Giant Sunflowers and keeping mice out of my garden

I'm sorry I haven't written sooner, but I've been very busy at work. But that hasn't kept me out of my garden. Here's what's happened so far this summer:

My sunflowers are now 12-14 feet tall. I've never seen such large sunflowers. I actually harvested some seeds and ate them. Have you ever harvested sunflower seeds?
It's actually kind of gross. First of all, if you are organic, as I am, there are these teeny red mite like bugs that live in the head of the sunflower. I took a high powered sprayer and blasted the head to get rid of the bugs. Then I let it dry in the sun for a day. When it was dry and bug free, I removed the seeds. Once they were removed I put them on a pan and let them further dry in the sun. My husband said that all the work I put in wasn't worth it. But where else can you get organic sunflower seeds?

Now for the rest of the garden. Mice kept eating my melon plants (and my pepper plant) down to nothing overnight. Afraid that I wouldn't get ANY harvest from my hard work, I did two things: First I put an electronic mouse trap in the garden, and I've been collecting little dead bodies every week. And second, my husband made me four little "cages" to put around my plants. These worked great until I went on vacation and the zapper trap broke, and a mouse dug underneath the cage and ate an entire plant! Those darn mice!

Anyway, one of the cassabananas is doing well (I have three) and I'm hoping that I'll get flowers and fruit sometime this summer. I know, it's late so I might not get any. I did get some ground cherry flowers and I'm hoping that I'll be able to harvest some in a few weeks. I've never tasted them before.

Anyway that's the update. Sorry it's short, but I have to get back to work!

Happy Gardening!

Shoot! I think I killed one of the cassabananas!

I'm very blue.

This morning My cassabanana seedling was full of roots and so I didn't want it to stick in the felt so I moved it into a red cup, and added some peat moss all around the little jiffy pellet, and then gave it some water.

I looked at it about an hour ago and the poor little thing was wilted. Her two little seed leaves were looking down like it was crying.

I feel so sad. I moved her into the greenhouse, perhaps she needs more humidity. But the last time this happened the little cassabanana died.

So now it looks like I'm down to two of those plants.

Sniff Sniff. I think I'll have a glass of wine to drown my sorrows.

Seeds from Danny

I'm so excited!  I got some new seeds in the mail for my fall garden!
I'm participating in a couple of different seed swaps and Danny sent me the following seeds:

Hyacinth Beans:

Purple or Maroon Hibiscus:

Pan Patty Squash:

and White Scalloped Squash:

I'm not really sure what the difference is between Patty Pan or Scalloped Squash, so I guess I'll find out when I plant them in my garden!

I love getting seeds in the mail, and I can't wait to plant them.

Happy Gardening!

Cassabanana and African Horned Melon

We got home in one piece, despite the Southwest Airline plane turning into a convertible (no we were not on that plane).

All of the plants look good except the Pineapple, but I guess that is to be expected on a new planting.

One of the best surprises is that I have one seedling of cassabanana, and two are just poking out of the dirt, so I might wind up with THREE plants!  This is good because my first go around with the cassabanana didn't go so well as I only had one plant germinate from twelve seeds that I planted.  The good news is that I contacted www.rareseeds.com and they sent me another packet.  So now out of the six seeds that I planted, it looks like three have germinated already.  I can't wait to see what the fruit tastes like!

On another note, my husband and I stopped off at the store on the way home from the airport and I saw an African Horned Melon there for four bucks.  I decided to buy it to see what it tasted like.  Well, it's pretty bland by itself, but if you add sugar, the flavor really pops out.  I say it tastes like a blend of cucumber and banana.  This fruit is not for folks who don't like seeds.  The fruit is full of them, so it might not be worth eating, but for those of you who are daring, it's worth a shot!

I'll be saving three or four packets of ten seeds each, so if you want to trade me for something really cool, post below and then we'll exchange information privately.

Oh, and the link I added (http://www.greeningofgavin.com/2009/05/african-horned-melon.html)  is to give  you some information about the fruit.  He's showing them green, but mine were bright orange.

Happy Growing!

Patio Gardening: Alpine Strawberries Growing at Last!!

I found this blog of another "beginner" gardener like me! It's so exciting. She is growing strawberries in egg cartons. I've heard you could do this, but I've never actually seen it done. I think that when I get home from my trip I will have to start taking photos of my garden. I really liked the photos that she posted.

Patio Gardening: Alpine Strawberries Growing at Last!!:

I hope that my plants survived the San Diego heat wave in the greenhouse! So crossing my fingers that the housesitter opened both doors so that they didn't cook. :-)

Happy Gardening!

Slugs and pillbugs

They say that pill bugs (rolly pollys) will only eat dead material, but its a LIE!!!!!  These little critters are eating everything in sight.  My poor little eggplant seedling didn't have a chance.

Between the pill bugs and the slugs/snails, my poor little plants won't have a chance while I'm gone so I had to do something drastic!  Now you know that I'm trying to do this organically so I've been trying not to use anything... just crush the little buggers by hand when I find them, but I can't ask my house sitter to do THAT!

Last night my husband had to make a run for Home Depot to get the watering system I told you about so I asked him to get me some "Sluggo Plus" which had good ratings by folks on the internet for killing BOTH snails AND pill bugs.  Well they only sell it online at Home Depot so he picked up some "Ortho Elementals Slug and Snail Killer".  It does say "For Organic Gardening" on the box so I'll pretend that it's organic.

I poured a bunch of it in the greenhouse (too much I found out after getting a magnifying glass to read the four point font).  Oh well, I'm not going to pick up those little granuals one by one to remove them! 

This morning I saw a dead slug in the inside of one of my red drinking cups (you know, where I planted my seedlings?) so it must be working.  We'll see if everything is alive when we get home on Tuesday...

I got a Greenhouse!

After my last travel experience, I am a little shy to travel again, and I have to go to Austin for my father in law's 90th birthday (how can I miss that?). I talked my husband into letting me get a little 5x5x6 greenhouse so that I could put all my plants in that, get water hooked up to them, and not have to worry about the house sitter neglecting the plants. So here's what I did:

1. I had to uproot several of the sunflowers and peas, because the green house had to go where they were sitting. I was afraid that they would die, but so far they are doing ok.


2. After I got the sunflowers situated, I started re-planting my jiffy pellets. I planted each seedling in a red plastic cup that you normally see used for parties. I left a few inches at the top so that the seedlings would have some room to grow without falling over.


3. Then I dug holes in the ground under the soaker watering hoses and "planted" the cups. I did this a few days before I was to leave, so that I could monitor how my system would work.


4. I realized that I wasn't going to have time to plant the landscaping plants I purchased (artichokes to replace some ugly shurbs in the front yard and blueberry bushes to replace some geraniums that weren't flowering) so I had to buy a shelf to put them on so I could put them inside the greenhouse--don't want them to die either!


5. Then my husband had to rig up a watering system for the additional plants.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this is all going to work!

My Trip to Indianapolis

I went to Indianapolis to do some volunteer work and before I left I planted the sunflowers outside (sunflowers do not like to be transplanted apparently so I planted them as soon as the little roots were sticking out of the jiffy pellet). I also planted the peas next to them. My idea is that the peas will climb on the sunflowers. I got this idea last year when I was pulling the ONE sunflower that made it past the slugs up out of my raised vegetable bed. It was a bear to pull up and I thought, "why am I using stakes when I could use one of these plants?" I'm thinking that corn might work too. Anyway, I had been keeping plastic milk jug tops over the plants just to keep the bugs off of them until they got big enough to live on their own. It's also been unseasonally cold here in San Diego, so I wanted to keep them warm at night. I showed my husband how to water the indoor "nursery" and how to take the milk cartons off (and on) the plants without breaking them, and went on my trip. When I came home, I was so proud of my husband because all of the sunflowers had made it! The indoor nursury, however, didn't have as much luck. All of the tomatoes, cucumbers, and pak choy had died, presumably from lack of water. The nursery felt was damp, but not damp enough to support the plants. So I had to start over.

My Tiny Urban Garden

My mother was a gardener. When I was a child I always wondered why she did it... our family had corn growing in the front yard before it was "cool", and I was always embarrased about it. Because we always turn into our mothers when we get older, at age 44, I started a garden last year, by planting plants that I had bought at some local hardware stores. I had so much fun that I decided in 2011 I would plant from seeds. I went online to see what I should plant. I found a site called www.rareseeds.com and bought some seeds. Here's what I bought (everything is heirloom non-GMO):

• Sun flowers- Mammoth Grey Striped (for my peas to grow on... they are so much prettier than the metal stakes!)
• Wando garden peas
• Spinache-Bloomsdale Long Standing
• Peppers-Emerald Giant (when I bought them online I thought they were red)
• Artichokes- Purple of Romanga
• Eggplant-Ma Zu Purple Chinese 
• Asparagus- Mary Washington
• Spinache- Bloomsdale Long Standing
• Pack Choy-Oriental Greens EXTRA Dwarf
• Tomato-Cherokee Purple 
• Cassabanana--This is a tropical fruit that can also be used like a zucchini before it is ripe. I have never tasted it.

I received the package in the mail, and planted everything in my little jiffy pot "greenhouse" on 2/21/2011. I'm looking forward to letting you know what happens this year.