Abandoned garden greatness March 19, 2013

For anyone who uses the excuse “gardening is too much work” I say your excuse is invalid. These wonderful veggies are from seeds planted at my mother-in-law’s back in December, before I left my husband. I planted the seeds and gave them no other care. The radishes were a bit overgrown and tough but sweet. The lettuce is wonderful and shows no signs of suffering from the lack of care. This is just a small part of the crop I gathered and it was really no work at all. I was not even around and my mother-in-law didn’t even know what it was and did not care for it in anyway. Moral of this story: stop making excuses and just plant something!

Baby ducks in North Chuck March 16, 2013

They are staying at the same hotel as me.

Playing with Reciprocal Roof Designs | SculptingEarth March 14, 2013

http://sculptingearth.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/playing-with-reciprocal-roof-designs/

Peach tree guild update March 13, 2013

What a little oasis of life. Onions and garlic are the root crops here. They will help keep certain insect pests away. Strawberries and red clover are the ground cover. The clover adds nitrogen to the soil and the strawberries act as a trap crop for some very destructive little moths. Oats and wheat were sown as a cover crop, to be knocked down later to enrich the soil. Mums and bee balm are also a part of the herbacious layer and will help to attract beneficial insects, as will the “Blue Girl” rose bush. There is some russian sage I was given thrown into thr group as well. I also have scattered wild flower seeds here. I can’t wait to see what all comes up as the season progresses 🙂

If at first you don’t sucSEED March 11, 2013

Remember the post about damping off?….well it only got worse.  I will spare you the grewsome details but let’s just say “total loss” would be an appropriate term for my baby tomatoes and peppers.  Some of the tomato seeds I did not have extra of so I guess I will not be growing them this year.  I have restarted Cherokee Purple, Roma, Rutgers, and Chadwicks Cherry varieties and still have the tree tomatoes and italian heirlooms growing.  I also restarted all of the peppers and a couple other varieties of hot pepper as well.  Now I have Serrano and Ancho (Poblano) in addition to the Early Jalapeno.  The sweet peper varieties are Jimmy Nardello’s Sweet Italian, California Wonder, and some sweet baby bells from seeds I saved.  I am not sure of the actual variety of the baby bell peppers but I saved seeds from yellow, orange, and red ones.
I managed to get a good population of fruit flies going in addition to the bacterial problem and ended up pitching most of my baby citrus.  What I didn’t pitch some nocternal critter was nice enough to destroy for me.
Enough bad news….the Dragon Fruit plants are really starting to take off. 

I ate a delicious pineapple and have started the top, based on the directions from last month’s Lowcountry Fruit Growers Society meeting.

Chris Carnevale sent me some “Ruby” blood orange seeds via USPS and I have them and some grapefruit seeds germinating.

I have some sweet potatoes soaking, hopefully depeloping slips for me to plant.

I have a cutting from a LSU fig rooting (hopefully) in some damp peat.

Last but not least, I bought myself a cute garden sign 🙂