My Hosta's they are turning brown!

Loosing a large tent in the back yard last year really hurt. The bed that is up close to the house has lost a very prominence piece of shading and all hell is breaking loose now. Weeds are shooting through the stones, some of the ferns are simply falling over exhausted and my poor poor Hosta is starting to turn brown!

Fortunately I think it has more to do with my watering them than anything else. After reading through some other sites on line I came across this page;

http://www.extension.umn.edu/yardandgarden/ygbriefs/p153hostadisease.htm

Since the browning appears to be random and spotty, I believe they are simply to moist. I put a large cement bird bath into the middle of the bed and I think filling it up with water is causing my Hosta's to stay damp.

When to pull a cucumber plant.

If this is your first year planting cucumbers you may have lots of questions about their care. While they can be regarded as fairly standard when it comes to seeding and growing, knowing when it is time to pull a vine is very important. Cucumbers are slightly different than your run of the mill veggies, once a single cucumber has "went to seed" (Turned yellow/orange, puffs up) the entire vine is done producing.

While planting my row of cucumber hills I must have accidentally dropped a seed into the pathway. After finding the sprout  I decided to leave it and see what happens. Everything was going quite well with it, I had trained it down the side of the pathway and it had gotten quite long. Unfortunately the very first cucumber it produced was yellow and very disfigured looking.

Fortunately the other 5 plants are doing quite fine and have been producing quality cucumbers for a while now.

Harvesting Tomatoes!

The last few days I have been able to finally start harvesting some tomatoes, yay! Only a hand full so far, but plenty for tomato sandwiches ;) My wife (not growing up on a farm like me) was surprised when I brought in slightly hard tomatoes and proclaimed them ready. She was used to the kind you purchase from a store, where they have had time to age in packaging and transport.

The basic rule of thumb I have for picking tomatoes comes from my grandfather and goes some thing like this;

• Note when a green tomato starts to turn
• Wait at least 3 days 
• Give the tomato a very gentle tug/twist

If it pops right off the vine, its ready to go. Otherwise give it one more day, and pick it no matter what. If it still looks like it needs a little bit of ripening sit it in a sunny spot inside for another day or so and let it finish ripening. Pulling them a little early relives the plant from having to "feed" it, and as a bonus most varieties get just a little bit sweeter while ripening off the vine. 

My pond is a never ending task

I have one of those preformed plastic ponds, complete with preformed plastic waterfall,  available at your local super store. Just finished building the waterfall part of it a nice enclosure, with enough room to plant some flowers around. Even got around to putting a couple different aquatic plants into the water. To date I have 4 lily pads above water, and a fifth one on the way!


One of the things I am very proud of is reusing a cheap stand alone fountain as the sprayer. It creates a nice looking effect to see the water gently gushing up and then falling down a two tiered fountain into the waterfall feature. However this morning I noticed that the water had stopped flowing, it appears that the tubing for the pump and the copper piping on the fountain no longer wish to hold hands and play nice.

Oh well, guess I need to make another trip to my local home and garden store for more supplies :)

Broccoli, you are my new arch nemesis

One of my vegetable crops this year was Broccoli. Started from seed I had high hopes for a summer filled with cheese and Broccoli side dishes, fresh cut Broccoli and vegetable dip and even some Broccoli and beef like you would find in an Asian restuarant. Being one of the more expensive vegtables at the market I was even counting on it to help lessen the food bill. But alas it was just not meant to be.

I am not sure where it went wrong, but I have had to pull all the Broccoli plants. Between something unseen eating the leaves and my own in-experience growing them not a single head of broccoli formed. A few different sources online and a couple good friends recommened I sprinkle 7-dust on them, to no end. As I pulled them last night some of them came up without the roots, having been "eaten" at the bast of the main stem there was virtually nothing holding them plant down.

But where one crop ends another begins. Within the next day I plan to have two different vegetable plants put in. A Honey Dew melon that my wife and I picked up from Walmart last night on a whim, and a Pumpkin plant my daughter and I have been growing from seed.

Attention all units, we have a plant down!

The last week has seen some rather strong winds blowing through the back yard, and unfortunately not all of the plants were ready to withstand it. One of the bell pepper plants could not stand against the mighty wind.

Seems the wind was strong enough to more or less snap the poor thing right at the base. I had hoped that it would recover but it looks like that will not be happening. Guess I will need to replace this guy with another one tomorrow.

And some rather happy news, some last minute pole beans have been sighted breaking ground. My daughter got a couple small packs of the beans when she attended the Easter Day event at the White House earlier this year.



While I was out back I snapped off a few random pictures and ended up with one that does very nicely as a wallpaper. Which got me thinking about adding an entire wallpaper section in the future. For now though, here is the original which might kick start something else shortly :P


It works rather well with a multiple monitor setup as well since the sides seem to blend a bit. Taken by setting my digi to closeup mode and just placing the camera near the ground pointed up slightly.

Day Project - DIY Tipsy Planter

Today was such an overcast day in North Carolina I decided to do a quick day project and call it a wrap. After looking around at the yard and thinking about what it needed I came to the conclusion it really could use some more color. The biggest problem with that though is 95% of my yard is considered Full Sun and some of the best color producing plants are of course, partial sun.

So I put on my thinkers cap and came up with a crazy idea! A Tipsy Planter! Basically these are awesome looking planters that can bring a ton of conversation to any back yard event. Plus I could set it up in the very narrow strip of shade which would let me use some of the, in my opinion, better looking flowers.

So, a quick trip to Lowes and Walmart with my daughter and I had gathered everything I needed to build a great looking Tipsy Planter. Here is a picture of the final product;


I had planned on purchasing more "hanging" type plants that would flow over the sides and provide a little bit more texture to the planter. However my daughter was firm in her desire for Vinca's, Petunia's and English Daises, so of course those are the ones that came home with us.

As for the other items that you will need.

• Garden Stake - I purchased a 6' and drove it roughly 2 - 2 1/2 feet into the ground. Be sure the one you get will fit through the drainage holes in your pots.
  
• Planting Soil - I went with a pricey Miracle Gro variety but feel free to use your preferred brand.
• 6" Terracotta Pots - I got five of them, 3 standard and 2 chocolate colored.
  
• One large Base Pot - I had an old one laying around, be sure the one you decide on is large enough to accommodate the terracotta pot.

One thing I lucked out on was my base pot had offset drainage holes. This allowed me to set the first pot back a bit and gave me just enough room to plant an English Daisy in the base. If your base pot has a centered hole then you may be better off with some type of ivy or another vine.


Once you have the base pot set how you like it, start driving the garden stake down using a hammer. When I had about 1 foot driven down I stopped and filled the base with dirt and placed the first pot in place to check every thing out.


Ensuring that everything was proceeding according to my vague plans I went ahead and drove the stake down some more then placed the other pots alternating them one way then the other.


Before placing the flowers into the pots I finished driving the stake down so that it was roughly 3" from the top of the uppermost pot. The next step was simply filling in the pots with flowers and giving everything a drink of water.




The only thing I may decide to change down the line is the garden stake. It happens to be a fairly windy day and I can see the pots sway slightly in the wind. As we get closer to hurricane season I may pull the planter apart and replace the garden stake with a length of re-bar*.

*Re-bar is used for masonry work, to help hold slabs of concrete together. You can usually find a 10' length at Lowes for around $5. Whereas the stake has a steel plate around the outside, the re-bar is solid steel.