Planning Spring's Plantings - Garden Post

Nymeria's First Snow

With the frost in the air getting more and more bitter, I can't help but dream of warmer days. The smell of marigolds, while I flip through a Southern Living Magazine with a sweet tea in hand - sunning on the porch.

It's enough to make me start thinking about my plants and my garden and my seedlings.

Last year, I purchased a grow light, which was just the bees absolute knees in terms of prepping seedlings for spring planting, but after a particularly viscous set of aphids, all my seedlings were destroyed and with it my hopes of a magnificent harvest. So I recouped what I could and struggled along the rest of the summer with an eggplant (destroyed by a hornworm), 2 pepper plants (produced until the first frost), and a pineberry plant (my pride and joy).

When the chills of fall set in I pulled my pineberry plant and the runners I had cultivated indoors with me, but a long thanksgiving break killed one of the runners, and little Nymeria did in the rest. So I'm back to my sole pineberry plant hoping fervently for some warmer weather.

But what to grow with my pineberry plant - what to grow... what to grow...

I've decided that I'm going to stick with what I know and what I can eat. I want to limit myself to the bare necessities, because we might be moving places in the middle of the summer and it would be a beast to have to move 20 containers.

SO.

What to grow.

I want my garden to have some focus, and I want my garden to not die, like it did this past summer (which might have been my fault - planning a wedding and all that jazz). So I'm going to limit my plants. 

I'm thinking that I should pick up some pineberry seeds and start from seeds, to see how that goes, and add to my one prize, lonely plant. I always love a challenge.

I'm also thinking about branching out into another kind of strawberry - I think the alpines all have a nice small size to them, and one I found doesn't have runners - so that would keep it all in it's container.

I also like having scallions and chives about - they have such a distinctive smell, and my chives grow quite prolifically.

I think I'll bring back some basil. It's always so expensive to get fresh basil at the store, and I do so long for some fresh pesto.

Aside from that... I still have some garlic in the ground, trying to get it to winter properly so that it grows me some big, honking bulbs, but if that fails - I think I'll wait till next summer (2016) to try again.

SO that's it:
Strawberries, Scallions, Chives, Basil.

It's going to be small, but I hope it's at least fruitful.

Best Gardening,

Laura

Peeking at a Peck of Unpicked, Unpickled Peppers - Garden Post

So as last you heard, spider mites were tenaciously taking over JR's and my garden. They had latched onto all of the marigolds and essentially made it their cesspool of a house. Having NO idea what was happening, we had left them there for a while, thinking well... it's spiders, just hanging out building a web, but NOOOOOOO. Effing little spider mites surreptitiously took over my favorite flowers.

So into trash bags they went... then a week later, I noticed the stupid little flecks of vermin crawling on our basil and pineapple sage plants.

Be gone with you! Into a trash bag.

After that I started sniffing out any trace of the red devils I could find, and I found some on our Serrano pepper plant, but you know what else I found on our Serrano? A PEPPER! I FOUND A PEPPER! There was actually a single beautiful Serrano clinging for dear life to the plant. So since we had a beautiful few days this weekend, back out into the garden I climbed, eager to prune and feed all of our little plant-ies!

So FIRST! I put my new beautiful cover onto our Chaise Lounge, because seriously... Never knew how disgusting they got without a cover... and this cover is absolutely perfect, because I can take a shower, throw on a dress and let my hair dry Au'naturale via the gorgeous sunlight. And this cover was made 100% better by the fact it was on clearance at Target! Love Target - Love Clearances!

So now that the furniture was looking good, I watered our plants with some high quality plant food included. Gotta feed those peppers! Here's our Serrano as I first saw it. It's absolutely gorgeous. It was about an inch in this picture, and you can also notice another pepper forming in the upper left hand of the photo.

We've been leaving it to get a bit bigger and as I write this it's now about two inches... yes I've been naughty and haven't written about it in a few weeks, but I wanted to save it for the really exciting news...

Not only is our Serrano kicking ass, growing some tasty peppers, but our CUBANELLE and Banana Peppers are too!!!! The Anaheim is taking it's time, so I've started calling it the Anatime sucker. Soon (aka like 2 months) we'll have beautiful Cubanelles grown straight from our own (HIGHLY pesticided garden)... so... yeah... really concerned about eating them. THEN, I sprayed the ever-loving-hell out of every single plant with a heavy dose of organic pesticide, because, they all needed it.

Banana Pepper!!!! 

Why so in love with all this pesticide-y-ness, do you ask? Well first there was the "fungus," then the clear maggots, THEN spider mites, THEN aphids, THEN whatever pest is on it's way next, because serrrrriously, there's probably a swarm of killer bees coming our way carrying a flock of some bugs I dont even know about yet. Why killer bees you ask? Because they'd block me from going outside to poison the other bugs...

Because why would you even walk outside for a second if there were killer bees on your front porch? Me... I'd call animal control.

But back to the peppers... As you can see in my lovely photos (blurred ever so slightly by my phone case covering the lens... because it's waterproof, because you only drop your phone in a toilet twice, before you realize  it's time to protect your electronics).


 Our Cubanelle is a little behind the rest, but it's actually really exciting to watch the peppers form from the decaying flower buds. Seriously... if all flowers turned into tasty food stuffs, I would hoard flowers like you wouldn't believe... I'd be growing a veritable menagerie of flower-food. But since only a few do, I'll stick to the peppers!

OUR FIRST Cubanelle!!! 

So that's it for this exciting edition of what LoRo kills (hopefully not the pepper plants - though the anatime sucker does look like it has the ugly little flecks that appeared before the spider mites built their web - so we'll see). 

We are having some success with some of our other plants that are KILLING it! Seriously! We'll keep you posted! 

Happy Gardening! 

Stay tuned every Monday and Thursday for more posts!

Sevin Snow - How to Kill Those Garden Pests

I have a love/hate affair with just about every kind of spider you can imagine. I love what they do, but I hate their entire little creepy being with all the living breath I have in my body. Because the ONE time I need them to eat little bugs to save my plants... They frolic with me in my bed instead.

I nearly had a heart attack last night from a spider crawling across the sheets as I watched Pretty Little Liars (LOVE IT!). I immediately started screaming my head off and JR came to the rescue!

However, on the upside this set me to thinking, since the spiders aren’t doing their job in our garden. I have done their job for them. JR and I went to the Home Depot a few days ago looking for pest killer. We found the Sevin Dust (also comes in easy to use spray - if you have a water hose, which we dont).

There will be no mother effin’ bugs on my mother effin’ plants.

After talking to just about every person I knew who grows plants they basically said that I had bugs or a fungus, but after seeing the creepy little clear maggot you can see here...

The maggot is in the upper right hand corner on the edge of the buried Jiffy Cup

… I decided it was bugs. The organic insecticidal soap I had been using was not doing the job, so Sevin Dust it is.

I DOUSED my plants in the lethal snow.

And then the rain came and washed it off.

And then I came back with a vengeance taking the death blizzard to a whole new level. I dusted EVERYTHING. The plants, the soil, the boards of the porch. EVERYTHING.

Those bugs have met their last day on this planet.

They will die.

I shall kill them for what they did to my plants...

I shall kill them dead.  

I also had gotten some advice that was essentially, pluck the affected leaves off the plant, which I did to the new basil plant We’d gotten to replace the one that the roofers destroyed, but every time I plucked off a new leaf two more were showing signs of deterioration.

Needless to say, that plant saw it’s last day. I literally plucked a plant to death. Don’t be like me.. don’t be a plant plucker.

So for our summer dead plant list, we’re now up to two.

R.I.P.

Thai Basil

Dill

Thai Basil, You'll Always be Remembered 2013-2013

I actually think that this plant is the one that originated the bugs, because it had the highest level of contamination, so it’s only fitting that the afflicted should be sent on to a better place. A happier place, where spiders do their effin’ jobs!

Only downside now...

We have to wait 14 days to eat the herbs

LAME!