And the Sun Came Out

That title may seem a little strange, but really, for the last 15 days or more, the sun has probably been out 2 of those days. It has been an amazing time around here with all the rain. Plus with the rain, it looks like we are going to have one of those summers with higher than normal amounts of mosquitoes. Oh joy! But I'm careful not to gripe too much about the rain, because one day soon, it will stop for a very long time, I'm sure. Anyway, not too long ago, I was able to transplant some plants in a more permanent location and some of them seem to be loving it. I have 3 beds around the house and I have split the plants between those locations to see where they do the best. That may not be the best plan, but I'm still learning about our area's climate and what works best in the Texas sun. I still have several plants that I need to find a location for, but hopefully I will.

So far, the coreopsis' seem to be doing the best. They are really blooming and the colors look so cool. Actually, I guess you could say they look warm. The plants in all 3 beds seem to be blooming really well. Most sun-loving plants like these seem to want full sun all day. All the beds that these are in do not get sun all day. The picture here is a bed on the south side of the house that gets the most sun which is probably around 6 hours total. We will see what happens.

This Salvia seem to be doing well and it has a little flower on it.

The biggest thing I'm excited about is my grapes. Have you ever seen baby grapes? Well, I haven't, but now we have them. This grape vine is about 3 years old and this is the first year I have seen any fruit. It has at least 4 bunches coming in. This vine is on the west side of the house. I hope they are able to mature before anything gets them.
I hope you have enjoyed this little update. I will show more hopefully in the near future.

The Great American Road Trip

Just wanted to post some information that really doesn't have to do with gardening this time. Not everyone enjoys having music automatically playing when they visit a blog but I kind of like having it to listen to, especially when it's music I like. That being said, most of you reading this knows that we will be leaving in a little while for the great American road trip heading up to Colorado and then on to Yellowstone for a vacation. And to be honest, I can't wait! I am so ready to go, I wish we could leave tomorrow. Anyway, I decided to look for some great road trip songs. I think you know what I mean. When you hear those songs, you can actually see yourself traveling down the highway with the wind in your hair and the sun shining and not a care in the world. I decided that I would create a playlist that had some of those songs. So if you are hankerin to go on vacation somewhere, make sure you give these a listen and see if it doesn't make you want to hit the road right now.

Some more cool tech stuff I think would be fun to have.

From nest-building to rearing the young – this nest box lets you watch birds in living colour.

The integrated wireless infrared camera transmits live images to your TV screen.

Friends, children and grandchildren – all can watch when the first titmice, nuthatches or sparrows move into the nest box. Watch your feathered friends live when they start to build their nests, hatch their eggs and during the busy rearing of their offsprings. Look (and listen) as the young birds grow up and leave the box. And all this from the comfort of your own couch – and without ever disturbing the birds.

The permanently installed wireless infrared camera will transmit images and sound directly to your TV.
Safely installed in the nest box, the 26 x 27 x 60mm camera will transmit live images from the bird house day and night (range up to 100m/328ft, 368,000 pixel resolution). A tiny microphone will transmit every little chirp. Just hang by a nail from a tree, a wall or garden shed at a height of 2 to 3 metres (6 to 9ft) and align the entrance hole (35mm in diam.) to the south or east – this provides the best protection for the nest box against predators and the weather.
The receiver just has to be connected by audio cable (both included) to your television. Four channels are available to reduce interference with other radio transmitters.

For more information on this product just click here.

Garden Update

Well I figure that it's about time for a little update. I really haven't done that much in the way of garden beds or other things, but my little plants have really grown. In fact, I feel bad because I haven't put them in a permanent location yet and some of the seedlings are becoming root bound. I will have to take care of them soon. We have been very wet around here so it's been hard getting into the garden. In the last two weeks, we have received about 10 inches of rain. The plants have loved the extra water.


In this picture, you will see that our little vegetable garden is doing quite well. The lettuce is called Butter Crisp and it doesn't form heads. so we have been going out and cutting leaves as needed and it has created some weird looking lettuce trees. We have really been enjoying it.

This is one of our cauliflower plants and it's really kind of strange. If formed this little head a few weeks ago and then the head started growing again. It never really looked like the heads you get in the store so I'm not sure what it's supposed to look like when it's ready to harvest. I will just have to wait and see what happens.

This is Catherine's little flower bed we planted last year for Mother's Day. As you can see, the Lantana's are starting to take over which I kind of knew would happen. I will have to move one of the plant's before too long or increase the size of the bed.

These are my little plants still in the "temporary" pots. They need to be transplanted badly, but as you can see, they look pretty healthy and some are even blooming. Those are coreopsis plants.

This is one of the coreopsis blooms. This is called "Mardi Gras". Isn't that a neat flower?

Ha! I'm Right!

It all started several years ago when I lovingly prepared my first flower bed at our new home. I will be the first to admit that even now, it's really not that much to look at. It's a pretty big bed and quite frankly, it's pretty expensive filling a bed of this size with all of God's goodness. But, I'm patient and figure that one of these days (Lord willin') I will be old and retired and be able to sit on the front porch and enjoy all the pretty flowers that I have worked so hard grow. Of course, that means we can't move anywhere anytime soon. So as I figure, I have about 20 years to create my wonderland. Why hurry?

Anyway, I don't need some stinking bugs trying to ruin my fun. Maybe it's the soil or our location or something, but it seems like we have an inordinate supply of pill bugs (roly polys, doodle bugs, etc...)whatever you want to call them. When I first made the bed, I decided to put a few hosta plants in various locations. There is quite a bit of shade so I thought hostas would be a good beginning plant. A few days later, I look at the plants and notice that they are covered with pill bugs. Okay, I thought. That's no big deal. A few days more and noticed that the plants were now ground level, eaten completely away. I couldn't believe it! Pill bugs ate my plants! I have to find out about this. My sister told me that I should post a question on Garden Web, an internet site that has all kinds of information about plants and really pretty much anything you want to know. The website is really a good site and there are many people that no a whole lot more about gardening than I do. So I went and posted my question about pill bugs eating plants. Well I must have looked pretty dumb, because there was an overwhelming response stating that no, pill bugs don't eat healthy plants, only decaying plants. No one at all agreed with me. Ladies in gentleman, may I present proof that yes, pill bugs do eat healthy plants. These are pictures of one of my purple heart plants.

You will probably notice some slugs or snails having a meal. At one point, I thought the snails would come and snip the leaf off and then the pill bugs would come and eat the decaying leaf, but then I realized that it's a combined effort. Now, I realize that when a real gardener sees this, they might say that there must be something going on in the soil or the plants are not really healthy, but the bottom line is that pill bugs are eating my plants. I took this picture during the evening. If I did nothing, in just a matter of days, this plant would be nothing but a stub at ground level and would later die. I have since resorted to Sevin Dust. I'm not too thrilled about it, but it keeps the bugs away until the plant grows enough to survive on their own. I have noticed that once the plant gets to be a certain height, the bugs will leave it alone. I guess they just don't taste all that good anymore.

No more frozen hoses!

Okay, I know it's almost the middle of spring already, but hey winter is just around the corner, right? Anyway, for all you northern gardeners out there, this might be just what you have been looking for. It's a heated garden hose. Cool, huh? This seems to fall under that "I wish I had thought of that" rule. Anyway, supposedly, you just plug the hose into an outdoor electric plug, then a faucet and you are good to go. The only problem I can see from this is that we all know that water and electricity don't mix. I'm sure this is perfectly safe and all, but I don't imagine that too many people have GFCI outlets right next to a water faucet. Plus the fact that the hose itself will run you almost $200. But to some people, it might be worth it to have nice toasty running water while the temps are below freezing for 6 months out of the year. Anyway if you have that much money burning a hole in your pocket, you can get this jewel here.

Heated water hose

Garden Update

I was finally able to get a few shots of the updated growth in my garden beds. The plants themselves are not only growing but the weeds are also, unfortunately. The onion plants and lettuce are doing very well and I think the cool temps that we have been having have really given them some energy. The cabbage seems to be growing pretty well, but seem to have some signs of pests. I haven't actually seen the critters, but the leaves do have some holes in them. I've never grown cabbage before, so I hope it's nothing to worry about. The small bed that I have some strawberries in seems to be doing rather well. I have always had a problem getting the strawberries to survive the hot summer, but the plants that I have now are about a year old so these made it through the heat last year. I'm trying to do a little experiment this year. I planted some tomato plants among the strawberries. My hope is that by the time the tomatoes have grown full size, the strawberries will have finish producing. Then the tomato plants will shade the strawberries through the summer......in theory. I did realize, however that when I was planting the tomato plants, I realized that my soil in this particular bed is really not good at all. When I created the bed, I really didn't know much about soil preparation and there is a lot of clay and very black dirt. I'm surprised anything has grown in there at all. Anyway, we will see what happens. Enjoy the pictures.

It's hard to see the good stuff for all the weeds, but I hope to clean this up sometime this week.


The lettuce has not started making heads yet, but they look pretty healthy


This is the bed of strawberries and tomatoes. You can barely make out the cages for the tomato plants. You may see some rebar sticking up. I have to use this to keep my cages from blowing away. We have a lot of wind here at our house and last year I really had a problem with my cages blowing over and harming the plants. I hope this fixes it this year.


Here are a few berries poking there heads out looking for sunshine. Yummy!


This is the petunias that made it through the winter. They are going crazy! These are almost 1 year old.

Something for all the high tech gardeners out there

Those of you who know me are probably aware that I take a particular interest in gadgets of all sorts. So when I saw this little product, I thought "wow, that's just what I need!" Unfortunately, I don't need it that much considering it costs $160. I am referring to the cool little toy that is a time lapse plant watcher type thing. What it does is record images of your plants in your garden over a period of time and then puts the images together in a video file that you can download to your computer. I think it would be fun to watch the flowers grow in my own garden. Plus I might actually catch a glimpse of whatever critter might be digging in my flower bed from time to time. Anyway if you want to know more about this little jewel, just click on the link.

Timelapse Garden Video Camera

Transplant Successful So Far, Doctor

Well, I started transplanting my little plants and I have done about a third of them. Mostly what you see here are coreopsis and scabiosa with a couple of star flowers. These were really starting to outgrow the milk jugs and I felt I really needed to get them out before to much longer. Anyway, they seem very happy in their new digs and I guess I will leave them here until I can prepare a permanent location.

I hope I don't kill them

I finally took the covers off my new seedlings and the outcome is more than what I could have hoped for. Everything sprouted and is thriving, including the hibiscus. I'm so excited! I decided to show you pictures of these little plants, because what's about to happen to them, no plant deserves. I think it's time to transplant to individual pots. I just hope they survive. I think I have decided to watch the stores and when the seed starter kits go on sale, I'm going to snatch them up. I think I would like to use those next year instead of the milk cartons. The cartons worked out fine, but they became a little troublesome when removing the tops. Anyway, I should be able to get the kits pretty cheap in a month or so.



This is the hibiscus I'm so happy about. You can see that there are two little sprouts. I'm hoping I can make these work.
I think these will be particularly difficult to separate because they have kind of wrapped themselves around each other so I'm a little nervous about it. This is a Campanula Bell Flower.

Angel Trumpet
Star Flower

Salvia
Butterfly Weed
Coreopsis

Scabiosa. I almost want to plant this one right here because it must really love this location!
I wanted to show you that my hostas have started coming back. So far this one looks very happy. I have three other hosta plants showing and they are looking great also.

Annual my foot!

Bloomin' Petunias
Well sure enough I have proof that some petunias we planted made it through the winter. Just see for yourself. This is a new bloom I just discovered. The plants seem to be recovering nicely and hopefully they will return completely full of blooms. We shall see.




Just Hangin' Around
I tried a little experiment for this spring. I'm full of experiments. I have several hanging baskets that are not being used so I filled four of them with potting mix and planted annual seeds. The instructions stated to put more space in between the seeds than I did so what I thought about doing is once the little seedlings are big enough, I will thin them out and put some in the garden and leave the rest to hopefully be a nice hanging basket throughout the summer. I hope it works. The seedlings seem so delicate, I hope I don't destroy them trying to transplant. As you can see here, I have all four baskets and my Cosmos and Marigolds have sprouted. I can't wait to see what happens. We are supposed to have a hard freeze tonight so I have moved the four baskets into the garage so the little plants don't get nipped. Better safe than sorry.




Huh?
I'm a little confused about the several daffodil plants I have in one of the beds. This has actually happened every year. The plants come up and look healthy, then they start to bloom and that's where it all stops. I'm not sure if they are not getting enough sun or what but I sure don't get it. Everywhere around our neighborhood I see other plants looking really great and bright yellow, but not here. If they don't do anything this spring, I may have to transplant them somewhere else for next year. All in the learning process.

What I Did Today

I really got into a cleaning up mood today. I decided to make some of the beds ready for plants. I started out working on the little bed that we made for Catherine last year as a Mother's Day present. She likes Irises so last year she dug some up out of our nice neighbor's garden and planted them along with some annuals and other goodies. Irises are pretty hard to kill and sure enough they are looking pretty good right now and should have some nice flowers before long. As I was cleaning up the bed, I noticed that our Lantana's were coming back with little bits of green right at the ground. Also some Petunia's decided to go ahead and live through the winter so they should be nice also. After all was said and done, I thought the little bed cleaned up nicely. Now it's ready for something but I'm not sure what.

Another bed I cleaned out was one that I made almost four years ago. This bed has not really had much going on in it. I really like strawberries, and I wanted to grow some in this bed. I have tried every year to grow them and finally realized that it is probably too hot here for them to live through the summer so I think I'm going to give up on that. There are a few from last year that survived and are still alive although they don't look very healthy. Maybe they will come around and produce a few berries that we can enjoy. I'm not sure what I will put here. I might could put some tomato plants and maybe they would provide enough shade to protect the strawberries once they finished producing.

And finally I started working on the bed that I showed in my last posting that has been overun with weeds. I can already tell, this is going to be a tough one to maintain this year, but I am going to try to stay on it. As I was cleaning, I noticed that my crocuses were coming up. These make pretty little purple flowers but they haven't produced very well in this bed. We will see what happens this time.

Not yet! Wait!

It's all happening way to fast. I need a vacation so I can get some things done. Since I am a teacher, I will certainly enjoy the summer off, but I almost wish we had a late winter vacation so I could do some outdoor work. Right now the days are getting longer but by the time I get home from work, the sun is going down and I really don't have that much time to devote to outside chores. A perfect example is a little flower bed right beside our back porch. This was a bed that I created a couple of years ago. I put some daffodil and crocus bulbs and that's about it. Last Summer, I kind of just let it go and I have plans to clean it out this year and put some of my new little plants that are sprouting in the milk jugs. Well, I better hurry because my bulbs have begun to leaf out. I will probably just have to work around them the best that I can. I hope to do this bed in the next couple of weeks and then post some "after" pictures. The weather here lately has been just beautiful. We did have a close call a couple of nights ago when a strong storm came through very quickly. We didn't have any damage, but several people lost their lives in a little town by the name of Lone Grove OK. That's really not that far from us. It's just across the border and west just a bit. Our hearts and prayers go out to those people because they are really hurting right now. But, we do live in tornado alley and we expect this type of weather, just not usually this early in the spring.

Sprouts!

Well, I tried my hand at overwintering this year. I used my sisters tip about using milk jugs to create little greenhouses for planting seeds. I used 8 jugs and planting a different plant in each one.

I found a little area of the yard and also next to the house that seemed like a good place to put them. I followed my sisters tips as much as I could. I guess I did alright because I checked them yesterday and was surprised to see sprouts! Boy, now what?! I wasn't really ready for plants yet because I really don't have any place to put them. I guess what I will do is wait until they get a little bigger then transplant them to little pots. Fortunately, they are not all sprouting at the same time, so I won't have to do them all at once. That will give me some time I guess. The four that have sprouted are Coreopsis, Campanula Bellflower, Delphinium and Scabiosa. I was able to stick my camera up to the spout of the jug and get some pretty decent shots of the plants.

Here are pics of the little sprouts.
Grow little plants and pretend you don't depend on me for survival.

Spring Is Coming!

Most people use the little furry groundhog in Pennsylvania to forecast the coming of spring. If he sees his shadow, six more weeks of winter. If he doesn't, he stays out and spring is on its way. I however choose to use what I think is the more accurate means of forecasting.......Walmart!
That's right ladies and gentlemen, spring is right around the corner because our local Walmart has put out a lot of the lawn and garden supplies just ready to go. I can hardly wait. It's February 7 and I have actually worn shorts for most of the day today. It's really nice outside, but I don't know if I'm really ready for spring yet. I'm one who doesn't like the summer very much at all so I like to make sure that I am really tired of the winter cold. But since I saw the scene at Wally World, I guess I need to prepare myself. I didn't actually see it, but I bet somewhere there is still a row of Christmas items they still can't get rid of.

A Little Tour

Okay, so since I'm going to make this about gardening, I might as well put some pictures on here showing you a little of what I have so far. Some of these are random, but it will give you an idea of what I'm up against.

Last year for Mother's Day, I thought I would give Catherine a little flower bed she could call her own. I went and bought a few annuals and it wasn't long before we had what you see here. The bed actually worked out very well and produced a lot of good color throughout the season. My next plan is expand it a little further away from the house and longer maybe including some curves and such. A few of the plants that are in this bed are petunias, Iris (Catherine loves Irises and we got these from the neighbors yard), and you don't see it here, but we added a Lantana. That will be coming back and should be pretty. We are looking forward to see what the irises will do this year. This picture was taken toward the end of May last year.


This was a project that took some time. We have a propane tank next to our driveway and while I really don't mind the look of it, I decided to mask it with some kind of plant. I wanted an evergreen and the only one I could find for our area was Carolina Jasmine. I built a trellis and planted the plants. I didn't take long for one to take off and it's beautiful in the Spring. The other one seems to be stunted for some reason. I don't know if it's hit a rock or what. I planted both plants at the same time, so we will see what happens. When we moved in, there was no retaining wall around the tank, so I had to build that. That came out really nice and has worked well. That was my first retaining wall experiment.


And the last thing I will subject you to is a picture of my compost pile or piles. These are not really effective because I do not have a water source nearby and they don't get full sun all day. The composting process is rather slow. I built two because after a while, I will take the compost from one and transfer it to the other turning it to try to speed up the process. Anyway, I will add other images of my yard later.