Category Archives: Garden

My Little Baby Basil

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If you’ve never had much success with gardening, you’re probably very impressed with Megan’s awesome garden. Me, on the other hand, I’m not so successful. Remember these plants I got?

Yeah, all of those in this photo I pretty much fried. :( I’ve tried moving them out of the direct sun, but it’s going to take some time and TLC to hopefully do damage control.

I’ve also haven’t had much luck with those little all-in-one kits. I don’t have photographic evidence of failure, but of sweet little basil sprouts of success!

Check out the basil! What, you can't see it?

I was a sucker in CVS the other day and I wandered over to the lawn and garden section. Everything was 50 percent off! So I nabbed this set for $2. It came with extra seeds and a ton of soil, so I was able to to fill a little Ikea planter.

It's my baby basil sprouts!

I’m definitely seeing basil martinis and margherita pizza in my future!

Did Megan’s gardening greatness inspire any of you to improve your green thumbs?

Megan’s Garden Update & Watering Tips

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A few weeks ago, we talked about transferring seeds from your seed pots to the ground.  If you did that (or did that awhile ago as you should have), you probably have some nice little plants growing in your garden.  Mine are getting big, and I thought I would share a couple tips today.

Tip #1:  Make sure you water! I know, it’s a bit weird, but sometimes you wake up late or get home early and think, nah it will be okay to skip this step one time.  Know what I learned?  It will not!  That was my lesson last summer when I accidentally scorched my plants.  You can tell when they are dried out, because the leaves get crisp and literally look parched.

Juicy red tomatoes!

Tip #2: Try not to get the leaves wet.  They will grow mold!  The leaves on our zucchini have some white mold spots from my sprinkler; so my ingenious sprinkler for watering the garden is not working out so well.  Bummer.  Matthew is working on a soaker hose that I can use.  I love the square foot garden, but it makes putting in a drip line rather impractical.

You can get orange pumpkins like these -- but avoid getting the leaves wet!

My mother in law came over on Friday and helped Matthew diagnose the problem with the leaves.  If I had been a good blogger, I would have taken pictures as what not to do.  Instead I got home and hopped in the car so we could go to Mexico for a weekend.

Fruits (or rather mostly veggies) of my labor.

How is your garden?  Do you have any other tips to share?  If you posted about it on your blog, share the link so I can see your pictures!

Megan’s Garden Update

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I was dreading my next gardening post, because I thought I had killed all of my seedlings again. The fates however, had something entirely different in store for me. While I was gone on vacation, my father in law watered my dried up seed pot tray — and lo and behold I came home to little green seedlings!  A miracle, I tell ya!  So I diligently watered them and prepared them for transfer.

See those giant pumpkin vines? They are 2 plants (which are triple in size now) which are the result of my first "failed" seed starters. I tossed the dried out seed pots in our compost, because I thought I killed them. A few weeks later, my compost was growing! I carefully replanted the misc pumpkin / squash plants (I had no idea what they were) and that is how these pumpkins came to be. I have to get a picture of our tree out front as well, because my hubby turned the compost and then treated the trees with it. Needless to say we have about 8 pumpkin vines at the base of our orange tree!

Now I can share with you my tips on transferring:

Water the area.  You want nice and moist soil, not dried up clumpy soil.  I like to deep water the transfer area a day or two before I plant, so that the soil is welcoming to the new seedlings.

I love this sprinkler that I recently purchased. Now I just have to step outside the door, turn on the faucet, and voila - watering my garden!

Cultivate the soil.  If you have compost, go ahead and mix some of that into the top layer of your soil.  If you do not have compost, you can mix in some fresh soil (we buy ours at Kmart where it’s cheap).  And if you are really lazy (like I often am) just go ahead and use a trowel to loosen the dirt.

This soil needs to be turned with a little hand shovel before I transfer my seeds (but I actually planted rows of peas here, after loosening the soil with a trowel).

Prep your Seedlings.  Make sure they have grown big enough to be transferred.  This means you do not want to transfer a tiny little seed that has barely started to grow.  I transfer squash when they have reached about 2 or 3 inches, tomatoes once they are 4 inches or so.  If the roots are grabbing onto other seed pots, it is time to transfer them!  I also break up the bottom of the seed pot and separate the roots a bit before transfer, so they aren’t in one big clump.

See how the squash and zucchini (top center and bottom left) are getting tall, this told me that they were close to transfer stage. I let them grow for another week or so in the tray.

Once you have planted your seedlings, give them another water.  Here in the desert we have to water twice a day. That sprinkler above has greatly impacted my garden.  Now it gets all the water it needs (because before I would get tired of watering after a few minutes and think I had done enough), because I let it go for 15 or 20 minutes in the morning and evening.  You will also have a better harvest if you plant in the morning or evening, when it’s cool and the plants have time to adjust to the ground before being scorched by the sun!

Thanks to Terry for the Swiss Chard plants (in the back). The onions are also doing incredibly well, anyone know the harvest time on these babies?

I will share one last picture of the garden with you.  This was my attempt at apartment/porch planting.  I had all of these great little pots with seeds in them, and the cats made them their sandboxes.  No, they did not poop in them, but they did dig up all the dirt.  But here is what your porch garden could look like:

These pots would have been perfect for an apartment garden, don't you think?

So what do you think?  Have you transferred your seeds yet?  Have you had a successful apartment garden?  Let me know!

Updating the Patio: Plants

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Do you remember when I did the mood board on small patio style? I mentioned how I was eager to get some style back there. We recently bought a door mat with some botanical decoration from Costco, so we were on our way. So this weekend, my mom saw an ad for a nursery that was going out of business. The sale was — get this — buy one get FOUR free!

Now, by the time we got there, the pickings were fairly slim. It was mostly trees, shrubs and neglected plants. Some of them had been there for a while with weeds and not looking very attractive. Yet, I was determined to get me some plants at this great deal. So I picked up some of the better looking plants and brought them home. I got 10 plants for $65. Plus, my mom offered to pay for half, so that made it even better. :) Check them out!

So, they’re still in the original pots, but I got some from my parents and I’m thinking I may look for a big box or something to put a few in there. I’m not even sure what types of plants these are, I’m guessing that they’ll survive in the partial sun with watering every few days or so. I’m not sure, but I just want my little plants to survive! So do any of you have any tips? I’ll be back again — hopefully soon — with more patio updates!

How to Grow a Garden: Part 2, Starting Your Seeds

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I am excited to share more gardening tips with you all today, but I am wishing that I had organized my pictures better!  So, just work with me and let’s pretend like there is some sort of order to this chaos. Okay?  Sweet!

This was the result of a trip to Lowe’s. Silly Matthew thought I would not find anything that I wanted.  Well those strawberries were like 75 percent off and cost $1 or so.  The onions were $1 as well.  The mini greenhouses are pretty sweet, and I will show you how to use them later in this post.  There were also grapevines on sale.  They were only $3, instead of $9!  We ended up with 5 grapevines.  And I’m pretty sure that 3 of them did not take and neither did the strawberries.  :(   But I did learn a lesson from that — buy strawberries that are already growing.   Apparently that’s what the MIL does.  She’s frugal too, so I know she doesn’t go the expensive way unless she has to!

Remember those trays from last week?  Well I planted hot peppers in 3 of them, and tomatoes in 3 of them.  You can see that I put 2 or 3 seeds in each spot.  This gives me a better chance that one of them will grow. You can always pull out an extra seedling, but it takes a lot more time to start over.  You can plant both peppers and tomatoes in pots, so these are great for a patio garden. We had a pepper in a 12″ by 14″ pot for a long time, and it did really well (it lasted through last winter and sprouted new growth this year!).  If you do not have leftover trays like this, you can probably ask if they have some to give away at Home Depot.  Or make your own out of half of a toilet paper roll, or little cups work too.  And then fill it with that fertilized soil or just buy nice soil from the store, apparently Kmart has really good prices on bags of soil.  And Miracle Gro is the best.  These are just things that the MIL says.

Below, you can see what I have started for my “porch garden,” as I will now on call my potted garden.  The tomato and pepper seedlings are there, as well as some bean seedlings.  I put Rosemary and another herb in the medium sized pots.  And I planted lettuce in the large pot. You can grow lots of lettuce in pots.  You do not need to start it in a starter, just throw the seeds right in the pot. I made 5 or 6 indentations in the soil and stuck 2 or 3 seeds in each.  And that’s a plastic pot, used to hold some sort of hanging flower arrangement that someone gave us.  Reuse!

Now we will go back to that tray.  You can use this for a porch garden, but it has SO MANY spots, that I think it’s more practical for a larger garden.  You can see all of the seeds that I bought, and some are from last year (don’t know if they will work, but I’m trying!).  You won’t put the lettuce strip in the little pots, but they are in the picture anyways :)

You need to water your soil pots.  This set came with 72 little soil pots, but you can buy refills if you use them up (or if you freeze your first ones by leaving them outside overnight too early and thus lose your first trial.  I am fighting for my green thumb, trust me!).  Set the little pods out.  You will be able to see a little hole on the top of one side, make sure that is up.  It’s the opening where you will put your seed in.

Pour in lots and lots of water.  I think it took more than 3 buckets full.  You can pretty much just drown them, and then pour out extra water, if you have any left.  You will be surprised how much it takes!  And then you wait.  Go ahead and walk away for 20 minutes or so.  Make yourself a drink.  Have a snack.  Plant something else (at this point I planted a peach tree which we had gotten on sale).  You get the idea.

Once they are fully waterlogged, you can put your seeds in.  I like to rip the tops open and smoosh around the soil.  Then I meticulously plant my seeds (remember 2 or 3 per pod) in each one.  This is the batch that had to be tossed. :(  That was really depressing. But I got back on my horse and tried again.  And I have seedling sprouting in round two!  So what lesson did we learn?  Leave them inside until you are ABSOLUTELY POSITIVE the cold season is over.  (Do remember I live in sunny So Cal, so my season is a bit earlier than everyone else’s, I think!) And then leave them inside a few days more.  I’ve been leaving mine inside at night, but taking them out during the day, so they get sun. You can see how I label my seeds here, with the little popsicle sticks, cut in half.  For the second round, I did little pods of 4 per seed, not a row of 6.  so each 4 patch was labeled.  And I made a corresponding cheat sheet, in case I lose my labels!

Put your lid on and let it heat up and get working!  It should have condensation on the lid, that means photosynthesis is happening!

Were these tips helpful?  Is there anything else you want to know?  And what seeds have you all started for your garden?

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