Gardening Gardening

My tomato plant that I replanted to a bigger pot because it didn't fit in the topsy turvy was on its last leg. I almost dumped it, but my Mom said it had some new life on it so to just hold onto it. Two weeks later its got 3 tomatos on it! My first tomatos. The eggplant was also on its last leg and now has three little eggplants growing on it. I also have 3 tomatos on a plant I started from seeds. It is so exciting to see at least some of the plants bear some fruit.

The cucumbers popped up some tiny babies but they never amount to much. I'm on vacation so I'll see what I come home to. My husband says they've all been watered.

My chives had a hard time with the heat and the replant but are growing strong now.

I transferred a host of plants to the garden box my husband built but they all died. A month later I went down near the boxes and notice that somehow in the heat and with no water two of the corn stocks were growing. I threw some water on them occaisionally and they were looking great. But, the grasshoppers rebounded and have since eaten my two studdly stocks.

We will get the fence up, the coop built, and the chicken should take care of the rest of it.

We are letting the strawberries go. I found out that its hard to keep them wet enough in a topsy turvy. The ones that grow get chomped on by the grasshoppers.

I keep trying and learning a little at a time. Next year we start the seedlings much earlier and also try some established plants.

Total Harvest:

20 blueberries

17 string beans

9 strawberries

1 soup pot worth of basil and parsley

1/2 a bowl of lettuce leaves

Still waiting for results on:

Tomatoes

Potatoes

Eggplant

Life is good!

Progress - The plants are growing

The potatoes are doing great! There is something green coming up from every location I planted. However, I talked to someone at church and he said his plants are HUGE! Not sure I left enough room between plants or that my planter box is big enough.

Strawberries aren't doing well. I'm trying to water them more but I think by using dirt from my yard I may have used soil that is too "heavy". Picked that up from a friend who has been gardening for a few years.

I transplanted my corn, cucumbers, and zucchini into planter boxes for my second "shock" per ZamZows. The problem is I don't know how to move them from the boxes to the garden. I'm afraid all of their little root systems with get entangled. I probably should have done two sizes of small shock pots (thats my terminology) instead. Oh well, I'll figure something out.

My husband is getting the fence posts today to do the garden so we should hopefully be planting into the ground and have some automatic irrigation system in place soon.

I got two blueberry bushes and two raspberry bushes and got those planted. I had to add support sticks to them as they were blowing around in the a fierce wind last night. I've got them replanted into large pots on the deck. I wanted them in the ground but my husband wanted to try them in pots first, we can always move them to the ground later if its not working on the deck.

It's nice that he participates.

The shock pots don't seem to be reusable as I had to push the bottoms in to get the plants out and they were wet so they fell apart. I may have to invest in plastic ones so I can use them year after year. I won't be able to buy shock pots when the world ends! The other option is one a friend of ours does where they have a sun room attachment to their house and it extends over their garden. We don't have a place for that as we have a 360 deck around our mountain cabin but we could do something just off the deck, just build a little enclosure. I'll have to think about that after we get the garden, the cow fence, the chicken coop, and the horse fence built maybe we can do a green house.

Have a great and blessed day!

Today I learned from the wonderful staff at ZamZows, here in Boise, that if you are growing seedlings you will get a better stouter plant by shocking it twice before planting it into the ground. So I went ahead and bought these little biodegradable pots that you can plant in the ground if you want to. I am interested to see how they hold water and if they are reusable. I thought I might want to use re-usable plastic since I have so many plants going in preparation for our garden.

I bought a tomato plant to put in my Topsy Turvy holder for tomatoes and it was too big. Not wanting to damage the root system I decided to buy another smaller plant. I thought I might just plant it in the bed with the potatoes since that was all ready to go. I double checked to make sure they were ok together and they weren't. Apparently, there is a bug that is attracted to potatoes and it will destroy the potatoes and tomatoes in two days. Total rot. It's called blight. So the commenters said that it was just easier to keep them separate and keep them pretty far apart so those bugs don't get to your tomatoes.

I also found out that you shouldn't smoke near your tomatoes as the smoke carries a virus that effects the tomatoes in a bad way.

The potatoes are in, the strawberries are doing fine and the seedlings are going crazy. Almost every little holder has something popping up in it. It's very exciting.

Help: I'm looking for some planters at a great price to transfer my seedlings too. I have the little biodegradable things for the first transfer but I need something bigger for the second transfer since everything is growing faster than I think we'll have the ground prepared and fenced.

Happy growing!

Seedlings, Strawberries, Potatoes

Have you ever read a post-apocolyptic book and wondered..."How would I do?" Well, we talk about it some and live in a place where we could survive if we set ourselves up right. So we take little steps here and there. And its been a week now that I took my first little steps which actually feel like a moon walk to me. Gardening, and I am the brown thumb. Plants die in my care as does most anything, but work and I do get the dogs fed most of the time. They start to act up when they are hungry or thirsty so that I tend to remember to do. Plants don't have that luxury. Yes they get moody and droop but they can't set their head on my lap, run in circles, or whine to get my attention so I don't always notice them when they are in need.

I begin my gardening journey with my husband's support that if we end up with a few strawberries and potatoes for our efforts we will consider the journey a success. Last week on Sunday I spent three hours pouring dirt into those little plastic holders to start seedlings in. I decided not to buy the covers because I thought...well, I don't know what I was thinking because it would be much easier to have the covers than handle huge sheets of saran wrap.

Tip #1: Splurge and get the plastic covers to create your greenhouse effect for your seedlings!

So, when I went shopping for supplies with my husband I thought we'd pick a few things to start the project. No, his theory was the more different things we tried, the more likely we were to succeed with something. So I have 24 different vegetables started in the seedling trays. And, there are 9 seedlings of each vegetable.

Help: So how wet am I supposed to keep this little guys?
--for now, I'm just guessing. They seemed ok today but it had been 3 days since I watered them so I just went for it and watered them again.

Tip #2: When doing 24 vegetables that you know nothing about - Label them. I labeled mine with numbers and names and then I also put the number on the seedling bag so when it's time to replant I can check the measurements for space between the plants and such things.

Today is Saturday...well it was, I guess it is Sunday now that it is 1:39am. But, anyway, I put 12 strawberry plants in a Topsy Turvy hanger. They were getting tired of being in their little trays, I can't wait to see how they do. My husband said that it might snow tonight, but came to bed saying it wasn't that cold so he didn't bring them in. I think that might be translated to "I'm too tired to go get them now, I hope they survive the night." Not sure, but the next tip might be - don't leave the Strawberries out if you think it might snow.

I also prepped my planter for potatoes. I googled for a video on how to plant potatoes. It said to cut the potatoes that we bought for planting with 2 -3 eyes on each and roots that had not grown too long yet, because too long was too much. Also, an article said that you can use store bought potatoes but they put some chemical on them to prevent the roots from growing so the results might not be as good.

Help: My husband bought probably 30 of these little potatoes and you cut them up into three pieces each that will be 90 plants! Hmmmm is that enough potatoes for two people?

I'm sure I was supposed to something more to loosen up the soil and prepare it for these little potato pieces, but I thought I would just give it a go and see what happen with some hole in an unused planter. I'll keep you posted on the success with that. I have plenty more potatoes to go, if these ones don't take. But, I guess the video said that potatoes were the easiest crop to grow.

The video also said to let the potato pieces dry over night to prevent disease. They are sitting on my dining room table and will go into the dirt tomorrow.