Mother's Day in the Vegetable Garden

                                                                                                                                                                                   It's been a couple of weeks since I've really been able to get out in the garden.  Last weekend we had the pleasure of having the grand kids over ( 6 yrs and 4 yrs) , so all my free time went into to them.  We spent the day making butterfly magnets for Mommy for Mother's Day and a bouquet of flowers made out of egg cartons, and of course the Grand daughter had to 'steal' one of my stones for her garden.  I didn't mind a bit and was thrilled to share with her.  Unfortunately I didn't think to get any pictures but we had a great time.  

      We managed to get some rain this past week, so I knew I was going to need to put more DE in the garden.  I planned on making time on Mother's Day to give the garden some much needed attention.  Right away I started seeing troublemakers .

See Mr. Stink Bug?

 I have been wanting to play around with some home remedy pest control and this was the perfect opportunity.  I found this website ( http://www.no-dig-vegetablegarden.com/natural-pest-control-remedies.html ) and decided to try out the apple cider and vinegar recipe, as that is all I had on hand at the time.  I'll being making a trip to the store tomorrow for some more home remedies  

   I used 1/2 a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar to half a liter of water.  I'm not sure if this is going to help a lot but at least I feel better 'thinking' I'm doing some good. 

   I took this time to really inspect the plants, checking under the leaves and really taking a good look at the stems and stalks. 

   As I did this I made sure to use spray the under side of the leaves with the apple cider solution.  I felt very confident that I had used the spray to the best I could, so now we'll see what happens

                                   

Early Girl Tomato's

   In the mean time, I decided that one of my tomato cages were leaning to close to another, so I zip tied it to the trellis, hoping that it will help anchor it away from the other tomatoes.  

Mr. Stink bug on the
cucumber plant

   I waited a few hours and went back outside to check on things and as I suspected Mr. Stink Bug was still hanging around!  I'll be putting the DE out tonight so he won't be around for long!  

   While I'm waiting on it to get late enough for that I'll be checking out different websites on good and bad bugs.

  Here's one of my favorite websites:

https://www.fix.com/blog/common-garden-pests-and-how-to-get-rid-of-them/ 

The Pepper on the left is the
Chocolate,  right is an Orange
and in the middle is a Jalapeno
Pepper

3 Hard boiled eggshells that I
crushed and then sprinkled in'
the garden.

 I had read in my research that eggshells when crushed and sprinkled on the top soil  in the garden, slugs, cut worms and other insects are repelled by they're sharp edges.
  Since I boiled eggs for Potato Salad (part of tonight's dinner) I thought I'd give it a try.
 My peppers occasionally drop flowers or leaves so I sprinkled around the base of all 3 pepper plants and decided to put some around the green beans as well.

Crushed eggshells on the base'
of the green beans

So far so good with the Tomato's.They look beautiful to me.  I can't wait for those Grape tomato's to ripen. 

 The one on the left is an Early Girl Tomato.  Top right is a Grape (Tami G) and bottom right is Rutgers Select 

 I also found some time to give my mini roses some much needed attention.  I re potted them a few weeks ago and gave them some fresh dirt, but a lot of blooms have died off.  I spent a little time pruning off the dead blooms.  They look so much better!

  I'm getting ready to break up my cactus.  When I first received it, there was just the one part in the middle.  It's since sprouted 3 arms. Since the last rains the arm on the right has 3 raised bumps.  I'm not sure if it's getting ready to bloom again or if it's going to sprout more arms.  The blooms are beautiful and only happen at night.

This is the last of the Lettuce in the Aero Garden!  

Tonight we'll clean it up and see what to next with it!

Lot's of surprises for the end of April

 I try really hard to keep an eye on the garden.    I consider myself a 'newbie' to gardening so I go out everyday looking for evidence of pest.  I try to make sure the soil is wet enough or not too wet.  I'm constantly checking the blooms for fruit on all my vegetables and look at what I found in my cucumbers.  I put a plea out to my fellow gardeners on FaceBook and did some research on my own.  The conclusion is Assassin  Bug.  Yep, he found my cucumbers.  As a matter of fact, quite a few of them were enjoying themselves to my plants.   I immediately got on Amazon and order Diametrious Earth.

 I also had a birthday this month and much to my surprise I had a package waiting for me when I got home from work.  My youngest son is attending college in Maryland and sent me this Awsome 55+ sunscreen hat and some bamboo gardening gloves.  He is definitely the favorite this year!

 Other than the Assassin Bugs the garden is looking great.  I actually found a young lady bug, but unfortunately I haven't seen any since.  The beans are looking good and the cucumbers are hanging in there.  We're still waiting for the DE to arrive

The Day that the DE arrived we ended up have strong winds out of the south/southwest.

The weather forecast kept promising rain, but that really didn't happen.  I had to water the garden any way.  This was mainly a wind event. Unfortunately this weather system did bring major tornado's to North Texas and 4 people ( as of now) have lost their lives.

This is taken right at a curve in the road as you can see the water is just starting to come across the road.  I moved in after Hurricane Ike , so far this is the highest I've seen it, but we haven't had any strong tropical storms and definately, no significant hurricanes.

 I thought I would see how high the water was on the canal. Not too bad, we're not in any danger of flooding.

 Of course, as many storms do, the next day brought gorgeous weather.  Winds had died down, the humidity dropped and so had the temperatures.

Now with the beautiful weather and calm winds I'm ready to treat the garden for pests. However, before I did I took a good look at the garden and noticed my green bean stalks were being eaten.  Unfortunately, I could get a picture of the pest, but I did decide it was a Mexican Beetle.   The DE should take care of him and his friends with no problem.

 I'm not sure if you can see my first Early Girl, but there she is!







My Grape Tomato's are looking pretty good so far as well!  I have quite a few blooms on them and have some high hopes!




The cucumbers have done very well, in spite of the winds and pests.







Before using the DE I did YouTube some video's to make sure I had some sort of idea of what I was doing.    I also learned that not only is DE harmful to the bad bugs in your garden, but it can also be harmful to bees.  I had a clean color applicator bottle that I cut the tip off to make it wider.  I filled it with DE, waited til late evening (when bees are less active), and then dusted the garden with it.  I tried really hard to stay away from the blooms as not to kill any bees that might be trying to pollinate.  I also went around the raised bed hoping that would help as well.

The weather forecast is predicting rain this next week, possibly heavy.  We'll see if it happens.  I'll have the grand kids next weekend.  It will be the first time they've seen this garden.  I expect we'll be doing some bug hunting!

Little Black Bugs / new parsley plant / harvesting the herbs/ planting marigolds and annuals and accessories for the garden

 

     Earlier this week, I was making chicken quesadillas and charro beans, and I just couldn't resist going out to the garden and trimming off a little cilantro.  I've had cilantro store bought and I've planted cilantro in my aerogarden to transplant in a container, but I have to tell you, boys and girls, I've never had cilantro that was this fresh or had such a flavorable taste and aroma.  It was spectacular and I know I'll get a lot of enjoyment from that plant.



After taking a good look at the garden I decided that i needed one more plant to complete my herb garden.  This time I picked up a curly parsley plant.  It was rather large , so after planting it, I did harvest a small amount of the parsley, basil, and garlic chives to make with the nights roasted potatoes to go with dinner.  They were absolutely delicious.  I'll be making herb roasted  potatoes more often!

      

     

    

 About mid week I noticed that my green beans weren't looking as healthy as I'd like .  Once I took a good look at the leaves I could see some black critters running around, so I took a good look at the rest of the garden and I decided that et was time for our first round of pest control  Since I'm still new at this I dediced to go with the pesticide pictured .  If anyone has any pest control suggestions, feel free to comment below.

                                                                                                            

 My garden is almost complete, but I feel that it needs to some minor touches to spruce it up.  I had the planters and dirt already, so I decided to plant some marigold and annuals, just to give the garden a little pop of color. As you can see I was trying to plant in between rain showers, and of course, that was the only time it rained all day!

Today, I went to my local dollar store to see what I could find to bling out my garden and I found three of the cutest, bling y, stones and and whirl y wind thingy (yes that is a technical term).  I am absolutely  loving the look of my garden.  The Orange bell peppers are blooming, as well as the cucumbers, two of the tomato plants and the chocolate bell pepper.  Things are looking good so far.

Now all that left is the trellis for the Cucumbers and Green Beans!

Romane Lettuce growing in my AeroGarden

These are clipping off of my mothers fig tree that
I've had for almost a year now.   Mom's been gone
20 years now, so  let's see what I can do with these. 

And more pictures of our beautiful Texas Spring Wildflowers!

Day 2, More Dirt in my Garden

Houston Garden Center I-45 S

The next day was my day off, so back I went to the garden center for more dirt.  We felt that 6 more bags should do the trick.  By the time I got my errands ran and back home I had convinced myself that somehow I had gotten the wrong dirt, and was a little concerned because our garden center doesn't take returns, but when hubby got home he assured me it was the right dirt! Whew, that would have been a costly mistake.  We dragged the wheelbarrow out and began mixing our dirt and filling in the rest of our raised bed!

Finally, we get to start planting.  I chose 2 different types of tomatoes, a chocolate bell pepper, an orange bell pepper, a green bean plant, a cucumber plant and garlic chives.  I also had some red and green onion on hand which I planted in between the vegetables.  

We decided that we still had plenty of space left, so the following weekend we headed to our local Walmart and got cilantro, basil, sage, a mild jalepeno plant and a cherry tomato plant.  We were able to get every think planted and place a small circular sprinkler that will reach corner to corner.  As of now we do not have that on a timer, but we have timer we just need to install it.  

 This is my back deck and my old vegetable garden.  I may see what I can do to turn it into small flower garden eventually.  I love sitting on the back deck in the evenings and enjoying the beautiful Texas sun sets.


                    Spring has sprung on the bay.  Here are some of our beautiful wild flowers that grow every spring.

                                             Thanks Linda Wollam for the pictures.

Texas Blue Bonnet
State Flower