The Good in the Garden

Brussel Sprouts - Eating every couple of days.  Still have producing plants from last year and healthy plants grown from seed last fall

Potatoes - A foot and a half to two feet tall

Swiss Chard - Really pretty electric yellow and red stems (will hate to pick it)

Begonias - They like the temps and moisture

Purple Cabbage - Four 1"X1" plants now are over two feet in diameter

Carrots - Most came up, but they are a little droopy form all of the moisture

Kentucky Wonders - Almost every seed came up

Tomatoes - Romas doing well and Early Girl.  One wild Roma came up from last year

Petunias - Really pretty red and white and purple and white varieties

Gerbera Daisies - Beautiful flowers.  They seem to do a lot better in the ground than in pots

Blackberries - Enormous plants now, many flowers and pre-berries.

Peach trees - All three have peaches.  Nets are up.

Apple Tree - New Granny Smith.  I didn't buy a 2nd tree (which is recommended for pollination) but we have about a dozen apple buds

Stay tuned for further updates.  :)

Rough Week In The Garden

From Randy, A.K.A. The Farmer:

The past week has probably been my worst week as far as the garden.  Everything was doing magnificently (no late cold freeze and moderate temps) until I noticed that my Roma Italian beans were being sawed off at the ground.  

I thought I had cutworms and put out cornmeal and flour (which is what was recommended for cutworms).  However, after watching closely for several days, what I really had was an infestation of rolly-pollys (pill bugs).  

They love a well composted garden and found a home in mine.  Although they generally eat decaying organic matter, they are also prone to eating tender roots and stems of new plants.  After the green beans, the chewed up the butternut squash sprouts and two tomato plants.  

I have them under control now, but there is no way to get back the month of growth that had been invested in getting them from seed to young plants.  

I can go buy the plants at the nursery, which I will probably do for the squash, but I will just have to plant warmer weather beans/peas in place of the Romas.  After the attack of the rolly pollys, we had that monstrous wind and rain storm a couple of nights ago and it wiped out half of my Bok Choy and onions and flooded several other things (which I am hoping will recover).  

My ground in the back slopes downward to the alley, so I built the furrows up so that they would drain well.  The rain and wind was so intense that the ground soil started moving downhill and I don't have any furrows anymore - everything is flat.  By being flat, the plants just sat in water and mud for about two days.

Crafty Garden

Last week during Spring Break I was surfing some of my favorite food and garden websites.  A fellow Texas blogger, Tina at Mommy's Kitchen, posted about her kids making Garden Markers.  She had seen the idea from another fellow Texas blogger, Joan, at 3 girls, me, and a recipe.  She made garden markers with her daughters.  So, of course, I had to try my hand at homemade garden markers.  Up to now we have just written down what was planted where in the garden.  While that is great if you can find the paper, I'm excited about the garden markers.

Since my kids are pretty much grown, my project was solo.  I mostly used things I already had around the house.  One of my daughters left a bag of chopsticks from a school project here.  They made great stakes for the signs.  Another daughter is very crafty herself and donated some string for decoration.  As a teacher, I tend to collect markers and paint pens.  All I had to do was get them out.  And having worked in a flower shop for several decades, I happened to have floral tape lying around, too.  My only purchase was clear coat spray and colored craft sticks.

Supplies for garden signs

Part of my collection of paint pens.  :)

Of course, I made a list of signs to make.
I'm really big on list making. 

Chopsticks

I used floral tape to tape two chopsticks together.

I must admit pulling out the floral tape brought back memories of thousands of flowers I taped over the years.

The colored craft sticks came from Hobby Lobby.  $2.33 for 75 sticks.

It was fun trying different combinations of paint colors and sticks.

Hot glue was my adhesive of choice to hold the signs together.

I used two coats of clear acrylic sealant to lock in the colors.

Each side got two coats.

A little tie of string finished off the garden markers.

The finished product

And here's the finished product.

Definitely adds little pops of color to the green of the garden.

They help me know what's what, too. 

My favorite was silver paint on the purple stick.

Our newest addition is a Granny Smith Apple Tree.

Yes, we did name our trees, all seven of them.  But that's a post for another time.

❀