Garden aquaculture June 24, 2013

There were some roots to battle but like most ponds mine started with digging a hole.

The hole was then lined with cardboard boxes taken from a store dumpster, a blue tarp found along the side of the road, and finally a pond liner.  The liner is part of a poond kit I bought on clearance over the winter.  The fake lilypads were part of the kit as well.  I also added a small formed plastic part to help form a small waterfall.  Shallow areas got a thin layer of pebbles.

I added plants and fish soon after that.  There are some real lilypads in the deep area.  The more shallow areas got a mix of pond plants and plants usually used in aquariums.  Within a day of adding the first plants a toad came in and laid eggs.  You can tell they are from a toad, not a frog, because the eggs are laid in a chain instead of a cluster.

Less than a week later thousands of tiny tadpoles hatched. 

I found a swamp hibiscus at a local nursery and added it to the edge of the pond as well.  One of the secrets to a successful system is having a balance of fish and plants.  The plants use the fish wastes which keeps algae overgrowth from becoming a problem. 

Since this is a garden feature, as well as a place to grow fish, I am aranging stone around the waterfall.  It isn’t completely pretty yet and you can see all of the stuff that makes it run.  There are 2 solar powered water pumps and a solar powered air pump.  The small solar pannels can be seen sitting on te rocks around the waterfall area.  I would like to buy a bigger solar pannel and put a battery in to store the energy so the pond will circulate at night but it is fine for now.  The real secret to keeping water oxygenated enough for fish is to have a large surface to volume ratio.  That is part of the reason for the large shallow areas in the pond.  These areas also give space for shallow water plants to live with just their toes in the water and a safe, warm area for baby fish and tadpoles to hang out.

These are not the fish in my pond, but the grown up version of one species.  These golden talapia are a great food fish and capable of surviving a variety of water conditions.  I have several babies in the 1-2″ size range (I think there are 7) in my pond.  I have also added tropical fish including paradise fish, white skirt tetras, black fin neons, and tiger barbs.  The tropical fish will thrive and breed over the summer but when cooler weather gets here I will have to either set up an indoor aquarium, adda a heater to the pond, or sell the originals and their offspring to a fish store.  Most tropicals will thrive but eat less during the winter with water temperatures as low as the mid-low 60s.  They will slow growth and eat less in cooler conditions so expect that if over wintering tropical fish in an outdoor pond.  Temps much below that will kill most tropicals so there does need to be a plan for their safe keeping.

I am still waiting for the lilypads and other plants purchased dormant to grow but the rest of the stones are in place around the edge.  I will tweek things a little, especially around the waterfall but for now it is complete.  I’m sure I will add more plants and maybe try growing lettuce floating around on top or some other such craziness but I am already enjoying my little pond.  It is both an attractive garden feature and a place to grow fish for both food and sale in the aquarium trade.  Total for supplies, including pond kit with liner, waterfall liner, water pumps, air pump, stones, plants and fish is less than $200.  This is because I buy things on sale or clearance.  The pond is about 5’x8′ and 3′ or so deep in the center.  It is home to a variety of life already and I can’t wait to see how it changes as nature works its wonders.

Memorial garden May 27, 2013

Planted in loving memory of the trees which once stood here. They are buried here btw 🙂

Today in pictures April 14, 2013

Strawberry plant with dew on the leaves

The beginnings of my first bkueberries of the year

Yay mushrooms....ugly ones even as mushrooms go but they help break things down so that my plants can use the nutrients.

The view along the moat/ditch

Stevia that truely is in the raw. It has lettuce and peas in the background as well.

Crazy wild blueberries

My not so lovely nemesis. This is a lone star tick. Please note the white dot on the back.

Sorry to my friends and family up in Michigan, still covered in snow...here is my first ripe tomato of the year.

Mustard greens going to seed, peas 5' tall and blooming, figs starting to leaf out....spring has sprung 🙂

The area I was working on today can be seen in the background here

My moat (aka the ditch) and lovely raised planting mound currently starring tulips

Pink tulips out in full effect

The shirt and I were both white when I started

Today’s flower seeds

This is far from being everything for the day, but here are the flower seeds I plan on planting today. Some are being planted for specific purposes. An example of this is the marigolds that will help keep root nemotodes away. Others, such as nasturtium, will hopefully act as a trap plant drawing pests away from my fruit and veggies. Some of these flowers have medicinal uses as well. The purple coneflower is a great example of this. It is also known as echinacea, known worlwide for immune boosting properties. Even the flowers with no specific purpose will add beauty for us humans and a varied food supply for beneficial insects throughout the year. Some insects have a relationship with specific plants such as swallow tail butterflies and pipe vine. Others have more general needs such as european honey bees, which will take just about any nectar or pollen they can get. This makes it important to plant a diversity including native plants in your garden. I have some transplants and veggie seeds planned for today as well…..let’s see how far I get 🙂 I’ll try to remember to update as the day progresses but my regular readers know how that goes sometimes.

That silly peach tree April 5, 2013

Remember that crazy peach tree that popped open buds way back in February?

Now I have baby peaches and the other 2 peach trees are just starting to bloom. The trees are all small at this point so numbers are limited, but I should have a couple months of peach harvest this year. When these trees grow up some it is going to be just great.

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!

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 🙂

The potato plan February 9, 2013

I posted the process of creating a bed for a double row of potatoes a couple weeks ago and, after a little research, I plan to plant companions in the bed tomorrow.  Plants from the cabbage family seem to grow well with potatoes, so most of my cold weather veggies can be planted in the middle of the potato rows.  This includes cabbage, kale, and broccoli.  In warmer weather beans and corn both do well with potatoes.  Perhaps I will plant beans here as the cabage family is finishing off in late spring.
Some plants help to repel Colorado Potato Beetles.  These include tansy, nasturtium, coriander, catnip, flax, and lamium.  I already have nasturtium seeds and will sow them directly into the soil after the danger of frost has passed.  Nasturtiums also repel a wide range of other pests.  One possible problem is that they prefer poor soil.  I have not ammended this bed with any compost or manure so hopefully it will be poor enough for them.

If I plant beans and corn here at the same time as the nasturtium the vines, which generally stay under 2′ tall, should grow up the corn.  Eventually the beans may over take them but that is ok.  Nasturtium leaves and flowers are edible and delicious in salads.  I may add some flax, catnip, or coriander as well but I do not have a definate plan to do so.  I do not really use coriander in my cooking, nor do I have a cat or care for catnip tea.  Flax interests me but I know there is not the space for much.  Still, I would like to try my hands at making linen and do use flaxseed oil.  These are all things to consider when planting your companions.  Each plant should be useful to you as well as groupings being planted to benefit each other. 
You can also interplant crops that will grow quickly and be finished before potato digging time.  Radishes, scallions, spinach, and leaf lettuce can all be good choices for this.  Since I am not living on the property to be looking after such crops I do not plan to do this but if you are planting in the yard where you live and want the most productive space possible give it a try.  one nice thing with potatoes is that they store well in place so if a longer standing crop is planted over them you can just wait to dig the potatoes. This does leave them in a place where root pests can get at the though so keep that in mind when planting.
Some plants should not be planted near or after one another due to similar nutrient needs or similar disease and pest problems.  For potatoes avoid planting after or before tomatoes, eggplant and peppers.  A few others are rumored to increase the risk of blight as well so avoid cucumbers, raspberries, sunflowers, pumpkin, squash (both summer and winter) and tomatoes for this reason.  Tomatoes and potatoes seem to be especially good as passing pests and diseases back and forth so absolutely avoid planting them near each other or planting one after the other. 

Finally starting my tree tomatoes February 8, 2013

Ever since seeing a picture of a tomato plant trellised to look like a tree I have been excited to try one of them.  All it took was a quick search on e-bay and I was able to find “Giant Italian Tree Tomato” seeds from e-bay seller aprilshowers2010.  This was months ago so I do not know if there are more left or not.  You can try contacting the seller I got mine from or just do a search of your own and see what comes up.  The seller also sent along a couple of bonus seed packets, one labeled “Italian Heirloom” and the other “Roma” but I will not be planting the roma variety right now since I already have 6 pots with roma seeds from a different source.  I am going to start the Italian Heirloom and Giant Italian Tree tomatoes tonight. 
To be clear the “tree tomatoes” are not a tree.  They are simply an indeterminate variety of tomato that grows very large and can be trellised to look like a tree.  I am growing quite a variety of tomatoes already but this one still excites me.  The seller sent a sheet of “tomato basics” with tomato germinating, fertilizing, and pruning tips.
These will be getting a late start but there is still plenty of time left before spring.  I’m not sure how many more seedlings I can reasonably take care of in a travel trailer but hopefully at least 12 more since I plan on starting 6 pods each of the Italian Heirloom and Giant Italian Tree tomatoes.

Maybe it was a bad idea…

To leave my warm weather seedlings out in the storm last night.  I have been bringing them in if it is supposed to drop below 45F at night and leaving them out if it is not.  The well water here smells like sulfer and I figured the rain water would be good for them.  Now I am thinking I should have just collected some in buckets for them.  It did stay warm enough but it rained harder than I had anticipated, creating a problem I have never had to deal with before.  The splash deposited soil on the stems and leaves causing some to fall over and others to just look rough.  I tried cleaning them up this morning by spritzing them with a water bottle.  This did very little to help so I did my best to remove some of the caked on soil with my fingers.  They all still look a little rough but I think most will survive.  Tonight is supposed to get down to 39F so I have brought them in for the night.  Here is what they look like now.

cucumber

tomato

On the good side I know that the strong will survive and I want good, strong plants.  Time will tell just how much damage I have done.  In nature I suppose this is part of the natural selection process so with any luck this will actually pay off. 
My tray of cold weather seedlings is living outside full time now and most have been able to withstand the freezes we had last week with no harm. 

The spinach (bloomsdale long standing) although quite cold hearty germinated poorly.  I think it might have enjoyed warmer soil for germination and in the future I will start it on a heating mat if the temps are low.  I had trouble getting the broccoli going as well, but I already knew it prefered warmer conditions than the cabbage, collards, and other winter veggies.  The calabrese variety of broccoli seems to withstand cold better than the di cicco, but some of both have survived being frozen.  This Sunday I hope to get their bed ready and put them in the ground.  I plan on starting more broccoli and some cauliflower in a bed a few weeks from now but first I have to build the beds.  Earlier in the week I cleared the trees from the area where these beds will be.  I will do as much as I can this Sunday.  It is quite a process to go from raw woods to vegetable beds and takes time, especially working alone.  As always, I have planned a week of work for just one day.  Wish me luck and feel free to stop in and lend a hand if you are in the area.

Growing ginger February 3, 2013

Ginger is supposed to be pretty easy.  I decided to give it a try and wanted to share.  This is going to be another one of those posts that will require some updates as things progress but here it is.  I am basing what I am doing on what I have read and will be growing my ginger in a pot since it will not take frost or freezing at all.  I might try some in the ground once the cold snaps have passed.  It might just make it if I get it established over the summer and mulch it deeply for winter.  I will let you know but for now back to growing in a pot. 
First thing you need to do is go to the grocery store and find a nice plump chunk of ginger root.  I am lucky to have found organic ginger, but there is no reason not to use whatever ginger you can find in the store.  This is by far the easiest way to get a start on the type of ginger used for cooking and also medicine.  There are many types of ginger that are more ornamental and lovely to grow if you like.  I am more interested in growing food so the kind from the grocery store is the kind I want.

Pick out a nice plump section with buds on it where new growth will emerge.

a close up of what the buds look like

I have read a few different thing about what the next step should be.  Based on all of the reading I decided to let mine soak in water for a day.  If yours isn’t organic you may want to wash it, soak it and wash it again before planting.  This is because it may have a growth retardant on it which needs to be washed off.  If you do not get it off you might not get it to grow at all or it might be slow.  I do not really trust my organic ginger not to have anything on it plus it seemed like a good idea to soak it so it wouldn’t be so dried out on the surface.  Mine had a few buds so I broke it up a little to make separate plants.  I am starting them in one pot and from what I have read they like, or at least don’t mind, being crowded.

Lay them horizontally with the buds facing up.  They do not need deep soil so you can use a shallow container or only fill the pot part way.  I am using a mix of my native soil ammended with peat and a little bonemeal.  My native soil is very dark and rich looking but sandy.  Ginger likes well drained soil that is evenly moist with plenty of organic matter so the extra peat will help with that and my native soil is sandy enough to drain well.  If your native soil is heavy, clay soil you may want to add large amounts of compost and some sand to the mix.  Be careful adding sand to clay heavy soil because you could end up making some primative concrete instead of goot potting soil.  Clay needs enough organic matter added to be loose and airy, then you can add some sand to it.  If you have really heavy soil you might be better off not using your native soil at all.  You will really just have to judge this for yourselves though. 
Cover the ginger with a small amount of soil.  It likes to be near the surface and planting too deep can cause problems so I left mine peaking out a bit.

Water well from the top so any air pockets have soil washed into them.  After that just keep soil evenly moist.  In warm weather set the pot out in dappled shade.  Add mulch to the top if the soil is drying out too quickly. Keep inside durning cold weather.  They are a forest floor plant and like some shade so you shouldn’t need a grow light.  I don’t have any other tips on this since it is my first try.  I’ll keep you posted on the progress.

How to pick your tomatoes January 31, 2013

Since I LOVE tomatoes so much and am trying to grow all of my own plants this year, I am becoming a bit of an expert on the subject.  I want to pass on some of what I have learned, so here are some things you should know when choosing tomatoes for your garden.
First off you need to know what the terms “determinate” and “indeterminate” mean.  Determinate tomato vines grow to a size, determined by their ancestors.  This is usually 2-4 feet tall.  All of their tomatoes will ripen at about the same time, giving a nice crop for canning all at once.  They are sometimes called bush tomatoes because they stay a small bush unlike indeterminate varieties.  Indeterminate tomatoes will keep growing and producing fruit until the cold kills them in the fall.  If your area has a long growing season you can harvest tomatoes from the same plant for months and months.  They will need some sort of trellis to hold them up, unless you have the space to allow them to vine along the ground.  They look really cool when grown in hanging baskets and allowed to vine over the sides too.  People usually remove any extra side branches and grow one main vine, which can grow to over 20 feet in length.  Old heirloom varieties are usually indeterminate and most modern varieties (including hybrids) are usually determinate.  There are some exceptions to this rule so if you are unsure read the label or ask the seed dealer or nurseryman for help.  Sometimes you will see a tomato variety described as “semideterminate” and those will usually get about 6 feet tall and require some trellising or a good cage, but nothing as elaborate as the indeterminate varieties.
There is nothing wrong with choosing hybrid plants or seed as long as you do not care about saving your own seed.  Seeds saved from hybrid tomatoes will not usually produce plants similar to the parent plant and may grow into a plant with little fruit or have some other problem.  A hybrid is not a GMO.  I could, and maybe should, write a whole other post on that subject alone but for now I’m just going to tell you to google it.  I would like to try saving my own seeds so I am growing heirlooms this year.
Another thing to keep in mind is climate tolerance.  Tomatoes are a warm weather plant but certain varieties are more tolerant of cold or fluctuating temperatures than others.  If you have hot days and cold nights, a short growing season, or just want to get some tomatoes extra early or extra late look for varieties like Glacier and Gregory’s Altai, normally describer as cool climate or extra early.  Some catalogs will have a seperate section just for these more cold tolerant varieties.  There are also early, midseason, and late varieties.  If you have a short growing season you do not want to get late season plants that are going to need 3 months to start producing fruit so make sure you buy a type that is appropriate for your growing season. 
There are also tomatoes known for making paste out of and also for drying purposes.  A couple of well known examples are Roma and Amish Paste.  If you want to make your own paste and sauce or give drying a try, starting with the right tomato for the job will help your chances of having good results.
There are also cherry tomatoes to be considered.  In my opinion every gardener should have atleast one cherry tomato plant.  These rarely make it into the house with me around.  Just like larger tomatoes, there are determinate and indeterminate varieties.  The heirloom, open-pollinated varieties are usually indeterminate varieties but there are exceptions.  If you want an heirloom cherry tomato for your patio or hanging basket, give Whippersnapper a try.
Once you have made it this far in the selection process there is still one VERY IMPORTANT thing to consider and that is disease resistance.  Some varieties will have a cluster of letters after their name.  These letters stand for the diseases that variety is known to be resistant to.  The Roma VFN is an example of this.

I suck at remembering what all the letters mean so here is the cheat sheet.

Beyond this you may want to consider the mature color of the fruit or other special properties.  This shouldn’t be your first consideration but hey, who wouldn’t want a rainbow of delicious fruit to impress the neighbors and draw attention at the farmer’s market?
This is really just the basics here but I hope it helps you navigate your way through the seed catalogs and nursery plants with a little less confusion.

Tomato transplanting January 30, 2013

Since I started these little guys 2 months before they can be planted outside they may require transplanting one more time before going in their garden beds. Their roots were just starting to escape the peat pods and most are getting their first true leaves. At this point they begin to use soil nutrients and will appreciate fertilizer and soil amendments. Since they will be growing at my property I decided to use soil from there in the mix for their new pots. I added about 1 part peat per 2 parts soil and mixed in some fish fertilizer (2-2-2) and bone meal (6-9-0) to the mix along with a little lime and a couple of crumbled egg shells. The nitrogen from bone meal is insoluble and will slowly become available to the plants. The nitrogen in the fish fertilizer is mostly soluble and will be available to my seedlings immediately. For those who do not know nitrogen is the first number of the 3 numbers on fertilizer labels. Phosphate is the second number on the label and is very important for baby plants. The fish fertilizer also has potash which is the third number on the label. This nutrient isn’t found in bone meal so it has a 0. Bonemeal does have calcium though, which is not represented in the typical 3 numbers on the label. The bone meal I am using is 7 percent calcium. If tomatoes do not have enough calcium you will have problems with blossom end rot, among other things. The egg shells and lime are also to provide calcium. Lime is also used to lower soil ph. I haven’t taken my soil sample into the Clemson extension office for testing yet but I know it is a bit acidic and so is peat. Still I used it sparingly in the mix. I will get my soil sample in sometime this weeks and once I have the results back I will be amending the area of the future planting beds according to the recomendations from Clemson University.

bone meal label

fish fertilizer label

lovely mix for my baby tomatoes

organic peat moss to help with drainage and moisture retention

My propery has a natural layer of peat but I bought some just for starting seeds since the stuff in the bag is nice and clean and digging enough for all of my seed starting needs and cleaning it up enough to use would be a bit more of a chore than I have time for at this point. I would like to invest in enough terracotta to do all of my seed starting and transplanting, or learn more about making soil blocks but for now I am using commercially available seed starter pots that come in a tray. I will be able to reuse them a few times, but eventually these will end up in a landfill. Doint things on a budget require compromise sometimes though and I know it.

I also bought labels you can write on. To save money and have less waste I labeled each group of seedling instead of labeling every plant. I would have just stuck to my lists but with multiple trays I think I would have ended up confusing things.

For now I kept the soil level at the same height as the top of the peat pods. Tomatoes are one of the few plants that you can burry deeper when transplanting, but there is no need for that at this point in things. I am not thinning them yet either because I want to be able to save the thinnings and they are too tender to withstand that much handling at this point in their growth. That’s all for now, unless I give a pecan update before getting ready for work. It will have to be a quick one but I think I just might…

Florida King Peach tree ready for spring January 27, 2013

This is one of the trees I just transplanted and it seems to have taken the move ok. I am glad for the more wintery (for the Charleston, SC area anyway) weather we have had over the last week or so. I have been really worried that it will bloom and then be frozen, ruining any chances of me being able to eat a homegrown florida king peach this summer. Check out the buds on this thing.

I hope it either holds off a while longer or that spring is early without any major frosts. The last couple winters have been quite mild and a couple weeks ago it was in the 70’s most of the week. Some of my fruits need more chill hours so I hope it stays cool for a while longer or their buds will be immature and unable to produce fruit this year. Wish me luck. I am truely at the mercy of mother nature on this one.

First strawberry plants

I am sort of suprized to see this already but here it is. One of my little strawberry crowns has sent up a lovely set of leaves. I didn’t expect to see anything this quickly.

Diversity

I like to make planting areas as diverse as possible and enjoy planting flowers together with my veggies and fruits. This picture shows an early spear of asparagus, a blackberry bush, australian peas, bee balm, and the base of my plum tree in the background. I have also scattered everything from radish seeds to tulip bulbs in this area. The squirels seem to appreciate the tulips and have certainly done their best to keep the soil loose here. I don’t think I will bother with tulips here in the future.

Why I write EVERYTHING down January 26, 2013

Have you ever planted something and then forgotten what it was or forgotten where you planted it.  Could you tell the difference between these seedlings if they weren’t labeled?

I know I sure can’t.  This is why I write everything down.  As I plant things I either map, label, or list it.  Here is my paper from the day I planted my cool weather tray and warm weather (mostly tomatoes) tray.

It has listed the type, specific variety, and number of plants of that type.  This is the back of some unimportant mail I got and when finished serving this purpose it can still be recycled or fed to the worms.  It is certainly nothing fancy but it does the trick.  If it were not for this list I would be lost.  I consider blogging something as good as writing something down on paper.  The point is to document what you are planting so later on you know what it is.  From there it is easy to look up any more specific information you may need. 

Trying to make tomatoes happy

This is the warm tray with the cucumbers and okra already moved into larger pots. The closest peat pods have peppers, which are just now germinating. The rest is tomatoes which for the most part germinated within a few days of being planted. The caro rich and marmande super were slower to germinate than the rest but are finally coming up now. The weather has been quite cool for the last week or so and my tomatoes have been stuck indoors. Even next to a window there is just not enough light for these full sun summer veggies so my little tomato stems were all turning purple. On older plants this could be a sign of lacking nutrients but since these do not have any true leafs yet I knew something else had to be stressing them out. After a little research I learned that lack of light or lack of warmth can cause the stems to turn purple. I decided to go back to using a heat mat and also to go buy a grow light.

I have had it for several days now and most of the purple has gone away. The new growth on the stems is green like it should be. I gave them some very diluted fish fertilizer as well, just to be sure. In addition to turning purple a lack of light can cause spindly plants with weak stems. For about the price of a few tomato plants at a nursery (about $12) I have helped all of these little tomatoes to thrive one more. It needs to be quite close to the plants so for now I am just setting the ends of the light on the edge of a taller tray and a tub of oxyclean. Nothing fancy here but it works and that is all I care about.

What a fungi January 25, 2013

I bet you don’t see many gardeners bragging about how well their mold is growing but that is exactly what I am here to do today. I innoculated this peat with soluble mycorrhizae (available from bountifulgardens.com ) and also mixed in a small amount of vegetable and tomato granular fertilizer from Jobe’s Organics. This fertilizer is 2-7-4 and has a wide range of beneficial fungus and bacteria in it. It has a little bit of all purposse fish fertilizer (2-2-2) from “Alaska”. I found this and the Jobe’s both at Lowes and both are labeled for organic agriculture. My original purpose for making up this mix was to have a good mix for moving seedling into when the peat pods were getting too small. So far only the cucumbers and okra had to be moved. Since I put the mix into a tray of 18 pots and only needed 9 for seedlings I decided to use some of the pots to start citrus seeds. This left me with just 2 empty pots. The beneficial bacteria and fungus live on dead plant matter, which is exactly what peat is. I wasn’t sure how it would go without any plants but it seems to be doing great all on its own. Now I can use bits of this to innoculate other soil. I have never been so happy to see mold growing in a pot before in my life. These beneficials are what brings soil to life. They help fend off harmful fungus and and bacteria and also add to the plants root system, helping the plant take up more water and nutrients. This makes them more drought tolerant and disease resistant as well as increasing growth and production. This is my first year using soil inoculant but I can already tell the difference, especially in the roots of young seedlings and cuttings. I especially recommend the soluble mycorrhizae from Bountiful Gardens. It was cheap and it does wonders for root growth.

I finally replanted the last two January 24, 2013

I have been moving plants ever since finding out that I had been working on the wrong plot of land but had taken a break since being bitten by my sister -in-law’s dog on christmas and then catching my hubby being scuzzy and moving out. Last weekend I stopped by to check all of the plants and noticed these 2 peach trees about ready to break dormancy. I knew I needed to get a move on and get them moved or it would cause them a major setback. Today I finally got out there and got them moved. They kind of blend into the background of the picture but here they are in their new home. For company I planted onions, garlic, strawberries, a “blue girl” rose, mint, beebalm, and a variety of wild flower seeds and flowering bulbs. I also scattered come white clover, red clover, and red wheat seeds. Now comes the patience part….