  Stay tuned for the post on sweet potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, and whatever else I said I was going to do in containers :o)

Plans for Front of House!

Now don't everyone get too excited, because I'm going very ambitious this year, which means I will most likely fall on my face.  The big plan for the front yard this year?  SUNFLOWERS!  I don't know about you but I love sunflowers.  Nothing turns a house into a cozy home faster than these giant monstrosities of awesomeness, which also tend to attract lots of birds.  So my hope is that I'll be sitting on my porch feeling like Snow White all summer with a bluebird army to dress me and mop my floor (or was that Cinderella?).  Anyways, here's the layout.

Closest to the white fence will be normal yellow snacking sunflowers. 

In front of those will alternate between the Chianti Hybrid (a dark maroon) and a white variety called Coconut Ice Hybrid. 

I've tried sunflowers before, and they didn't even get off the ground.  Literally.  I didn't stake them at all so those stupid giant heads shot up so fast on stalks too skinny to support them and they all fell over.  So now to rectify mistake number one with try number two.  And please, if you've planted sunflowers and know of another glaring noob mistake I'm about to make, please FOR THE SAKE OF THE BIRDIES, let me know.  I got a bunch of 6' tall bamboo stakes with soft fabric ties to try to hold them up as they grow.  I've also heard you can use old pantyhose to tie them.  Don't use anything rigid like zip ties or old sandwich baggie twist ties because if the stalks grow in width and you forget to loosen them it will hurt the plants.  So hopefully this week I'll work on digging out the ground and prepping it so I can get them planted and update this blog with a pretty picture of them starting to grow.

Sunscreen-The story of the sad wrinkled 29 year old hand.

http://www.californiababy.com

With all the rain we've been having, I haven't been able to get much gardening in.  But I figure it's a good time to remind everyone that one of the most important things for gardeners to keep aware of is the sunlight in your garden.  Sometimes our obsessiveness over the amount of the sun our plants are getting doesn't transfer over to remembering how damaging the sun is to us.  Just want a post to remind everyone to stay safe out there!  And no one looks good crispy crunchy and burnt.  If you're out working in the garden for any amount of time, 15 minutes or all day, you need to be wearing sunscreen.  I have been trying lately to use all natural or non-chemical sunscreens, which tend to not be as pretty because they leave behind a white residue.  Burt's Bees is a very inexpensive one I use on my body, and for my face I'm currently using California Baby SPF.  It's $20 a bottle at Ulta, so not too expensive when using it for your face, and it actually fades very well into my skin with no white residue (warning, Burt's Bees has the residue, that's why I only use it for body).  I use this daily under my makeup and it gives me a nice 'dewey' look but also evens out my complexion by providing a slight sheer coverage.  If I'm not feeling the dewey look and want to go matte I just use foundation powder instead of liquid powder that day and blot with a tissue before applying.

http://www.marykay.com/skincare/agefighting

If you don't like putting sunscreen on your face daily like all the doctors say you should, then you need to look at better brands because there's nothing to not like!  Many out there (even in the non-chemical) glide on and soak in with no residue or gross SPF smell at all.  Go into a Sephora or an Ulta and ask the lovely ladies for help finding a daily sunscreen that isn't offensive, or if you're a lady look for a foundation that includes SPF.  I used to use Mary Kay's Timewise Day Solution SPF 35 and if I switch back to a chemical formula I'll definitely go back to that.  It is a stand alone SPF, not a moisturizer with an SPF, so you can use it with whatever you already use and not be worried about a super greasy, over-moisturized face.  Very light, no smell.

The sad wrinkled hand of a 29 year old.

Back when I wasn't trying to be so eco-friendly I loved the sunscreen sport sticks when I needed something more than daily coverage at the beach or for an all day excursion.  These are so easy to glide on my face and smear in and much more convenient to carry around.  I don't know about everyone else but the sunscreen I disliked the most was ANY spray sunscreen.  Even wiping it in after spraying I still ended up with little spots everywhere and often burned.  Also, whenever you put sunscreen on your face (which should be every day, even in winter) put sunscreen on the backs of your hands!  This is the first body part to show signs of aging and has very sensitive skin that is constantly exposed and we rarely think about protecting. Seriously, look at your hands right now.  They're disgusting, wrinkly, veiny.  Do you really want them to get worse?!?

And lastly, get yourself a nice, big, floppy...hat.  Your hair is not magically transformed into sunscreen just because you can't see your scalp.  And your scalp needs protection.  Not only is it sensitive, but if you do happen to get skin cancer on your scalp it's pretty darn hard to see and diagnose early with all that hair in the way.  Bandannas or a baseball cap are also okay if that's your thing but the floppy hat does double duty of also shading your entire face.  If you have a good hairdresser they are usually on the lookout (I've been sent to the dermatologist by mine) but there's only so much they can see during your bi-monthly visit, particularly if you have dark hair.  Not to mention, there is nothing less attractive than peeling scalp burn that looks like you've got a wicked case of chronic dandruff.  So at least wearing a hat for an hour while you're outdoors will save you from having to wear a hat for a week indoors while your scalp peels away in disgusting, white-flakey fashion.  And I'd like to see you trying to put aloe or "sun relief" on your scalp.  Ew.  Blow drying?  Forget about it.  Date night?  HA.  Hat up.  Just do it.

Postscript:  Yes, this entire post was to make me feel guilty about not using my daily sunscreen in the hopes I stop being a hypocrite and start using it again.   But hopefully I'm also guilt tripping all of you into doing it too.  Anyone have any favorites that they want to clue me in on?  Also, I was going to post a picture of me in a big floppy hat, but who are we kidding, the best I have is a structured cowboy hat.  So it's likely I'll be amending this with a lovely picture of my nasty burn/peel scalp in a few weeks instead :o)  Stay tuned!

What I did this weekend part 2

Another lovely day outside, so I got out there and planted a bunch of peas (snap or snow and bush) in one row of 2x5' and in the other 2x5' I planted a row of broccoli.  On the peas I planted according to specs, but on the broccoli I'm using a set of seeds from last year so I overseeded probably by about double since I figure the germination rate won't be as high.  Here's hoping they just all sprout and I have to do some thinning.

After that, I set out weeding the rest of my garden beds so I have one less step when they're ready to plant and then weeded around my fruit bushes, which now look lovely.  I have two blueberry and one blackberry.  The only downside, there were wolf spiders all over in those weeds.  I know spiders are good for the garden because they eat pest insects, but they're still scary.

Today it's supposed to be near 90 degrees so I woke up a bit early and hosed my garden beds and all my potted plants so they start the day off a bit cooler and won't get too hot.  A must when the summer months get into the mid-90s for all plants, but especially now for cooler weather plants that can't tolerate that type of heat well this early in the season.

Sorry, no pics, this one is more of a journal entry so I remember what I did :o)

What I Did This Weekend: Part 1

Marigolds keep pests away.

Seedlings transported to larger pots

Ah, a wonderful 80 degree weekend, what ever will I do?  Catch up on my gardening to do list!  First up, the potted plants.  I planted a basil plant, three marigolds to keep pests from my other potted plants, four fruit trees (more on them later), and one GIANT pot that is a mix of red/yellow/white onions and purple haze carrots.  After that I went ahead and moved my seedlings to larger pots.  See my economical use of those old, cheap, plastic pots I got my strawberries in?

 

Poor hoe...

 Next up, I got to hoeing the first portion of my raised garden bed to be planted.  I hoe so good I broke it.  No, for reals.  I broke the hoe.  After trying to hand-hoe for a bit with the top of the broken hoe, I gave up and went back to my mom's favorite method of breaking up the soil to make it loose for planting...a shovel.  Man, kinda time consuming...but I will admit, it works much better and goes much deeper than a hoe.  Jump on shovel til it goes deep, jimmy/crowbar it up, spear the giant clod of dirt into smaller bits.  There are so many "that's what she said"s available in this paragraph.  You're Welcome.

Can't see grooves, but you can see 1 planted and 1 grid onions

But moving on, once the area was loose soil, I gridded out my spot by making little grooves with my hands.  The bed area is 4x5'.  So I did 1 row of rainbow chard, one row of carrots, three 1x2' grids of onions (red, yellow, and white), and then the grids opposite the onions with different salad greens (butter beauty, a gourmet blend, and baby leaf spinach).  As I planted each area I covered it with either top soil because I have a ton leftover, or potting soil.  This way I could easily see each grid where I'd already planted.  I then watered with a lovely mist spray, you don't want a jet spray on seeds because it can knock them out of place.  Be gentle!  Onions can probably take whatever you throw at them, but why be mean?

Thumb Peas, mmmmm

Here's hoping it doesn't rain tomorrow and I can get another 4x5' bed planted!  And as a special treat, look at how well my Thumb Peas are doing!

Uh oh! Frost Monster!

DC has issued a frost alert for this evening, which means when I get home I'll be moving my container pots to the garage, and covering up my strawberries with some landscaping fabric to keep the frost off their leaves.  If moving your container pots indoors isn't an option, you can put grocery bags (paper or plastic) over the plants.  You can cover them with just about anything that will stay down and keep them covered.  Fabric, plastic, newspaper (probably needs to be weighed down by rocks).  From what I understand, early spring veggies that can be planted a few weeks before the last frost date can "handle" a frost...but none of them are going to thrive from it and they will take a hit healthwise.  So if you don't have time to cover up your peas or strawberries...don't start weeping into your cereal, they'll be okay.  Now, the folks who got in tomatoes, beans, peppers, etc...ya know, the things we always plant the second we have a 70 degree day even though they're not supposed to be put outside for another month or two in mid May?  Yeah...get those covered up...well...one frost can and likely will kill these plants.

Strawberries!!!

No need for a witty title here.  Everyone loves strawberries!  Alas, I have a love hate relationship with them.  I love fresh, locally grown, in season strawberries.  Why all the descriptors?  Because I HATE the non-local, winter grown, flown from California, totally tasteless strawberries that you get at the grocery store.  But I still find myself buying them in hopes they're magically delicious. 


Prior Failures
So pretty much each year I try to grow strawberries and fail miserably.  Last year I got a stacking container.  One super hot day later and all the strawberries had withered up and died overnight.  No amount of watering or shade really got them back to life and I gradually threw each one away as the hope for a comeback dwindled. Lesson from last year?  Strawberries enjoy cooler weather, so if you're having a 100+ degree day, water them before you leave for work and put them in a spot that will get some afternoon shade.  If you are growing them in containers, this should be easy.


This Year's Renewed Attempts
On to this year:  to the right of my front fence I planted a line of strawberry plants.  Mostly Eversweet (which is an everbearing) and two Loran (also everbearing).  Picked them up at Lowe's for $2.50 each.  Most strawberries sold around here for home gardeners are Everbearing, meaning they bear smaller fruit throughout the season.  I'm guessing a trip to a nursery would have more variety but I'm just trying to keep a plant alive long enough to bear fruit so I don't care what type they are.  The other type, June bearing, means all the fruit comes at once in one big harvest, and these tend to be the biggest berries.  There's also a type called Day Neutral...which as far as I can tell does exactly the same thing as Everbearing.

Then, I'm also doing a strawberry container pot!  I've heard you need one that's at least 18'', so I got a larger one.  Most places only sell a small pot that's about 8'' high and far cheaper, so it took me some time to find the taller one.  I finally ended up sending out an APB to family that I was looking for one and my sister found a cheap one and picked it up for me.  So if you want one, get the word out to friends to search early!  I got mine well after the season ended.  Last year after getting it I researched how to use this tall pot and there's all sorts of layering with rocks in between each level of plants and some pole in the center with holes to distribute the water, but I'm far too lazy for that.  So I guess if my container plants die, I'll try it the hard way next year.  I just stuffed the plants in the holes and filled the pot with potting soil.  Nothing special.  But in here I have the same two varieties as in the bed and also Ozark. 

Prepping the Strawberry Bed

Fabric, plants, and mounds.

On the strawberries that went in the ground I tilled the area to get rid of grass and weeds a few weeks ago.  Strawberries are an early spring plant, meaning you get them in the ground a few weeks BEFORE the last frost date, as soon as the soil can be worked.  Then I went in and re-weeded the area until it was simply clean dirt.  You really need to weed well for an area you're planting strawberries in because they're not a hearty plant and can easily get overrun by weeds and die.  Supposedly their roots are also very susceptible to grubs and whatnot so they recommend planting in an area that's been unplanted for a while.  Ideally this means clearing the bed of grass and weeds the fall before you plant them.  I ignored this advice, we'll see how it goes.  Also, supposedly any bed with prior inhabitants in the last three years of potatoes, tomatoes, peppers or eggplant is a HUGE no-no for strawberries because they have zero immunity to something these plants carry called Verticillium Rot.  That's why I just plopped them down in the front yard; I know no veggies went there.

Planting

Finished product.

Once weeded, I grabbed some compost and tilled it into the soil, getting the soil as loose as possible for planting.  Then formed 8 little mounds to plant in.  After that, I cut little X's in some landscaping fabric and laid that down around the strawberry plants to keep the weeds from competing with them.  Black plastic landscaping fabric is a no-no because the strawberries are a cool weather plant and will get too hot with the heat trapped in.  Here's hoping my black mesh landscaping fabric breathes better and is okay.  Next up after that is some pine needles for mulch; straw is another good option.

Now...to sit back and wait on how my experiment does.  In order to get the plants growing you're supposed to pluck off all blooms until July 1 the first year for Everbearing types so that the plant tries harder to grow.  After that, you can let them turn to full berries for the rest of the summer and enjoy.  The next year you can just eat all the berries, no need to pinch off the early buds.  Also, don't over fertilize because it leads to the plants growing too many leaves and not enough blooms.  I'll post updates throughout the season on how they're doing!

What Up Hoe? Time to Treasure Hunt.

Itty bitty Abby arm

About a week before planting each veggy outside, it's time for my least favorite task, and probably the most expensive due to the cost of fill dirt or fertilizer for pots or raised gardens:  Soil Preparation.  I would swear that every year I buy 10 bags of dirt for the stupid raised bed and every year it sinks right back down and looks half full.  Hopefully my composting adventures will help cut down some costs here, but it is a pain.  Not to mention as a 5'1'' lady with arms resembling spindly twigs, getting the jumbo super saver bags of dirt is IMPOSSIBLE.  I actually sent a guy into a laughing fit last year just trying to pick one up before he offered to help me get them into my cart only to realize I'll never be able to get them into my car.  Thankfully, Lowe's is awesome about providing car-side help the moment you ask.  But I digress, get thee to Lowe's (and take thee large male muscled friend with thee), and pick up some veggie dirt and fertilizer if you haven't gotten your composting game on yet and get started with the soil prep.

Large male muscled friend arm.  See the difference?

Another thing to keep in mind is having the right type of soil for your plants.  Some plants like acidic soil (berries are a key example) and you can make the soil more acidic by using pine needles as a mulch or mixing into the soil.  Other plants like more alkaline soil, so you can buy garden lime to add to the soil.   These include onions and beans.  A garden specialty store will usually test your soil for free so take up a few samples from your vegetable beds each year along with a list of what veggies you're planning on planting and what acidity they thrive in (so you know whether you need to amend with limestone or pine needles or can leave certain beds alone).

My favorite, basic hoe.

Now sadly, just picking up some happy dirt and fertilizer is not the end of the story.  You need to work it into the garden bed and create a loose dirt bed for the roots to spread in.  This requires tilling.  And lots of it.  Again, with said spindly twig arms my momma gave me.  This is another area where your life will be greatly improved if you have said large male muscled friend to help you out.  They can till a giant area in like 5 minutes that would take you three hours to break the ground.  And they'll usually do it for a wink and a nod.  Or a six pack of beer.  My large male muscled friend is named Walter, and I promised him a shout out.  And no, despite the name, I'm not enlisting my help from the local nursing home and do not endorse such use of old people.

The high class hoe

Ideally, you want a couple inches (at least 6) of loose, tilled soil to plant in.  If you are starting new and have grass, place a black trash bag over it a few weeks or more in advance to kill the grass and then till it into the dirt.  If you don't have a few weeks, use a flat garden shovel going parallel to the ground to remove the grass.  A tiller often times doesn't get deep enough, and in these circumstances, just get out the basic shovel and go to town digging a hole and spearing the dirt you bring up into smaller pieces.  I generally alternate between the shovel and basic garden hoe.  I've found technology in this area will not help you.  I also own a gas tiller, which frankly, I'm scared of.  But it came as an attachment to my weedwacker so I figured I'd try it.  It pretty much just sends dirt flying everywhere in a big mess, but is perfect for quick mixing of fertilizer or store bought dirt with your own dirt.  It's also as loud and intimidating as a weedwacker.  If it hits hard clumps of dirt, often times rather than separating and tilling, it just bounces back up in the air off the hard clump of dirt.  So skip the gym and get to work hoe(ing).



**disclaimer, I have not ever found treasure while hoeing, but I still keep my eye out for the stray dinosaur tooth.

Are you a plant killer, or are your bushes just bored with you?

Spring is the best time to plant various bushes and even some trees.  So one thing to find out now is whether the bushes you planted last year are dead and need to be replaced or if they are simply wintering.  If they're dead, you want to get them replanted as early as you can in the season so they have as much time as possible to grow and catch up with your other plants.  So how can you tell?

These are the same plant!  One is clearly not "wintering" but rather "dying."

You can see in my favorite little bush, pieris japonica, that one is clearly not "wintering" because it's companion is green and flowering.  But it still has green leaves, so I may give it another season to try and come back to life, even though judging by the base being brown it's almost all dead.  So if you don't have a companion plant to compare it to what do you do?  Look at the stems-is there green near the base of the plant?  If so, your bush is wintering and healthy.  If not, go near the base of the plant and scrape a little bit of the stem away.  Is it hollow, brown, and crackly or is there some green or hardy white there? 

And of course, each plant is different so knowing what you have is important.  I often try to keep the label of the plant on it season to season for that very reason since I'm not an expert.  Most of us know that if your evergreen bush starts looking like it's "wintering" it's dead.  Evergreens don't winter, they're hardy cold weather bushes. 

Evergreen bush in winter

Hydrangea a few weeks before spring see the hints of green?

Early spring, some green buds...

Hydrangeas on the other hand look COMPLETELY dead, which led to my research on the issue.  I spent $25 each on those four suckers, how are they dead?!?  My hydrangeas are only one season in so they are very susceptible to not surviving the winter.  But I was hopeful so I went and looked at my neighbors' hydrangeas to see what they looked like in the winter and lo and behold, while larger, they still looked just as grotesque and dead.  Yay!  Mine must be wintering!  So I left them alone and now those same dead looking stems are sprouting leaves and starting to turn green. 

And a few weeks into early spring, many leaves!

What fell out of the planter...totally dead right?

 I also had no idea that lilies are perennials and come back until my planters started sprouting all over the place.  Last season the old lilies turned into hollow sticks and broke off, so I thought I just had two planters of dirt, what a nice surprise!  Well, at least, assuming the thing that is sprouting is a lily, if not, I'll be sure to let y'all know I'm an idiot.  So apparently some plants even if the stem is totally dead are still just "wintering."  I'm assuming bulb flowers like daffodils are like this.  So really, this entire post is totally not helpful.  What am I?  Your Google?  Go find out yourself if your plants winter or not!

Or are they...

But in all seriousness, if your bushes are dead and you've googled and made sure they aren't just going to rise out of the dirt each year like daffodils or lilies, get them out of the ground and get ready to replace them as early as possible for that plant.  I got my bushes in a few weeks late last year and while they appear to have survived, they didn't grow nearly as much as they could've if I'd gotten them in during the April showers. Alright, I'm off to go dream about trying strawberries for the third year in a row and see if I can get at least one berry this time!