Tag: Plants

July Garden Update 2020

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July has been very busy for the garden. I harvested radishes the end of June, and July I just pulled my onions. I started the month with several tomatoes set, but before long, there was a period of no setting fruit, and they stopped growing entirely. My cucumbers however had a great start of the month. I got lots of big and beautiful, as well as gourd-like and misshapen cucumbers. I was able to can pickles, and just last week I was able to make a gallon of fridge dill pickles that last up to a year! By the end of the month, I had gotten a tomato from each plant, and had begun finding green beans. The carrots were almost ready to harvest, and the seedpods on the radishes had begun to turn red. The last thing that happened this month, was the loss of a tomato plant. I planted 2 big beef, and 3 better boy, and one of my big beef plants must have been hit with fusarium, a fungus. I treated the roots with a mixture of peroxide and water, I heard it sizzling, showing it was a fungus, but the plant got hit hard and fast, so it couldn’t recover, and I had to pull it.

My second bed also went crazy this month. It grew so fast, that I had quite the mess there. Besides that, My marigolds had begun growing, and one day, there was a big hole in the bed, and the netting had several holes. I found, several weeks later, that it was in fact a bunny who found my raised bed, and had 4 little bunnies under my marigold. We also decided at that point, we’ll splurge next year and buy chicken wire for the beds next year. better safe than sorry. Despite that, only a few onions got toppled, and nothing was eaten, just a couple frightened bunnies when I’d come for my daily cucumber haul.

July 6

July 12-13

July 17

August 1

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Garden Update June 2020

Hello, and welcome to another one of my garden updates. My last update was for May, and this one is for June. (Sorry it’s a bit later than the last one.) My garden has grown so fast, it’s shocking! I’ve gotten some radishes and lettuce off my plants, and this weekend I was able to get some cucumbers off my plants too.

This last month I’ve learned some valuable lessons. First, and I mentioned it in my last post, it is so important to space radishes. I tried to get them high density, just it just grew into a mess, and it took about 2 weeks longer to get any. Also, the two pictures below of harvested radishes is all the radishes I was able to harvest out of that mess. I had several radishes break under the soil and begin to rot, and I had many many more that produced no bulb due to overcrowding.

Second, I’ve discovered that cucumbers are a handful! I’ve been trying to grow them vertically, tying them to a tomato cage. And, though that works, They don’t climb naturally well, so I find myself every 1-2 days in the garden directing and tying off my cucumber plants. I also trimmed off some of the lower leaves off my cucumbers. They were turning yellow and dying, and they were also restricting air flow and making it hard to see any low hanging cucumbers.

Third, I learned all spacing needs to be respected more. I planted my green beans and cucumbers about 18 inches apart, and you’d swear they are star-crossed lovers. I go out into my garden everyday, and I always see these two plants reaching for one another, and being less than an inch from becoming a tangled mess I don’t look forward to dealing with. However, my other bed of lettuce, Swiss chard, tomatoes, and onions aren’t having any crowding issues. My Swiss chard didn’t come up. I believe I waited too long to plant. I also planted another segment of lettuce, and that also didn’t come up, I’m assuming same problem. My onions in that bed have appeared to stop growing. They are tinier than the other bed despite being planted earlier. They tops have also begun to fall over on several in that bed, leading me to believe pour drainage is likely a problem. I have several tomatoes that are nice and big, however none have begun to turn red yet. I also have one that a bug got into, but that’s not bad.

Fourth, I’ve learned good soil and drainage is important. As I just mentioned, my one bed isn’t holding onions, and I’m positive that if it isn’t holding onto moisture too much, the soil is likely not giving them enough nutrients. This bed was filled with mostly decomposed mulch, so the soil isn’t as good as my other bed. Besides that, the fabric bags we filled using soil from my in-law’s house, and their soil has a very high clay content. Because of this, in the hot June/July weather, I have to go and water them about every other day, when I see the leaves really wilting.

I’ve gotten everything planted and going. Some things aren’t growing as well as others, but I’m learning. We got a peach tree about 2 weeks ago and got that into the ground. I also left a few radishes to go to seed, and I have 2 onion sets going to seed now.

Ive also fertilized my soil about 3 times. I’ve been using Miracle Grow plant food for vegetables. Between that, watering regularly, and all the warm weather, my veggies have grown so fast!

May 24

May 29

June 9

June 18

June 21

June 24

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Planting My Garden, May 2020

It’s finally time for me to plant. I spent hours researching plants, finding out what can and cannot work together, researching gardening techniques and styles. I’ve watched days worth of YouTube videos by different gardeners, and I was waiting for now. Memorial day weekend is plating time where I’m from. Before then, there is a constant risk of frost or even snow. I planted my onions, some Parris island lettuce, and my radishes about 2 weeks ago, and they got snow and frost. But, after Wednesday night, we are out of the frost zone! I planted another 1/3 of my lettuce row with seeds, I planted 4 Swiss chard seeds, I planted 5 indeterminate tomato vines, and Josh and I made stakes that are 1 in x 1 in x 6 1/2 foot for my tomatoes. We plated 5 clusters of cucumbers, and added cages around them, because we hope to grow them vertically, and finally, Josh made a trellis for me using chicken wire, and I plated green bean pole beans along the front of that. Our beds are 8 ft by 4 ft.

I did a lot of research leading up to this. Different staking methods, high density spacing, harvest conditions and seeding conditions. I grew some plants from seeds, however, I also purchased many plants. I’ve never really gardened before. Josh grew up with a garden, but I’ve only grown the occasional cherry tomato. I have house plants, but even they are hard for me to manage all winter. I’m hopeful. I put lots of time into this project and I’ve learned so much about these plants. I know I will be disappointed when something doesn’t work, but I’m hopeful, and I hope to share lots of canning posts this summer on here and Instagram.

Things I did differently

According to my plans, it says beets, but it was always radishes. I just say beets sometimes, I don’t know why. The other thing I’ve done differently was how I planted the beans. I wasn’t sure if I was getting a trellis, so I planned for a teepee. Instead I planted the beans 4 inches from the edge of the bed with about 6 inch spacing between them. I still fit 12 plants along the 6 foot of trellis Josh put up. Finally, I haven’t planted my carrots yet. I am currently using their pots to hold a few other plants I still have. I plant to plant my decorative plants soon. I also am thinking of keeping my early crop of Romaine in the pot. The white hanging pot has changed from onions to cat grass, and the 2 other pots in that photo are large cucumbers. Of which, the reason I didn’t plant the carrots is we need for dirt for out fabric pots, and I plan to fill 2 more for my 2 large cucumber plants. This will mean 4 fabric bags of plants.

If I could do things different

I guess I would make the raised beds slightly narrower. Because, I get quite the ab workout leaning into the center of the bed from the side. I would also plant all my onions together, and plant them at the outer edge of the beds. On my cucumber bed, I planted a row of radishes against the edge of the bed. They are doing fine, but I won’t be able to plant anything in it’s spot when I harvest in less than a month. I would also actually follow spacing for the radishes, instead of planning to plant high density like the lettuce.

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Coat Hooks + Christmas Cactus

Hello again!
The last few days have been busy. Just the other day, we had an offer on a set of coat hooks that Josh had made. This led to us mailing the items to them. Here is a few photos for the final product that Josh made.

The knobs came on the cabinets when we moved in. Since there were only about fifteen cabinet pulls that matched and the rest were just like these, eclectic, we replaced them and had no use for the old, so we decided to use them in a project.
The pieces of wood were nice pieces that were leftover from another project, and the mounting brackets were also handmade out of extra metal.
Josh cut the pieces, drilled the holes evenly spaced, rounded the edges and sanded the faces, stained the wood, waited for it to dry, then assembled. I gave them a final wipe down yesterday with a light scrub to remove any dirt, then mailed them to the buyer. The overall dimensions of one piece were 12.5″L X 2.5″H X 2″D.

Thanks for reading and I hope you’ve also gained some inspiration.

Tell me, would you be willing to buy something like this if it was sold on eBay or Etsy? Also, what is your favorite website to shop on and look at?

Bonus:

Also, here is a picture of my Christmas Cactus. We bought it last Thursday from Aldis and some of it’s buds are starting to open! Have a fun, safe weekend!

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