Sometimes the Best Solutions are the Redneck Ones - Fixing the Strawberries

I purchased some bird netting from Amazon for around $11, and I was in a hurry to get it up as more and more strawberries were starting to turn. Last year the birds feasted and I starved, so this year I was determined it was going to be different.

The first step was to move the strawberries from the ground to containers. They've been on the move since that, bugging out whenever the front lines shifted (read: blue jays started hanging around).

Next step was to get them covered. I figured I could drape the netting over them, but I still didn't want the birds getting under the netting or being able to reach the fruit through it. It took a few days to come up with a solution. Wire coat hangars. I'm telling you - those things are useful for just about everything.

Strawberry plants covered with bird netting. You can see the wire coat hangars in between the plants. I alternated the direction they were hung so that they would keep the netting off the leaves.

Ripening strawberries

The Mystery Lily Blooms

So at last, at last. The mystery lily has bloomed, and it's very pretty! Mom had the idea to use a stick from the yard to hold up the stem, since it was leaning pretty far over. And just in time - it bloomed the day after she staked it up. No fragrance, unfortunately, but very lovely and a wonderful surprise that morning - 5/28/13

Setting out the Final Additions to the Garden

I set out the last tomato on Sunday, May 26th; I also set out my bell pepper plant. The bell pepper is close to 2 months old right now (and very small still... ) and the tomato is a perfect 6-7 weeks old.

Purple Cherokee Tomato

Bell Pepper

Comparison between the new Cherokee Purple and its older counterparts. Look how tiny!

That Purple Thing, II

So, I wrote about the Purple Thing a while back, here. I speculated that what I had on my hands was an Aster. However... I think I need to reevaluate my diagnosis.

After stumbling across a link, here, the phrase, "It's an osteo that doesn't close; its double blooms stay open all day and night.." really stuck out to me. I was never totally satisfied with labeling the purple thing as an Aster, as the bloom times were all off and the link didn't mention anything about the flowers closing like they do. 

So. There we go. I think I have an African Trailing Daisy, which is surprising because it's out of its hardiness zone. It only blooms in winter for me, but what a show! 

Flowers and Blooms

Just a quick update on the flowers and roses!

Look how big the oriental lilies have gotten! Most have 2-3 buds on them.

The mystery lily has gotten so big. The bud has pointed downwards and seems to be turning yellow. Perhaps I will have yellow flowers?

Finally! This is the last blooming rose in my garden. The Grandma Nacogdoches rose.

Garden Update for the last part of May

One of those quick summer showers just passed through, so I went out to snap some pics of the garden. Things are slow; we're in the wait-and-watch phase. The only work left to do at this point is to set out my Cherokee Purple and my bell pepper plant, which I am to do this weekend.

The squash are taking over my garden. Both of my hands are smaller than some of those leaves.

After a rough start, my peas have jumped! I keep expecting to see vines any day now...

The carrots, several weeks after their final thinning. There are 7. ... yes. 7.

Look! Tomatoes!

Tons of blooms on the Roma tomato.

Snapshot of the whole garden in all it's ramshackle glory.

Remember the onion bottoms? They're sprouting! And pecan tassels. They're everywhere.

Strawberry blooms!

The strawberries in their new home hanging from the banister on the back deck.

I don't mind picking strawberries one at a time. They're delicious!

New Rooting Project(s)

Propagating Rosemary via Cuttings

So after the rose cutting flopped, I ended up doing some cutting on my rosemary bush. I cut a whole chunk out, trying to reshape it, and realized I had some good pieces that would probably make good cuttings. So why not try?

Rooting Rosemary:

1. Cut some rosemary! Take plenty of time to enjoy the wonderful fragrance. 

2. Select semi wooden branches (too green and it might be too weak) that are 4-6 inches in length. 

3. Strip the leaves from the lower half-ish of the branch. 

4. Prepare your pots with soil, and water the soil well. 

5. Gently push the cutting into the soil. 

6. Press the soil into place around the new cutting. 

Rosemary cuttings made May 12th.

The soil should stay moist, but I'm trying not to have to cover these. The humidity is soaring, and I don't want to invite mold. They get shade but bright light during the day and morning sun.

Aloe Vera

So I have a pot of aloe vera that's doing very well (the same ones I sunburned), and sister wanted a piece of it. I had some new plantlets in the pot that grew over the winter, so I fished them out for her. She picked three, and I fixed a small pot with damp soil. Have a look:

So far so good. I hope they have a long life. My other plants are glad not to be so crowded.

Growing Onions from Discarded Pieces

White Onions

So two different onion scenarios. Last summer, I took the bottom of a white onion from the store, cut it from the onion, and planted it. The steps were very simple. I just let the cut piece dry out a little on the counter (couple of hours, maybe a day), then I stuck it cut side up in some dirt, with no dirt covering the onion.

It turned into this:

As you can see there are three different sprouts coming up. I should have split them apart, but I did not.

In the upper right corner you can see what will soon be a flower bud opening to make seeds. I didn't want that to happen; I wanted to see what I had grown.

So I dug it up.

Heh.


Here are the steps:

1. Here's what they looked like washed and with the tops cut off. I cut the bottoms off too. I will only eat the white part. No idea if that's the right thing to do or not, but that's the part you'd normally eat. It smells stronger than any onion I've never gotten in the store!

2. I cut the bottoms of the onions off (with a generous portion of the bulb material left. You can see the very large root systems here. I prepared three new pots with some dirt.

3. I placed the onion pieces in the pots and covered the roots, leaving the very top of the onion uncovered, and watered well.

So there you go. Three onions from one bottom piece. Yes, they were very small onions (and cooked down to a very small portion), but they were delicious! This time around I will be separating the shoots that come up so that the bulb growth can get larger.

Green Onions

The second onion-related project has to do with green onions. The store never sells them in small packages, so when you buy you're forced to buy in bulk, and you never use them all up in whatever recipe you follow.

Steps to growing your own green onions:

1. Secure extra onions.
2. Prepare a pot of soil, and water it well.
3. Since my pieces already had roots on it, I trimmed the green part down so that the tiny roots wouldn't have a lot to support. Then I poked each one carefully into the wet soil. If your pieces don't already have roots, I've read you can set them in glasses of water (which you frequently change), until they make roots.
4. I pressed the soil firmly around the new plants.
5. Wait.

I almost made another mess-up by leaving these in the direct sun. Now they are under my carport in shade and bright light. I'll leave them there until they show significant leaf growth, at which time they'll move into the garden spot.

So there you go. Waste not want not.

Graham Thomas Rose

The first bloom on the Graham Thomas rose was May 10th. And of course, it was a rainy, dreary day. This event was particularly special since this rose didn't bloom last year.

Rose Cutting - 5th Week.

A moment of silence, please.

No pictures this time, just a news update. The rose cutting is officially dead. Since all the branches had browned and dried, I pulled it out of its pot to see if it had even thought about making roots, and it had not. Instead I found tiny maggot-like worms. Ew.

The dirt was tossed into the yard (waste not) into a non-garden spot, and the pot will be rinsed out before I stick anything else in it.

Some important lessons were learned.

Diagnosis of what probably went wrong (in no particular order of significance):

1. The cutting was from old wood rather than green wood, and it was very short.
2. No rooting hormone, which might have helped my chances a little.
3. I might have left too many leaves on.
4. I uncovered the rose too soon; should have left the plastic baggie on much longer than I did.
5. Becoming overly ambitious at the sight of new leaf growth, I moved the cutting into a spot with partial sun instead of mostly shade and bright light. Oopse.

I found a great link, here which does an excellent job at teaching you how to do rose cuttings. For me, the most important information this article had to offer that was not readily available in all my previous Googling:

1. Wounding the stem is good; taking all the bark off is bad. I should have wounded the stem in strips, one or two strips, down the cutting rather than stripping the bark all the way off. As the growth hormones are essentially in this top layer, I crippled my cutting without knowing it.
2. The cutting needs to remain covered for the whole time it's rooting, at least until the second set of leaves.
3. It's the second set of leaves you want to watch out for; any initial leaf growth, according to this article, will be as a result of energy already stored in the cutting. Secondary leaf growth, however, will be as a result of successful root production.

It was a very fun project to try, and now that my own roses are growing by leaps and bounds, I will probably begin experimentation to perfect my methods.

Organic Gardening? Getting Rid of Pests

So I'm not usually into the whole organic gardening thing. Yes, I'm generally concerned about what goes in my mouth. I like my plants to be healthy and strong, but the bugs around here are mammoth in proportion, and frankly, I need mammoth-sized products to deal with them.

Plus I think I'd have to go a long way to be as bad as what comes from the store!

All that to say: I have a new favorite product for the garden.

Cinnamon powder.

Thanks to unusually wet and cool weather, almost all of my pots are infested with fungus gnats. They're tiny black critters who can barely fly, and they're covering my soil like fleas on a dog.

They were responsible for destroying my first round of seedlings, and I'm blaming them for some of the damage to my rose cutting, too.

Well, I have found the solution. Sprinkle good ol' Cinnamon powder onto the top of your soil. It kills the fungus that gnat larva eat, thereby starving the buggers. Thusly they die too. For the adults, I've read that a bowl of soapy water (such as bath soap) will attract them. They get into the water, and drown. Excellent.

I have not attempted the soap-bowl trick, but I *have* used the Cinnamon powder. I tried it first on the rose cutting; in two days, I saw no more gnats. Now I have gone large-scale, and every pot outside has received a sprinkling of cinnamon if a gnat so much as landed on the dirt.

My garden smells delicious, the gnats are dead, and I am a happy gardener. One tip: try not to get the cinnamon powder on the leaves. I've read it will burn young leaves. Other than that... happy hunting.

I now officially have a vegetable garden

The garden is planted!

Saturday, May 4th, mom and I set out my tomatoes at long last. I realize I had the peas, squash, and zucs already planted, but really. The tomatoes are my favorites. I was not going to be happy until they were set out. Have a look:

Five tomato plants in 5 gallon buckets. As of this writing, all of the tomatoes have flowers on them except the Yellow Pear, front right. In the background, you can see my buckets of peas. They're actually not doing so hot, and I'm afraid my seed wasn't very good after being stored for several years.

Closeup of the biggest flower buds on the Kimberly Cherry tomato.

 Also on the 4th, I potted up my seedling Cherokee tomato, at the top, and moved my bell pepper plant into a new pot as well, at the bottom.



Here is also a picture of the carrots, looking huge. Although I didn't snap a picture, I have thinned them out once more. I believe 7 carrots are now left in my container. But that's just fine with me. If they are 7 carrot-sized and carrot-shaped carrots, then I will call this experiment a success.

Squash palnts putting on new leaves. As of this writing, all four of my squash plants have the beginnings of flower buds.

I don't know if I've written about the onion. This is an onion that mom bought from the store. She cut the roots off, and I stuck the bottom with roots into a pot. That was last summer. I honestly don't know what it's doing. I'm wondering if it might bloom soon...

Last but not least, fresh strawberries from the garden! The first strawberry didn't survive long enough to have its picture taken. It straight from the plant to my mouth in a fit of glee. Oh well. Here's the second and third strawberries, to make up for that.

Rose Cutting - 4th Week

So. I don't really want to put a picture up, but for the sake of record keeping I will. Things... things aren't looking too hot.

 As you can see, my final set of original leaves is turning yellow. The new set at the bottom looks yellow in this picture, but I think it's just the light because they are, in fact, still green.

The lower branch, as well, has turned brown and dull, so I think it's dead.

For now, all my hope hinges on that tiny set of new leaves and one more potential leaf but I can spy if I squint.

I'm resisting the urge to go ahead and tag this and the rest of the rose-cutting series with an 'oopse' tag and therefore call it a failure.

I'll let it sit there til I'm certain it's all kaput.

It's been getting good morning sun, some afternoon shade. Plenty of water and the pot drains very well.

I'm not sure what other steps I should have taken, or if my method was okay and it was simply the plant itself. I've no idea how hardy the parent stock was, as I've never seen it in bloom.

It was a fun spur-of-the-moment gift, after all. We shall see.

Lafter in the Garden

First Day Lilly - Stella d'Oro. Bloomed 4/29/13. Since then, I've had as many as 5 blooms open in one day, I just didn't have the presence of mind to snap a picture of it. I even had blooms last two days, thanks to unseasonably cloudy and cool weather.

Lafter rose; first bloom on largest Lafter bush. Bloomed 5/2/13

Another bloom on the largest Lafter rose. Bloomed  5/2/13

First bloom on the smallest Lafter rose. Bloomed 5/4/13.