First Rain in Nearly 4 Months

We are just so grateful and happy over the rain that soaked our cracked and dried out land all day yesterday. Ponds here have dried up and it has been a major struggle just to try and keep the little bit of garden we have left going.

I went out the day before we were to get all the rain and took a load of pictures and am heading out in a few minutes to take some now that we have had a good soaking. I imagine to see a great change starting to take place in our beds. While we do continue to water our beds when there is no rain one just could not imagine that rain water would make such a difference.

As our grandson so nicely pointed out to me, when God sends us water it is good for the garden because God has the best water. Boy oh boy for a 5 year old he is smarter than many adults I know.

So stop by and check it out I should have the pics up this weekend but I do have 2 cases of cucumbers that need to be made into pickles today and a garage sale to get ready for next weekend. Should have the pics up by Monday evening at the latest oh and surprise surprise I now have pictures of Loofah Gourds that have finally started to grow. I fear it is to late in the season for them to mature before the first frost but will keep our fingers crossed and see. Irregardless if that happens or not I have the pictures so if you try to grow your own you will be able to identify when they start to grow.

Hibiscus Plant and RaisedGarden Pictures

As I had told you all before my daughter and I really kept a close eye on the plants as they went on clearance at three local stores. Those were Wal Mart, Lowes and Ace Hardware. We found the best deals at Lowes and Ace Hardware.

One of those deals was a Hibiscus, I watched them closely as my mother was wanting one. Imagine my surprise when they went on sale from near twenty dollars to something like nine dollars. Mother had been looking for a peach colored one and I found it. So as a surprise to her we got it for her and were quite pleased with the savings we got as well. Turns out it was a light pink in color not peach, but she just loves it.

Several days after we got hers we went back looking for something else and they were down to three dollars each. Well, even though I had no idea what it really was I wasn't going to pass up that deal. I'm happier about that than you could ever imagine.

I have worked and worked with mine and finally got it to a point where all leaves were green and it is now used to being watered every Saturday.

I got up the other morning to he most beautiful surprise and I just had to share it with you.

Isn't that the most beautiful bloom you have ever seen? Mom said her's has never opened up that flat before, her petals stayed more upright than these did. I was so awe struck at how large and beautiful the bloom was I hadn't taken notice of the fact that it didn't look like other blooms or....maybe that is what drew me to it so much.

I was afraid that in a picture people would not realize how large this bloom was which is why I placed my hand next to it. In fact the bloom is so large that it is bigger than a saucer plate you would get with a set of dishes.

The red center of this bloom amazes me as well. I told my husband that it looked like plastic. I carefully felt  it, the petals are so very soft and the red part not only look like plastic but it looks like it as well.

The smaller of the two Loofah plants has started putting out blooms. I didn't get a picture of it but there were three blooms yesterday. I was thrilled to see them in all their splendor, these are the female blooms and sadly enough not the male blooms. I haven't seen any male blooms either and if that continues to be factual then there will be no Loofah sponges, seeds or anything for next year.

Several months ago I allowed several of the asparagus plants to get very tall and produce seeds. The normal course of action would be that they would dry on the limbs and drop to the dirt. In the past several years that we have had the patch I have seen no new ones drop so this year I picked them by hand there were hundred upon hundred of them. I let them dry in the house, removed the seeds and assured they were dry and put them back in the raised bed myself. We added some perilite to the compost mixture,  sprinkled the seeds out and then put a layer of top soil on it. The taller plant you see in the background is the one coming from seed. The smaller one is an asparagus and it will be ready to pick and eat probably today.

This is our once beautiful strawberry patch. The heat has done a real number on it. I'm hoping that it will come out of it again before winter gets here.

This is another bed of vined green bean plants. I much prefer the bush but will take what I can for now. Some years are much better than others and this one has been tough.

Look at my beautiful Rose! I know its  a bit blurry, I had a bad case of shaky hands today. But all the same this is the second bush that has bloomed. All these plants were one dollar each in Wal Mart, I just can't get over how good they all are doing.

I saw this flower bed at the Mo State Fair. Next summer I'm going to have tat going arond my house

Loofah Plant Pictures

While this still isn't quite a current picture of my Loofah plants it is the next  in the series of photos I've been showing you as this plant grows. Despite the horrid heat and drought conditions we have this summer the plant is growing quite well. The one issue I have is that so far there are been no signs of the actual loofah's. I'm hopeful that it will still happen and at the least am hoping for 1. If I get at least one Loofah then I'll have more than enough seeds to start a lot of plants next year.

This is my second set of Loofah plants. The one above and this one were planted (seeds) at the exact same time. This one has seemed to struggle to just get going but as you will see when I get follow up pictures loaded, it is ahead of the large plant by leaps and bounds. I dont know how many times I considered just pulling these up as they weren't "growing" like the others. So happy I didn't do that.

This is the same plant as the one prior. You can see how it is growing up the arch on the one side, doing a little in the middle and on the end where you can't see there s one plant there that is about an inch tall.

When you compare the small plant above to this one, whih is a section of the larger plant you can see what I mean about the size difference. I'm getting ready to head out this morning to check and see if we got rain and how all the garden plants are doing. So check back with me soon as I think I will have some suprises to show you.

July 5, 2012 Garden Pictures, Really starting to see damage from the heat.

 

For those of you new to the blog these strawberries had to be removed from our large patch. My husband and son have started raising the strawberry patch so the size of it had to change. These plants were in the way so they had to be removed. My daughter and I transplanted them into this container and within a day we thought we had killed them. I cut off all the dead leaves leaving the roots in the soil. Slowly but surely the plants starting come back and we have actually gotten about ten strawberries out of this container. My suggestion if you ever have to transplant strawberries, never give up on them, they are quite the hardy plant.

If you are not aware there are two types of strawberries you can get, the plants we have are called Ever bearing. Ever bearing plants will continue to put out strawberries for most of the summer, the other type puts them out one time and that’s it. Ever bearing Strawberries can get quite large but not as large as the other variety. I would prefer having strawberries all summer over having one batch of very large berries.

This is one of the plants in the container, here you can see that it has a small berry that has turned red. You can also see here that on this plant alone there are three more that are still green. Not to bad for a plant that basically had to start all over and catch up with the others.

The two pictures above are showing the range in sizes of strawberries we have been getting. Some have been smaller while others have been quite a bit larger. The really important aspect to us is they are YUMMY! (I like to use big adult words as often as possible. LOL)

The picture on the left are the Blue Lake Green Beans, in this photo they look very good. In the next set of pictures you will see how the heat has really done a number on them.

In the picture on the right are Bush Green Beans, I’m not certain of the brand of these. They had done quite well and had produced like crazy. Then they started looking really bad when the triple digit heat hit us. I went out to pull them out and start a new batch but when I got close and looked they are producing new leaves under the dry ones on top.

I’ve opted to give them a bit more time to see if they come out of the damage the heat did to them and start producing again. If they should not start looking better soon they will be removed, compost added to the bed and another batch of beans started for a fall picking

I took this picture in an attempt to show you the base of this tomato plant. That is one plant, when it was planted it had one stem. If you don’t pick off the sucker leaves on a tomato plant they will start growing as well. These however are not sucker leaves, the stem actually branched out under ground and came up like this. The base of this plant is small in comparison to some of the others.

These have by far been the most amazing Tomato plants I have ever had the pleasure of dealing with.

This picture taken at a distance doesn’t do justice to how pretty the Loofah plants are. I was attempting to show you the height of the plant. I will have some pictures later on that will show it better. They have reached a height of about 5 ft tall so far.

The two pictures above and the four below are all basically showing the same thing. I am forever amazed at a plants ability to stretch its “arm” out, grab a hold of a supporting object and wrap around it.

Some of these you can see where they had to reach a fair distance, some sent runners one way and then another and yet others just kept wrapping around in the same location.

The plants “knowledge” that it needs to do this in order to support the items it will produce is just something to behold.

I’ve finally gotten my daughter to just sit down and look at plants with me. I mean really look close like this and see the truly amazing things they do.

July 3, 2012 Catching up on picture posts

 

You might wonder what the fish has to do with this blog, but really the fish is quite important. Every time we go fishing we go and buy a box of worms. Once the worms are gone we take the left over “dirt” and pour it into our houseplant pots. It is making a huge difference, they love it.

 

Then once we catch fish that qualify as a keeper we take them home and hubby cleans them for us. What is left over goes out to our compost bin and is therefore recycled and ends up in our garden. No part of the fish is thrown away, we use it all.

Aside from all the uses of the fish we absolutely enjoy going fishing. We go as a family and enjoy our time together. Often times we have a hard time leaving to go home and have been caught walking back to the car in the dark, staying until we have no choice but to go home.

Going fishing started out as hubby’s hobby. Our daughter and I have learned a lot from him about fishing and have worked hard to be good fishing partners for him so that he can enjoy himself instead of always having to take care of our stuff for us.

We even learned to put the worms on our hooks. Mind you we do not like doing that but again we want to be good fishing partners and not be little sissy’s about putting the worm on the hook. LOL

Before we left I got these pictures taken. These are our Radish’s. They really came up good and strong. We tried to thin them out and they didn’t do well. Since the soil/compost mixture is so loose we are just leaving them, we think they will be able to make the room they need to grow.

This is the 3rd bed of green beans that we have started. These are Blue Lake Bush Green Beans. We were so excited about them, but as you will see in the following post’s I’ll be making they are not doing near as well as they started out.

They started out so well and had such huge leaves on them. They did get planted right before the triple digit heat hit and that could be why they are having such a hard time now despite the fact that we are diligent about keeping them watered and taken care of.

This is one of the first beds of green beans we started out with. We thought they were Blue Lakes but we now know they are not. They no where resemble the above pictures. Not sure how we got them all mixed up.

The Tomatoes continue to go crazy. We had one plant that had a tomato on it that got so heavy that it actually broke the branch it was on.

As you can see here the plants are just loaded. In this small space there are 7 Tomatoes.

It’s a bit hard to see in this picture, I’ll try to get a better one. The Strawberry Patch is really doing well. The plants have been sending out lots of runners and really are spreading the plants. I’m hoping by the end of summer this bed will be full and we will need to start another.

The number of Strawberries that these plants are putting out this year is by far our best year ever. It may not sound like a lot but we are getting around 20 per day on average, and they are much larger this year than they were last year.

Our grandson just loves checking on the Strawberry Patch. At 4 yr. old he can tell me if they are new/babies, if they are big and not ready and if they are ready to be picked. He has a sincere love and fascination for the garden’s and their produce. It brings me such joy to watch him and our daughter learn so much about the plants and how to care for them.

This is one branch of a Cherry Tomato Plant. As you can see on this one branch there are 9 Tomatoes showing. Each plant in total has on average about 40 per plant.

We are still averaging about 2 Asparagus coming up each day. Normally they are done by this time of year. Since we changed the way we are watering them and the amount of water we are giving them they have done very well. They continue to produce, it’s impressive. I always like to mention that if you are going to start a patch you must salt the ground.

My sister was telling me yesterday that she loves White Asparagus. I had not seen that before so now I have to see if I can find seeds for those and start a patch of them.

You will always want to maintain your patch. In case you are not aware they will continue to come up each year. Normally you will get your first plants that are big enough to eat in about 3 years time.

The Loofah plants are still doing well. They have continued to climb quite well. We have not seen any blooms yet, I’m starting to get concerned that we may not get any Loofah’s this year. I certainly hope I’m wrong. They are so useful and I have no more left from the last time we grew them.

The Cucumbers are doing quite well also. They are climbing well and really starting to put on the cucumbers. However, due to our heat some of the cucumber starts have dried up on the vine before they could get started well.

This is a side shot of the Cucumbers. Not only are they growing in height but they are nice full plants. That is helpful as they are loaded with blooms and soon we should have more cucumbers than we know what to do with them.

This is another shot of one of the Tomato Plants, as you can see there are so many tomatoes on this plant. They are hard to even count anymore, I gave up trying to figure out how many were on a plant.

This is a picture of our small garden bed, it is located under our Hummingbird feeder. These plants really attract the birds to the area. When we started this bed, in case you didn’t see the pictures of it, it looked terrible. We started with about 15 small plants. It looked so empty but in just a few short weeks it really starting filling out.

Now we are taking advantage of the seed pods that each of the flowers make. We have collected so many seeds from the different flower varieties that we will not have to purchase plants next year. We can plant from the seeds we have.

This is a new rose from our Double Knot Knock Out Rose Bush. I really enjoy this rose bush, it is so pretty and it blooms fantastic. At any given time it will have many blooms at the same time.

This is a group of three Roses on the same plant pictured above.

 

I’m in great hopes that I will soon have very nice pictures of Roses to share with you. We happened to be at Wal-Mart when they had a huge sale going on. We got 2 each of Red, Pink and White Rose Bushes and paid a grand total of $1.25 for each of them.

That put us at a grand total of 6 large Rose Bushes and 4 additional Double Knot Knock Out Bushes that we had pictured a few days before. We took the 10 Rose Bushes and have planted them along our driveway. I think it will end up looking very nice. I’ll get pictures of them tonight so you can see what I’m talking about. They are just about naked though, after I cut off all the dead leaves from them not taking proper care of them. They should spring back quickly.