March 17- 22

Last week I had a lot going on with the family so I forgot to record that on Mon or Tues I went out and planted more peas. Unlike what was stated in the last post I only got one square weeded and ready for planting.

This week I was going to go outside to plant more spring vegetables but had such bad allergies I stayed indoors most of the time. I did go out on our back deck and plant some peat pots with 3 kinds of tomatoes, eggplant, 3 kinds of peppers, watermelon, wee be little pumpkins, zucchini, butternut squash and some flowers. I brought them inside and have them downstairs under my grow light. I will turn the light on once they sprout. I wrote on each pot but will make a diagram soon just encase the marker is unreadable by the time the plants are big enough to plant outside.  I have to find my impatient seeds so I can also plant my hanging pots. That is my goal  this week since it needs to be done right away. I should be getting some allergy medicine next week to so I hope to feel up to going out this saturday and working some more.

Now I need to remember to water the plants that I have out there already so they don't die. It has been drier than usual this time of year  so my plants will need some extra TLC till the irrigation water gets turned on next month.

 Since I didn't get these posted last week here they are. This is before I weeded the raspberries.

 Here is my after .

Here is the square I prepared and planted chives in I forgot that I also transplanted a strawberry plant at the same time so I need to go and check on how it is doing. I didn't water it since this picture was taken. Hope it is alive.

March 3-9

This week was very busy for me outside the home. It was gorgeous weather all the days it wasn't raining. It is still really cold when it rains not freezing but cold. I should get out there anyway but didn't.

I did finally succeed this Saturday March 8th. It was wonderful to get out there and dig and flip my grass in hopes of having some control over grass this year. I also got some seeds from my chives and spread them in  a corner of one of my garden squares. I still need to mark it on my diagram before I forget. I also started pulling up plants around my tulips but then realized I wasn't 100 percent sure they were weeds. I will wait a few more weeks until I can identify them. I started to get the grass out of my raspberry patch. I dug and flipped my grassy walk way between garden squares and raspberries. I also prepared two squares for planting one of them I planted the chives in.

While out in my garden at the end of the day I felt like I didn't do much. Sitting here writing it sounds like  a lot, that is why I started to write more frequently. I have a hard time giving my self credit for the awesome work I do and only look at what remains to be done.

I was reminded by by dear husband to take pictures to attach. I will get some posted next week.

Feb 24- march 1

Things are starting to sprout and grow. We have had some very warm weather this week. I am finding my tulips growing. I would like to get some weeding done and more peas planted along with some lettuce possibly. It will have to wait for Saturday. I will report back here if I get it done.

Goals for next week would be planting seedlings. I have decided to draw diagrams to keep track of where I plant things so that I can remember. 

Dispose of Grass

I have been a fair weather gardener for a lot of years. Just last year I decided to become a more avid gardener. It was worth it. I think I have found a way to get the grass out once and for all without chemicals or vinegar. Now I will be able to enjoy my garden.

I tried spraying vinegar it works okay. It works great if you heat it up first so it burns the plant a few different ways. I found this to be more expensive than round up. It only worked if I drenched the plant or sprayed multiple times. It took a lot of vinegar and at almost 5 dollars a gallon was very pricey. Since I could get the same amount of round up for just a few dollars more and use half as much to get the same results.  I went with round up for  a while.  It still would not kill the grass all the way and had to be sprayed more than once. Also once my garden was planted it didn't help me since I couldn't spray close to the plants without killing them to.

Then in August last year I found a great solution. I never expected it to work so well. I have a border around my garden of just bare dirt to try and keep the grass at bay; or it was suppose to be bare dirt but a lot of grass had filled it in. I dug up the grass in that area and just flipped it over. I then chopped the clod with the side of the shovel to even the ground out again. It worked so well that even now there is no grass growing in that place. I then winterized part of my garden that way in the fall just before the freezing temperatures set in. I am very pleased with the results so far but it didn't work as well as the one I did in the heat of summer. It still is a lot better than if I had done nothing at all since I know what that looks like based on the other parts of my garden I didn't get done.

Now it is simple to just dig each square (4'x4') and flip the grass that is growing or take out the grass by the roots. I have the awful grass that sends out multiple runners and keeps popping up in unexpected places.

I think it worked because it confused the plants since the roots are in the air as well as the heat drying them out. Also since it was in a walk way I first did this, which has a high volume of foot traffic,  it made it too difficult for the grass to recover.
 

What I did in my garden this week

Feb. 17 -22nd

I decided to start a weekly entry for now hopefully I can keep caught up this way. I believe that the more I write about what I am doing the more motivation I will have to improve and keep going. I wanted my garden to be awesome last year and it was definitely  better than the year before.  This year I want it to be enjoyable to look at as well as producing lots.

I cut down my dried up flowers in my front flower bed (between the sidewalk and the road) and cut the iris greenery down so I won't have a lot of dead matter this spring to deal with. I had covered my mums with dry cut grass in hopes that I will have them again. I know it was a long shot but it was worth a try.  Every time I clean up this flower bed the youth that walk by our house decide it is okay to walk there now, I have tried solving it various ways.  There is always a space of time when there is little there to suggest that there are still plants growing. I want to propagate a ground cover in hopes there won't be as much bare soil,  the one I planted there died back and I don't know if it is coming back this year so it is not ideal for that spot even if it survived.  I do have bulbs growing on one end but always end up with bare soil. Maybe a miniature rosebush or something of the sorts would get the message across.

I also collected dried weeds from among my bushes in front of a bedroom window and cut down all the suckers around our two trees in the front in hopes that I won't have as many problems with that this coming season.  Our flowering plum send up suckers every year. I have been trimming them before they get more than 2 ft. high or so and it has seemed to decrease how many come back. I notice them at least 2 to 3 times in a year. I  spread my columbine seeds all over the front flowerbed by our front door.I did start to trim my rose bush in the front and only got so far with that project. I have one more flowerbed in the front to clean out and make weedless.   The rosebush is in the last flowerbed in the front that I need to work on.

I know last year I got some early gardening in and I believe it did help decrease my weeds. The weeds are still not under control and it makes it so I don't enjoy my gardens as much. I tried Preen but realized that I like to grow flowers from seeds so that has not been real helpful since it is designed to make sure seeds don't grow which is great if they are weed seeds not so much if they are flower seeds. I did spread some in my garden last year when I tilled so I sprouted the seeds then planted them I believe that it helped speed up the growing process a bit. It was almost like planting a young seedling but I didn't have the plant shock and didn't have to harden the plants off it was great. I might do this instead of growing seedlings this year. I just put them in a bag with a damp paper towel. I want to make seed stripes this year because the sprouted seeds were all in a clump and hard to separate last year. I think you can do this with any seed so even plants that don't transplant well can be sprouted then buried to grow.

I will need to get my eggplant growing that is one I have to do a seedling for since the growing season is so long. I will see about my watermelons to one I believe has a shorter growing season. In two to three weeks I need to clean up my hanging baskets and plant them I hope to have them spectacular by May. They were a disappointment last year. It was my first year trying to grow seedlings myself to put in the baskets. I had better luck growing then in the basket to begin with.

One other observation about my garden and I want to make sure I continue doing this is when I dig up grass around the edges of my garden if I just flip them over so the roots dry out it doesn't grow back for a very long time. I did it in about Aug if I remember right and it still hasn't grown back in it was bare since I have done it. I hope this helps keep the grass out of my garden and raspberries better. I will do this when ever there is no danger of digging up the plants I want to grow.

Waiting

I am waiting to get my seedlings started. I wanted to start them this month but decided to wait since there is a possibility in a week or two they wouldn't get watered and that is about the time they would sprout so I didn't want to take that chance.

I am excited to get started. I did plant some peas in my garden when the ground thawed  Jan 27th, 2014.  I planted them in front of my raspberry plants. I am hoping the raspberry vines can become their support and also shade them when it warms up this spring. We will see if this works well or not. I plan on planting more since I only got about a two feet planted. I also found out that the middle of my raspberry plants didn't get weeded before the cold set in. I will have to watch this closely so the grass doesn't take over again.

Garden Musings

I have been looking out the window at my garden. I picked the spot that gets the most sun and it is partially thawed. I might go out and plant some peas if enough of the snow melts to give me some bare ground. It has were I have my raspberries planted. Just a few more of these nice warm days and I will be able to.

I have also been trying to plan what I am going to grow and how much. I hope my mom can get me some plant starts again this year for free. It was so great I got my melons and 2 cucumber plants and 4 basil plants and 2 tomato plants that grew and they were given to me for free. Love that when it happens.

I should go through my seeds and see what I have. Most of my seeds come from pinetree seed company.

https://www.superseeds.com

I have some heirloom ones as well that I can save seeds from. I have just started learning about that. I have a lot of seed though so I don't think I will run out of some of the basic types of garden vegetables for a while. I know I have enough corn seed. I think I am lacking in squash seeds. I want to try to grow small pumpkins this year again so I will have to order me some of those at least.

Planning 2014

With a new year ahead I am reminded that I need to start planning now so that my garden can improve and grow this coming year.

Just before it got cold I cut my raspberry plants and am looking forward with hope for a wonderfully big harvest. Too soon to tell what my extra attention to my patch will produce. Well know in July.

I started my plants in April last year I hope to start them sooner this year. I plan a month earlier to see what happens. So come March 1st I better have my peat pots bought and go through and plan what to plant and where to put it.

I am looking ahead to a bright future for me and my family. With what is going on in the world I have very little control over what the politicians do, what businesses decide. How that will affect me is talked a lot about on the radio in the news. I decided to start controlling something I have control over so I don't go insane thinking about all the other things which are out of my control. One thing for me is I have property and I can have a garden which can grow the things we eat. And also I can grow things I would like to try. Then when I produce more than we can use I can either freeze or can it for another day. If there is still too much I can serve others around me which is a win-win for me. I have even got some seeds that are heirlooms and can be harvested for seed for the coming years so for some of my seed needs can be meet by planting some to produce seeds for the next year. My garden is small so I don't use up my seeds that fast either.