Friday, May 30, 2008

weeds from plants?

Some of the little seedlings I see growing in our front garden I am pretty sure are weeds, but they also look like they might be pretty plants... I am not sure what to do. I guess I will just let some of them grow until I am sure. I am getting very, very impatient for my flowers to grow and bloom, but it will probably be another month before I see any flowers.

Friday, May 23, 2008

Update

In the front beds, the cosmos continues to grow and appears to be thriving. The dwarf sunflowers are also coming up, as are some of the marigolds. Grass is growing back like mad, so I am weeding like mad! I am not seeing any chives or alyssum, and I've decided to order some canna lillies to fill in some of the blank spots and possibly plant seedum at the border to ward of the grass.

We planted radishes in 2 large containers on the front porch. They have sprouted! I am hoping that soon we can have a delicious radish salad to celebrate our harvest. I hope to grow some more radishes in the fall, as well as carrots.

Hope to get our raised beds in this weekend. Decided to buy potting soil rather than the cheaper topsoil. I don't have any compost yet, and I really want my plants to grow well.

My container blueberry bush came and looks adorable on our porch. It is very small.

I have plans to order blueberry and raspberry bushes and strawberry plants. (Our family loves berries--with whipped cream, they are a tasty Atkins-friendly treat.) I do want to test our soil's pH. The blueberries need acid. I may order a grape vine too. Many of these fruit plants seem to need years to reach their peak, so I feel some pressure to go ahead and put them in.

We've gotten started with our compost bin--hurray! We bought a hoop compost bin.

We have started some more seedlings in a little seed starter. Some of my seeds were so tiny that they needed bottom watering, including coleus and pink polka dot plant, good houseplants. We've got tomatoes growing that I intend to grow in containers. My ponytail palms did not sprout in a regular pot, so I am hoping I'll have more success this way. I really love growing things from seed.

Our birdhouse gourd plants have been started as well! That's what everyone will be getting for Christmas!

Our only problem is that the container dill keeps dying. I think I have been taking the seedlings outside too soon or something. I'm doing to try again and put it in a more sheltered location, I think.

IA seems to be really liking watching the plants grow. He likes to visit the sunflowers and cosmos and talk to them. He talks to all the plants. They are his "plant friends."

Saturday, May 10, 2008

A little weeding, more planning


Cosmos seedling


Weeded the garden today. The seedlings seem to be doing well, and there are more of them. I haven't seen any alyssum seedlings yet, but it's a little too early. I am hoping that grows well and will fight off the grass. Our fence posts were put in yesterday, and we should have a back fence next week I think! Then I can get started on our back gardens. I can't wait to plant some vegetables. I am trying to find a good deal on some soil for my raised beds.

One funny thing--one of the fence guys mentioned to my husband that our soil was pure concrete, and he was amazed that grass grows here! That's certainly how it seemed to me. You can see our lovely "concrete" soil in the picture above.

I have also ordered some "hoop-type" compost bins. We have a bunch of water-damaged cardboard that I'm planning on composting, so one of the bins will just be to contain that, until we can use it all. This fall, I'll use the extra bin to hold leaves for composting. I will gradually bury our food wastes with the cardboard and leaves.

I just keep ordering seeds... It will be interesting to see what I manage to grow this year!

Monday, May 5, 2008

Sprouts appear

So, I planted up the one small bed in our front yard, leaving the larger bed for later. Right after I planted the first bed, we had 3 days of thunderstorms. The lovely soil which I had turned and mixed with a potting soil looked like concrete when it was all dried out. I decided that:

A) The seeds had probably washed away.
B) I hadn't planted enough of them anyway (probably true).
C) Plants can't grow in concrete.

But, you know, despite all of these problems, I have sprouts! I think my cosmos, dwarf sunflowers, and marigolds have all sprouted. The cosmos seems to be doing the best. Anyway, I planted more seeds in the other bed and beefed up the other side a bit too. I decided to forget about the blue star flowers and planted white alyssum instead. I also threw in some chives because I know how hardy they are and tossed in some shasta daisies as well. I decided it would be better to thin the garden than to not have enough plants.

The plants I am growing are really, really easy plants (marigolds are practically weeds!!). They should be "fool proof." We shall see... I feel like it is a bit late in the season to be starting plants from seed, but we only moved in a little over a month ago.

My son was excited about the sprouts, but the container plants are really more appealling for him. I killed our dill sprout, and he was sad about that today. Oh, well, we will try again.

In other news, my husband got the lumber for the 2 raised beds he is making for me (8ft by 4 ft by 8 inches high). I had originally planned on 5 of these babies. but the realization of the expense and upkeep required caused me to decided that I could get by with 2 beds just fine.

So, far I want to grow in my raised beds:
  • miniature pumpkins
  • green beans
  • corn
  • chives
I'll probably think of some more things too. I think I will probably not get started for another couple of weeks. I still have not figured out where the soil for these beds should come from or how much it will cost.

Also, there are several bunnies that visit the yard who will probably dig under our new fence and eat a lot of my veggies. May have to look for some creative ideas there. I am too much of a city girl to consider harming the bunnies.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Our root viewer


An additional project we have going is the Root Viewer. The neat thing about it is that you can see root vegetables, like carrots, radishes, or celery growing through the clear plastic tubes. We are growing carrots, but we may try another vegetable when they are finished.

We tried it before when IA was 2 or 3, but all the dirt got, uh, dumped out. Project is going much better now that he is 4. Our carrots have sprouted, and we're both very excited about it.