Archive for the ‘Fun Spring Activities’ Category

New Vegetable Gardens & Companion Planting

Friday, May 19th, 2023

raised-bed

I’m feeling so excited and inspired this year to create a new set of vegetable beds! Vegetables are so much yummier from the garden than from the store, and there are no perticides in my backyard because I will be using natural ways to keep pests away.

Once again, I used the sun lamp from the hydroponic garden to start my vegetable seeds this year. I placed an old cookie sheet under the seeds so that water wouldn’t get all over the counter. I am growing three heirloom tomato plants in the hydroponic garden. Then I’m also growing green beans, peas, cucumbers, melon, watermelon, and lettuce. My lettuce grew successfully from seed last year and produced a harvest throughout the entire summer.

Here is a review of last year’s gardening posts:

seedlings

My husband got me a couple of raised cedar vegetable beds, and I found some tall trellises at Lowe’s that were half the price of Costco. We filled the raised beds with good organic soil made especially for vegetables.

raised-vegetable-beds

I’ve been studying about companion planting. Basil is a good herb to grow beside tomato plants because they keep the tomato pests away. Cucumber grows well with green beans and peas. I grabbed a sheet of paper and began scribbling where I would place each plant for maximum happiness for the garden.

plant-map

Come to find out, cucumber doesn’t like basil, so I scribbled it out and placed it next to the peas instead of the green beans. The back of the raised garden bed is where the trellises are, so the green beans and the peas will be climbing those trellises. I have some poles to put the cucumbers on. I found some potato starts at a local gardening store, and green beans produce nitrogen that potatoes need, so I want to put potatoes next to the green beans.

Watermelon and melon grow along the ground, so they can grow around the potatoes and tomatoes, if they run out of space. We also got jalapeño peppers and red and yellow bell pepper plant starts. My husband and third son love jalapeños, and I use bell peppers in salads and other dishes.

I have an apricot tree that hasn’t started producing yet. I placed lupine flowers next to it on both sides, because they produce nitrogen that fruit trees need. Then I placed ruby red bottle brush in front of the fruit tree to draw more bees to pollinate all my produce.

strawberry-beds

The raised bed I showed you last year on my YouTube channel cracked over the winter, so I had one of my sons remove the legs and place it on the ground. I planted strawberries in it, because strawberries are invasive, and I want them contained. The strawberries in the terra cotta strawberry planter mostly came back, surprisingly, after so many freezes and thaws last winter.

blue-flower-pots

On my back porch I’ve planted wisteria in large pots to grow over the pergola and draw more pollinators to the backyard. I also placed annuals inside the pots. One of the annuals is marigolds because they keep mosquitoes away, and I was just bit the other day before I decided to get an insect-repellent flower. Red geraniums have always been an easy flower to plant, and I got some small blue flowers to round out the splash of color.

I’m looking forward to see how successful my vegetable gardens will be. I will try to come back and drop another picture in here, to show you what it looks like when it’s all producing yummy vegetables!

Here is the transformation, a month later:

How to Grow a Hydroponic Herb Garden

Tuesday, July 12th, 2022

hydroponic-herb-garden

The plants in this hydroponic garden grow directly in water… with no soil. Every two weeks, the little green light on the bottom turns red to remind you to put two capfulls of plant food into the water. Other than that, you just top off the distilled water each day, and you get lucious herbs. Simple.

herbs-in-hydroponic-garden

My husband got me this one from Costco, but you can get them various places and under different brands. What they have in common is that they have pods that you place into the water. These pods contain seeds which germinate when placed in water under a grow light. The grow light on this model (Aerogarden) is adjustable. You place it lower when the seeds are germinating, and as they grow taller, you raise the light higher.

How to Set Up Your Hydroponic Garden

Here is a tutorial on how to use your hydroponic herb garden:

As you can see, you fill the container with distilled water, so as not to crust over the system with harsh chemicals from tapwater. Then put the lid on, and place the herb pods into the circles.

herb-pods-for-hydroponic-garden

Place the little “greenhouse” over each pod until they sprout. Then remove the “greenhouse,” allowing the plant to grow taller.

tomato-pods-in-water

When the herbs are so tall that they touch the light, they need to be trimmed or transplanted to another container or outside.

tomatoes-hydroponic-garden

So far we have grown herbs (including basil, parsley, and mint) and some cherry tomatoes. It’s fun to add some greenery to your home, and to have herbs available to clipping and throw into your cooking!

Starting Vegetables from Seeds

Tuesday, May 10th, 2022

starting-vegetables-from-seeds

It’s been a while since I’ve started vegetables from seeds, so I thought I would try it again this year. We planted these back in March, so now that it’s May, we have transplanted the seedlings outside. We filmed the entire process, giving tips along the way. Make sure to check your weather forecast to make sure that it will not freeze overnight in your area before transporting the plants outside.

I show you in this video the whole process of starting vegetables from seeds:

  • We planted the seeds in seed trays, using seed starting mix instead of regular soil, because the seed starting mix keeps moist better. You can use old yogurt containers or other small containers instead of seed trays.
  • Make sure to have a grow light, which has the full spectrum of sunlight so that the seeds can get off to a good start. Otherwise you can place them in a sunny window.
  • Put cellophane over the rows of seeds, to keep the seeds moist and to cut down on the amount of times you need to water them.
  • Use a spray bottle to water, so that the seeds don’t get washed away.
  • Some seeds grow faster than others. Some take a few weeks to germinate. As you can see in the video, the green bean plant sprouted high above the others, reminding me of the Jack and the Beanstalk story!

Starting Vegetables from Seeds (video tutorial)

After a couple of months, you will want to transplant the seedlings outside. Some of the plants were getting too tall for the grow light, but the frost outdoors hadn’t passed yet, so I just transplanted the taller seedlings into larger containers and placed them in a sunny window.

transported-seedlings

I have a raised garden bed in partial shade, so I chose veggies that like the shade, such as lettuce and spinach, to plant in it. Then I set up a trellis next to my house, and I planted the climbing varieties of vegetables along the trellis. Green beans, for example, need a structure to climb up. You might want to stake those up with a wooden shishkabob skewer like I did in the house in the sunny window, using a twist tie to make sure they don’t fall over.

Growing your own vegetables is a great way to eat healthier and tastier food. I will be growing an even larger vegetable garden next year!

Gardening: Your Backyard Oasis

Friday, May 29th, 2020

gardening-your-backyard-oasis

How would you like to create a backyard oasis? Everyone needs more of nature, and gardening is calming for your body and mind. When you sit on your porch, what do you see? With a little effort and a few tips, I will show you how to improve your outdoor space.

Gardening: Your Backyard Oasis (video demonstration)

Make a beautiful haven where you can sit and pray or think about life, and get away from it all. I started filming this video near the end of April, and now it’s the end of May. So I show the progression of the backyard, awakening from the winter, and blooming into the spring and summer.

We also hung lights around the backyard deck for the first time, changing the atmosphere in the evenings to a festive experience, which I will show you by the end of the video.

Vegetable Garden Tips

The first tip for vegetable gardens is to have raised beds so that you can dump really good soil into them. When I first moved into this property 20 years ago, I didn’t know that the soil was not good for growing anything. Not only was it too sandy with rocks (look at the dirt that I’m sitting on in the video), but the 23 pine trees on our property make the soil acidic. Furthermore, most of my backyard is in shade because of the trees.

I love the fact that my backyard looks like the woods. But eventually I realized that the only way to improve my yard was to grow mostly shaded plants. Tip #2 for a vegetable garden, then, is to try to find a place where there is sun. We finally found a place (that used to be a dirt pile) to the right of our deck.

vegetable-garden

Last year we only had one raised bed, as you can see in the picture below. I didn’t know how large the plants would grow, so I overcrowded it. For this reason, even though there were lots of leaves, the plants didn’t produce much fruit.

So tip #3 for a vegetable garden is not to overcrowd the plants. Leave space between the plants. Then the roots won’t be competing for the nutrients in the soil with any other plants, and the sun can shine on all the leaves of each plant.

Tip #4 would be to give the vegetable garden a good watering every day, especially when the plants are young.

Tip #5 is to have tomato cages for the tomatoes, and if you are growing beans or other vines, place the raised bed next to a fence so they have something to crawl up. Next year I might add a third bed next to the chain link fence just for this purpose. This year all I needed was the tomato cages to re-enforce the stems of the tomato plants, so they don’t topple over or break with the wind.

Tip #6 is to pick off any dead leaves that you see. This keeps the plants healthy.

overcrowded-garden

Perennial Garden Tips

At the beginning, the perennial garden didn’t look like much. When removing the pine needles and dead leaves, we saw a few green perennials coming up. (Perennials are flowers that come up year after year.) We trimmed the bushes, pulled some weeds, and amended with good soil. After a month of watering the garden, it looked beautiful!

This perennial garden is right outside the bay window of my dining room, so it can be enjoyed every time we sit down to eat a meal.

perennial-garden

Rose Garden Tips

My rose garden is in the front yard, but I thought I would include it in the gardening that we do. I show you in the video how to prune the rose bushes after uncovering them from the winter. We also put rose fertilizer on each bush. Roses are my favorite flower, so I really love this garden!

rose-garden

The back porch looks lovelier this year than ever, since my husband hung lights on poles bolted down to blocks of cement. (I show you a close-up of the base of these poles in the video.) My husband placed a hook on the top of each pole, and strung white lights. It feels like I am in Europe, where I traveled and lived before I was married. It makes me feel so much joy!

garden-evening

Here are some other gardening posts you might like: