Homemaking Organized Blog

Archive for the ‘Gardening’ Category

We’re well into our container gardening this year and in case you were wondering how others were going about it I’ve dug up a couple of links for you…

1. My friend sent this one to me.  You’ll like it. Originally published in 2008, and loving called a patio farm, Jan has done a lot of experimenting on what can grow in pots and how.

And here’s a nice pick of her garden as of April

2. How to make your own salad bowl. With the recent (and yet again) ecoli breakout maybe it’s time.

3. And here’s a nice site all around about the ways of porch gardening. Lots to browse through so take your time

and be sure not to miss this carnival

Our Own Update:

Our gardening update is the tomatoes and peppers are in their containers and we had a hail storm…

Well we’re going strong with the garden. We’ve been getting out there every day watering, checking, tapping our fingers, waiting.

Tomorrow we’ll put out the tomato starts. I’ve been hardening them off the last 2 weeks and now they just hang out outside waiting for me to transplant them. I’m scared. I admit it. Tomato plants are so fragile and tempermental at the beginning that I get nervous any time I touch them. Last year we didn’t pluck or trim the suckers or whatever you call that so we’re going to do that this year. If I remember correctly we let them grow wild until about July and the finally my husband convinced me to leave him alone with them for a morning. When I came back he had hacked and twisted them into submission. I was afraid they were dead but they kept giving us great tomatoes all season long.

This year I also have to be a bit more careful about blossom end rot. I had that problem with some last year. I have the lime and I have to be more diligent about checking the water reservoir early on. They (I use the Garden Patch) say you only need to water once a week but I found myself needing to water every couple of days and when it got scorching sometimes daily.

The potatoes are doing well. They took a while to get going because it was still a bit chilly outside but they’re doing well now and we will probably need to top them off with more potting mix next week.

That’s all for now!

Well it’s gardening season again and we’ve started. How about you?

For the potatoes we are hoping to repeat the success we had growing the potatoes in the Smart Pots.

We are reusing the same Smart Pots. They have been rinsed and nicely stored since last season. I did find a few petrified bagworms embedded in the fabric but (deep breath) I’ve moved past it since my husband dug them out for me.

I’m kicking myself for not saving some of our potatoes over to plant. We ate the last of them about a month ago. So I reordered seed potatoes from Seed Savers. I purchase two variets. The same from last year, German Butterball, and a new variety, Purple Viking which has a white flesh and purple skin.  Both of these came in nice and large. Last year the German Butterball were kind of small and so were the tubers from our yield.

Now I have learned from the Homestead Blessing sisters and their homemaking gardening video that if you want larger tubers don’t cut your potatoes down. That’s it in a nutshell so don’t quote me but we had larger tubers from Seed Savers so we did not cut and we planted them whole. Even though they had several eyes per tuber.

Now to plant the potatoes we used 2 15 gallon and 1 30 gallon Smart Pots. We filled each pot halfway with potting mix that had mixed with 1 shovel full of peat moss. Then we added 3 tablespoons of Oscomote granules (don’t know the article said to use this fertilizer).  Then we stuffed about 5 potatoes per pot down in the stuff. We let Peanut do this and hope they are placed far apart enough. Then we watered.

Now we wait…(when the plants are about 3 inches above the soil line we are going to fill the rest of the pots with the same concentration of planting mix).

It’s January and for the first time in my life when this month hit I was excited to get gardening catalogues and start my planning.

Admittedly I’ve done nothing BUT I am excited! Doesn’t that count?

This year I’ll try and do better by the onions, carrots and lettuce. I’m thinking of picking up a few more Smart Pots for those. Not too many because I’m still gardening in a small space.

I’m finally reading my copy of Momma’s Guide to Growing Your Own Groceries by Kimberly Eddy. That has me stoked even more. True this gardening guide is not written with the container gardener in mind but it is written to help you get started growing items you will actually eat (rather than just start fondly at). Having lived in Europe Kimberly’s book is great with practical advice on thinking through the placement, design and application of your garden so that your grocery budget will be reduced (the ultimate goal).

Kimberly has been at this (13 years in 2005) much longer than I have (year 2 wahoo!) so I’m counting on her advice to help me have a better harvest. We did GREAT! with our tomatoes and potatoes last year. This year I’m adding better cucumbers, lettuce, onions, carrots, and peppers to the bunch.

So are you gardening this year? And if so what are you planting?

I know I’m actually a bit late in posting this but hey! I’ve been busy.

So tomato season is over. We fluctuate in temperatures and haven’t gotten down to freezing…yet but we did already take down one tomato plant.

So where are you with your kitchen garden? Here are some tips I came across when trying to decide what to do with the tomatoes.

1. If your tomato plants still have plenty of tomatoes still on them and you just aren’t ready to give up yet even if winter is knocking at your door you can uproot your plants and hang them upside down somewhere like your garage or basement. Apparently some have gotten tomatoes well into December with this method. I was going to try it but it just seemed a tad messy for me and remember I’m the squeemish gardener.

2. You can pick all your green tomatoes and make up all kinds of green tomato salsas and my mom’s favorite fried green tomatoes. This did not ring my chime so I passed on this.

3. You can pick your big green tomatoes, clean and dry them and either put the all in a box or wrap them individually in newspaper and put them in a box in the garage or basement. Check them every other day or so and when you see some starting to ripen place them on the window sill.

We did this. We had a TON of tomatoes and handed them out with still more than enough for ourselves. We washed about half of them (before becoming exhausted) and wrapped those in newspaper. The rest we just put in a box. Funny enough the ones in the newspaper are ripening the fastest. Our windowsill is very colorful.

I’m also a freezing a few whole. Following this tip.

This week’s Dollar Stretcher Tips has a great tip for stretching your tomato growing season. I had truly wondered about this and I aim to try it. Read it here . Scroll down to Stretching Tomato Growing Season.

You’re Welcome

Okay I think it’s officially fall. The start of school and the month ‘September’ do that for me.

But my tomatoes think that NOW is the time for them to get going.

They are growing beautifully!

It’s annoying and so wonderful all at the same time.

The amish paste are doing the best. There are tons of them and the plant is just growing crazy.

One of the black tula plants, which I thought surely had given up on life revived and has a ton of tomatoes.

The golden (something or other, I’ve forgotten the name) has finally given us two tomatoes and they are the biggest the whole garden has seen.

The only thing that has happened is about two weeks ago my husband and peanut daughter went out there when I was busy elsewhere and pruned everything. Now they don’t do all the reading, analyzing, and agonizing that I do. They just cut what looked bad and IT WORKED!

Go figure…

Wheee!

So today the Quinn family got out early to harvest their potato yield. If you remember we have been testing out growing potatoes in the Smart Pots all summer. Apart from great soil preparation and haphazard watering (over the balcony) we have done precious little to these potatoes.

We grew the German Butterball and some rogue russet from Wild Oats that was going to seed in the fridge.  That was a last minute decision and not a bad one

So here is the potato gardening in a summary fashion (you know like “sum it all up”).

• We grew our potatoes from seeds from Seed Savers
• in Smart Pots
• using this method
• My husband laid the pots on a flat piece of wood that was sitting on top of some 2×4′s over the dirt (good decision)
• We picked a few new potatoes when the flowers died off
• We found some of those green seed pods and made the decision to get rid of those too.
• The foilage started to die back about 2-3 weeks ago (recommended time) and based on work schedules, school starting and the season we made the decision to harvest today.
• There were big VERY VERY ugly slugs and LOTS of spiders under the wood but we had not seen them all summer… well the spiders yes but they are always here.
• We planted 2.5 lbs of the German Butterball. They are estimated to yield between 2 to 3 times their planted amount. We are estimating we yielded about 10 to 13 pounds.
• Our rogue potato, of which I have long forgotten how many I planted, yielded some nice sized tuber and probably about to 10 lbs.
• It is rewarding to see the fruit of your labors even if it is not gargantuan amounts. We are sharing with family and hopefully next year we’ll have some for friends
• I will be planting these again next year. This time using all of our pots for the German Butterball (you just rinse them out and keep them in the garage…after removing the spiders of course). I’m going to try and save a few of ours for seed but order again from Seed Savers. The only thing I might change is how many go in each pot. I have to do some research. Everything else worked well and it was a great learning experience and activity for our daughter.

Whew! The gardening advice never ends!

We have some very flucuating weather as of late and as a result I’ve had some misses with a few tomatoes. I allowed a couple to ripen on the vine and unfortunately this happened during a heat spell which has left them mushy. Ick! Nothing worse than a mushy tomato.

So here I’m linking you up to some good tomato picking tips

• Hyde Park Garden Fair Vegetable picking tips (scroll to the bottom for tomatoes)
• Tomato Casual. None of these were the reason for my tomatoes being mushy but just in case this might happen to you…