Katie's Garden

Planting..finally!

2010-04-13T06:52:00.000-07:00

The time is FINALLY HERE!!!
I've been hardening my seedlings for over a week. The tilling & prep work for the garden is complete & I've planted some of the seedlings. Yay! I have lettuce, tomato, sweet basil, cabbage, and onion seedlings planted. I have more seedlings to plant still. There are Snow Pea seeds & carrot seeds in the ground as well.
I'll take pics & post them soon.

The Seeds Are In the Pods!

2010-02-28T13:28:00.000-08:00

It's that time of year again! Time to start the seedlings indoors. I do have to go buy more pods & seeds though. But so far, Trin & I planted Jalapeno, tomato, red & sweet onion, and bell pepper seeds. Now to water and wait.
This year I'll till the soil & do it all traditionally. The last 2 yrs I've used the lasagna garden method with minimal success. Maybe I'm just a traditional kind of girl! haha
Ok, that all for now.

Um, I believe I forgot to blog...after May of last year.

2010-01-19T20:22:00.000-08:00

So anyways. Almost 1 yr later..or less..I shall continue this garden blog.

I know I said I was going to till the rest of the garden but I ended up using the lasagna garden method throughout the entire garden. (I promise to till this spring..ya, we'll see ;) During the summer, we had record rain which was nice because I didn't have to water hardly at all. However, too much rain on pumpkins and corn make for disaster. My 1 pumpkin plant that came up ended up drowning and dying. And the corn only produced minimal ears. Also, I need to find out what corn I grew the first year I gardened. This corn I've been growing the past couple of years is very weird and short. Kinda strange.

Well now we're into winter and gardening is a thing of the past..and future. I did have one lone cabbage plant out there but that has gone away as well. I didn't prepare the ground using the "Lasagna Garden" method last fall. So I'm pretty sure I will HAVE to use someone's tiller this spring which I think will make for hardier veggies anyways. My first year having a garden I did everything very traditional and had the most lush garden. So, I'll try it that way again. I'll just need to put down garden plastic to keep weeds from growing.

Okay, this is it for now especially since no one's thinking about veggie gardens right now anyways! LOL

Veggie plants galor!

2009-05-31T06:50:00.000-07:00

Well, I tried to post a video of my garden...which I will just not right now.

My tomato plants are huge. And I realized, after it was too late, that I planted my beafsteak t plant in the wrong place..but oh well. We will all survive. lol

I was given 2 jalapeno plants, 3 hot banana pepper plants, and a yellow squash plant. So that was nice. Now I have 4 jalapeno plants! heehee Salsa WILL be made!

My 3 zucchini plants, my pumpkin vine, and my yellow squash plant all have golden/red marigolds planted next to them. This is to keep, HOPEFULLY, the nasty squash bugs away..or maybe keep them away long enough...those things are NASTY!

I've got corn that's about 1 1/2 feet tall and some more that's just sprouting. I also planted 7 red onions and they're growing great. My romaine lettuce is in abundance and I've got to take some to church and start passing it out. I also have a HUGE cabbage plant, so I need to look into some good cabbage recipes. I've got some garlic growing good and also various onion plants.

Anywho...
I'll try to get pics up here soon. Maybe the video..if it will upload this time.

Love to all my plant lovers!
Katie

Flower Power!

2009-04-21T07:32:00.000-07:00

Trin's here posing with my bleeding heart plant (it's a bulb that comes up every spring and surprises me with it's beauty..love it.

This is my porch garden, well it's in front of my porch and I don't know what else to call it. Most of the plants were already there when we moved in. I've added mums (because I need color in the fall too!) and some evergreens (no I don't remember the name of these plants but as soon as I do, I'll let you all know what they are ;)

And this is a pot with some plants in them. I know, descriptive huh? Well, the one with the pink flowers is a strawberry plant of some sort..though you can't eat the strawberries

A closer look and you can see a strawberry at the bottom.

The End..for now

So trashy

2009-04-21T06:17:00.001-07:00

Well, it's been a few weeks since I've posted. It's been a busy few weeks and also, my external hard drive has been holding all my pictures hostage. So, I took new pictures...so there!

Here's me hammering the chicken wire onto the board with a nail.

As you can see, I did end up using scrap wood from our wt pile.
And yes, it looks trashy...but serves it's purpose.
SEE! My romaine are now protected!

A try at a Temporary Fix

2009-04-05T20:08:00.000-07:00

Ok, I do think of gardening as my drug of choice. But that's not the kind of fix I'm talking about.

As I told you in my last post, the "Runny Babbit"s (this book will make you baugh your lutt off!) have decided to eat my lettuce for me. Well, I decided they didn't need to. So I bought some chicken wire and have yet to actually buy the wood for the completion of the project. If I actually buy the wood (might not cuz I'm cheep and might have to get wood that's sitting in our "wt" pile...though I'm fully aware that wood does not cost much at all) this will be the first year I've had a framed garden. So we'll see.

So this afternoon, while my husband was at a friend's Man Cave watching Wrestlemania (his grandma got him into WWE, formerly WWF, when he was 10 yrs old hehe), I decided to work on my temporary fix for the bunny issue. Here's the tools I used. I did decide to use some scraps of wood TEMPORARILY to weigh down the chicken wire and keep it from blowing away. It will blow away out here! You can use garden staples, which I was going to do and probably should have done. But I got way too excited taking apart a pallet that has been sitting around in my backyard. Maybe if I hadn't wasted my time with that, I would have gotten the project completed before the storm blew in. Oh well.

Ok, back on track. I used chicken wire 2'x50', wire cutters, zip ties, a measuring tape, a marker (which I just realized is not in the picture), hammer and nails (used if you are using wood. If not, add garden staples to this list and delete nails. Keep hammer for staples)

I first measured my garden. Then measured the chicken wire to what I needed. I needed 3 sheets measured 2' x 7 1/2'. This would cover the top and two long sides. The ends will be 2' x 2'. I still have yet to cut all these sheets out. I did however get one long side, the top, and one end cut.

After cutting, I bent the pointy wire ends inward so as not to get poked at when working in the garden..and on this project. Then I lined them up on the ground and began zip tying them together.
This is all she wrote because, as I worked, the wind became more and more fierce and then I noticed the clouds above me were very ugly. And soon, the rain came and I had to scramble and get all my supplies inside and my project under the dismantled pallet.

*sigh* This week is supposed to be a cold one. I'm not looking forward to it. We've had a long winter. Ok, a long winter for Tennesseans. And I'm ready for the weather to be beautiful and for Spring to be here for real...minus tornadoes. Which reminds me, I've got to go check the weather channel. So see you all!

Compost, roses and Max...the dog

2009-04-05T19:40:00.001-07:00

A year and a half ago, my good friend Amy gave me a double knock-out rose bush. They are very popular out here in Tennessee and it's beautiful. And the best thing about it is that it's maintenance free! I love that because in California I had 7 rosebushes that I had to trim. This one maintains it's self. That is what I'm talking about!

One problem though. Max. Oh Max. He thinks he's being so helpful... watering my rosebush and all.

Well, onto compost. I finally moved my compost pile. I kind of messed up last year. I put it near the house, next to the dryer vent. The mice and rats came...and you know where this is going. 11 dead mice and one drugged rat later, I think I will move the pile now! lol Oh well. We live and we learn. Oh and my husband gracefully replaced the dryer vent with a metal one...one they can't chew through.

So anywhooo. I know nothing about compost. Well, hardly anything. I just throw a bunch of rotting veggies, veggie scraps, coffee grinds, leaves, etc.. in there and hope for the best. I rotate it here and there. But that's about it. I just bought some chicken wire, so that's what's going to go around the pile.

Again, here's my anorexic looking Whippet, Max, supervising. He likes to do that...better than him running out of the yard ;)

Well, here's what it looks like so far. I put up the fence so the dogs won't get to it. I made my compost spot. I'll be tilling the area between the compost and existing garden in the next few days...when the weather starts acting right, that is.

But now I've got to put up chicken wire because the bunnies have already been munching on my lettuce. How cute! They thought I bought that lettuce for them. Well, they thought wrong!

Prep continued...AND I GOT TO PLANT SOMETHING!

2009-04-02T07:34:00.000-07:00

Good morning everyone!

Yesterday I decided to give my seedlings some sun. They love being outside as much as I do! WooHoo! Loving me some Spring!!! ...sorry guys, I got a little excited there. hehe

Actually, I'm hardening these baby plants so I can transplant them soon. I'm going to wait till the middle of the month to transplant them. But I figure the slower I harden them, the better they will be.

Well, back to preparation. My preparation started with adding food to my already lush garden soil. Then, because the package told me to, I raked it into the top 3 inches of the soil. And then I had a blank canvas to work with.

I bought some romaine lettuce plants. I think these will be the only plants I dont' start from seed this year. I chose my spot for them..and then transplanted.

There are 2 cauliflower seedlings coming up just in front of the lettuce. Can you see them?

Yay! I was so happy I could finally plant something. I'm dying to do more planting!

I dug out a pathway. It was full of weeds and I have a "sink hole" in my yard that constantly needs dirt put into it. So this seemed to be the most logical thing to do. After I dug out the path, I filled it with wood chips I had near my wood pile. If you don't have the pleasure of wood chips being in your yard, you can go buy them. I'll be putting more wood chips around the garden just to keep Matt from having to weed-eat around my precious little plants and throwing weed seeds onto my weed free soil.

Ok dogs! Stay off my plants! I think it's time to put up all my garden fencing!

Let me know what all of you are doing with your gardens (veggie or flower).
I'll be posting more later...
Katie

Preperation time!

2009-03-31T10:34:00.000-07:00

Hello all!

I've decided to dedicate this blog to my garden. This encompasses my veggie and flower gardens. I hope you enjoy. And I hope we can share experiences and advice here. I know I need it! hehe

March came in like a very cold lion and will hopefully go out like a lamb. So here's what my veggie garden looked like on March 1, 2009. While I
took this picture I thought about how different this area would look by the end of the month. And so it does.

I started out the season (Spring of course) with planting seeds indoors. They have long since germinated and are growing and waiting for their turn to visit the fertile soils of Katie's garden. ;)

Last year I used the Lasagna Garden method. This year, after a cold winter, the soil is weed free and ready to go! All I had to do this year was pull weeds around the garden spots and add some nutrients to it.

I'm so excited that I will be able to have a larger garden this year. Because I was "with child" last year, I made my garden as small and maintenance free as possible. This year I will be extending the garden on either side to make room for corn and other veggies. I will be mixing traditional method (tilling and adding soil and nutrients) and the lasagna garden method. Last year, I found that the corn didn't do very well in the rich soil. The year before, I had planted the corn in rich loam I composed by tilling in garden soil into the clay soil that is in my backyard. (You may have clay soil or sandy soil. Go to this link to read more about dirt: http://thepioneerwoman.com/homeandgarden/2009/03/about-that-dirt/ )

I discovered that I have a few plants already growing in my garden. The garlic grows wild around here. This year I decided to give in and grow some since I use it so often. Also there's one bell pepper plant that decided to grow where last years was. I guess a seed from a rotting bell pepper decided to wait out the winter in my garden.

Of course, I had to transplant the pepper plant. I'm doing my best to rotate the crops. Next year, I might need to move my garden to another spot in the yard to give the soil there a rest...not sure how necessary that is though. I'll have to read more on that in the future.

Well, that's it for today.
I'll be posting my progress as it happens.
Katie