Update on the plants



I know it has been a little while since I've posted so I thought I would show you how the plants are doing.  This has definitely been a learning experience.  I've learned that some of the seeds needed to be started much earlier.

The zucchini are growing like crazy:

Everything else is growing pretty well:

















The giant bell pepper seeds are taking a while to grow.  They just sprouted about a week ago.

These are a few sprouts of Oleander that I cut off my mother's plant.  I put them in a glass of water and left them there for about a month.  They started putting on roots about a week ago so I went ahead and put them in some soil.

This originally was an onion we bought and forgot about it in our pantry.  We found it one day and it had sprouted.  I planted it and it produced two stalks which are going to produce a flower.  Once the flower blooms and dies it will leave behind seeds that can be planted to grow more onions!












Hopefully next weekend I will plant all the vegitables I have plus a few more I will have to purchase since I didn't get those seeds.  So far I have spent about $10 on all the plants I have growing.  That is over 40 plants for $10 but I've only used about half of the seeds and half of the potting soil.  Next week I will have pictures of my planted garden hopefully!!!  See you then.

Getting the garden ready!

The weather was finally good enough to get the garden ready! 

 

 

Below is what my garden looks like. It is an 8' x 24' raised bed.  Last year I didn't put anything besides top soil in my garden.  This year I'm adding other things to it like organic compost and manuer compost as well as blood meal and organic fertilizer designed for vegitable gardens.

The tall wooden boards have heavy duty fishing line strung between them.  Once my plants start producing veggies I hang aluminum foil pie plates to keep the birds and squires out.  I have something for my cucumbers to climb on as well as a sprinkler system. The sprinklers are the black poles sticking up in the garden.

The first thing I did was tilled the dirt because the top few inches have hardened making it very tough to mix the new material in.

After I tilled the dirt I used a shovel and scoped the dirt away from the edge of the bed.  This makes it easier to mix in the material without throwing it out of the bed.

 

 

Once the dirt was tilled I spread organic compost and Black Cow composted manuer.

 

I dumped 6 bags of organic compost and 4 bags of composted manuer on the garden and spread it evenly.  The comost will add nutrients to the soil as well as loosen the dirt.  You don't need to add this much every year.  I just added this much because I haven't added anything before.  Just remember the softer the dirt the better the roots can grow which means a better crop!

 

Next I added the two bags of fertilizer.  These were also spread evenly over the entire bed.

 

 

After I spread everything out I tilled the top 6-8 inches of dirt, compost, and fertilizer.  The last thing to do was to spread the dirt back out to the edges. 





 

Unfortunately it takes work to produce a great garden but you will find that it is a labor of love.  Hopefully I will plant the garden in about 2 weeks.  The seeds are outside today and are loving it.  The zucchini are about 4 inches tall already.  I'll post more pictures of the plants growing next week.  See you then!

Potting the seeds

Today I checked the remaining seeds to see if they were ready to be planted and they were!!!  I also checked on my zucchini and some of them are already 2 inches tall.

 

 

 

I now have 4 pots with 4 zucchini seeds in each, 10 pots with 3 squash seeds, 8 pots with a Big Red Heirloom tomato seed, 5 pots with an Abe Lincoln Heirloom tomato seed, 8 pots with a cherry tomato seed, and 8 pots with a jumbo bell pepper seed.  I had 8 Abe Lincoln seeds but one seed never sprouted and I broke three roots when trying to get them off of the paper towel.  That is one thing you need to be careful with.  If the root is growing through the paper towel you can pull of most of the paper towel and plant a little bit of the paper towel that is still attached.  It will break down and now damage the root. 

 

Now if you were counting Abe Lincoln seeds you would have noticed that I started with 8 and had 4 that didn't make it to planting but I still ended up with 5 Abe Lincoln pots.  No I am not a magician.  One of the seeds actually sprouted two plants with two separate root systems.  So even though I only had 4 good seeds I still was able to have 5 sprouts.

 

On a final note I have to thank my lovely, wonderful, amazing wife for allowing me to put all these pots in the laundry room.  This is one problem with not having a shop or greenhouse to do my preparation.  Since we don't have a spare room and it is getting down in the 30s at night the seeds need to stay inside at night.  Once they all have sprouts they can probably survive being outside.  So until then I will be watering them inside and trying not to make too much of a mess. 

 

This weekend if the weather is good I will get my garden ready to be planted and show you how I do it!  See you then!

Sprouting Seeds

I took these zucchini seeds out of the package on February 25th.  Today (8 days later) some of those seeds have already sprouted!  Hopefully tomorrow I will check the seeds that are still in the zip-loc bags and see what else needs to be planted.

Checking on the seeds. Day 6.

Well I checked my seeds today.  Most of them are slow except for my zucchini seeds.  Here is a picture of what I found when I uncovered the zucchini seeds:

Since some of the roots are almost 2 inches long I decided to go ahead and plant them in containers so the roots can grow.  I poked 4 holes in the potting soil and put a seed in each.  You can do 3 or 4 seeds to make a more full looking plant.  You can purchase seed starter soil but at this point just a good potting mix that can support vegetables is fine.  Thanks to this cold weather the seeds need to stay inside.  I've put down plastic in my laundry room and this is where these plants will start their life.  These plants won't make it to the garden until probably the first week of April.

 



The other seeds either haven't started growing or are just barely sprouting roots so they will stay in their "incubator" until they are ready for transplant.

Saving seeds

I haven’t checked my seeds yet but I wanted to briefly talk about how to save seeds.  Have you ever eaten a cantaloupe and wished you could grow more just like it?  Well, you can.  It isn’t very hard.  Tonight my wife ate a cantaloupe and enjoyed it so I decided to save the seeds.  Here is how you do it:

When you cut the melon in half the “meat” or center part of the melon will have seeds in it.  Scoop as many seeds as possible out of the melon and into a bowl.  It is ok to scoop the meat out with it. 

Once you have the insides in a bowl put some water in the bowl and try to rinse or pick out as many seeds from the meat.

Fill the bowl with more water to allow some seeds to float and the rest to sink.  The seeds that are floating are immature and won’t produce a plant.  Scoop the floating seeds out and drain the water. 

Place the remaining seeds in a paper towel and rub the seeds to remove some of the membrane that is remaining.  Put the seeds back in the bowl and fill with water again.  Stir the seeds with your finger to loosen up the seeds and allow any remaining immature seeds to float. 

Drain the water and dry the seeds again with a paper towel.  Place the dry seeds on a paper plate, paper towel, or pan and spread them out.

Put these seeds in a warm area that is out of the way.  Mine sit on top of my freezer in our laundry room.  After 3 or 4 days you can either plant your seeds or freeze them.  If you want to plant them get a seed starter kit or some seed starter “dirt” and plastic cups and plant 3 or 4 seeds per container.  Make sure there are small holes in the bottom of the cup to allow it to drain.

Good luck seeding your cantaloupe!  Email me if you have questions. 

Time to start getting ready for my garden.

 

 

I've always enjoyed gardening and have done quite well in my attempts.  My grandmother always had a great garden (vegetable and floral) which is where my parents tell me I get my "green thumb" from.  Ever since I was young I had a vegetable garden.  My parents had a tiered box garden where we grew a few varities of vegies.  When I moved out of the house and started renting places I took my garden with me.  It was just in the form of 5 gallon buckets.  Want to know how I did that???  Email me!!

 

At my home I have landscaping which I love to take care of but my vegetable garden is my non-biological pride and joy.  My garden is where I can go when I need a moment away from everything.  It relaxes me.  When my wife and I moved into this house I immediately started planning on how I could put a garden in my smaller back yard.  I decided to build a raised bed for my garden.  Using landscaping timbers I build an 8'x24' garden.  I even put in an irrigation system.  I'll post pictures of my garden in a few days.  I also helped my parents build and set up an 8'x24' raised bed garden.

 

The past few years I've met people who also share the love of gardening and enjoying the fruits of their labor.  I've even been fortunate enough to share my harvest with people I work with.  God gave me more than I needed so I shared.  I think I even have a few people waiting on me to grow more!!! 

 

Last year I grew over 2000 cherry tomatos from four plants!  Anyone who came to my house left with a bag of tomatos.  I decided I needed to find something to with those cherry tomatos besides just washing them off and eating them like candy (which there is NOTHING wrong with).  I found a few recipes and combined a few to create my own way to make sun-dried tomatos out of them.  Wanna know what I did???  Ask me!

 

I had a garden full of other fruits and vegies in my garden as well.  Just my tomatos alone I had sizes ranging from nickle size to over a pound!  Last year I had the following plants: four cherry tomato, two big boy tomato, two beefmaster tomato, two celebrity tomato, two roma tomato, four banana pepper, four cucumber, two eggplant, one green bell pepper, one yellow bell pepper, one red bell pepper, 2 zucchini, 6 squash, and two jumbo jalapeno.  Yes... all of that was in one 8'x24' garden.  Needless to say I had plenty to share.  I also planted tomatos, squash, jalapenos, and bush beans in my parents' garden as well.

 

This winter I decided to plant a winter garden because, well, why not?  There was a perfectly good garden sitting there empty and begging to be planted.  So I planted 9 broccoli and 18 collard greens.  I was able to pick the greens several times and put aside enough to last me a few months while sharing with my family and a friend.  The broccoli was a fun experiment because it was my first time to grow it but I won't be planting it again next Winter. 

 

This past weekend I scraped the top 1-1 1/2 inches off the garden to kill some of the weeds.  Soon I will get the mulch, fertilizer, and nutrients to get the garden ready but that will be another post.

 

I have never started a garden from seed.  I usually purchase plants to plant.  After working for a local landscaping company I became interested in growing from seeds so I started by attempting to seed an Iris.  Well, 120 baby Iris later I decided I would try to do part of my vegie garden from seed as well.  Since Louisiana has such consistent weather (insert sarcasm) I realized I couldn't start seeds outside.  I did a little research and decided I am going to try to start the seeds using the paper towel method which is a faster way to germinate.  What I did was moisten paper towels and place seeds on one half and fold the other half over to seal over the seeds.  Once the seeds are sealed I put them in bags and sealed them.  I set them out of the way and will check on them every day or so to see if any have started sprouting which means they are ready to be put in dirt!

 

The picture below shows most of what I am going to plant in my garden.  From seeds I hope to grow zucchini, squasy, giant green bell pepper, Supersweet hybrid 100 cherry tomatos, Big Red Heirloom tomatos, and Abe Lincoln Heirloom tomatos.  I also plan to plant cucumbers, jumbo jalapenos, and possibly something else but I'm just not sure if there will be room!  Some of these seeds are destined for my parents' garden so I can plant my extra stuff there!!!

 

 

 

This is my first blog but I'm excited to be doing it.  I'm excited to share my passion with others and maybe I can even answer a question or two you might have.  If I can't answer it we will learn together.  See you in a few days when I check the seeds for germination.