By
Administrator on June 27th, 2006
Posted in Organic Gardening | No Comments »
I’ve been MIA lately due to all the other things I have to do which have taken priority. One of these is my organic veggie garden. I’m afraid it’s looking pretty dismal out there these days due to the inordinate amount of rain that we’ve been getting here in the Northeast.
I had to re-plant my bush beans as the first planting was pretty much wiped out by a combination of the rain, lack of sunshine, and some critter or other that’s been taking advantage of the situation to chomp the leaves right back to the stem. I’m wondering if it might be slugs as this weather has surely been to their liking and I’ve found a few on the lettuce and elsewhere. At any rate, it’s been impossible to try to control insects by spraying Neem oil on the plants as it would just wash right off again. This is extra annoying as I’ve just bought myself one of those four gallon self-pumping sprayers and haven’t even had a chance to try it out.
The straw that’s meant to serve as mulch on the garden is still sitting in bales, killing the grass as I haven’t had the chance to get it spread around yet. Of course this also means that the grass and weeds inside the garden are going great guns. THEY don’t seem to mind all the rain at all!
To top it off, I have something kind of weird looking growing along one of the rows. It started out as a neon yellow something that almost looked as though it had been splattered there (like a paint splatter). Next it seemed to swell and solidify and turned a nasty light brown color, and now it has gone to a rusty brown. I’m wondering if it might be some kind of slime mold. When I came across a description of this creature that seemed to span the border between the plant and animal kingdoms in an encyclopedia as a kid, I was absolutely fascinated. I have to say I’m not feeling all that thrilled about it now!
Well, on the brighter side, a few of the tomato plants are blossoming despite the less than ideal conditions and some of the mixed flower seeds I keep throwing into the far back of the garden seem to be providing some color finally. Guess I’ll just have to grin and bear it. Happy gardening to all!
By
Administrator on May 27th, 2006
Posted in Organic Gardening | No Comments »
First of all, I must apologize to anyone who checks for new material on this blog. I’ve been too busy to get here before now this week. Spring is an extra busy time for me as I’m trying to keep up with my store, keep up my inventory of hand-crafted jewelry, candles, and gift baskets, and, in addition, get all the seedlings for my organic vegetable garden planted and maintained.
Our weather has been exceptionally wet around here for quite a while and it’s had an effect on my garden, slowing everything down and making me wonder if the seeds I’d planted were ever going to come up! This weekend is the traditional time for putting out tender plants since we rarely ever have any frost from this point until late Fall. My little greenhouse is full of tomato, pepper, eggplant, celery (first time I’ve tried planting this), herbs, and a few flower plants. At least I hope that’s the case since I forgot to open the door a bit this morning and it may well have gotten awfully hot in there today. I’m planning on getting everything into the ground over the next two days.
Our soil is not the best, being mostly clay and the inevitable load of rocks; however, I’ve been mulching and amending it for a few years now and can see the difference already. Most of the organic fertilizers and amendments I’ve seen have been a bit too expensive for me to buy in the quantities that I really need, so this year I’m trying something new. I bought a 50 lb. bag of alfalfa pellets for only ten dollars and change from a garden supply/feed store and have brewed up a big trash can full of “alfalfa tea”. I’ve heard great things about how plants thrive when watered with it and will have to report later on how this experiment turns out. Here’s an organic gardening tip for anyone who’s been trying to compost large numbers of fallen leaves. If, like me, you have tons of leaves but no ready source of manure to add to it, you may have found that it is extremely difficult to get your compost heap to heat up enough to break the materials down quickly. I received one of those expensive double-barreled composters as a gift and hoped that that would do the trick. Nope. Even when I added the so-called compost “starters” those stubborn leaves would just kind of sit there. Last week I added some yarrow leaves as I’d read somewhere that they were supposed to help in the composting process and saw no difference after a couple of days. I then threw in a gallon or so of the alfalfa pellets and when I checked the composter yesterday I actually felt a bit of warmth in there! I’ll post more on this later and hope to finally be able to report success.
In the meantime, if you enjoy gardening of any type and haven’t already found the “Dave’s Garden” site, you’ve been missing one of the best resources on the web for information on plants and gardening. So, here’s the link:Dave’s Garden Enjoy!