Gardening With Dummies

Creative Containers

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy) — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 20:45:00 +0000

I love container gardening. Big containers, little containers, funky containers. Haven't seen a container yet I didn't love.

I use colanders to grow lettuces. I find it's the easiest thing in the world, and I place the containers on our outdoor dining tables as centerpieces. Our tables have large umbrellas so the lettuces get some shelter from that hot, blazing sun.

I just take the container, throw the seeds right on top, water well, and place in the cold frame until the weather breaks.

I also add Johnny Jump-ups or marigolds in each colander just for the color.

This is an easy project, great for kids, so if you see colanders at yard sales or Dollar Store, grab a bunch and make yourself some nice edible centerpieces.

I'll upload new photos as the plants begin to grow.

My Square-foot Vegetable Garden

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy) — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 21:01:00 +0000

2013 Vegetable Garden

In an effort to save myself countless hours weeding, I am foregoing row gardening for square-foot gardening. This method has allowed me to double the number of plants I can grow in the same amount of space.

The only thing I have to be sure of is that the soil is very, very well nourished.

It's the only thing I need to focus on and everything else will fall into place.

This is my plan, seeds have been started, winter sown jugs have sprouted, and I am ready.

Frost be gone! And let us eat!

Home-grown Potatoes

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy) — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 16:42:00 +0000

Sprouted Red Norland potato seeds

I've decided to grow my own potatoes this year for two reasons:

1. It's easy enough.
2. They'll taste better.

I'll be growing mine in garbage pails as the prospect of digging a trench a foot deep is not in my game plan.

The Red Norland potatoes are sprouted and can go in to the pail right now, but the Adirondack Blue and Yukon Gold show no signs of sprouting, so those will sit on my window sill for a couple of weeks until I see something happen.

Adirondack Blue on left and Yukon Gold on right

The way to grow these potatoes in your garbage can is here in video format or here in text format.

I am nowhere near my last frost date but the Red Norlands are so heavily sprouted that I will plant them now and cover the garbage can with clear plastic to let sunlight in an to create a greenhouse effect that will prevent frost from killing my crop.

The most important thing I got out of all my research was to eat NO GREEN POTATOES. These can be toxic (who knew???) and the way to make sure you end up with no green potatoes is to be sure you have no sun directly hitting those potatoes. So I will be mulching with straw to keep those rays at bay. Also, do not attempt this with store-bought potatoes. They're treated to prevent sprouting and you'll be waiting forever to see any action.

I'll post again as the season progresses, but I'm looking forward to a large bounty of fresh, home-grown potatoes.

Pruned

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy) — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 02:54:00 +0000

Montauk Daisy in Spring

The Montauk Daisy is one of my favorite flowering plants and I have ten in My Father's Garden. I planted ten in the Fall of 2010 and they were about six inches high and three inches wide. They are now three feet tall and wide.

The put on a magnificent display in September and October but they are downright unsightly once the blooms are spent and the killing frost arrives.

As tempted as I am to prune them at that time, I hold off knowing that I risk losing them in the bitter winter.

So every year, at Christmas time, as friends and family come to see us, they are greeted at the door by the horror of the "spent" Montauk Daisy.

But come spring, I do a heavy pruning and cut each plant down to about two inches. I cut off the buds, all the new leaf growth, and I do it unafraid.

I continue to cut the plant back until May 24, leaving only four to five inches of growth, and by doing this, I am guaranteed an amazing show in the fall, with big, robust blooms, and thick, glossy leaves.

Montauk Daisy Pruned

The plants do and will flop, but they won't get nearly as ugly as the Montauks you see in so many yards and gardens which are left unkempt and which haven't benefited from the hard pruning.

Ten plants will give me at least 200 cuttings every spring which are easily transplanted. I have no place for new Montauks, but I have plenty of friends who are more than happy to take a few cuttings off my hands.

I purchased my daisies at a grocery store in September, and believe I paid $3 for each one. There is no need to buy large plants that will cost you more; small plants will grow bigger than you can imagine.

Keep in mind that you need to give these plants plenty of space. They need full sun, moderate amounts of water (rainfall is usually enough unless you have a bad, dry season), and I never fertilize. I mulch with newspaper and shredded pink bark and that seems to be enough.

Oh Snow!

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy) — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 01:35:00 +0000

The wind blew the furniture into the obelisk

It just doesn't want to stop snowing around here.

We had another foot of snow dumped on us, just when I was sure I'd be able to get out there and get to work.

The greens in the cold frame fared well, and the winter sowing jugs under the snow will be fine.

Word has it that temperatures will go up considerably over the next few days; I don't expect any more snow this seasons.

Seeds in jugs and plastic containers

But this is Connecticut, and anything can happen.

Man makes plans, and God smiles.

Unfrozen Pond :)

Vegetable beds under snow

Overwintering Tropicals

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy) — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 18:01:00 +0000

Mammoth Elephant Ears getting showered

Zone 6 gardeners understand my plight!

We want to grow beautiful tropicals and struggle with keeping them alive over the winter months.

I don't do well with houseplants and I don't have much interest in them, but after year, in September, I begin to bring in all my heat-loving tropical plants.

Where many people dig out the elephant ears and replant in the spring, I decided to see if I could just overwinter the foolish things and get bigger, more robust ears the following season.

Brugmansia in need of bigger pots

I also have Brugmansias which are not faring as well as I had hoped, but I will be repotting these thinking that maybe they're pot bound and this is contributing to their struggle.

Elephant ears and brugmansias are heavy, heavy feeders and require a ton of light and a ton of water. During the summer months, I feed them with Plant Tone fertilizer (a cup a month on the elephant ears and 1/2 cup a month on the brugmansias) and I water every day if it doesn't rain. In the winter, I stop feeding them and water them deeply once a week.

Because I have hardwood floors throughout the entire house, and am deathly afraid of water damage, I keep these in my bathrooms and haul them into the walk-in shower when it's time to water. I use false-bottoms in all my large pots so these aren't as heavy as they may appear. I also have east-facing and west-facing windows in the bathroom so I know they are getting plenty of light.

I don't know if the elephant ears will come back to all their glory, but I felt it was worthy a try to overwinter them. If nothing else, I've learned something and can go back to the old way of digging up the bulb and storing it for the winter.

Progress in the Fresca Jug

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy) — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 04:37:00 +0000

The arugula and Buttercrunch lettuce have sprouted in my soda bottles, on my back deck, outdoors in the dead of winter.

So my Winter Sowing efforts have paid off!

If you want to know more about winter sowing, how to do it, why to do it, visit Trudi her explain it all. You can even get seeds from her for FREE if want!

I had read about this in Gina's blog a while ago but pushed it to the back of my mind as one of those things I would do someday. The day came when I was completely fed up with winter, short days, cold nights, snow, wind, and the promise of spring still months away. I bought a few seed packets of those vegetables that are considered "cold weather crops" and off I went.

You can winter sow vegetables or flowers, and you can start in December (December 21 is the Winter Solstice and many people begin on this day, specifically) and sow all the way through April in my Zone 6 garden. There are a million reasons for doing this: no lights, shelving, hardening off, damping off, space issues. Containers are abundant (I use milk jugs, soda bottles, fruit packages, yogurt containers... anything that will hold dirt and let light in), and the price of seeds is a lot less than the price of plants, not to mention the selection.

These seeds were planted on January 19 and these photos were taken on March 4. Because these are cool crop lettuces, they can go into the garden relatively soon. I'll probably move them to their permanent spot at the end of the month.

Plant Markers

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 20:54:00 +0000

As I've begun growing vegetables from seeds, I needed to get plant markers.

Burpee's sells 20 for $2.00 at Home Depot. That's $.10 a marker or stupid money. I wasn't going to pay ten cents for one marker.

So I went back to the window treatment department of Home Depot and bought a 27 x 30 white mini-blind. I took it apart when I got home and cut each slat into four pieces.

I paid $2.97 for the mini-blind and got 120 markers out of it.

That came to $.02475 a marker. Less than three cents a marker is more my style. And a Sharpie is all you need to write on them, although a regular lead pencil works very well, too.

If I ever find any in the trash or at the dump or offered as give-aways, I'll grab them because plant markers are one thing a vegetable gardener or seed starter can always use.

Cold Frames

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy) — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 17:26:00 +0000

Three years ago, when we were still building the house, my husband told me he had found ten windows on the curbside for garbage pickup.

I told him to grab the windows and we stored them outdoors, against a tree, for three years.

They are perfect for cold frames.

They measure 30 inches square and they were free.

There is loose, peeling paint on these windows so I will have to scrape that off, but other than that, there is nothing wrong with using these windows. I've also laid a black garbage bag underneath the frame to keep things warmer.

Total cost for each cold frame came to about $25 for lumber, handles, and hinges. I added handles to the sides of the cold frame so that I could easily move them off the deck when the weather turns.

I have one thermometer, and this morning, while the weather outside was registering 30 degrees, the temperature in the cold frame was reading 50 degrees.

And this is a very, very good thing!

Hope Springs Eternal

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy) — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 18:08:00 +0000

As I expected, the surge in our temperature (50 degrees this morning) has thawed out the ice around the spitter and we now have a good-sized hole in the pond to allow the gasses to escape.

I have seen no signs of fish but am hopeful.

Oh Sow Winter

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy) — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 17:33:00 +0000

Winter sowing is all about planting seeds outdoors in the dead of winter and saving yourself the hassle of growing them indoors, under lights, and dealing with all the issues that are part of seed growing.

I'd heard about it on another blog two years ago and said it was something I would do "some day".

The day has come.

I've started saving every plastic container I think will work for this and use Miracle Gro potting mix as my planting medium. The potting mix I have is from last year and I'm hoping that the fertilizer in it that's supposed to last six months is pretty much dead, since fertilizing seeds is not a good idea.

I've set the bottles and containers on the back deck where they get afternoon sun. I may have to move this to the front deck where they'll get only morning sun as I've read that afternoon sun can really cook seedlings.

The tape I used on the containers is plain duct tape and I've marked the number on the duct tape with a Sharpie. The tape with the number is on the bottom of each container so that the sun won't bleach it out, but to play it safe, I've also inserted a plant tag inside each container, deep in the medium, where the sun can't get to it.

A lead pencil is probably the best thing to use to make sure your writing never fades, but I didn't think of that until all these markers were done.

The store was selling markers at $2.00 for 20. I thought ten cents a marker was too much to pay, so I went and bought a mini-blind (23 x 37) and cut the slats to make 148 markers. Total cost was $2.90.

I'll keep adding containers to the collection and will let you know, come spring, if it was a good move or not!

Frozen Water Will Not Move

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy) — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 20:57:00 +0000

Houston, we have a problem!

The cold has been too much and I think what happened is that the spitter froze and the water is no longer able to come out.

I tried to break through the ice with no luck. And I was scared of falling in the foolish thing and breaking the ice that way.

I have 26 fish in this pond that I want to save and I'm afraid that the gasses being trapped will kill them.

This pond is approximately 3,500 gallons and 4.5 feet deep so I'm not concerned about ice; just gas.

Weather is supposed to climb to the low 40's in two days and I'm hoping it will be enough of a climb to dislodge the spitter from the Ice Queen and get the water running again.

This is the fourth day of Trapped Fish. I hope they can last another two.

Moving Water Will Not Freeze

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy) — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 20:51:00 +0000

To keep the koi pond from freezing over, I have let the spitter keep running through the winter.

So far, so good.

I have 26 fish in this pond, which is about 4.5 deep in the center, and although I do not worry about the fish being stuck in ice, I do worry about gasses getting trapped beneath the ice.

These gasses can and will kill fish, so best to keep the spitter spitting.

Homeward Bound

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy) — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 23:42:00 +0000

Bergen, Norway

This has been a wonderful experience in so many ways.

But I miss my gardens and can't wait to get back home.

Boarding a plane in 240 minutes.

Landing in Rhode Island sixteen hours later.

:-)

Wordless Wednesday

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy) — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 10:52:00 +0000

GBBD - August 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy) — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 13:32:00 +0000

I have no idea what is blooming at home, but in Bergen, Norway, there's quite a bit to moon over. Visit Carol at May Dreams Gardens to see who started this meme.

A Vegetable Stand to Die For

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy) — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 17:07:00 +0000

These are not my vegetables, but if they were, I'd buy a little cart and show them off like this, too!

Norway is wonderful. No time to to post. Praying my gardens at home are doing just fine.

I heard through the Nordic grapevine that New York got hit with massive rains in the last day or two, and I hope those rains made it to Connecticut.

If they did, all should be well until I get home.

Wordless Wednesday

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy) — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 07:42:00 +0000

Tomatoes

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy) — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 22:50:00 +0000

Cool, huh?

This is my first harvest of full-grown tomatoes. I didn't look at the tags before I harvested these because it's starting to rain and rain and my hair do not good companions make. I can see why Ugly Hornworm wanted at them!

I noticed one of the tomatoes is cracked (although still edible). I know that was all my fault and am surprised I didn't have more tomatoes like this since I think I've watered the vegetable garden no more than five times this season.

I haven't tasted these yet but I will before we leave on Friday for Norway.

I did take the time to feel them as I washed them. They were clean and firm. So nice knowing that no chemicals were used anywhere near these plants. These snapped right off the vine when I picked them; others that seem to be fully ripe didn't come off so easily so I'll leave them for another day or two.

I'm sure a good many of you are happy as I am that I've finally gotten real full-size food out of my garden. Now maybe I'll stop whining about it and move on to bigger and better things.

The Benefits of an Unkept Pond

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy) — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 19:12:00 +0000

Tadpoles.

And frogs.

'Nuff said.

Grape Tomatoes in My Salad

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy) — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 13:37:00 +0000

Here's a teeny weeny colander filled with teeny weeny tomatoes.

They were delicious!

Aside from the chives, this is the only thing I've eaten from my garden.

I didn't plant enough soon enough but I'll know better next year.

Hornworm Update

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy) — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 13:47:00 +0000

The beastly creature I discovered on my tomato plants yesterday is a HORNWORM. How did I get me one of those?

So yesterday, not knowing if this was a Majestic Butterfly To Be, I picked the disgusting thing off my plant and tossed it aside.

I went online and Lisa confirmed that it was, indeed, a nasty hornworm that would never be a majestic butterfly.

I learned on Google that I could eliminate this thing with BT and after having such great success with BT on my maple (Eastern tent caterpillars have not returned), I went after the hornworm with my bottle of freshly-mixed solution in hand.

Except I couldn't find the nasty critter.

This morning, I find the creature in the middle of what will next year be my Rose Garden and I attacked it with BT believing BT would paralyze it. Freaking thing kept moving.

Back to the Internet I went and learned that BT needs to be sprayed on the leaves the critter will eat and whilst eating the leaves, BT will enter Critter's digestive system and kill it that way.

Crap! Does that mean I have to put this thing on my tomato plant?

I'm not doing that. I am going to hope a bird will scoop down and eat this thing.

I don't have a problem spraying the tomato plants and pepper plants with BT but my concern is that I'm going to eat this stuff and I don't want to eat bacteria. The label says, and I confirmed it with other sources, that I could spray my plants "right up until I pick the fruit". What the heck does "right up until" mean? I can spray a day before, an hour before, a few minutes before? My clock doesn't have a Right Up Until on its face and my calendar makes no reference of it.

So I think for now, I'll spray the plants with green tomatoes and keep the stuff away from the red ones which should be ready for picking in the next couple of days.

Hornworm, be ready. I'm coming to getcha!

UPDATE: I prepared a solution of dishwashing liquid and cold water and poured it over the Critter. It was dead in less than two minutes. I sprayed the tomato plants with BT in case Critter's Cousin decides to pay us a visit. None of the tomatoes are ready for picking so I wasn't too concerned about spraying the entire plant.

Tomato Invader or Butterfly In the Making

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 17:20:00 +0000

I have no idea what this horrific looking thing is but it was too darn close to my tomato for me to leave it alone.

After all, I've worked hard to grow these tomatoes and ain't nobody stealing my thunder.

I didn't kill GreenThing because, God forbid, it will one day become the most beautiful butterly on earth, but I moved it to another zip code.

If anyone knows what this is, please share, and let me know if it's a Tomato Invader a Butterfly In the Making.

An Angel In My Father's Garden

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy) — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 14:50:00 +0000

I finally found the right angel for My Father's Garden.

I didn't want something too big or too small or too whimsical.

Or too Catholic.

So here she is, looking up at my father's tree the same way I always looked up to him.

Wordless Wednesday

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy) — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 10:04:00 +0000