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A Clever Way To Label Plants

Category: Gardening | Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2014 10:32 am

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A few years ago my wife was in a wholesale store and ran across a large bag of orange plastic knives for a ridiculously low price. When she got home and handed them to me I shrugged my shoulders in confusion. She explained ,"You can use them to label your plants."

And she was right. I use a sharpie to write on both sides of the handle and then shove the blade portion into the soil. Eventually the writing fades off, but since I normally use them on my seedlings I don't have any problems.

After holidays is a good time to find them marked down. Knives don't sell as good as forks so there always seems to be an overabundace of them. Color doesn't matter... green for St. Patrick's Day, orange for Halloween.

I used white ones this year for some of the seeds that I started for my fall garden.




Using plastic knives to label plants ( photo / image / picture from eclecticgarden's Garden )


UPDATE:

Only a few days after posting this I came across some 30 count bags of plasticware in Walmart for 75 cents. It had spoons and forks too, but I don't see why they wouldn't work too.


( photo / image / picture from eclecticgarden's Garden )





Last edited: Tue Aug 19, 2014 10:15 am

This blog entry has been viewed 485 times

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Soil Experiment

Category: Gardening | Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2014 4:13 pm

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I'm always up to trying something new in the garden. The pictures below show the steps taken to hopefully improve the soil. Basically, I dug a trench, put in a good layer of dry cow manure, wet it, chopped it up, put in a good layer of grass clippings, wet it again, covered it up with dirt and then added a layer of oak leaves.

It was a lot of work, but I'm sure the hard work will pay off.


Trench ( photo / image / picture from eclecticgarden's Garden )






Cow Manure ( photo / image / picture from eclecticgarden's Garden )






Trench with dry cow manure. ( photo / image / picture from eclecticgarden's Garden )






Grass clippings in the trench. ( photo / image / picture from eclecticgarden's Garden )






Trench covered with dirt. ( photo / image / picture from eclecticgarden's Garden )






Trench finished off with oak leaves. ( photo / image / picture from eclecticgarden's Garden )





This blog entry has been viewed 479 times

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A Magical Place

Category: Gardening | Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2014 12:34 pm

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To me, gardens are a magical place. There is just something about walking through a garden that causes a part of me to come alive. I don't care if it is an elaborate botanical garden or simply a few potted plants on the porch. It doesn't matter what the location or what kind of garden it is my mind immediately goes to that magical place any time that I enter one.

I've often tried to figure out why I feel this way. What is it about growing things that brings about this twinge of excitement? I honestly believe that there is something spiritual about it. As a Christian I was taught that God created man from the dust of the earth. If you have ever read the Bible then you know that there are agricultural references throughout. Jesus himself spoke about plants and farming on multiple occasions. One of the most famous parables that Jesus gave was about the seed falling by the wayside. The seed that fell on the rocky soil didn't make it, but the seed that fell into the good soil did. There are too many more examples to give here. My point is that there are many.

Is it this deep connection to God that pulls me toward the garden? Am I drawn there because I believe that God is there? I would like to say yes, that I am such a spiritual man that I can work out in the garden and draw closer to God, but I don't think that is all there is to it. I also believe there is the human factor, that I just enjoy the hard work, that I like to see seeds planted in the ground and then grow to produce food for me and my family to eat. In effect, I like to see the beginning and ending of something.

Hmm... beginnings and endings. That kind of reminds me of the book of Genesis... In the beginning God... Perhaps it is more spiritual after all.

This blog entry has been viewed 480 times

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Weeds and Manure

Category: Gardening | Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2014 7:28 pm

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It's amazing how the weeds will start to move in so quickly. With all the unsufferable heat, the $1000.00 nosebleed and last weekend's bee adventure I've somewhat neglected the garden... and the weeds took notice. Since Wednesday I've been cleaning things up and it definitely looks better.

I'm still planning to have a late summer/early fall garden so there's a lot to do. I'd like to try something that I haven't done before with the soil. I've got access to plenty of cow manure. I'm going to dig out my rows and put a layer of dry manure, follow that with a layer of grass clippings, cover it all up with a thick layer of dirt and then let it sit undisturbed for a good month before planting.

I'm interested to see if that gives everything enough time to break down.

Last edited: Fri Jul 18, 2014 7:33 pm

This blog entry has been viewed 531 times

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September Garden

Category: Gardening | Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2014 12:34 am

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It has been extremely hot in my part of Florida. The garden has been paying the price too. The squash and cucumbers are done. In fact, the plants are already on the compost pile. My tomatoes were a bust. The amaranth came and went and I'm pretty certain I just picked the last of the beans. The okra Is on its last leg too. Now I'm cleaning up the garden so I can be ready to plant again in September. It"s great to live in a place that you can plant twice in the same year.

Last edited: Thu Jul 03, 2014 2:24 am

This blog entry has been viewed 424 times

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Tomatoes After All

Category: Gardening | Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2014 10:15 am

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I didn't do so well with my tomatoes this year, but thankfully I was able to work around that. My sister-in-law's family leases out land to a local farmer and he has a large U-pick tomato field. He called her up this past weekend and told her to come get all of the tomatoes that she wanted. So, of course she called my wife and on Monday they headed to the tomato field.

My mom fried some green tomatoes that evening. I didn't think my dad would ever get through eating them. The majority of them were pink so they got put out in the shed to ripen. It looks like we will be putting them up on Saturday. We'll get the jars ready today and pull out everything we need to get the job done.

I never was a fan of canning tomatoes when I was a kid, but I've learned to appreciate it now that I'm a little bit older. It's funny how things work out that way.

This blog entry has been viewed 430 times

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Chaste Trees

Category: Gardening | Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2014 10:13 am

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Over the weekend I planted four chaste trees close to the new chicken pen. They serve three purposes. First, after they are a little bigger they will be protection for the chickens. Second, the bees love the purple blooms. Third, it makes me happy. Not only do I get the satisfaction of enjoying the trees as they grow, but I can rest contently in the fact that I got them for half off.

This blog entry has been viewed 414 times

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Me And Tomatoes

Category: Gardening | Posted: Sat Jun 21, 2014 12:12 pm

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I do great with everything else, but for some reason I always seem to struggle with tomatoes. Last year I grew a determinate tomato called Floradade that was specifically designed for my area by the University of Florida. That was the best crop of tomato plants I ever grew, but I thought the taste wasn't that great.

My brother always grows Cherokee Purple tomatoes. I love the taste and he does great with them so I thought I would try them this year. I guess they did okay, but I've already had to pull them up because they were looking bad and stopped producing.

My grandfather is probably looking down shaking his head. If he was here he would tell me what I am doing wrong. I guess I'll keep reading and talking to others. Eventually I'll figure out the secret.

This blog entry has been viewed 514 times

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Straw Bale Experiment

Category: Gardening | Posted: Thu Jun 19, 2014 10:10 am

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I read about growing in straw bales a while back so last year I decided to give it a try. I bought two straw bales and set them up in the garden. Then, I mixed up some chicken manure tea and poured it over the top of the bales. I let it set for a couple of weeks and then I dug out about 2 inches of straw so that I had two rows, filled them up with potting soil and planted one row of beets and one row of carrots. They came up, but didn't do very well. This was at the end of last summer, so I figured that I must have planted the beets and carrots in the wrong time of year.

I let the bales set over the winter and then back in February I planted onion bulbs. I also tried a few carrots and beets. Again, the beets and carrots didn't do so well. The onions, however, seemed to take off.

As the season progressed I transplanted a couple of borage plants in the bale and even stuck in a marigold or two. The borage grew, but not like the borage that I had in the garden. The same with the marigolds.

When it was all said and done the onion bulbs never really grew that big except for one. The rest just grew big tops. When I pulled them up the root system on the onions was incredible, but the bulbs themselves were pretty small.

I wouldn't say it was a complete failure because I had fun doing it and learned a lot. Plus, now that I've spread the straw out on the garden it has made a very nice mulch. I'm thinking that I might not have prepared the bale enough before planting, but I don't believe I'm going to try it again.




Straw bale in the beginning ( photo / image / picture from eclecticgarden's Garden )






Straw bale - 30 days ( photo / image / picture from eclecticgarden's Garden )






Straw bale - 60 days ( photo / image / picture from eclecticgarden's Garden )






Straw bale - 90 days ( photo / image / picture from eclecticgarden's Garden )






Straw bale - spread out ( photo / image / picture from eclecticgarden's Garden )






The onions from the straw bale ( photo / image / picture from eclecticgarden's Garden )





Last edited: Thu Jun 19, 2014 10:16 am

This blog entry has been viewed 457 times

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Sayonara Squash

Category: Gardening | Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2014 12:43 pm

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It's been a good run, but yesterday I pulled up one row of the yellow squash. It produced until it could produce no more. I have gotten more squash this year than ever before. I'm going to attribute that to all of the bees. I still have another row of squash that was started about three weeks later. This is the first time that I have staggered plantings. It makes so much sense, I don't know why I never did that before. That is what I love about gardening; I always learn something new every year.

Last edited: Sun Jun 15, 2014 12:45 pm

This blog entry has been viewed 433 times

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