Flower Bargains from Walmart

These heavenly smelling beauties followed me home from Walmart today.  Only $1.98 with lots of blooms and more to open.

Texas Bluebonnets, A Gift from the Wind

We have 3 bluebonnet plants in our yard this year, only one is in a flower bed.  Many thanks to the wind who dropped the seeds.

This plant is right next to our water hose so we have to be a little careful around it.  I'm hoping to collect seeds to spread some more around.  

We are expecting thunderstorms with hail today and tonight so I snapped this photo before that happens.

Seeds are Sprouting!

The seeds I started are sprouting.  I have Merritt Collards in the back, Homestead tomatoes in the second row and TX wild tomatoes in the front.

They were very slow to start this year so I put a heating pad on low under the pie plate I'm using.  Two days later I had sprouts!

I really like the Jiffy pellets to start them in, it makes it easy and nearly foolproof.  Just soak the pellets until they swell up, then stick 2 or 3 seeds in the hole and cover with a bit of the soil.  I set mine in a glass pie plate and tape paper notes as to which ones are what, then I use my desk lamp with the bendable neck to get the light down close.  I put a bit of water in the plate as it goes dry.

Once the sprouts are up I plant the whole thing in a 2" pot.  Those pots go in a plastic bin so I can water from the bottom and easily carry them outside during the day.

How I Made a Garden Journal

For the last 3 years I have used a blank book as a garden journal, but it doesn't work for me very well.  I would forget to write down what I did and then have a catch up day.  And it was hard to compare plant lists, what worked and what didn't and what the weather was like.

After reading about bullet journals I came up with a design for a garden journal that works for me.

I bought a green binder, some divider pages, regular ruled paper, graph paper and those pretty garden stickers for fun.  Here's what my divider pages say:

Building Projects

Garden Layouts

Seed & Plant Lists

Months

This is a building project page that shows how I build my raised beds:

 In this case I pasted the original journal page onto a ruled sheet of paper.

This is this year's garden layout.

You can click on the photos to enlarge them.  For the seed & plant list pages I wrote the items in green then made notes in red if there were problems and a red star if they did well. 

On the back of the page I taped labels for things I wanted to keep.

I drew up my own calendar pages because I wanted them to be vertical and I didn't care about days of the week.  I like garden quotes and I've added them in on the backs of pages for fun and color.

Each month has its own divider so it is easy to compare say February with other Februarys from different years.  I am making my notes in pencil so they don't bleed through and because I am used to pencil from doing genealogy.

I put the current month in the very front of the binder for quick and easy access.  One thing I have started is adding the high & low temps for each day and when it rains.  Having it right on top in the binder and adding the weather info is keeping me active with it.  Not much to report this month except I am still picking tomatoes.  Our first freeze is due in a couple of weeks though.

Planting in a Pot Tip & How To Improve Garden Art

Before planting in a large pot you will need a pool noodle and one of these serrated steak knives - it makes it much easier.

Use the knife to cut the pool noodle into 1-2 inch chunks depending on the size of your pot.  For some very large pots I used 2 noodles for each one.

Just put the chunks into the bottom of your pot.  It creates excellent drainage, is lightweight and easy to deal with if you dump everything out to change things.  It's also inexpensive since pool noodles are about $1 each.  If you are really strapped for cash and your pots are large you can use empty plastic water or soda bottles.  I did that 2 years ago to some large pots and it works fine.

***

I had gotten this little terra cotta bunny at a yard sale for 50¢ but I really didn't like the terra cotta color.  So I splurged and bought this:

It was not cheap but I have plenty left for another project one day and my faux stone bunny was much cheaper than a real stone bunny would have been.  Now I need to decide where to tuck him in between plants.

And this plastic pot got an update.  It is years old and the plastic is getting brittle.  So using my accent blue paint and green trim paint (just semigloss exterior paint from Walmart) I gave it a bit of pizzazz.  The garlic chives a friend gave me look pretty happy now.  Oh, and pool noodle pieces were used in the bottom of this pot too.

Come See the Wildflower Garden

The wildflower garden I planted last year has come up and is absolutely gorgeous this year.

We have a horseshoe drive and this is inside it.  Our big mesquite tree grows in one corner.  This bed is about 3 feet wide.  I put in a few plants from the nursery last year but most everything you see is what has come up from the 1000's of seeds I scattered last spring.  Those Queen Anne's Lace are 4 feet tall!

I had gotten a lot of seed packets marked way down at the end of the season and those along with a wildflower mix a friend gave me is what I scattered over this mostly bare bed last spring.  Very little came up last year though I did have blanket flower blooming it's heart out all winter.

And it is still blooming.

Above you see the arbor I redid 2 years ago with branches instead of the falling apart lattice it used to have.

Here's Buttercup, my supervisor.

And I just purchased a Red Flame grapevine, sharing the planter box with a yellow chrysanthemum about to bloom.  The planter boxes on either side of the arbor were made last year from scrap wood.  They are bottomless so they have good drainage.

This bush is just under the mesquite tree, you can even see a couple of red berries amongst the flowers on the top right.

This is the other side of the horseshoe, only a few blooming plants here, most of the ones I purchased did not make it, but a few did.  I will sow wildflower seed here this year and next year it should be gorgeous too.  Hopefully all will resow themselves from here on out.

How I Made 2 New Orbs for the Recycled Garden

It's been raining for days and the ground is still too soggy to do much.

So I got out these $1 nail polishes I had for crafts, a navy blue bowling ball and a red hollow ball made of resin.

This is the bowling ball, it took about 3 days.  I just kept brushing on the polish and overlapping colors, finishing with some pearlized polishes that blended things nicely.  I used a small foam wreath from the dollar store, inside a grocery sack, to set the bowling ball on so it would not roll.

And the smaller ball, it took 2 sessions.  Same system for painting this one except that I went around it instead of up and down.

They look a bit like planets, don't they?

I have another bowling ball that I think I might cover with pennies.

And remember this one I covered in marbles?

Maybe the yard will dry out enough that they can all find homes outside tomorrow.

My Baby Tomato Plants are Growing!

"Okay", you say.  "What's the big deal about growing tomato plants?"

Well, you see this is the very first time I got really good results from planting seeds!

I started with 3 seeds in each jiffy pellet and they all germinated for the first time ever.  So I had to thin down to one plant and then as they grew I had to plant the pellets in larger pots.  All were happy except one Ol Timey Yellow tomato-that's the empty pot you see.

From the left I have 3 wild Texas tomatoes, 2 Ol Timey Yellows, 3 Mexican Calabash and 3 Arkansas Travelers.

I am not sure where I will put them all, I may need more beds.  I plan to grow them like my friend Mikey does.  He lets them grow naturally, sprawling on the straw covered ground wherever they want to go and he has great yields.  I have 2 4x4 beds and a 3 x 8 bed that is raised.  The other 2 raised beds are spoken for.

I already have potatoes planted in one raised bed and the 2nd will get green beans.  I plan to plant melons and cucumbers in pots to grow on the fence, they did well last year that way.  

In addition, I purchased 2 thornless blackberries with a gift card I received.  Those need to get planted this week, they are leafing out already.  And my 2 peach trees are in bloom!

More updates later!

I Have Babies!

Tomato babies that is!

I've not had good luck trying to start seeds in a pot, so this year I bought some Jiffy peat pellets.

Success!  The row on the left is Texas Wild tomatoes, red about the size of a golf ball.  The next row is Ole Timey Yellow, the first one to pop up.  The 2 rows on the right are Mexican Calabash and Arkansas Traveler which are a little slower to start.

The pellets are little small so I will probably have to transplant into a pot before going into the garden bed, but I am pretty happy so far.

How To Make A Marble Covered Bowling Ball

If you are like me you have seen bowling balls like this on Pinterest.  I love the colorfulness as it brings such a bright spot to the garden.  Plus I am doing a round/orb theme to the front garden.  So here's how I made mine...

I bought my marbles, it took 15 bags to cover a regular bowling ball.  I bought the marbles at the local dollar store but Walmart carries them too, $1 each.  It says 50 but one is the larger shooter which I set aside.

I bought 2 tubes of GE all purpose clear silicone that is waterproof, we already have the caulk gun to put it in.  See this post to see how to keep your large tubes from drying out.  I did not use all of the second tube.

The bowling ball I picked up at Goodwill for $2, it is a solid black one.

I glued a canning jar ring to the ball where the finger holes are and filled in parts of the holes that showed with silicone, the ball was hole side up for this part.  This makes a nice stand for while you are working on it, it won't show in the garden.

Once the base was dry I flipped the ball over to stand on it.  Then squeezed glue in a small area on the top and started pushing the marbles into the glue.  I worked in a circular pattern and tried not to have very much glue squish up between.  I worked in small sections as I came down the sides, sometimes you have to push the marbles back up into place but they will hold as the glue gets drier.  Do try to use different color marbles next to one another if you can.

After the top was done I waited until the next day to work on the bottom.  Same scenario but I worked from the marble edge up to the ring base.  This was a bit easier as the marbles could not slide down now.

And here it is completed.  The silicone glue made kind of a frosty colored grout in the gaps.  I'm not sure what it would look like with a multi-colored bowling ball but any solid color I think will work well.

Now to find the perfect spot in the garden.

Spring 2015 Garden Tour

Yes, I still have more cleanup to do but here is my potato bed!  So much better than last year, I bet I actually get nice potatoes from this crop.

Cauliflower about 1 week away from harvest.  It is so sweet and I can't believe how fast these grew!  I have 3.  Onions are peeking out on the right.

The 6 cabbages are making nice heads, they look picture perfect!

And the green beans are up!  The lattice keeps the cats from digging and using the bed as a litter box.

The iris are loving the rain we have gotten and are just glorious.

Mom's roses are so full of blooms you can barely find the leaves.  These are minis.

More minis

And I love these orange minis.

There are several of these bushes.

I like these the best, seems the baby grasshopper does too.  But I am not looking forward the grasshopper invasion we get every year.  They have not been a problem so far but they are annoying.