Grasshoppers, Weeds and Compost

I want to start documenting and becoming more serious about gardening. My garden this year isn't going to be what most people consider a traditional summer garden. I prefer to grow from Fall to Spring because our summers here in SE OK are brutal and just a few minutes in the heat triggers horrible migraines for me.

What I want to experiment with for myself are trying to naturally deter grasshoppers, kill weeds, and replenish my garden bed soil.

Grasshoppers: I found my first grasshopper yesterday and I immediately spread diatomaceous earth. I didn't see any grasshoppers today but I did find a lizard and frog in the garden.

Weeds and grass: I'm using grain vinegar to see how it affects grains and grass around my garden beds. This patch is looking a little wilted after two days of vinegar being sprayed on it.

Replenishing the soil. Once my fall/spring garden is spent, I want to plant a summer cover crop and apply compost to the soil so I can plant again in the fall. I started this compost bin in May 2012 and it started to have some beautiful compost by fall, but an armadillo found the bin and cleaned it out searching for larvae. I add shredded paper, kitchen scraps, gardening scraps and leaves. I haven't added manure yet to this batch.

Arugula, Kale, Swiss Chard, Carrots and Strawberries

In this week's gardening adventures, I had arugula bolt, kale that has begun to bolt (and if you don't know what bolting is, it's when the plant sends up a flower stalk to produce seed and that means the plant is done producing), a Black Lab mix who ate my peppermint seeds, a cat who ate some of the seedlings I have going in the kitchen, my carrots are starting to look like carrots 6 months after the seeds were planted although they are still maybe half an inch long, my green onions have been taking off again, I have some strawberries growing, and I'm starting to see bees and grasshoppers. Temps have mostly been in the 60s and 70s, although we did hit 80 on March 1.

The first photo is the bolting arugula.


Next is the Swiss chard and carrots.

Strawberries, my mother-in-law's horse manure has given me the largest strawberries I've ever had. I'm not sure what happened with that photo...

Eggplant and Peppers

The weekend of February 11, I started the Fairy Tale eggplant, Shishito peppers and jalapenos. I'm using plastic egg cartons that cradle the eggs by surrounding them in plastic on both sides and a lid that closes over the top. I took the lid off and placed it on the bottom as a drain pan, and fold over the top to create a mini greenhouse. I then placed the egg carton on my stove top, which I have been keeping the oven set at 200 all winter so my female cat has a warm place to sleep now that her brother has passed (I removed the burners so she won't get hurt accidentally).

I figured out last year with our gas stove (which had a pilot light) that the top of the stove is the perfect temperature to germinate seeds after successfully starting some lemon basil on it. I do have a germination mat, but I'm using it to place the seedlings on underneath the newly installed plant light after they germinate.

The jalapenos germinated in just a couple of days and are growing quickly. The Shishito peppers germinated after 5 days and the eggplant after 7 days.

This weekend I am starting my sweet red bell peppers, tomatillos and tomatoes. The weekend of Jan 28 I started some Red Creole onion seeds which started to germinate within a couple of days and new seeds are still continuing to pop up.

This week I added some of my mother-in-law's horse manure to some freshly potted strawberries and romaine lettuce (I don't know that the lettuce is going to make it, I seem to have horrible luck with it). I also worked manure into some potted mint and lavender and tossed some on the top of the raised garden bed. Once everything that is in the current bed matures, then I'll work more back into the soil properly.

The Parisienne carrots I planted throughout the fall are finally starting to develop more leaves than just the first set, and the kale is finally starting to take off. I still have Swiss chard that is alive, just not really producing; the Brussels sprouts are growing as well but resemble a head of cabbage more than sprouts; and the pea seedlings have made it through a couple freezes and snow we had over the past couple weeks (I kept them covered in a folded towel). Oh, and my onions and garlic are growing like gangbusters!

Purchasing Seeds

After pouring over seed catalogs for the past couple of months, today I am ordering seeds so I can attempt to start them indoors over the next few months. I have had mixed results with starting seeds, but I really want to get the hang of it so I can save money by not having to buy transplants.

From D. Landreth Seed Company I ordered a mixture of items: Great Northern Beans, Kidney Beans, Big Red Bell Peppers, Yellow Squash, Feverfew, Zucchini, Sage, Fairy Tale Eggplant, and Queen Anne's Pocket Melon. I'm really excited about the Fairy Tale eggplant, which I bought from a farmer at the wholesale Dallas Farmer's Market and sold at the Saint Jo Farmer's Market in 2010, and Queen Anne's Pocket melon. Tony doesn't care for melons, I think he has a mild allergy, so I wanted something small that I would be able to eat by myself and not get tired of and the Queen Anne's Pocket seems perfect. I can't wait to see what they smell like!

From Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds I ordered tomatoes: Morning Sun, Amish Paste and Atkinson. I was really hoping to get yellow cherry tomatoes again, I grew them in 2010 and had a lot of luck with them, but everyone is sold out so I'm going to try the yellow grape tomato instead. The summer of 2010 I was given tomatoes from a friend at the Saint Jo Farmer's Market, German Queen, and I made the best pizza sauce with them. I'm hoping to do the same with the Amish Paste and as insurance if they or the Cherokee Purple I have don't produce well like this year then hopefully the Atkinson will produce.

Gardening Notes

As I'm learning more about when to plant what, I'd like to have a central place to turn to for notes.

-Plant garlic on Columbus Day: http://www.organicgardening.com/tags/garlic

-Plant potatoes on Good Friday: http://www.organicgardening.com/tags/potato

-Plant tomatoes on Memorial Day: http://www.organicgardening.com/tags/tomato

Harvesting Seeds

This spring I was jonesing to grow some herbs and veggies but seeing as we would be moving soon I wasn't able to do a proper veggie garden, so I decided to start some basil in a pot that I could take to the new house with me. I came across some heirloom lemon basil at the local feed store. I feel it's important to learn to grow heirlooms from seed as a form of self-sufficiency.

I thought I had made a post showing how I germinated the seeds, but apparently I didn't. I'll have to make sure I document that when I do it again later. Essentially I filled a pot with organic potting mix, sprinkled the seeds on the surface, sprayed it until it was moist, then laid a piece of plastic wrap over the top and secured it with three clothes pins so there would be gaps to allow for airflow but still hold in the moisture. I've had a problem with mold in the past when there hasn't been sufficient airflow and it's killed the seedlings. I kept it either on the top of the stove (which was gas and the pilot light kept it warm) or in a sunny windowsill until the seeds sprouted and then I set them outside during the day to acclimate. After a couple of weeks when the temperature stayed 50s or above at night I left it outside. I started with 8 seeds and thinned them down to the hardiest one. Once the second set of leaves appeared (the first set of true leaves, not not cotyledons) I began fertilizing the seedling once a week.

Here's the seedling after approximately a month:

Here's the plant after approximately 3 months:

I noticed today one of the stems with flowers was dried, so I pulled off the flowers so I could open them and search for seeds. Each flower averaged two developed seeds although some had as many as four and others had zero.

Out of the flowers I pulled off one stem I ended up with approximately 75 seeds that I believe may be viable. There were many undeveloped seeds that I threw away. It amazes me that one plant can produce hundreds of seeds. One of my favorite sayings that I viewed at the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens is "It only takes one acorn to grow a forest".

Here's what the seeds look like:

There is something about seeing the cycle of life complete itself in such a short amount of time that simply amazes and inspires me. I feel like I experience a miracle with the life cycle of each plant.

Harvesting Onions

Yesterday we had some very heavy rain, our local area got about 3-4 inches and our yard flooded. I went out to check my little garden plots today and most of my onions had been washed up after being under water yesterday. The roots were the only thing holding them in place. About 1/3 of the tops had fallen over as well, so today I have been trying to figure out what to do next. Do I harvest them, try to anchor them back in the soil or leave them as is?

Since onions are one of those plants that can be harvested at any time I decided I am going to go ahead and harvest the plants with the fallen stems over the next week, I anchored some of the onions whose tops had not fallen but the entire plant had been washed up, and I'm leaving the others. I'm taking a wait and see attitude right now. I only have about 30 onion plants right now and as often as I use onions I can easily go through these in a couple of weeks since they are relatively small bulbs (larger than a golf ball, smaller than a tennis ball).

From what I've been reading, in Texas onions are harvested in May when 2/3 of the tops have fallen on the entire crop, where they are then pulled and laid in the sun to cure (outer layers dry to protect the inner layers), then the tops are cut off and they are stored or the tops can be braided and the onions hung until pulled off for use.

I feel that I've been fairly successful with the onions and I'd be comfortable planting them again in the future, so I think I'll plant many more in future years. It'll be a great money saver since I use them almost daily in my cooking. 

Here is my onion plot when I went to check on it today before I started playing around in it. I also have a yellow squash and zucchini planted in there two in the bare spots where onions didn't make it. When I tried stepping into the middle of the plot to help prop up a couple of the onions I ended up sinking down about 8 inches into the mud the soil is that soft right now.

Starting Sage

After watching Julie and Julia the other night while knitting a mug cozy, I was inspired to pull down my cookbooks and read them instead of just browsing for a specific recipe. One cookbook is The Naked Chef by Jamie Oliver. He starts out the cookbook explaining things like how he got started, what staples he keeps in his pantry, what herbs should be grown fresh, etc. This inspired me to start a pot in my kitchen windowsill, especially since one of my goals for 2010 is to have a small 3'x3' vegetable garden (more about that later).

In my pursuit of frugality, I fought the urge to go shopping for new gardening supplies and seed and instead went on a search to see what I already have on hand. On my front porch I found a cluster of pots with dried potting soil from an herb garden attempt two or three years ago. I didn't realize at the time that if I sat the pots in front of the window a/c unit, the hot air would dehydrate them. Now I'm starting small with one plant. Jamie recommends rosemary, thyme, sage and bay and says they can be grown in most climates.

In my fridge I found a packet of sage seeds, so I am starting with those. I'm doing some googling to try to understand the plant better, but I start all my seeds the same with generally a lot of success. I find a small container like a seed starting pot, a small terra cotta pot, a paper egg carton, a toilet paper or paper towel roll, etc., fill with a little soil, moisten, add the seed, then place in a plastic ziplock bag in a warm, dark place for up to two weeks. I check on the bag to make sure mold is not growing and see how the seedling is coming along. Once it starts developing it's first leaves (the cotyledons and first true leaves) then I move it to a sunny location and keep damp. I seem to be great at starting seeds, but my forgetfulness which manifests into neglect is what kills the plants after it's first month or two of life. I'm going to be trying to develop habits and routine though so I can avoid this problem in 2010. We'll see how it goes...