On My Mind...

Square foot gardening started...

I'm so excited - last year I actually grew some food and hopefully this year we will have more food from our garden and less from the store / farmer's market!

I have flipped through and read from The Square Foot Garden and I love every page of it - I'm kinda nerdy like that.  I love planning out a garden, digging in the dirt, and luckily I have a husband who is awesome and indulges me with things like raised beds with an awesome mix of peat, vermiculite, and compost, and builds really cool vertical growing towers. - he even has a conduit bender which I have heard is a cool guy tool :)

 

I get to stare at my awesome garden from my window in my front room where I spend most of my day - LOVE IT!

For now we have put seeds in - beets, chard (lots of it), corn, green beans, radish, carrots, broccoli and I have one more box to plant plus my regular garden area from last year.  I can't wait to see little seedlings peek their heads out!

**I had a neighbor bring me  a bunch of tomato seedlings that are about 4" tall anyone know if that is tall enough at this time to actually produce some good tomatoes in Oklahoma?

I love my flowers...

Every year about this time...well, I say every year like it has been forever...how 'bout this is the 3rd year I believe...my sunflowers and zinnias are here to greet these bright yellow finches.  The first time it happened, I spotted one on top of a sunflower leaning over to get the seeds.  It was my first year in the house and I thought someone's bird had escaped...

Now, I just wait for my birds to come back knowing that I have planted all the things they love!

 

*sometimes they even bring a date...

My thoughts on Zucchini and why I am NOT happy!

Mother nature and I are not getting along today...

Let me tell you a few things about zucchini after attempting to grow it for 2 years!

  

looks like a decent zucchini right?  Maybe let it get a little bigger like the last one...

Not happening because I have been invaded with not just squash bugs...

 

but also squash vine borers...

 

this little zucchini was my attempt at picking when it was small thinking we could still eat it...after sitting for 2 days I notice a little hole so of course I dissect it (although I failed biology for not dissecting animals, but that's another story)...this little stinker pictured above is a squash vine borer.  Google in all it's wisdom pointed this out to me when I googled "somethings killing my zucchini"...amazing how google can make me knowledgeable on any subject in a matter of minutes!

 

Now for those of you who are growing zucchini...good for you...please send some fresh homegrown zucchini my way.

Watch out for these neat little things on the leaves though...

 

That my friend are squash bug eggs...if you kill a huge squash bug like the one above, just know that eggs will be inside of him also...(I won't show you that picture)

In my morning of checking out all the stalks - looking for little holes of the squash vine borers entrance to sucking the life out of  my 2 plants, looking at each leaf for eggs, and then finding what the base of my plants looks like...

 

I am sad...

I had hopes of bowls full of fresh zucchini...

Not happening for me this year.  I dug up one plant, tossed it and will deal with the other plant later today.

3rd year will be the lucky year right?

What I will do different next year

• prepare my dirt
• plant earlier (hopefully we won't have a month of rain)
• be a nerd and inspect each plant every day...I might need to quit my day job

Happy friday!

1500 ladybugs...

We have aphids on the tomatos...so of course I ordered 1500 ladybugs...isn't that what everyone does?

It was very cool to watch that many ladybugs come crawling and flying out of a mesh bag.  The kids had ladybugs crawling all over them...awesome night!

 

 

 

Garden love...

 

I honestly don't know how many times a day I just walk out there...sometimes just for a second...simply to enjoy all the sights.  Our little garden may be a small little suburban garden, but it makes me smile every day!

***

Photo details so I will remember...strawberry, zucchini, radish, radish, carrots, rasberry blooms (hopefully soon to be rasberries), grapes, jalepeno, eggplant...I'm so excited and I just can't hide it....

Bird ID...

We spotted this bird over in the garden one morning, he hung around for awhile and then took off.  I looked in a bird book that we have, and think maybe it is a flicker...

 

He was pretty cool to watch as he picked around in the dirt, I'm just hoping he likes grub worms since I ran across a few as I have been working in the garden.

And yes, I know there's alot of grass / weeds in what I call the garden...it looks much better now.

Diggin' in the dirt...

 

 

 

 

This is the perfect time of year...of course as I type this, it is pouring down rain...

We have spent so much time outside, planting asparagus, tomatoes, zucchini, cucumber, onions, chives, carrots, radish.  My oregano is going crazy...i've got to start using it.  We have enough strawberries this year to fill up a small bowl - which is awesome (actually the bowl in the fridge that is full, is bigger than the one in the picture - i'm just saying)  The grape plant, I just noticed last night, has some little grapes growing on it!!!   I love this time of year...

Now, I just need to plant my flower seeds and then enjoy!

I'm excited to see how it all turns out looking...I have been reading about companion planting, so my garden will also have some color, and hopefully be bad bug free so we will be able to enjoy some yummy homegrown veggies!