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.

Despite the fact that it is crazy muggy outside I managed to get out and do my Garden Walk. I was snapping pictures left and right and looked down to see what the count was. It said I had take 1837 pictures! Knowing there must have been a glitch with my camera I continued taking pictures to find that I had indeed  only take 50 pictures.

I have several things to share wtih you today. We started the new box with carrots, radish and parsley so I got quite a start when I looked in that box just two days later.

I also have some pictures on here to show you that Raised Bed Gardening doesn't always have to be in a 4x4 box, there are many styles and ways you can do this.

I was so happy this weekend to get hubby to put the stem protectors on our Blackberry Bushes then read how a man did that to his Apple Trees and got all kinds of ants and bugs building homes in there and it destroyed his trunk of the tree. So hubby took an organic bug spray and sprayed down in the tubes to stop that kind of thing happening and since the ones we got are the spiral cut protectors we will be able to check it from time to time without it being a huge issue.

Okay on to the photos's. This was the suprise we got this morning when we looked in the new bed we started. I know it's hard to see but if you look carefully right in the middle you will see that in two days time the Radish' are already coming up. We are just so tickled.

In this picture you can see the white spiral cut pvc
 pipe. It sinply is there to protect the  trunk from the weed
eater. Even when you are so very careful with those things
 accidents can happen. I've seen it many times.

We had these fence sections around the house
we had at one time planned to use then to make a fence around our garde area, however, even after they have been put in the ground with stakes they are so wobbly for a fence. Now with the bushes wrapping around it etc it is working well for the bushes and I didn't have to go to the added expense of buying something else for them.

This is a purchased 4x4 Raised Garden Box. We
purchased this one simply because it was on sale
and the price was right. Under normal conditions
these cost a lot more than it does to make your own.
The two level wooden boxes that you see in my
pictures cost us a grand total of $12 per box. The
above box was on sale for $20 I think. We got
it to see if we preferred those or the ones we make.
The boxes we make won hands down.

The brown barrel with the Rose Bush in
is is called a Whiskey Barrel. They also are
 wonderful for putting plants in.

This was an idea we  had and I'm very happy with
it. This Bat plant loves to be in direct sunlight for
the biggest part of the day.Rather than trying to find
someplace to hang the pot I opted to just sit it in our
Hummingbird flower bed. When it gets closer to winter
all I have to do it go out and pick this guy up pot
and all and take him inside.

 

This again is one of the same barrels, they
just work like a charm. Then when I plant
something like a Rose in it, then come winter
we can pull it in the garage for a little
added protection from the winter weahter.

As I said above any container
will work, this is a barrel
that minerals come in for my
dad's cattle. Once they have eaten
all the minerals we clean them very
well and usually use some bleach
drill some drain holes in the bottom
and there we go, a huge pot for
planting

I love this, used to be from a distance  you couldn't tell anything was planted there. Now you don't even have to get close to it and you can see the Loofah's on the right and the Cucumbers on the left and they are doing a fine job of climing up their arches. I have seen no further blooms on the Loofah but there are baby Cucumbers all over their plants.

As I worked on putting my pictures in here something crazy has happened to my page. I've had a devil of a time trying to get it lined out the way I wanted and in the order I wanted but the female computer didn't want to co-operate with my naturally blonde hair.

I ask your forgiveness if the order of this page is  time consuning and not at all very well put together. I guess that is part of the "fun" of starting with a new company and learning how their programs function.

I hope you all have a blessed day in our Lord today!