The kale has brought an abundance of aphids to the garden. The lady bugs are chopping down on them and leaving babies behind, like this little guy hanging out on a lettuce leaf. This is Rosie, we got her last weekend. Read about her and her friends over at Backyard Ramblings. I am just a [...]
One of my absolute favorite things in the garden is when I spot new growth. It can be anything- seeds starting to sprout, new buds forming on exiting plants, a little spot of green on a branch, a tiny fruit starting to form. This is a pot of “sprouts” that I found growing in the [...]
As you can see we’re pretty full on the seed starting side of things at the moment. Some of these will be put in the flower garden, others, like the tomatoes, will find their way into the vegetable garden. Sometime. Hopefully soon! We’ve also got a few brugmansia rooting and Chris trimmed up the gardenia [...]
As I started thinking about what I wanted to accomplish to try in 2013, I naturally included gardening. Gardening is such a regular part of my life now, and it makes me so happy. In some ways, it’s hard to believe I’ve been plugging away daily at my “little” garden (which now takes up about [...]
+Unknown morninglory +Bunching onion +Radish +Bunching onions +More bunching onions +Mmmm, radishes! +Mushroom sprouting from the new mulch. Just waiting patiently for things to fill in.
First happy surprise: after whining about the weather, I went out back and found this beautiful blossom on one of my dwarf hibiscus plants. It’s bloomed before (it’s not prolific, but it comes and goes) but never in these particular colors- it’s always been more of an all-over peachy yellow. I’m not sure if it’s [...]
We just moved into our first house, the first house we’ve ever bought I should say, and along the shoreline of the pond/lake we took down quite a bit of Chinese tallow. It was nice that it cleared up the view, such as what you see above of the house across the lake, but we [...]
A week in the life of a container gardener: Saturday: There seemed to be some nasty weather coming, so Gracie and I didn’t spend much time out in the garden today. We cleaned up a bit, trimmed some plants, and watered, although the plants were mostly moist due to the rainy weather we’ve had [...]
So, this week I was looking back to see what creative projects I completed during the month of March and I was a little dismayed at how little I had gotten done. I tried to figure out what the heck I had been doing with my time, and I realized that most of it was [...]
There’s a few downsides to container gardening in Southwest Florida. One of them is the summer. Down here, it rains pretty much every single day from June to October. And not light rain, either- torrential, unhappy, stormy rain. The sun comes out late in the afternoons, but things never really dry up. And the summer [...]
The best thing a garden can do for a child is teach. It is great for unschooling. When I began gardening I always planned to keep the kids as involved as possible. Zoe has always loved seeds, whether that be looking at the different shapes and sizes, or actually planting them. During the summers, she [...]
This week’s theme is Beginnings…however we want to interpret that! Last Fall we had really good success with our cucumber crop, enough so to make many jars of pickles. I was thrilled about this because I had not tried hard in Florida to grow cucumbers, only trying once with poor success. Chris, my husband, had [...]
