Most cities have mandatory recycling and every bit helps. You can put things out to be picked up or you can reuse many things in new and unique ways. You can also recycle by giving things away to those that may have a purpose for it, especially artists who create in mixed media. Less landfill and sorting! I love it when any friends or relatives contact me before they dispose of certain things. Let people know if you have a need for something for your arts such as bottle caps, bottles, cans, etc.
Contact your city to see if you can start a community garden if none exists in your area. Keep in mind that you will need to be able to water during any dry spells.
If you do not have a yard to garden, try pots or any containers, preferably outside, though I have been known to grow indoors with proper sun or grow lights. I have recycled many containers such as gallon paint cans, washed and holes in the bottom for drainage. You can use old tea kettles, garbage cans of any size or tubs I find at yard sales for a good price. Just be sure you are able to make drainage holes or your plants could drown with too much rain.
Don’t allow smoking near your garden due to possible disease that is spread to tomatoes and other plants. Smoking sucks anyway you look at it. Very irritating and aging to the body and a waste of money.
Standing in front of my first garden in the burbs.
How Green is Your Garden?
I am chemically sensitive and I have been for many years. I know a lot of people that have the same problem and the numbers are growing. Chemicals are big business and the only way this will change is if we stop using those products. Less demand means less production, less money for advertisement to convince you that you need them, hence less pollution. We use chemicals for cleaning, lawn care, health and beauty aids, even in our foods. Now when did granny say, I’ll just add a little more MSG or cottonseed oil when she was cooking dinner? There is simply no legitimate excuse for our dependence on these toxic additives to our foods especially.
I understand that there can be a concern at times about a product’s ingredients becoming stale or unstable without their use, but if foods were received fresh and used as intended, the need for many of the additional additives would subside. Insisting on fresher products may force our governments to allow us to consume products grown or produced in America, which in turn puts more Americans back to work. Most of our products come from other countries and there is a longer time span from production or harvest to market due to all the import, export procedures and regulations. Personally I fear any product that should only last a week, tops, lasting for months on a store shelf
Living green means living fresh and organic, as we were created to live. We were certainly not created to constantly ingest man-made garbage. There is so much talk about finding a cure for cancers, but I have yet to see the people responsible for this quest do anything remotely that will bring this about. We certainly don’t need all the marching for donations, which is big business for some. We need our world leaders and governmental agencies to do the right thing for a change and reduce the world’s pollution that is almost out of control now. I don’t know about global warming, but I do know that toxic chemicals pollute and poison our air, water and earth daily. Soon this may not be reversible. This smog destroys people’s lungs and many inner city children show signs of asthma right away due to their tender membranes and tiny bodies. Some don’t stand a chance. Instead of trying to stop this madness, Doctors give these children more chemicals and toxins in their bodies to try to counteract the symptoms.
Most cancers are caused by irritations and the body’s homeostasis being altered allowing the cancers to grow. I live near numerous factories and since moving here my lungs have become so much worse. I don’t smoke and never go by smokers anymore due to the chronic bronchitis this causes me. Gone are the days of drying laundry outdoors unless you live out in the boonies, and that air is still not really fresh anymore. Our air circulates globally and China is a big polluter next to the U S.
I encourage you to write to your state and federal governments to see what ideas they are coming up with to improve our environment. Please feel free to offer any suggestions to them that you think may help, just keep it “clean.”
I am eating it while I type. That and some chicken drenched in “Sweet Baby Ray’s Award Winning barbecue Sauce!”
My potatoes are about the only things I have gotten out of my garden this year, says someone who normally has a very green thumb. It was more varmints than the drought. I had so many rabbits, squirrels and chipmunks this year, it was not funny. It is my own fault because I have a deck, they can hide or live there. I have lots of shrubs, trees and plants because I want to make my yard as much like nature as the city will let me get away with. I also have a small fountain, bird bath and keep a small amount of water in a tub for the thirsty squirrels to keep them from climbing into the bird bath.
Found a stone fountain clearanced at Krogers to go with the rock theme of my yard. Always keeping my eyes open for a bargain.
My yard is now semi-private and when I do glance over to some of the other yards near me, I am reminded of a depressed neighborhood. Some have a couple of plants or place one lone shrub at the far end of the yard. Most have no landscaping what-so-ever and instead barren, dying grass. Some of our neighbors have put out perennials in front of their yards with “free flower signs” after dividing, which is so nice. I will be doing the same next year with hostas if I am still here. I understand some don’t have the time or the money, but it is not very expensive to buy a few on sale and divide the next year or start them from seed. I guess you are either a plant person or you are not. I just love plants of all kinds and they help the environment in many ways.
I started my first garden years ago in the burbs with un-amended hard clay soil. My plants were great. I have no idea how some of the seeds ever took root, but they sure did. The difference was I had no varmints there. You never even saw one squirrel. There were woods nearby and obviously the bigger varmints got the little ones before they became a problem. Once in a while you saw, and smelled a skunk.
This year they got the green beans, both bush and pole, all squash, Spinach didn’t stand a chance, and most of the lettuce. With some things, such as beets and carrots, either the germination was terrible, or the birds were eating the seeds as well, they got all the black and red raspberries this year. I just happened to have a couple of left over Russet potatoes that were sprouting at the end of May so I threw them in the garden with the hopes of getting a few potatoes. They are still there and I hilled them this year. I will let you know how many I get from both plants in a later post. The first one was sweet with tender skin and very good.
Hope the rest of you are able to enjoy your harvest this year. God Bless!
There used to be a song titled “Bunny Rabbit Blues” that our preschoolers danced to. This bunny rabbit blues is different. I stuck up a make-shift gate of chicken-wire to try and keep the baby bunny out of my garden, but it just burrows under anyway. I keep watering once in a while, but with this drought, I am about to give up seeing as I am only feeding the wildlife in the area.
Took a bad video of one that got caught in the act and was trying to get out. Usually it lets me lift up the fence so it can run away, but this time it ran out the other side using the hole it burrowed.
Music by a local Detroit Group called Mudpuppy entitled “Funky Stuff.”
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!
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!
I swear it screamed! If birds can scream, this little bird actually screamed when it looked back and saw that I was right behind him. That he actually let his guard down like that and could not sense “human inches away” must have freaked his little bird brain right out. He was digging feverishly in the sun-scorched dry dirt for something, anything that even resembles a bug so it took him a few seconds and he let me walk up to him and stand for a few seconds before he looked back and with a very loud and shrill TWWEEEET, took off across the yard.
I do have bird baths and fountains so they are getting enough water and cooling off, but they are eating all of my black and red raspberries this year. If I go out near the berries they start squawking and gathering all around by me like a scene from the birds. They do not want me near their food supply. I tried to get it on film, but when I go out with a video cam, almost no birds are in sight. When I step out by myself they are doing all kinds of “fly” things. One large robin was sitting in the middle of the berry bush, looked at me come towards her and just kept eating and ignoring me so I stood there resolute in the knowledge that I will not be getting anything from my garden this year. Then if by chance they miss something, yeah me!
These are the things that I have found on my latest yard inspection:
Too many weeds! (My fault)
Quite a bit of leaf damage that I blame on ants.
Minimal varmint damage such as chewed leaves and vandalism.
Birds are getting most of my berries this year so the chirp must have gotten around that I have both red and black raspberries.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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
Po' Girl Shines 
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