SeedGrow....Back, Back, Back Again!

Great news to all that were a fan of the seedgrow posts last year! They are back, and I get to review not one, but three different kinds of seeds. Renees Garden has been kind enough to provide the seeds free to me to grow and review.

The first seed I am trying out is Container Lettuce Garden Babies Butterhead.  For ease of my fingers, I will call it Garden Babies, or Garden Babies Lettuce for short.  I planted two long planter boxes with the Garden Babies seeds.  Some have germinated and are on the way to becoming cute little lettuce butterballs. You can see mine above.  Yes, I know my soil is a little dry.  It is going to rain tonight, so I didn't want to use the hose water if nature will take care of it for me in a few hours.  Evidently my compost has a few weed seeds in it...a post to come on that later.  But they are small and easily pulled out. 

This picture was provided by Renee's Garden to show what the lettuce can look like when it is mature.  I think they are so compact and adorable!  The packet says "These cute, perfectly formed little butterhead rosettes have softly folded leaves, a lovely buttery texture and out-standing sweet taste"  The packet also says it is slow to bolt and heat tolerant.  I am getting hungry just thinking about eating these tasty little lettuces. 

Pay no attention to my little weeds...I wait until they are just a little bigger so I can grab them out easily. 

The next seed I am reviewing is called Large-Leaf Container Basil Italian Cameo.  I think I will call it Cameo Basil for short.  I just sowed the seeds in here, so there is nothing to see yet.  They will be sharing the pot with a sweet potato vine.  I am collecting basils this year, so I am curious to see how this one stacks up.

This is the Renees Garden picture of the Cameo Basil.  The packet states that Cameo was created by crossing Genovese basil with a dwarf basil.  That is why it looked familiar!  The pot I am putting it in is right on my back patio...so it will be easy to go out and snip some when I am cooking.  The green leaves will look great with the purple sweet potato vine.  

Lastly, I am growing and reviewing Butterfly Flowers Summer Splash Marigolds.  I will probably call them Summer Splash.  I love marigolds, they are just so cheerful and easy to grow.  They also do so much to attract beneficial insects and keep pests down naturally.  The packet states that this particular marigold blooms longer than any they've ever seen, and you don't have to remove the spent blossoms.  I might remove them anyways, just to keep the plants looking tidy.  I planted the seeds in my wagon planter on the back patio.  I seem to be having some trouble with getting these to germinate.  The seeds probably dried out, I have been busy and we had some hot winds the other day.  However, these plants need room to spread out, so I think I can transplant some around and end up with plenty of flowers.

This is the provided picture of the Summer Splash Marigolds.  Whoo-whee!  If this is how big they get, I better spread mine out more.  I can't wait to see how they look all together in my planter.

I am so excited to be doing this again, and I can't wait to see how everything grows this season.  I will be back in future posts to talk about all the fun things I will be doing with these plants as they grow.  Hope you see you here.  Again... I'm growing with the SeedGROW project. Thanks to Renee's Garden for the free seeds.

I Can Already Taste the Salsa: Potting Up the Tomatoes

It actually wasn't raining this weekend!  I took advantage of the nice, dry, but windy weather to pot up my tomato seedlings.  My potting table is one that belonged to my guy's grandmother.  I believe it was made by his grandfather.  I thoroughly enjoyed taking my little tomato seed 'pucks' that I tried out this year and dropping them into the bigger containers.  It was very easy and convenient.  You can see in my picture that I had a LOT of tomato seedlings in this tray.  The tray came with 12 rows of 6 little soil pucks.  I planted them all in tomatoes and they did great.  Whenever I buy something from a greenhouse and it comes in one of those little 3 or 4-inch pots, I save them.  They make great containers for moving the seedlings up and giving them more room for their roots to spread out. 

As I potted them up, I put them into rows on the patio, and my stepdaughter gave them a drink.  This was their first day outside in real sunlight.  It was very breezy, so they got sunlight and movement.  The breeze stimulates the seedlings to grow more sturdy and stocky, and then they will be better acclimated to conditions outside.   When I pot the seedlings up, I also bury them just a little deeper then they were before.  When I plant them out in the garden, I will again plant them where the lowest part of the stem is below the soil.  Roots will grow out from that part of the stem and make the plant stronger. 

This is the final class picture.  69 tomato plants!  12 different varieties.  The fun part now is carrying these things in and out of my basement for the next few weeks.  It makes me want a greenhouse, NOW.  But sigh, for now, I will get extra cardio going up and down the stairs.  These seeds are actually ALL heirlooms this year too.  I will have future posts talking about what varieties I chose to grow and why.  Until then...are you growing tomatoes from seed this year? 

Wordless Weightloss Wednesday!

I'm Blinky...1...

2...

3rd times a charm!

22 lbs down!

Things I Screwed Up Last Year

Okay, I'll admit...I am far from a perfect gardener. I do a lot...but I don't have a lot of real life help...I sometimes screw things up. So now this spring, I'm having to fix my mistakes. Here's some of the things I'm trying to get right.

1.  My strawberry bed:

This is partially my fault and partially the fault of the person who gardened here before me.   I had a bed full of strawberries when I moved in...it was WAY full.  But grass grew up in the bed and choked out half of the strawberries.  Yes, I should have weeded it more.  But there was no way I could have mulched it, because the strawberries were too thick.  Maybe they needed to be divided anyway...that is what I"m telling myself.  And I am wondering if these people put ANYTHING at all down under this bed to keep the grass out.  So, I cultivated the soil and pulled out as many roots as I could.  Short of emptying the whole bed, I don't know what else to do.  I replanted some new strawberries into the bed, and I"m going to buy straw this week and mulch around the plants to keep the grass at bay.  This is the first raised bed I've ever worked with...and I am finding the grass problem frustrating.  How do other people deal with this?

2. Asparagus Patch

You can see the bricked off area over on the right...with grass in it, and some tools laying half on top of it...that is my asparagus patch.  This one is ALL my fault.  Last year I dug trenches, planted my asparagus crowns, covered it with compost, and promptly forgot about it.  I had SO MUCH grass grow up in that bed too.  I am totally fighting grass at every turn in this yard. That is part of the problem with a new till garden.  Until about this time last year, most of this yard was solid, lush green grass.  Evidently it objected to me attempting to remove it.  So, I had to try to get rid of the grass here too. 

This is what I did for now.  I know, it's not pretty.  But I think it will choke out the grass.  Underneath, I laid down a thick layer of wet newspaper, only leaving holes for the asparagus crowns.  Then I put the landscaping fabric down over it and used those big staples to pin it into place.  I didn't have any straw at the time, but now I do, so I will be putting some cheerful bright-colored straw down to cover up the ugly black fabric.  I'm hoping with a little spot weeding around the openings, this will take care of it. 

3.  Blueberry bushes

My poor, poor blueberry bushes.  I planted them last year, and thought I was helping them by adding stuff to the soil because they love acid.  However, chemistry was my weakest science.  I added LIME to the soil.  Somehow, I must have misread something online, I thought lime would help the soil.  DUH DUH DUH...I have basically been torturing them almost to death for the whole last year.  I read just lately that lime is a base.  Oops.  Well, that would explain why they didn't do ANYTHING at all.  So, this year, I mixed up some stuff specifically for blueberry bushes and poured it on.  I also incorporated the blueberries into my sun bed, and mulched them with everything else.  I'll show pictures of that in a future post.  They already seem to be perking up. 

So those were my 3 major screw ups in last year's garden.  Like I said, I am a self taught/internet taught gardener for the most part, so sometimes I learn things the hard way.  I took these pictures a few weeks ago, and since then, spring has really been getting going here in Iowa.  It is easy to be positive and clean up old messes when everything is growing and blooming.  I just hope I can learn from this, and do things better in the future. 

Please, please, please tell me you've screwed things in your garden too.  I want to hear about it...LOL. 

My Little Piece of Nostalgia

The deputy and I went to the Iowa Machine Shed restaurant recently to celebrate his birthday.  He totally LOVES this restaurant.  They are truly a farmstyle restaurant.  But don't think fresh and local...think overalls and gravy and ham.  Think butter, rolls, fried, and gingham.  If that's your thing, then great for you.  But if you're trying to lose weight...then it is kind of scary place.  I used to love going there when I was younger and I didn't care about calories.  They have a fantastic baked potato soup.

So anyways, my favorite part of going there is spending some time in their shop.  They sell all kinds of cool cooking and decorating stuff, as well as LOTS of pretty smelling stuff.  This time, they had these cool seed baskets up on a top shelf. 

They were all slightly different.  I made my, "ooooo", sound and went over to look.  The deputy came over and said, "You know what these are?  These are the things they used to have on the table. "  I realized he was right.  They used to keep these on the table to keep the water pitcher and various sugars and such in.  I also realized I HAD to have one.  We spent quite a while looking for one that had all the elements I wanted.  First, it is red, white, and blue...which I have a lot of things in this color scheme.

Also, it had a chicken on it.  I don't have chickens, but I really WANT chickens.  I also have really wanted to change up my table decoration for a while.  I had a tray there holding napkins and all that, but it's been there a while.  

The basket also had the word 'seed' on it.  It was a done deal.  A piece of local history for only 10 dollars. You can see I have already made it at home on my dining room table.

They also had the corresponding 'silo' salt and pepper shakers.  My son had never seen this type before.  I had to explain to him about the 's' being for salt and the 'p' for pepper.  In all, I was very pleased with my purchases.  It's not too often I can decorate with something that fits into the seed/gardening/chickens decor category that the deputy also likes.  A  win/win situation. 

My son just wanted me to take his picture since I had the camera out.  I very rarely get a true smile out of him, so I had to include this picture.  Isn't he turning into a good-looking young man?  I think so, but I'm a little biased.