Veggie updates

My tomatoes look great! We've been able to harvest some already, and I think we've got a yummy few weeks coming up.

The only problem was that some of our tomatoes looked like this: 

Internet research quickly determined that it appears we have a tomato fruitworm using our some of our tomatoes as a nice place to live for a while, before turning into a moth. Some more research determined that I had a few options: try to find them on the plant and pick them off, use pesticides, or an organic farming approved bacteria (meaning you can put it on your plant and still sell the tomatoes as organic). 

I don't really like touching bugs or eating pesticides, so bacteria it was. Andrew picked up some of the bacterial dust (which sounds terrifying). It affects caterpillars only and causes them to stop eating. The bacteria breaks down in the sunlight so you need to do it in the evening. It says it is totally safe around children and animals, but I didn't want to take any chances. That evening after G was in bed I made sure Chuy was inside, I dusted my plants. We will have to reapply every 7-10 days until we stop seeing these guys, but hopefully it works. 

With it getting hot, the cilantro plant was flowering and was no longer very fragrant. We have a small garden and it was shading my basil. Gone!

And, finally, I'm getting really close to my first sunflower!

Squash

When I built the veggie garden a few months ago it seemed to be huge. I had big plans for all of the things I was going to have in it.

Then my stuff started growing. The cilantro is going nuts, as are the tomatoes. Here is my second first tomato!

The first tomato that turned red I picked and put next to the sink so that Andrew could see it. He assumed it was a tomato that fell on the floor and so he put it down the garbage disposal. So this is the second tomato to turn red, but the first we will get to try.

When I first planted everything in my 4x4 foot garden the garden seemed so big! I had plans to add peppers, squash, and maybe another basil plant.

Early March: 

Now I see why raised beds are recommended. 

But I still had my squash seeds I had already purchased. So I cleared and turned the area to the right of my flower bed 

And hopefully in 10-14 days, I will have some seedlings!

Play area

As part of building Grayson's play area, I wanted a sandbox. When I was in Dallas my mom and I went by a children's store that sells used clothes, gear and toys. We got him a turtle sandbox. It's perfect because it has a lid and isn't too big. He's loving it!

Porch After

We finally got a pressure washer. I think the porch looks a lot better, and pressure washing is a very satisfying activity.

The before:

The after:

 

Bird feeder

As I mentioned, squirrels like to go after the bird feeders. The day after I posted that, I walked out to the backyard to find they had taken one down. They chewed through it, so it's done. 

Chuy inspected the evidence

 Completely broken 

The bird feeder's previous home.

Attracting birds

Grayson is really into birds right now, so I decided I should be trying to attract them for him. We had a couple bird feeders, and I bought two more. We get a wide variety of birds in our yard including hummingbirds, blue jays, cardinals, several finches, and then of course sparrows, pigeons and grackles. 

Andrew does not like pigeons and grackles, so his preference is that we can feed the birds, but not those. To keep out the big birds, most of  our feeders are exclusionary. 

Front porch- we actually get several hummingbirds out here. This is probably moving to the other column because we seem to hit our heads on it every time we weed.

Shed feeder. I thought this might be a good place since there are trees around for the birds as well. I've read you should put your feeder around trees so that they have somewhere protected to fly to if they see a predator. The cage keeps out the bigger birds pretty successfully, but I have seen a squirrel get inside it. He can't get out very quickly, which means you can really get him with a hose or water gun, but I still wish I could keep him out completely.

Second backyard feeder. This one has both a squirrel baffle and a spring that is supposed to keep heavier animals from eating. We haven't had the feeder long, but so far it's worked. The baffle minimizes but does not eliminate squirrel activity. 

I put another hummingbird feeder on our upstairs porch out front. This one is much prettier and was originally supposed to go downstairs, but until I switch the column the hanger is on it will need to be up here. This one is glass and hurts a lot more when you knock your head!

And we also have a wasp catcher up here since we have a minor wasp issue. So far we don't have any nests this year, so I'm crossing my fingers it stays that way.

Birthday

Happy birthday Karen!

 

Another roadtrip

Grayson, Chuy, and I all went up to Dallas this weekend. Karen came in from Atlanta for her birthday celebration and we had a really good time with her. Based on her last frost date, I had to give Karen her present early so she's had it for about 6 weeks. We gave her an 8 foot garden from sproutrobot.com. The idea is that you sign up for the vegetables you want to grow and based on your zip code it sends you seeds when it's time to plant and then you get email reminders to transfer the seedlings, thin them, etc. It is a pretty new site and still has some kinks to work out. Karen had trouble requesting her seeds and I don't think I've gotten the reminder emails I am supposed to (I'm signed up for no seeds, just reminders, which is free). Anyway, hopefully it works. She said her some of her seedlings made it through the transfer to the garden so far.

Here are some pictures of the weekend:

Grayson with the birthday girl (notice how well my parents front lawn is doing....)

Grayson and Grandma in the Radio Flyer wagon we borrowed that he LOVED

Sisters in bright bottoms

Birthday party

Roses from my mom's garden: makes me wish I wasn't so scared of trying to grow roses

Grayson and Grandpa after church. This was pretty typical of G all weekend - fingers in his mouth. He's working on a lot of teeth right now and was pretty fussy

Our lawn

Our lawn looks amazing right now (if I do say so myself). In fact, we don't have to say so because both the houses next to us are getting landscape work done and the professionals have been impressed with our lawn too.

Every Friday I get an email from a local gardening center, with tips, tricks, and to do lists. A few weeks ago they said it was time to fertilize your lawn with 3-1-2 fertilizer. Andrew went to the store and bought the only one with that ratio he could find - some organic alfalfa meal fertilizer. He put it out on the front yard and was pretty discouraged. It's really light and so was very hard to spread. He was worried it was blowing away.

When we came back from our vacation we were thrilled to see that apparently some had gotten in there. Our front lawn is thick with grass, has almost no weeds, and looks very healthy and dark green. It is our first real success and very encouraging.

Presto Change-o

Last fall I saw this and loved it:

I thought I could add them to our our fence so you could see them from our dining room window. I ordered the hangers for the pots, but had a really hard time receiving them. The vendor actually had to send them three times before I got them! I'm not sure what was going on, but in the 3 months it took to resolve, I lost faith they would ever come and put regular hanging baskets on the fence. By the time I got them (I couldn't believe the poor guy stayed with me!) it was winter so I didn't put them up.

I still haven't (but I do know where they are and plan to do it soon!). There is a tree in our neighbor's yard that shades that part of the yard. He said he's going to take it down, so I'm waiting to see how much sun that area ends up getting. In the meantime I thought it would look nice to move the hanging baskets on the back fence behind the triangle. I finally got to it!

They have marigolds in them now. I'm hoping the extra sun helps them grow better, and that it adds some color and height until the sunflowers bloom.

I also moved around some plants up front. I took out the poor sun scorched ivy and moved the sweet potato vine to it's old spot.

The ivy went to the much more sun gentle back porch:

The lily that went with the sweet potato vine isn't flowering anymore. I'm going to have to do some research to figure out what's going wrong here.

Weeding schedule

When we got back from the beach I was excited to see how everything had grown, except the weeds. I've decided I need to implement a weeding schedule or I will be overwhelmed quickly. I'm a little overwhelmed at what happened while we were gone!

Monday: Front yard (grass areas)

Tuesday: Front gardens:

Wednesday&Thursday: Back Triangle

Friday and Saturday: Sides of the house

Sunday: Shade garden