Organic Gardening

Promising a Rose Garden in 1932

My mother’s side has managed to hang on to all kinds of photos since the invention of the camera.  Not sure when some of these were taken, but some were in the 1800’s.

Looking through the stash, I happened upon an envelope of black & white negatives.  Most were of my great grandfather’s home in Detroit and his beautiful rose garden that he was so proud of.  I had never seen these before and I was not aware that he had been such an avid gardener.  I lived with his daughters growing up, my gram and my aunt Ruth, who tended a garden in the yard as well.  Mostly black raspberry bushes and all kinds of flowers.  They had one apple tree, not sure of the type and one Montmorency tart cherry tree.  I used to love to climb the trees to eat of the fruit when they came in season.  My mom tells me recently of all the worms because they did not spray.  I don’t remember ever seeing any worms when I ate the fruit.  I don’t know if that is good or bad.  I guess worms are a lot better for you then pesticide.

I have scanned some of the negatives of my great grandfather’s gardens the best that I can.  I am not sure what type of camera they were taken on, but there are two sizes of negatives, both very large and not numbered.  My great gramps came to America from Canada.  His parents were from Germany.  He passed away before I was born so I never knew him.  His wife, my great grandma, had passed a few years before these pictures were taken.  Even though they are black and white, I hope that you enjoy them as much as I did finding the negatives and turning them back to print.  Check out the rungs on the ladder.  It appears homemade!  It may bring back memories for some of the older folks, for the younger ones, enjoy a trip back in time to 1932!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Organic Gardens = Too Many Varmints

I will gladly take the worms

and bugs amidst the sighs,

to know I grow the purest things

that won’t sit on my thighs!

pogirlshines©

We have really been having a scorcher all over the USA.  Hopefully we will cool off soon and get much needed rain to put out all the wildfires and keep our gardens growing.  Dearborn Michigan was over 100° for the heat index a few days ago, and I know we were one of the cool areas.  It is 12:30pm and currently 86° with the forcast only for 87° I wonder.  Most of the heat is in the southeast at this time with still no sign of much rain anywhere, especially in the areas that need it the most.

As a Christian I pray, but I realize I never really pray about the weather.  I think this is a good time to start.  I wonder what would happen if everyone reading this blog prayed for rain.  It’s sort of like doing a little rain dance in your head, in the name of Jesus!

 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Late Spring Organic Gardening Update

These are the things that I have found on my latest yard inspection:

  1. Too many weeds! (My fault)

  2. Quite a bit of leaf damage that I blame on ants.

  3. Minimal varmint damage such as chewed leaves and vandalism.

  4. Birds are getting most of my berries this year so the chirp must have gotten around that I have both red and black raspberries.

  5. My beans, both pole variety and bush, are not germinating very well or something is getting the seeds before this happens.  Most of the green bean leaves have a lot of holes and insect damage.  I was not vigilant early enough, but am now regularly spraying with my detergent, Fels Naptha bar soap and water and garlic powder.  Doesn’t smell or taste too good to most of the bugs.  Make sure to re-spray after watering or a rainfall, if you are lucky enough to get one this year.

  6. All my plants maturity is behind schedule.  It is warm enough so I blame the fact that I did not compost my soil this year or add extra nutrients.  I have watered minimally and I live in quite a polluted area and saw the difference between gardening in this city compared to the areas that I used to live in that were considered the suburbs, but were almost country like in setting instead of factories all over.

  7. There is a continuous group of all kinds of animals.  My birdbath and fountain attracts all kinds of birds.  I also keep a shallow pan of water for little animals to go to for drinking or bathing.  Sometimes the birds are hogging all the water at the same time.  They are cleanest birds because I see more of them taking baths than drinking!

  8. The plants doing the best are the ones I placed in the flowerboxes this year instead of the usual annuals.  You’ll see Spearmint, Dill, Yellow Banana Peppers and tomatoes along with a few Geranium.

 

 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

 

Creative Gardening

Artful Gardening Ideas from “living artfully” by Sandra Magsamen

  • Instead of potted plants, make little herb gardens to serve as dining table centerpieces.  Or use glass bell jars as terrariums.

  • Cut a heart shape in the lawn using a mower.

  • Plant a garden with butterfly bushes and enjoy the visits of hundreds of butterflies.

  • Make a garden pathway using stones you craft with cement.  Pour the cement in a box of the size of the desired stone and place objects, like shells, sea glass and mosaics in the wet thick mortar.  Carve your name with a stick or even stick in your bare foot to make an imprint before it dries.

  • Plant lots of red tulip bulbs in the shape of hearts in your garden so that in the spring, your garden will blossom with love.  Secretly plant a heart tulip bed in your neighbor’s garden.

  • Pick a handful of pansies from your garden and tie together with a velvety purple ribbon to give to a neighbor.

  • Hang several hummingbird feeders outside of a main window and watch as the birds joyously flit back and forth.

  • Build a koi pond and fill it with colorful fish.

  • Make feeding balls for birds.  Simply spread peanut butter on an orange and then roll it in birdseed.  Hang these beautiful balls from branches and watch as the birds enjoy the bounty.

  • Learn to build (or have built) a water garden and transform your yard into a babbling brook.

  • Add elegant and colorful pinwheels or figurines to your garden.

  • Plant a mini forest of large sunflowers and when their stalks grow tall, walk into the magical thicket.  Allow the flowers to dry in the sun and hang as bird feeders from the trees in the late fall.

Early Spring

As the blog writer, I am writing this disclaimer that I do not fully agree with some of these ideas, but printed them verbatim from the book.  I don’t think it a good idea to surprise any neighbor by planting things secretly in their yard, depending on the items and the neighbor.  You want to be careful mixing cement for the garden stones and wear proper equipment to protect skin, lungs and eyes, so I am not sure you want to put your bare feet into the cement, unless you wash off right away.  I am not a fan of ponds.  My home had one when I moved in and I would find small animals and birds drowned in it occasionally when I came home from work.  Found that too upsetting and had it dug out and replaced it with a small herb garden.

I also have a problem with the suggestion to walk into any thicket of sunflowers.  Bees and hornets love them!  As beautiful as they are, you may want to keep your distance, especially if you have allergies.  Unless I was planning to eat some of the sunflower seeds, I let them dry on the plant and the birds and squirrels help themselves.  I am not into super-cleaning up my garden at the end of the season.  There have been things written by so-called experts that this reduces plant disease.  This is not true unless you know you have diseased plants, in which case you will want to take care of them at the time you find this out.  Leaving the plants be at season’s end, makes your garden more attractive & interesting.  It also makes it bird and animal friendly.  They make use of all kinds of plant substances by eating it or using it for bedding or nesting.  Some left over plants make nice perches.  I usually do my major bed cleaning in early spring but make sure all plants and leaves are kept off the lawns and ground cover year round.

Parsley is also a shrub!

Got The Garden in Yet?

I use Memorial weekend as the deadline to try and have all the warm weather plants/seeds in.  This year I jumped the gun a little due to the warmer than normal weather.  The birds and especially the squirrels went to digging right away.  Decided to water the next day only to find little holes dug around the tepee branches and some of the unearthed seeds sitting there, even with the really fake owl I placed out to keep the rabbit away from my lettuce and soon to be replanted spinach.

Garden 2012
scene of the crime
Guardian Owl

 

Best Herb Book!

Years ago I received “The Complete Book of Herbs A practical guide to growing & using herbs” by Lesley Bremness as a Christmas gift.  Totally loved it.  I see that it is still available online.  It offers so much information in an easy to understand, practical format.  Man has relied on herbs for our very life since recorded history.

Lavender

 

The book starts with garden planning and designs, goes right to the herbal index which lists various popular herbs with great color photos of each plant, but not in any specific order.  Included for each is a short explanations of cultivation, and their various uses.  After the herbal index the information is broken down to specific projects and recipes for decor, cooking, medicinal, health and beauty.  To name a few, the book includes recipes, how-to’s for making garlands, herbal papers, soaps and floral waters.  The back of the book goes into more specifics regarding cultivating & harvesting herbs. 

Chives

Most herbs are annual or perennials.  Beware the biennial.  They are a strange breed of plant.  Can’t figure out why they only last a couple of years and don’t fruit or seed the first year and die off after they do this during their second year of life.  You will have to be patient to be willing to wait til next year to use it and take proper care of the area it is in so it returns to complete its maturity.  So you will only get one year of production, the second year, then will need to replace it and wait for another year again.  If you wished to have a yearly crop, you would have to plant these every year.

Peppermint

 Many modern gardeners try to keep a super neat garden pulling out and chopping down everything once they die back.  Leaving some plants, like the grasses, adds beauty to the winter garden and gives the birds nesting materials in any season.  It is one thing to efficiently weed, but try not to uproot your perennials and biennials during fall or spring garden clean up.  Before I was experienced, I would accidentally take out part of my perennial’s roots after they died back trying to clean out after the plants had died back. 

 

Oregano

To sum it up, growing herbs in the garden is a good idea for many reasons.  Saves you money, you control the way it is grown, and it gives you a much larger.  I never use the stuff.  I would rather go out and hand-pick bugs off my plants and squish them before I would add a poison to my plants to kill them, and slowly kill myself.  Speaking of poison, please be careful when ingesting any herbs you are not familiar with.  Some people can be sensitive to certain types of plants and not be aware of this until they eat it.  Severe reactions are rare, but try anything in moderation first.  Always use moderation ingesting well known culinary herbs.  Some can be toxic in large doses, such as sage.  Currently there is a lot of information from so-called experts online, in books and on television regarding taking all kinds of herbs fresh or in suppliments that most have never heard of.  I cannot address these types of claims regarding relatively unknown substances.  Some culinary experts make claims to eat various things, that I was previously advised are not edible.  Just be careful and do your research.  Do not throw in some herb seeds and start eating anything that grows up from that general area.  Be sure of any plant before you ingest it.

 

 

Parsley

Find some seeds.

Organic Gardening in the Early Spring

Due to the unseasonably hot weather I have just mowed my grass for the second time this year.  Don’t think I normally mow til sometime in April.  Lovin’ it, but selfishly so due to many areas of the country have had very bad storms and tornadoes and loss of life and property.  I was in a tornado as a teen with my friends at a popular beach in the area.  Summer storm came up and an announcement was broadcasted to seek shelter due to actual tornado warning in St. Clair County.  Just a few of us were left, had to go along with my friends since I rode with someone.  The sky started to look really weird and coming towards us from the water we all noticed the large water-spout spinning madly towards the shore.  To further point out the stupidity of the young, we all ran into the station wagon while those large metal garbage cans and large branches whizzed past our heads and we were trying to protect what little brains we had with our hands.  By grace of God we were not killed or seriously injured while the tornado passed and the car rocked wildly back and forth, but never picked up.  Some of us were really scared and crying like mad, won’t mention any names.

There are basic things that to do to try to prepare for the growing season.  Try to start seedlings for some cool weather crops by the beginning or mid-March.  The last danger of frost in southern-lower Michigan is Memorial day.  After that it would be so extremely rare to have cold enough weather to kill any of the warm weather crops.  I try to get my cool weather crops planted by mid or late April

I am planning on amending my soil tomorrow so I can have the cool weather seeds planted by Friday the 13th, a very lucky number for me.  This will be the second till job on the main garden behind the garage and will add some peat and manure to enrich it.  Did not have any compost from last year because I was planning on moving and renting out my house by this summer.  I usually let some compost freeze over winter and break it up again to use later in the spring.  You need to start now to have your compost ready for later in the summer or even next year.  I still may decide to plant rye grass and more ground cover back there and make my life a whole lot easier this year by going to farmers markets instead. 

My normal routine would be to have the soil completely amended and ready for planting by mid April.  I usually plant peas, pea pods, snap peas, spinach and lettuce.  There is already lots of parsley growing in the front yard.  I also have the smallest plot of chives and oregano in a number of areas that come back each year.  I am not a gardener who plants much variety.  Only things that grow well that I like.  Not much luck with various cantaloupe plants and squash I have started first from seed among some of my other plants and shrubs, the squirrels trample and get into everything.  Most don’t make it.  Lettuce and green beans are the most successful, even with all the bunnies.  The critters eat off a lot of my squash blossoms before they can fruit.  I used to can loads of tomato sauce and diced tomatoes, but again not much harvest due to all the mangy varmints.

March2012 before tilling
After first tilling
Pruning Clematis and cleaning off the deck
Deck in dire need of white washing instead of repainting

 

Building a Trellis From a Felled Tree

 A couple of years ago there was a windstorm and I woke to a crashing sound about 5:00 am.  I thought something fell on my house so I looked out the front window and the large oak tree was still standing.  I went back to my room to look in the yard and my initial view were branches and leaves pressed to the window.  I threw on some clothes and ran outside to better view the damage, though completely dark with my outside light being damaged as well.  The first thing I noticed was my rather large mock cherry tree was completely split down the middle.  The initial planters of the tree had not properly pruned it when it was young and it was all gnarled at the crotch of the tree and did not allow proper aeration.  The tree had appeared very healthy in all respects, but the split clearly showed that it had been rotting for sometime in that area.

Tree Split

                                                                                         

 What caught my eye was the fact that a number of the tree branches were resting on the power lines going to my 1942 bungalow, phone as well as electric.  I got out my electric chainsaw and was praying the entire time I was cutting the branches off myself.  Everyone was out of town during this time.  I did not try to disturb my neighbors.  I figured if any of them heard my chain saw at about 5:30am and wanted to help me, they were welcome.  None ever showed up.  After I had cut off most of the branches that were resting on the power lines, I was able to see underneath to find a large limb was resting on my deck rail, which prevented the entire weight of the tree to actually knock out my power lines!  I was thanking God like mad for his blessing and help in that it could have been much worse.  Starting with the fact that the only chain saw I had was electric.  Had the power lines been knocked down, I would have just had to call the electric company and let them do all the work.  At least I found out the hard way what I was capable of.  Once everthing was felled and neatened up, I slowly cut all the branches so that I would be able to use most of the wood later.  Nothing was really wasted.  My neighbors look some of the larger pieces of the trunk and the kindling for fireplaces and firepits.  I kept various sizes of the cleaned off branches to use as trellises and fences later.  I have two trellises done at this time and will be making more if I did not spread myself so thin at this time looking for another home I can buy for cash cheap, looking for another job, working on my clothing and jewelry I want to get on etsy.com asap, getting ready for various art shows and fixing up my current home to make it “renter ready.” The following are pictures of the finished trellises made from the branches of that felled tree.  I have also included a short video.  After I layed the various branches to shape and size, I had to verify that the branches also touched one another in the correct places so they could be properly drilled and the screws would hold.  I actually started using my old screws used with Hardibacker, backerboard with I installed ceramic tile around the tub.  They are #10 x 1  1/4.”  I need to get some 1 1/2″ for the thicker branches.  It’s not difficult.  Anyone can do pretty much anything they put their mind to.  If it doesn’t work, then try another way until it does work for you.  You may want to tie the joints together with natural hemp twine either in place of the screws or after screwing together for added strength.  Screws keep the branches in place much better then just twine.

First attempt
First Attempt

Getting fancier each attempt!
                Work in progress.

                                        

Fancier still, I painted one of the trellises with Lumiere Paints.