Tag Archives: growing veggies

September 16, 2023 · 2:15 pm

Grow Organic

Since I can remember I’ve always wanted to grow some of my own veggies and also grow and use herbs. I’ve done some of the first with various ranges of success and still want to do the second.

Norah Halstead has written a good general case for growing your own veggies and herbs organically both for your improved health and for the sake of the planet. She explains that you can enjoy this no matter how limited your space is, and walks you through what you need to know to create a rich environment for your plants. She managed to punch through most of my intimidation about growing, storing, and using herbs, both for my cooking and the idea of using some for medicinal purposes. The more medicines I end up taking, the more I would LIKE to be able to go as natural as possible when I can.

I would like her to concentrate on a book JUST about herbs, giving more information about what each herb does, more hints about how to grow each, when to harvest, more information about storing them after harvest, how to store the seeds for next season, and more.

The Nutrient Patch: Health-Boosting Vegetable Gardening Made Easy by Norah Halstead

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March 23, 2022 · 10:49 am

Beware

In my travels around the yard, I went out to check my early spring raised-bed square foot garden. So far, the plants seem very happy.

“It was such a pleasure to sink one’s hands into the warm earth, to feel at one’s fingertips the possibilities of the new season.” ~ Kate Morton

This is my veggie garden. I have yet to plant radishes, and I’m still on the look-out for head lettuce, since that’s my husband’s favorite. We both love fresh, ripe, home-grown tomatoes, but it’s too early to plant those. I’ve converted two or our handmade brick planters on the other side of the yard on the far side of the house to be tomato planters. I’ll share pics of those when we get them planted later on. As you can see here, one of the next things I’ll do is mix up some weed killer and spray it on the ground underneath my planters. I’ll also spray a perimeter around the whole garden, outside the fence. Another chore is to find our bright, neon-colored tape to string through the fencing so the deer don’t run into it.
Here’s a closer view of a couple of the six planters we have. You can see I’ve really spread the plants out this year. some of the squares are empty, hoping for the head lettuce or radishes, but you can see the wispy sprouts of the sweet red onions on the right of the picture if you look carefully.
Spinach
Leaf Lettuce – Romaine

I’m thankful for a warm, dry home this morning. I really got chilled on my walk, but my spirits are definitely lifted now.

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February 11, 2021 · 2:28 pm

Seeds Started 2-11-2021

This afternoon I have finally planted seeds that I HOPE will make transplants for my spring garden.

It was more involved than I thought it would be. I simplified it as much as I could, but it still took me two days. The biggest problem was trying to get the seed starter medium wet. That sounds like a dumb problem, but the medium is VERY light. If I had sneezed into the bag, the medium would have covered the whole kitchen – I kid you not. I added water VERY carefully and slowly. The spray in the kitchen sink was MUCH too strong. I finally used a turkey baster to ease water into each of the peat planter pods, making sure each didn’t overflow. I also didn’t want the peat pots to fall apart, so I stopped several times in the process. I did it last thing last night, hoping that things might settle in overnight.

This afternoon I found a spray bottle in the garage and used it to add more water. Then I used a pencil to make two planting holes in most of the pots, but only one hole in the ones for the broccoli. I planted two rows of spinach, two of broccoli, two of lettuce, and one row of green pepper. I split the last two rows, planting some yellow squash, zucchini, and two kinds of tomatoes.

I pushed the holes closed and tamped down the medium a bit in each peat pot, and then sprinkled some fertilizer pellets. Finally I sprayed everything carefully one more time and added the clear plastic seed starter tray top. I had to hold it down with some pill bottles because it didn’t want to close tightly.

Supposedly, things will start sprouting in 8 to 14 days, depending on the seed. When that happens, I’ll take the plastic top off and turn the tray around each day, hoping the sprouts will grow up reasonably straight.

I have little clue what I’m doing. Everything I have read is like the recipes for bread that say, “Knead it until it feels right.” :0(

It’s exciting to be TRYING to grow plants that I can move to my spring garden around the 5th of April.

123RF.com

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May 6, 2020 · 3:37 pm

Wednesday in the Garden

Yesterday I spent a lot of time weeding, staking, and tying up tomato plants to make them as secure as possible with all the waves of severe weather we’ve been having. So far, they seem to be doing fine.  I have six plants in this planter.

 

And four more here.  I actually have some blossoming on a couple of the plants now!

And in the raised bed garden –

My spinach is doing well. My plants aren’t as pretty as they sometimes are because we have had so much heavy rain that the boxes fill up faster than they drain and the soil alternative settles on the plants. These seem healthy, though.

 

 

 

Red onions and head lettuce.

 

Head lettuce.  You can see that the center leaves are starting to curl up, forming the ‘head.’

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April 30, 2020 · 3:03 pm

Gardening as Art

Elizabeth Murray

 

I love all kinds of plants. My parents didn’t do much with plants, preferring no maintenance over other priorities.

We live on top of a ridge line in Arkansas. The only ‘soil’ we have was brought up here by truck – enough so that we could have a small yard around the house. The rest of our approximately 8 acres is wooded.

Over the years my husband, son and I built 14 brick planters around the house. filling them with potting soil so that I could grow some flowers. Flowers lift my spirits. I can FEEL my heart filling and the concerns fading when I see some of my flowers doing well. I love adding perennials each year so there is less I NEED to do. Then I concentrate on annuals to dot into the planters, plus put into little planters around the yard, on the front porch, and on the deck each year. This year, because of the pandemic, I’m not planting any annuals, so I enjoy the perennials that defiantly and proudly spear up out of the planters and put on a lovely display regardless of the world around them.

I’m like a little kid at Christmas with my raised bed, square foot garden. I had never seen any food grow, and so I have learned a LOT about what NOT to do over the years, finally achieving some success over the past several years. I LOVE watching the plants lift their faces to the sun. I even enjoy weeding the ‘boxes’ of my garden, since the Mel’s Mix soil alternative makes it easy to weed. The fact that the boxes are at my chest level also makes it so I can do the job without bending over double or getting up and down off the ground. Today I’m starting work on weeding UNDER my garden boxes. That’s a bigger job, but the weeds are growing fast now. I need to get things under control as soon as I can.

 

My favorite sign in our yard is –

Amazon

My break is over now. It’s time for another session murdering weeds…

 

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March 14, 2020 · 11:58 am

Happy Veggies!

Science | How Stuff Works

Spinach

 

Sweet Red Onions

 

Head Lettuce

 

 

 

My veggies were smiling when I went out to take these pictures this morning.  Everything seems to be doing very well now.

I told you how hard I was trying to get the irrigation system going for my garden a couple of days ago. If my husband and I couldn’t get it going, I was going to have to fill my watering can over and over to give them a drink. We FINALLY figured out why we weren’t getting water in the outside agricultural water faucet we have – a faucet control in the well house was turned off instead of on.

Now that it is running perfectly, and the timer is set for daily watering, we are getting rain every day from yesterday through Thursday of next week. A beautiful illustration of Finagle’s Law of Dynamic Negatives.  (Finagle’s law of dynamic negatives (also known as Melody’s law, Sod’s Law or Finagle’s corollary to Murphy’s law) is usually rendered as “Anything that can go wrong, will—at the worst possible moment.”)  We also have it to mean “the more you need it, the harder it is to fix” or “you will get it fixed when you no longer need it.” 

My garden is such a joy. The boxes we built allow me to continue gardening with pleasure, not having to bend over double or get down on my hands and knees over and over. The fence keeps large critters out. The chicken wire around the bottom keeps small critters out. The Mel’s Mix in the boxes (peat moss, vermiculite, and as many different kinds of compost as you can find or make) allows plants to grow well and happily, not having to depend on the quality or quantity of our soil.

The cool weather crops, spinach and head lettuce, will hopefully do really well before it gets too hot here. The red onions will stay where they are until harvest, probably in October.  When it gets a bit warmer, I’ll add yellow squash and radishes, if not some other things, to the garden.

I have two large brick planters on the other side of the house that we converted to be square foot planters. We devote both of them to tomato plants.

So far, I have smiling, happy veggies. Fingers crossed that this will continue.

Have a happy Saturday!

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