The Garden Inventors: Tips, tricks & original ideas

cool marigolds... mixed ones, and our Zinna's.

2010-09-12T16:38:00.000-07:00

Our Zinna's from seed. They did so well.

danish marigolds

these seem to be a cross between the ones we bought last year, and the danish marigolds ... the leaves are the coolest.

this year the flowers we so much fun. They grew from the seeds we had harvested ourselves and they turned out so well. They are both such easy to grow plants and so forgiving of mistakes... gotta love that.

pumpkins

2010-09-10T12:37:00.000-07:00

My Cinderella pumpkins

almost ripe

starting to turn orange...

pumpkins are my fav

My pumkins started turning orange really early this year, maybe because its been so cold, brrrr, but I have lots of cinderella and baking pumkins, the snails loved to eat the Atlantic Giants, but I got a few medium sized ones of those, just starting to go orange.

Harvest Time

2010-07-26T15:08:00.000-07:00

Well this week I started to harvest most of my herbs, some spinach and corn. Its the greatest feeling seeing the reward for all of your hard work.

In this picture I have four fresh sprigs of herbs; parsley, oregano, basil and thyme. This is the easiest and my most successful way of keeping some new dried herbs on hand. I started out by bundling them at the bottom while they were still in the ground then i cut, cleaned and hung them upside down on my pasta dryer with some twine. After they dried out and became nice and crunchy i de-stemmed the leaves and stored them in an airtight spice jar. I love doing this because herbs and spices can be pricey and they are fresher than store bought. Although nothing can beat fresh cut or frozen, its the next best thing.

Our family really loves rasberries, and right now my mom has been working on making fresh jam from our home grown and wild berries. The biggest problem has been getting enough fresh berries accumulated to make a full batch of jam, so we started freezing them in ziploc baggies

. -- this turned out to be a bit of a blunder because they would freeze into a huge brick and just a pain to defrost. So we started to spread them out on a half cookie sheet lined with some parchment paper/wax paper/silpat and froze them.

Problem solved, individually frozen berries, after a day or so, dump them in a food sealer or ziploc. We still have a good stash from last season and its easy to open up a bag and grab a few, instead of chizzling them off a huge frozen brick. And yes, thats Moose and Alaskan Salmon fillets!

Last but not least, Im not quite sure if anyone else has ever harvested full plants like spinach before but I had a bunch of scrap left over -- Roots, stems, rotted plants, etc.

And I had nothing to do with it since we dont have a composter set up yet. So I thought to myself, why not just stir it into the dirt?

So i did, and its worked just fine since i wont be using that section till next summer. Easy way to compost a small amount of scraps without making a composter, i also did this when i initially made this growbox, i just tilled the grass and buried it with more gardening dirt. We got a truckload for about $50 by the way.

Yukon Gold Potatoes

2010-07-19T13:29:00.000-07:00

Digging up some potatoes for the week. You can just put your hand in the soil and feel around for the size you want and that way, keep the smaller ones growing... or get them all if you like to eat them small or roast them.

Yumm... We like to roast them with some of our zucchini with a little olive oil and crushed rosemary.... nothing like fresh potatoes!

You know you've got little potatoes after they bloom, then its just a matter of deciding how big you want them to get. We dig them up all summer long.

too much soap

2010-07-19T13:19:00.000-07:00

So, I used the bright idea of spraying some of my plants with palmolive dish soap (diluted) because I had heard that it worked on aphids and stuff like that... well everything was fine but the tomato plants.. it got rid of the bugs but killed half the leaves... so moral of the story, try it on one leaf first -save most of the plant. I was so bummed out!

Otherwise, everything is growing great. My pumpkin patch is going awesome. Its my favorite part of my garden.

These ones are the Atlantic Giant and I love them because the insides are all spongy, like a cucumber.... and they smell great.

Watering Cones

2010-07-06T17:53:00.001-07:00

I found these watering cones at Harbor Freight for $1.50 for 6. They just go in the ground with 2 liter bottles filled with whatever going out into the soil as it drys out through these pre-drilled holes in the post. It works fantastic, I am filling mine with the fertilizer tea I made and that way getting to specifically fertilize some of the plants I want to focus on. I am excited about that.

I put them on my pumpkin plants, my tomato plants and squash. So, now I am going to see if they are bigger then the other plants because they got focused fertilizer.....

The transplant shocker

2010-07-04T22:17:00.000-07:00

My Mom's

My garden

This year my mother and I began our gardening indoors and of course, we became slightly competitive..

A month or two went by and most our plants were the same, but then the dreaded hardening and transplanting time came. Mom had began hardening about two weeks early when it wasn't entirely summer and left them outside through the night (covered of course.. only around 40 degrees F) Eventually she had her garden set up and chose to plant. Having a smaller crop I was able to move mine outdoors quite easily and being a procrastinator i waited until my plants were bigger and it was warmer outside until I hardened mine off and began planting. In theory hers would have been larger still, and better off because there wasn't much shock and the roots systems weren't as developed when transplanted and mine worse off. But lo and behold, both of our gardens are flourishing. There seems to be a critical planting time period when a plant is still small enough to fit into a pot but big enough to be transplanted without dying from shock.

Just another trial with having a very short summer..

Tea Bag Fertilizer

2010-06-25T20:28:00.001-07:00

This is actually Liz's idea, and I wanted to try it, I thought I would do it today so I did. Tea bag Fertilizer, -very cool The idea is basically make a fertilizer "Tea Bag" and let it seep in water and use that to water your plants with. Its an organic way to fertilize and it doesn't burn the plants. I used a big old plastic garbage can, and filled it with water, then used a pillowcase and filled it with composted steer manure that I got from Lowe's ($1.26 a bag) and it was so quick and easy. Instant yucky water! Anyway, I just needed a little fertilizer and it seeped and kept me from having to try and work more fertilizer into the soil, and was so super easy. Its a winner idea in my book, so way to go sis! I had to remind my son to keep his hands out though... yuk.

Oh and guess what? I was so excited.. I have baby pumpkins, squash, and potatoes, and peas... so much more fun the spinach and lettuce ! yeah, love it when I can see the cool little veggies.

2010-06-24T19:12:00.000-07:00

Put down the slug bait today.. trying to keep the snails and slugs off of my pumpkin patch... the pumpkin patch is on of my favorite parts of my garden. I get the warm fuzzys of the holidays all summer long watching my pumkins grow! LOVE IT. I just treated the outside of the patch, and wow does that stuff work, although i have to admit, I do feel slightly guilty about the poor snails, but what is a gardener to do, let the buggers eat you right out of gardening, or go on the offensive? I wish a sign of NO SNAILS would work... sigh. So, I am living with the guilt.

Grow Boxes of all shapes and sizes part 2

2010-06-21T17:36:00.001-07:00

Wow, I don't think I've ever dug that much dirt! I did add about 7 bags of composted steer manure, which FYI, don't leave in the sun cause wow, does it stink to open a hot bag of compost! It is so much better to plant in a raised bed, so much time off. I do like making the raised bed out of the fencing and the weed blocker. It was really a quick easy way to make a big bed. It is a bit wavey since its old used stuff I found, but it worked great.

My raised beds worked great, but the dirt falls down the sides and I could only plant on about 2/3'rds of the bed since the sides slant so much. But it makes weeding a bit easier since I trample between the beds and it helps keep the weeds from growing. My tomatoes in my growbox are a lot bigger then the ones I put straight into the ground, and are already flowering. My corn is not doing much...

Next I'm trying out Lizzy's idea of a teabag fertilizer to keep my garden more organic..

Grow Boxes of all shapes and sizes

2010-06-16T15:19:00.000-07:00

Diana- I am trying raised bed gardening this year and since I didn't want to invest a few hundred dollars into it, I came up with these different ideas. My first idea was after I found some old galvanized steel laying about and decided to make it into a growing box. They were actually pretty easy since the steel sheets had been laying out in the weather for about 30 years anyway and were all pretty much the same size. I used some wood 2"X2" natural wood to have some posts to attach the steel sheets to. I used little screws and a powerdrill to put them together. And, bam. easy peasy grow box. They are about 30" square which makes them easy to move and put about anyplace in the garden. Plus, since its natural wood, not treated, its easier to keep up with the whole Organic thing.

I found some smalled steel sheets that I used to make some flower boxes, and I used one for my Herb Garden which hopefully will be as cool as useful in cooking summer stuff. I spraypainted the outsides of those a dark bronze color and fitted a bottom to them. It wasn't anymore work then the others and has the same benfits. Any kind of sheet of wood or steel would work the same. Cost is about 5 dollars a growbox with the steel sheets I got free.

My next grow box attempt is underway. Today I tilled up the ground and used old wire cages, part of them anyway, to form the sides. I staked them wire fencing stuff down with wooden stakes and next I am going to cover the insides with landscaping fabric. I will fill it with dirt most of the way and then we'll see how that one works.

My plants did come up earlier in the raised beds I made this year, but I have problems keeping the dirt in place and with weeding, so I'm hoping that these growboxes will solve those issues.