chrispaul97's Blog

Gardens gone wild
Jul 2, 2011 | 10:01 AM PST

Came back from an 8 day vacation to find my garden in need of water and full of weeds. Even though apparently there were terenchal rainstorms the whole time we were gone the heat wave made everything grow crazy. 

But the good news is that we also had a lot to harvest. I'm picking blackberries like crazy, cucumbers and edamame. 

herb garden
Jun 7, 2011 | 6:38 AM PST

Where I currently have my herb garden is a place that has seen many changes in the past 3 years. The area is probably stressed. I also want to add some serious dirt to that area to raise it up about 6 inches. I think I'm going to move all the basil to the veggie garden area. I think I will move the rosemary too but don't really know where to put that one. If I stick it in the vegetable garden and it grows well it will take over the whole place. 

I think for next year I am going to have to till a whole new area and make it pretty for all of my herbs. Oh joy, hubby will love that one. 

bok choy
May 16, 2011 | 5:34 AM PST
Tags: bok choy , lettuce

Just picked a handfull of bok choy seed pods only to find out that I should have left them on the stem until the plant dies. Then I can harvest the seeds. Geez. I'm glad I planted several bok choy. Apparently lettuce does the same thing in producing seeds. All little pods. I'll leave that alone too. 

 

more oy
Feb 14, 2011 | 10:32 AM PST
Tag: blueberries
Planted the blackberry and blueberry bushes only to find out that I have to go get another blueberry for fruit to produce. Problem with being broke is I have no more money for the garden this year. But this does give me the opportunity to see if the blueberries like my soil. I know the blackberries do fine out there. If the blueberry survives I will pick up another one next year or two or three. :)

Spring is finally here ( i hope )
Feb 14, 2011 | 6:49 AM PST

Though I'm sure we will get at least one more frost here in TN. Most of the way done with our new stone wall in the front of the house. Going to plant potatoes today, a new blueberry bush and another blackberry bush. 

The kitties keep trying to either eat my seedlings for spring or keep stepping on them.  They insist that I should not have anything in the garden this year. Oy.

Yellow Squash
Jul 14, 2010 | 3:13 PM PST
Don't let them get too big or too yellow. The skin gets tough and there are loads of seeds inside. Yellow Squash is NOT the same as Zuchinni

Note To Self
Jun 14, 2010 | 12:14 PM PST
Tag: edamame
Edamame likes to start in the ground and not indoors. It grows much taller and is much happier starting from a seed outside. I will have to remember this for next year.

Whatever goes
May 3, 2010 | 5:30 AM PST

This year I have been so busy but want to keep up with my garden so whatever gets into the dirt this year is what I'm growing. No planning involved. I've got garlic and onion almost ready to come out of the ground in about a month. 

I've planted edamame, zuchinni, green pepper, spring greens, shallots, 1 cauliflower plant and blue potatoes. The lettuce is doing great. I only planted a small amount since this was my first time with them. I will be planting more later in the year since they are a cool weather crop. So happy with it. 

 I've got tomato that is growing from last years seeds that were hiding in the dirt. I'm debating on wether or not to keep them there. They are in the way of the potatoes. I might transplat them once they get bigger.

The monsoon we had this weekend might have destroyed the garden but I haven't gone out there yet to check. Most of the garden as you can see from my pictures was under 2-3 inches of water. I guess if nothing else I don't have to water at all this week!

Different
Nov 27, 2009 | 4:20 PM PST

Wow!! I'm gone 3 1/2 months, well okay, almost 4 and I come back and Garden Guides is all different!!! Quite a shock. 

I like it though. Nice touch. 

I planted my garlic and decided to test plant a batch of onions. I usually plant onion in the early spring but wanted to see what would happen planting now.

Ate my last garden tomato the other day. Bittersweet. It was such a small thing. I'm sad now, I have to wait until next year to have more fresh tomatoes. I'm planning on planting more yellow next year and some cherokee purple. I love the smoky flavour of the yellow tomatoes I have and the pure tomato taste of the cherokee.

Rewarding
Aug 3, 2009 | 6:28 AM PST
Tags: zuchinni , tomato

Well, gardening is lots of hard work but is very rewarding. Lots of weeding today, cutting back suckers on tomatoes, cutting dead zuchinni leaves. 

My tomatoes are finally turning colour. I've got at least 5 different varieties so I am anxious to see what I get first. Got more zuchinni and apparently a yellow squash got into the mix of my zuchinni seed because what I thought was a zuchinni plant is growing a baby yellow squash. How interesting.

zuchinni again
Jul 23, 2009 | 7:29 AM PST

Well, I guess my prayers were answered because I got zuchinni. I planted 5 plants. So far I only have two that are producing but man I am sure not running out. One plant is just starting to get its female zuchinni and two more are following.  It's great. I just picked another big one today. 

If you don't watch them they really do get away from you, so you have to be out in the garden everyday to check on the size. I have two more coming and already I am thinking of who to give them too. But since we really love zuchinni I know we won't be giving most of them away but I'm not a hoarder either. 

I have two huge zuchinni waiting in the kitchen for instructions. I would make another bread but I tend to eat a whole loaf myself when I make the bread so I am trying to abstain from that. Stir fry is always a great idea. We made zuchinni sticks in beer batter deep fried the other night. Those were really good.

Thinking of trying a layerd dish with onion and tomato next.

zuchinni
Jul 8, 2009 | 10:00 AM PST
Tags: zuchinni , cucumber

I must remember to use the internet as a guideline. I thought I was doing so well picking my first zuchinni at 7 inches long and slender because the internet says to pick them small. Yes they do have great taste but I want bigger zuchinni. I thought all my zuchinni would end up on the small side. This past weekend I spent some time at a friends home. His parents have a garden and would you believe they had zuchinni and yellow squash as big as your head! I was jealous.

But I got to bring a lot of it home so that was cool.

Did find out though that really big zuchinni is just as tough as people say it is. I did get a lot of seeds out of them though.

Well anyway, I have two zuchinni that have way surpassed my first picked zuchinni. I will be taking them off the vine in a day or two. I don't want them to get too big. I will definately post pics.

I also have two cucumbers coming off the vine later this week too. yay

garlic
Jun 27, 2009 | 10:52 AM PST
Tags: garlic , onion

I harvested the rest of the garlic today. It was in the ground too long I think. Some of them had spider eggs around the bottom of the stems. I left them for the animals. 

I got what I wanted and am in the process of curing them now. 

I also started to gather some onion. Much better than last year. I didn't cut the tops off this time and let the energy of the plant go into the bulb. I've got some decent sized onion this year.

I only dug up 3 for now. Harvest isn't officially for another month even though the onion are edible at all stages.

I'm so excited. I found another cucumber baby in the garden. I also think I should have little baby tomatoes by the beginning of next week.

Exciting
Jun 23, 2009 | 10:56 AM PST
Tag: gardens

It's so exciting to see more posts everyday on what's going on in everyones garden. The winter was so sleepy and boring......

But now we have great pictures of what's blooming and soon we will have lots of pictures of what's ripe! Woot. My favorite part of Garden Guides. YAY!!!

harvesting garlic
Jun 18, 2009 | 9:45 AM PST
Tags: garlic , zuchinni

It's a great feeling to go into the yard to pick out garlic fresh from the ground. Found out that store bought garlic does grow. 

My idiot self didn't use enough fertlizer while the garlic was in teh ground. So they are all really small. The largest so far being and inch high and wide. There isn't much odor either. I don't know if this is because they are store bought or because they are small. 

I smell the garlic in the cut part of the stem but not in the cloves themselves.

I had to use pesticide on my zuchinni. :(

I've got cucumber beetles. The first application didn't get rid of them. So I reapplied. I will not use anymore. If the plant dies, it dies. I will try again next year. I mean hey, at least this year I got to see fruit where as last year the plant kept turning brown and dying and all I got were male flowers.