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Showing posts from April, 2014

Raised Beds: Everything you wanted to know and a little more...

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Raised beds are gardens with side walls built of stone, brick, cinderblocks or, like mine (shown here), wood. You can find kits and/or building instructions anywhere on the web. Building your beds this way brings the garden soil up above the landscape of your yard.  This is especially good if your soil is of poor quality or has poor drainage.  A bed is usually about twelve inches deep which reduces the amount of bending needed to tend to your plants, but still gives enough room for the roots to grow. But make sure you build it in a sunny location so your vegetables get full sun. Some of the advantages to creating raised beds are:     1)    The soil warms up faster in the spring, which gives it the ability to dry out faster than your normal garden beds.  And for an avid gardener, that means you can plant your vegetables earlier.    2)    The soil stays soft because it is rarely walked on like a huge garden, so tilling in the spring can be easily accomplished with a hoe.   3

Today is National Arbor Day

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               There is nothing like sitting in the dappled shade of a giant Oak tree or a sprawling Maple listening to the leaves flutter overhead, tossed by a light summer breeze. Besides my family and friends, I have to admit, it is the biggest thing I miss since moving out west.   Apparently, I am not alone. Today is national Arbor Day. The foundation of which began in the late eighteen hundreds, when J. Sterling Morton and his wife moved to Nebraska.   Being avid gardeners, they established a large garden which included a variety of trees and shrubs they missed from their gardens back east. Soon, the idea caught on.   Others settling in the area missed the trees as well, but soon learned the more important reason for the planting them was to provide a windbreak for the fierce Nebraska winds, which had the added benefit of keeping the topsoil in place. Morton a proponent of planting trees wrote articles for the local papers and created training materials to educate the

Growing Tomatoes

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It seems that everyone who thinks of starting a garden wants to plant tomatoes.   And rightly so!   They taste good right off the vine, or in salsa, or your favorite soup.   The list is endless…and yummy! Although they can be one of the easiest plants to grow, there are a few things you should know about growing these red delights. Starting from seed. If you are leaning toward starting your plants from seed, here are a few suggestions: ** Don’t overcrowd your seedlings.   There is a natural tendency to plop a couple of seeds into a pot so you can assure at least one of them will grow.   There is nothing wrong with that, but you need to be certain as they start to sprout they have plenty of room to stretch their legs, otherwise it will inhibit their growth. Thin the seedlings about the time they get their second set of leaves.   Do this by GENTLY transplanting individual seedlings into larger 4-inch pots. ** Give them lots of light.   Tomato plants need strong direct sunlig

Getting the Scoop on Dirt

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One of the first things I do before starting another garden bed is examine the current state of the soil where the bed will be located.   In Ohio, I was blessed with an abundance of rock-hard clay soil. I hope you caught on to my sarcasm because I didn't even try working with it.   With the help of my three strong sons, I removed the sod, and then dug four to six inches down removing all the offensive soil.   I then went to my local garden center and had high-grade gardening soil trucked in. Raised beds are also an option.   In Nevada, I have the opposite problem where soil was concerned.   I live on a beach with no water.   The ground around my home is nothing but sand.   Here I used raised beds because I didn't have to worry about drainage as I did in the clay soil of Ohio. My hubby made boxes made of leftover wood and I filled them with soil from a local garden center. Both of these are extreme cases.   If you have good soil, then rejoice, but it doesn’t mean your s

Good Friday Thoughts

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How do you view Jesus? Today, Good Friday, as I read through Isaiah 53, my view of Jesus became clearer than ever before. (I love the way that happens!) Many verses in this chapter of Isaiah, I know by heart, but had I really heard the message? As a Christian, I know Him as a gracious loving God who extends mercy and grace to his children. Jesus stood in our place, taking on our sins all while enduring excruciating pain as the Roman soldiers drove nails into His hands and feet. As I watch the news, I am befuddled and angered by the many accounts of people pushing anything to do with God from schools, from public signage, and from their lives. We’re living in an age of declining Christianity. Or are we? Isaiah states that Christ had been “despised and rejected by men.” (v. 3) Even then, when Jesus walked this earth, people snubbed Him.   The passage states they actually hid their faces from him.   Can you imagine passing people in town, greeting them with a smile, only to hav

My First Online Order

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On Monday, I talked about the benefits of ordering plants online. Today I thought I'd share a story of my first order. I remember my first online order.  I had meticulously scoured the catalogue, determining what exactly I wanted in my new garden.  I planned for spring, summer, and fall flowers so my garden would sparkle from the time the snow melted in the spring until the leaves on the trees changed in color in the fall. Weeks later, I received several boxes of plants.  I opened them up, greeted by the fresh scent of dirt and new growth.  Pulling each plant from their protective packaging, I envisioned the mature plants shown in the catalogue, their stems reaching for the sky.  That is until I opened one package and found a sprig of growth not much bigger than the top third of my pinky.  Really?  They expected me to plant this small thing and have anything resembling a plant by summer?  I’m sure God with his vast wisdom and abundant creativity was laughing at me when I cal

Ordering Plants Online

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I order a lot of my perennial plants online.  Yes, the plants are smaller (as shown here), but you can get them at a discounted price—especially if you watch for the sales in spring.  It’s a good way to buy several plants without breaking the bank. I usually sit down in early spring with a catalogue from my favorite nursery(s) and make a wish list.  I review each item to make sure they grow in my zone and in the area I want to plant them (shade or sun, dry or moist soil).  Then I whittle that list down to the amount I want to spend.  For the most part, I’ve never been disappointed in my purchases and have had good luck with the plants.  They come shipped to me in containers wrapped in packing material meant to keep them moist and protected.  The key thing to remember is these are first year starts to your garden.  If you are expecting them to fill your plot the first year—you’d be mistaken.  However, by the following year, they are about the size you’d purchase in a nursery for

What my children will do differently - 8-Track Tapes

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    Eight Track Tape Day – who would have thunk it.   If you have fond memories of driving down Main Street, slipping a 5.25 x 4 inch plastic cartridge into your car stereo and enjoying your favorite rock and roll song, you probably grew up in the sixties and seventies.   And, you remember the heyday of Eight Track Tapes.     This was a time when muscle cars were supreme and rock-and-roll blared through every radio station.   Eight Track Tapes paved the way for mobile music, which quickly moved on to cassettes and CD’s giving everyone the ability to play their favorites whenever they wanted to.   And wherever they wanted to.   But did you know Eight Track Tapes were created by the jet mogul William Lear? It was an endless loop of 1/4 inch magnetic tape, which contained eight parallel soundtracks and a never ending supply of music.   Problems with the design soon arose especially when the cartridge got dirty or the tape jammed.   It was impossible to rewind the ta

Easy-to-Grow Vegetables

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You want to start a vegetable garden, but don’t know where to start. You browse through a seed catalog or the rack of seed packets in your local hardware store and suddenly everything looks tempting.   It’s kind of like doing your grocery shopping when you’re hungry.   Start small.   Select your favorites from the easy-to-grow list below.   Some of the crops need to be started indoors or purchased from your local nursery as seedlings.   Most are sown directly into your prepared soil. Green beans . You can start these seeds after the last frost of the season.   They are easy to grow and can provide a bumper crop that will last all winter if frozen. They come in bush form or vines that will twine their way up a fence. Radishes . Radishes grow in all soils and they mature in only a few weeks, which make them a great crop for kids to grow.   Plant seeds directly into the soil.   Depending on your zone, they can be grown twice a year—in the spring and in the fall. I’ve even found a

Plant of the Month – Lungwort

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April's Plant of the Month – Lungwort The lungwort plant (or Pulmonaria) is one of my favorite plants because of the multi-colored flower petals that bloom from a single plant. Every spring I looked forward to the brilliant blue, pink, or white flowers of the early-blooming Lungwort plant.   When not in bloom the leaves, either spotted or plain depending on the variety, continued to stay full through the season and into winter. They grow best in high-humus soil that retains moisture. Although lungwort tolerates dry conditions, I have yet to try it here in the desert. Specifics: Light :   Sun, Partial Sun, and Shade Zones :   2-8 Plant Type :   Perennial Plant Height :   6-12 inches tall, depending on variety Plant Width :   1.5-2 feet wide, depending on variety Flower Color :   White, rose, blue violet flowers, depending on variety; variegated leaves, depending on variety Bloom Time :   Blooms spring and summer, depending on variety Landscape Uses

Running out of Gas

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I’m not necessarily a NASCAR fan, but was amused when hearing that Dale Earnhardt Jr. ran out of gas while on the last lap of a race costing him first place. I thought only individuals with broken gas gauges did that—like my husband!   Only there weren’t crowds to help my husband out, or a team of mechanics waiting around the next bend with a gas can in their hand.   Nope.   He called me. I have to set the scene for you before going any further.   He worked second shift which normally put him home just after midnight.   One night a week he was on a bowling league that met after work.   This was before the concept of ATM’s on every corner.   (Okay, I’m dating myself just a little.) It’s before cell phones.   AND, there were very few all-night gas stations in our area. About 2:30 my phone rings.   I had just gone to bed after a late-night Mommy-I-need-you session with my infant daughter. He tells me his car is stranded alongside the road, he had to walk a mile to get to a

So you want to Start a Garden (Part four)

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Continuing with our questions from So you want to Start a Garden (Part One) How much space do you have for a garden? Or maybe I should ask—how big do you want to make your garden?   My first major garden, but not my first garden, was quite large.   So much so, when I had dug up all the sod and unwanted dirt and was waiting for good soil to be brought in, friends asked if I was putting in a swimming pool.   The funny thing was . . . they were dead serious! It took several days to put in over 500 plants to fill the area.   I don’t suggest doing that unless you are a seasoned gardener.                It boils down to how much do you want to grow? I’ve grown a successful vegetable garden in not much more than a six-by-six foot plot. It provided tomatoes, peppers and green beans—enough for what I call a taste of summer.   If you are planning on canning or freezing your crops for winter meals, you’ll need something much bigger.                Some plants are space intensive.   Th