Aristotle was not Belgium.

Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not "Every man for himself." And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up.

Best line ever in my opinion. And a definite top 10 must see.

Excuse me while I wax rhapsodic for a moment. One thing about gardening that has really opened my eyes is how fretful it can be. I'm growing herbs and vegetables to see if I can. My backyard was a mess so I've had to do a lot of soil conditioning and spent more money than I care to admit so far on mostly dirt. My neighbor is also growing vegetables and when I look over the fence at his garden I see these HUGE leaves and tall plants and he tells me that he's got little tomatillos and the brussel sprouts are starting to flower and I fret because I wonder if my plants are growing at the right pace. My plants aren't small but they aren't HUGE either. But then I remind myself that what I'm growing has a different season than what he's growing and that yes, everything is right where they are suppose to be. I was telling hubby that with work, he's already thinking about July and August but I have to stay with day ahead. Harvest time won't begin until maybe June but definitely July. I can't put too much thought in how much corn I'll have in July, I have to make sure the stalks are where they are suppose to be now. Are they the right color? Are they the right height? Do I see any damage? It's definitely living in the here and now as oppose to planning for the future. But I'll say this, if I get even one produce I'll probably be on the verge of tears busting with pride because, "I.DID.THIS." as my kids are prone to say.

And then I think about farmers. Not commercial farmers but I guess you could say farmers who lived 100 years ago or even further back than that. I think about people who truly live(d) off the land and can empathize with them. If their crops don't grow, they don't eat, it's as simple as that. A common joke is to hear about the farmer who walks out on his porch and just stares out at the field. I often catch myself staring at my plants. Is there anything going wrong that I missed? Is there something else I need to do? There's always something that needs to be done, what is it?

This comes about because the leaves on my peanut plants started to fold towards each other like they are praying. When leaves do that, the cause might be because of magnesium deficiency. The thing is, I decided when I began this project to use Miracle-Gro soil. You don't have to feed the plants for at least 3 months and there are even warnings on the bags NOT to give your plants anything else because you might burn them. I also have not put any mulch on top of the beds because I read that you're really only suppose to mulch twice a year, once when it gets hot and once when it gets cold. You mulch to retain moisture. When I check my soil, it's at the exact moisture level that it's suppose to be: at a finger's touch it feels damp and some soil sticks to my finger.

So the leaves on my peanut plants have started to fold inward and I also noticed that the corn I planted the peanuts next to, the stalks look yellow-green as opposed to some other corn that look vibrant dark green. These are signs of magnesium deficiency. A google search later and I find that a simple fix is epson salt. 1 teaspoon of epson salt to a gallon of water. I take the plunge and mix up a gallon and pour some on the plants and spray some directly on the leaves hoping that I'm not killing them by giving them too much of one nutrient. This morning I wake up and yay! The peanuts leaves are wide open and the corn stalks don't look yellow green as much as they look almost neon green. I did it! I figured out what was wrong and I'm fixing it. And because I'm fixing it, I might have peanuts before I know it.

So it's good to be wrong about the fretting and it's nice to be able to look it up just to be sure. I can't imagine doing this without the internet at my fingertips.

Because I was afraid of worms, Roxanne. Worms!

In addition to gardening, I've also tried my hand at vermicomposting. It sounds easy. Get a bin, put a bunch of worms in it, throw some dirt and shredded paper and start piling in your kitchen scraps and voila! In no time you'll have some of the best compost around for your landscape.

So I head to a local feed store, Buck Moore Feed & Supply and pick up some red wrigglers. And they came with directions. Worms. Came with directions. Feed them anything you want! except oranges and go light on the onions. Shred in any paper! except not glossy. If the environment is good the worms will start reproducing like crazy! and they don't like to be crowded. Oh yea, and worms don't like to stay in their own "castings" also known as worm poop so remember to change their environment.

...huh?

Now I start thinking to myself, "These are worms. How hard is it to keep worms? They don't like to eat certain foods? How picky of an eater are worms?! I understand the paper, glossy paper is harder to decompose but I have to watch the worm population? I can't even begin to wrap my head around that. And I understand not wanting to be in their own poop but how do I determine when it's time to change the .... worm litter? I mean my cats have developed pretty good signals as to when THEY think their box needs to be changed... they start throwing the cat litter outside the box but what exactly do worms do? Are they going to start leaving the box and doing who knows what on the kitchen floor?

After much research in the library of Google, I've found out that it's for one thing called vermicomposting and vermiculture. There are many, MANY philosophies about vermicomposting and I finally found the wikiversity about it here and it really provides comprehensive information on the entire process.

Some points I'd like to make:

The most important thing is that your bin does not have a smell to it or that fruit flies do not appear. If this happens, the worms are not processing the food for some reason and are thus not happy. Check for the following:

Bedding is to dry

Too much food (worms can't process it quickly enough)

No movement or activity when worms are prodded

No sign of worms

Check your bin once a week

Aerate your bin by moving everything around at least once a week

Worms are not a big fan of "animal" products such as eggshells

As far as the worm poop goes, everything so far has told me that once it becomes too much, the worms will begin to try to migrate out of the poop. This can be seen by the worms beginning to crawl along the wall of the bin. For starters, it seems the best bin setup is a continuous flow setup. I've decided to go from a single bin to a continuous vertical flow setup. That's just another fancy way of saying I'm stacking the bins. I went to Wallyworld and bought a 3-drawer plastic storage cart (sans wheels) and drilled holes in the bottom of each drawer. I like this setup best because I can see in the drawers without having to open them.

Overall though my worms have been happy which makes me happy. What can I say, it's the simple things in life.

That's Follett. He's an idiot. Probably no film in the camera. But that's another story

Picture Post! Because there is so much I want to document but I've got a sick kid and I'm on a roll with cleaning up the backyard and I don't want to stop. It only looks terrible now instead of horrible.

Corner update

Those blotches of green seen between the tree and the window are Asian Jasmine. That brown disk in front of the window is a thermometer/hydrometer that we can see from our bed. I know we could have gone with a digital one but this one was cheaper and I don't know... funnier. But that's another story.

This is the garden by the grill (with our rat terrier Bruce making a cameo)

In this is red cabbage, red and white onion, rosemary and (hopefully dill) but that's another story.


This is the other two gardens and my homemade seedling shelves.

These (will) have sunflowers, cucumbers and watermelon but that's another story.

My homemade seedling shelves, I LOVE them!


We're prone to calling it the seedling condo

but that's another story.

Of course we're using popsicles sticks as seed sticks


And I'm being creative in my seedling containers


which I have an opinion on containers


But that's another story.

By George, she's got it!

Remember here where I decided this landscaping thing would be done in phases. Well chuck it, that's not how my brain works and I've found that the quickest way to get from point A to point B is to go with that flow not against it. It turns out the best path for me is the one I create while I walk and with google as my compass, I seemed to have figured out the layout of my backyard! Much happiness for me. =)

So here is a hardly to scale picture of my layout.


GB is Garden Beds. The one next to the patio butts up against our grill which I love. Our patio is brick and was laid by hubby which there's a story in there but that's for another time. Once the patio was laid we had enough extra bricks that he could actually build a grill. At first he did it more because he really wanted to grill and our gas grill had just broke. Once he built it, we fell in love with it. There isn't any mortar so hubby can change it as he sees fit. He's made it taller and thinner, shorter and fatter. Needs a shelf? Simply rearrange a wall. I could go on and about the virtues of this grill. Maybe for another post. To get back to the picture, just to the right of the grill is a tree and around that tree I'm going to plant basil and garlic. Originally I was thinking of putting an herb garden specific to those herbs that hubby uses to grill. After a mini-brain storm session, we realized the only herbs he really uses are basil and pepper. Armed with google, I did a quick research on growing black pepper, piper nigrum. Near impossible to do apparently. It's easy to get the seeds but from my 10 minutes of study it's very hard to germinate the seeds and suggestion are to just get a plant. I found two places that will mail the piper nigrum plant, one in Australia and I already forgot where the other one was. Alas, it does not look like we'll be growing our own black pepper soon. How cool would that be though.

So back to the picture. to the right of the house, where the beige is will be river rock. To the right of the shed, there will be a compost bin and the 4 bins to the back right of the shed will be a rainwater collection system. I should mention here that my timing of coming up with this idea is impeccable. It's AFTER we've had literally 6 months of almost non-stop rain. Naturally, now that we're actually coming out of the rainy season, I have a V-8 moment and realize the perfect place to put a multiple 55-gallon drum rain harvesting system. Go figure.

The red rectangle in the back will be where the wood is stored. Not only do we like to grill, but we also have a fire pit AND a wood-burning fireplace which we like to use on the 3 or 4 super cold days we get in the winter.

The green spray paint on the left of the shed will be where native wildflowers will be planted. The light beige is a ground cover if I remember correctly called Alyssum. The dark purple will be Asian Jasmine hopefully taking off from where the light purple indicating where Asian Jasmine has already been planted. The two black circles are pecan trees that aren't going anywhere and the three red circles will be where the Italian Cypress trees will go. The black box by the cypress trees is some kind of telephone box thing and the gray circle is a telephone pole located in our yard.

The Garden Beds by the way are doing wonderful! The ones in the back of the yard have sunflowers and will have cucumbers and watermelon and pumpkin (hopefully). The one by the grill has red cabbage, red onion, white onion and rosemary and hopefully soon I'll be adding dill.

I told ya. It's all about defying the odds.

So much to say I really need to update this more frequently. But I want to take pictures along the way and that's what slows down the updating.

The seeds are doing fantastic. My original plan was to put all the seeds in containers and this is where my brain synapses don't quite connect. Guess what happens when you 15 sunflower seeds. You can end up with 15 sunflower seedlings. So the seeds sprouted wonderfully and I ended up with a bunch of sunflower seedlings which each require at least a 5 gallon container. Yikes. True, you can plant 2 or 3 to a container and then weed out the ones that don't become dominant. But in my lack of confidence in my skills, I was afraid the ones I didn't pull out wouldn't make it either. So I basically kept ALL my sunflower seedlings. I have some in pots big enough for them now but after pricing containers for the rest, I decided to just jump in the deep end and go with raised garden beds. I bought enough wood for Hubby to build 3 and have set up 2 gardens. I also did some research and discovered 3-Sisters Gardening. After more google-fu, I discovered that there's more to 3-sister gardening, there's a whole concept of companion planting and have embraced this concept completely.

I also had some, what does the corporate world call them, "learning opportunities", along the way. I lost an entire batch of cucumbers because I transplanted them into the ground to early. Basically, when transplanting container plants, you should wait until the plant has essentially outgrown it's current container. If you transplant them to early, especially when going from container to ground, it is very easy to "shock" the plants. The easiest way to determine a plant is ready to be transplanted is when you see the roots coming out of the drainage hole but I've discovered that another good safe way is to just judge the size of the plant compared to the container. See, this would be a good place to put a picture of one watermelon plant that was ready to be transplanted and one that isn't.

Another learning opportunity has been the seedling greenhouse. When I first got the seedling greenhouse, it was late February/Early March. The days were still high 60's (F) and the nights were still cool. I put my seeds in their little peat moss thingy and place them on the front porch where they got maybe 2 hours of direct sunlight in very cool weather (my front porch faces northeasterly). With my second batch of seeds that included all my pumpkin seeds, the days were warmer. I left my little seedling greenhouse in my backyard where the seeds got up to 7 hours of sun a day in mostly warm weather. I essentially baked my seeds and subsequently, none of the pumpkin seeds germinated. I couldn't figure out why so I re-read the direction on the greenhouse package and did a big, "Oooh, that figures" when reading the part that the greenhouse is to be kept out of direct sunlight. My third batch of seeds, I left inside by a westwardly facing window that received maybe 2 hours of direct sunlight on cloudless days and within a week, the little seedlings were literally pushing the lid of the greenhouse up/off. I never knew how excited seeing seeds germinate would make me.

I also bought some marigolds to plant in my garden beds. Marigold is a great companion plant for all vegetable and herb gardens. Marigold gives off a pungent scent that will deter most insect pests. French Marigold, which is the ones I planted do require routine hosing to deter mites and whiteflies, but when looking at this in my garden, it's worth the extra work



Oh, I almost forgot another "learning opportunity". Did you know Painted Lady Butterflies only live for about a month after changing into butterflies? If you want to release them after watching them come out of their cocoons, it's best to not get them until after the last frost as you can not release them until the low is above 60 (f).

Our little Heimlichs were able to enjoy a little bit of freedom before their time here passed.