The Flowers of our Labors

It has been a HOT May in Middle Georgia, which is awesome for our heat-loving plants. What is not awesome is the horrible lack of rain - we haven't had one drop in over 3 weeks. We've tried our best to conserve water (and our utilities bill) by extending time between waterings. The compost, mulch, and leaves serve double duty by holding moisture in the soil and feeding the plants.

So far, it's been too hot (or I've been too lazy) to do any "official" fertilizing, pest or weed control. But I have been using some DIY mixtures which seem to do the trick for the most part.

For weed control:
1 part white vinegar to 1 part water. Shake it up in a spray bottle. Be careful you're only spraying weeds - it WILL kill your flowers and veggies. This works wonders!

For bug control:
1 tsp. dish washing liquid soap to 2 quarts water. Shake up in a spray bottle and spray both the top and underneath sides of the plant leaves. It works well for tomatoes, eggplant and peppers, but test on one leaf for more delicate plants. I recommend using this in the evening - it can scorch on leaves if it dries in direct sunlight.

For fertilizer:
1/2 Tb. Epsom salt to 2 quarts water. Shake up in a spray bottle or mix together in watering can. Pour at the base of young tomato plants. Spray on blooms of tomatoes and peppers.

With these simple management techniques, we have a heck of a garden this year!
Eggplant

Tomato (these are the ones I started from seed!)

Little Tomatoes

Big Tomato

Cayenne Pepper

Cucumber

Pole Beans

Zinnias (finally about to bloom!)

Spring Garden

Here are some recent photos from our yard:

Pretty Peas





Trying something new this year: pole beans on bamboo poles and cucumbers on trellises
Companion plants: marigolds and zinnias


Azaleas (which I've never lifted a finger with these...I guess we're blessed)

Garden Prep 2011

You know the saying, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder."? Well, there's nothing like a two-month hiatus to renew my motivation for blogging about our DIY projects.

For years, Fall has been my favorite season. I've always loathed Spring because where I'm from up North, Spring means wet, sloppy messes on the roads and in the yard. Here in Middle Georgia, Spring Rocks (and is quickly becoming my favorite season)! There are beautiful blooming trees, mild temperatures, and best of all, NO SLOPPY MESSES! And probably my favorite part of Spring is the anticipation and preparation for the garden. Last year, I let my husband take the lead in planning and planting. This year, I've grabbed the bull by the horns.

I've already taken a gardening class, sent in my soil sample to the University(for which I'm anxiously awaiting the results), and started seeds indoors.
Here's a picture of my make-shift mini greenhouse:

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This attempt includes tomatoes, jalepeno peppers, and zinnias.

And the perennial herbs have been hard at work too!



A little mint making a resurgence.



One reason to let cilantro go to seed: it comes back!



Super Chives!

I've also decided to give peas another go:

Garden Update

It may have taken a few months, but we now have our first peas!


Despite a few nights of cold temperatures (though it didn't frost in our backyard), we continue to have chilies (which I keep adding to my riesta), tomatoes, and blooms on our eggplants.











Perhaps one of the greatest benefits to gardening in Middle Georgia is this crazy-long growing season. Now that it's cooler, the plants seems happier and there is virtually no bug problem. Happy plants = happy gardener!

Garden Update

Nothing much came of the carrot and beet seeds I planted, but the greens (turnip, mustard, kale) seemed to do well despite hot temperatures early this fall. Now that it's cooling down, I'd expect the garden to start dying off. On the contrary! The two tomato plants that didn't produce anything all summer long are finally producing tomatoes. And in abundance, I might add! In anticipation of the coming first frost, Marcus harvested some green tomatoes (pictured below).

The pepper plants seem to not know when to stop producing also! We finally harvested some habanero peppers (pictured below), though we're not quite sure what to do with them.

Our eggplant plants are flowering again, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we'll get more eggplant this fall. I have a feeling in the next few days we'll be covering plants like crazy, including our more delicate herbs.

Garden Update

I realized I haven't posted in a while about the garden. Fortunately, unlike the rest of my life, the garden has gotten out of control! I kindly refer to the eggplant, okra, and basil as trees and to the tomatillo as "the big green monster." Since my husband has been away, I honestly have not applied a single fertilizer, insecticide, or herbicide. Surprisingly enough, the plants keep on growing. (I do weed and prune from time to time - go me!)

Our tomatoes are done for the season, but our eggplant, okra, tomatillos and peppers continue to produce. Sometimes I'm not quite sure what to do with all of them, so I've started dabbling with canning. So far I've pickled okra and jalepenos, and I'll find out in a few weeks how they actually taste! If they're decent, I'll share the recipe. If they're a complete failure, I'll pretend like it didn't happen.

Fall/winter veggies I started from seed seem to be doing okay. I think it's been way too hot for some of the seeds, especially peas and carrots. Hopefully in a few weeks I'll start harvesting greens and pole beans. Here are some recent photos:

Like Two Peas in a Pot

Sometimes it's hard to wrap my head around the extremely long growing season here in Middle Georgia. Last weekend, I started planting for fall/winter veggies. I had two large planters and two trellises left over from our wedding that I was finally able to put to good use. In one, I planted English peas, in the other, pole beans. After only a few days, I have germinating seeds! I haven't been this excited about germinating seeds since my 8th grade science fair project! (Which, by the way, was about how bacteria affects seed germination). Here are some photos of this little gardening project:

Organic Gardening

When we decided to make a garden in our back yard, we made a conscious decision to do everything organically. Why? We feel like it's the responsible thing to do - for ourselves, our dogs, our community, and for the earth.
Now that we're well into the growing season, we've hit the part of organic gardening that involves maintenance, e.g. fertilizing and keeping away bugs and pests. In lieu of spending half our paychecks on organic fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides from our local hardware/garden store, we've opted (of course) to DIY. We've primarily been drawing tips and tonics from Jerry Baker's book Bug Off!.

Here are some of our favorite recipes:
Bug Away Spray
1 c. Murphy's Oil Soap
1 c. antiseptic mouthwash
1 c. tobacco tea
Mix ingredients in a 20 gal. hose-end sprayer and soak plants to the point of run-off.
*To make the tobacco tea, wrap half a handful of chewing tobacco in an old nylon stocking and soak it in a gallon of hot water until the mixture is dark brown. Pour the liquid into a glass container with tight lid for storage

Cabbageworm Wipeout
1 c. flour
2 tbsp. cayenne pepper
Mix ingredients together and sprinkle on young cabbage family plants.

Tomato Leaf Tonic
2 c. tomato leaves
1 qt. water
1/2 tsp. dishwashing liquid
Put leaves and water in a pot and bring to a simmer. Turn off heat and let mixture cool. Strain out leaves and add dishwashing liquid. Pour solution into a hand-held sprayer and spritz the plant's foliage from top to bottom. This will keep away flea beetles, asparagus beetles, cabbageworms, and white flies.

In addition to these tonics, we also bought some praying mantis eggs to put in the garden to hatch. So far, the combination of tonics and praying mantis have worked, save the mangling of our cabbage plant (we waited to long to apply the tonic to salvage it). The only downside: you have to reapply each tonic after each rain, and unfortunately, it's been raining A LOT lately in Middle Georgia.

We've also tried some tonics to keep our dogs and the squirrels out of the garden (both involving some concoction of hot peppers), but much to our chagrin, neither have proven to be effective. Thankfully, the dogs and squirrels have been less than destructive to our garden anyway.

If you'd like more reading on the subject, a friend of ours referred us to this website: http://doyourpart.com/category/at-home/around-the-yard-vc13535/

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have veggies!

Though not yet ripe enough to harvest, we're getting close on a few plants. We are SO excited! We've already begun using herbs from our more prolific plants - basil, cilantro, thyme, and mint - and are probably at a point where we can start making salads from our lettuce plants. Yay! Here are some recent pictures from my camera (I'll add more pictures from Marcus' camera soon).















The first of the Roma tomatoes.














The "Big Hoss" (my nickname for it, not the official name)















Lovely squash/zucchini blooms














Attack of the Lace Bugs! Poor cabbage!














Hooray for eggplant!














Lovely lettuce.

More pictures to come! Our praying mantis have hatched!

Vegetable Garden

The day we first looked at our house this past November, we both agreed that the back corner of the yard would be a perfect place for a vegetable garden. And wouldn't you know it, five months later we have a lovely little plot.

Back in March, Marcus marked off the plot. In early April, we bought a heavy-duty tiller and tilled the plot. About a week after that, Marcus and a friend picked up compost and manure and tilled it into the soil. Shorty thereafter, we planted 10 tomatoes, 2 tomatillos, 10 yellow squash, 10 zuchini, 10 okra, 10 cucumbers, 4 eggplant, 2 lettuce, 2 cabbage, 2 hubbard squash, 2 cantelope, and 10 peppers. Already, most plants are flourishing although some are struggling (cantelope and okra). This project isn't a 100% DIY, but folks have been asking about our garden. Here are a few pictures:














The plot on a sunny day.














The garden on a misty May morning.



















The first little tomato!














Flowering tomatillos and tomatoes.














Flowering eggplant.



















The first of the peppers!



















Oh right, we have an herb garden too!