Breaking Ground and Managing Pests!

   Ground has been broken.....

                 

 ... it has been hoed, squared, and garbage bags have been placed.












So your probably wondering, "What is the white stuff?". Our neighbor asked the same thing. It's called Diatomaceous Earth (aka DE). It essentially is organic bug killer. DE is fossilized remains of marine phytoplankton and when it gets on most bugs it will dehydrate them.  Here is a nice post describing more about it. http://www.richsoil.com/diatomaceous-earth.jsp I prefer to use it because it is safe for animals and people to ingest. Our Little Boy has been ingesting a lot of dirt recently due to us working in the garden more so DE makes me feel more ok with him eating dirt. In fact, a lot of people will buy the food grade DE to consume as a way of detoxifying. People claim and farmers that DE helps with parasites and carrying heavy metals out of the body. http://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2014/01/diatomaceous-earth-homestead.html

So lets talk pests!

So far this year my biggest pests are actually pretty big and hairy or feathery. My cat has already eaten the leaves off of four of my bean seedlings. The ones with feathers are the actually strawberry thief! We caught them red handed! (We are going to build a cage to cover the strawberries) I really just need a green house...no really I do! 

Last year the biggest pest we had were caterpillars and ants. Now ants can be beneficial to a garden but ants also really like aphids which are not good for your garden. Ants love these little aphids because they secrete a sweet liquid that the ants eat. They will actually make their own little farm of aphids and "milk" them. Yep, that's right they milk them. We had quite a few little aphid farms in our garden last year as well. One good treatment I found was to mix a couple drops of dish soap, a tablespoon of vinegar, about 10 to 20 drops of peppermint essential oil, in a spray bottle then fill with water and shake. You can also use citronella essential oil with lemongrass essential oil. Then I would spray this mixture on the plant directly on the aphids. It worked really well as long as I remembered to spray it every three days or so.  

The ants go marching everywhere! 

It seemed no matter how many times we would destroy an ant bed they would show up somewhere else. There are a plethora of methods you can use for getting rid of ants. Still working on the best one. DE is pretty effective. Also, constantly bothering them works too. We also tried essential oils on the ants which helps but you have to keep adding it pretty much every other day. They do not like the smell. We also would just shovel them out of the bed. I do not recommend the shoveling method. (The husband gets bit) =) Some people claim pouring boiling water down their ant hole works. We never tried that because they were always too close to my plants. I wish you the best of luck if you have as many ants as we did last year! 

We are trying a new method of pest control this year!

I have been searching Pinterest and YouTube for an organic pest control method that is easy, sounds reasonable, and has good reviews. I think I have found one! It sounds easy any way. Please watch the video below to find out details on this method. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33Q0uP4odh4

If you don't want to watch the video, here is the basic gist of it: Mix Sol Suds (Dr Bonners brand), with Neem oil and water. Then place in a fogger atomizer and spray your plants weekly. However, he explains you should be careful to see that your plants do not get a build up of oil on them. I will report on the method as soon as we start. Feel free to send me or comment about any other methods that you may know about on keeping pests out of your garden organically. It's hard work and I have a little better understanding why organic produce costs as much as it does. 

Here is a picture of the seedlings they are almost ready to put in the ground!  

It is getting exciting around here!! 

We have sprouts!

Growing has commenced...

What is growing you ask?  

Purple Pole Beans, Snap Bush Beans, Cherry Tomatoes, Amish Tomatoes, Salsa Tomatoes, Romaine Lettuce, Cilantro, Parsley, Dill, Sage, and Sweet Peppers. We chose to sow these seeds by following the Backyard Harvest book I mentioned last post.  (http://amzn.com/0756671639) Next month we will sow more plant seeds suggested by the book. 

Now all we have to do is finish getting the beds ready. We are borrowing a tiller from a friend of ours so we can make sure the soil is all nice and airy. The beds will get a bag of Black Kow dirt (I know this is not organic and may contain some GMO residuals from any corn they were feed), I am still looking for a source of clean poop. The soil is sandy here and the Black Kow really helps the plants that like a little more nutrient dense dirt. The beds also will get a bag of organic gardening soil. Then my lovely spouse will dig some more dirt out of the swamp if we need it. Hopefully without ants in it! We had an ant problem last year....but we will talk about pests in my next post. 

This post is about how I have been procrastinating about getting the raised beds and pots ready for the plants that are so beautifully doing their job and sprouting. Being pregnant has really slowed me down this year especially with the Little Boy running circles around me. 

In two of the raised beds, you may have noticed that there are already some plants growing. In the first one we have asparagus, and in the second we have two strawberry plants. 

The Strawberry plants are doing great! They have tons of blooms and baby fruit. Only problem is we have a raccoon problem! What do you recommend for getting rid of raccoons? My husband says that we have to kill one and hang it's tail on the fence. Nice, huh? I want to make a fence for the raised bed any way to help keep out other unwanted creatures.  Robert (my husband) says that the raccoons are too strong and will break through the fence any way. So, I guess there might be hunting in my future. :(.....

The photo to the right shows the asparagus plants. Only one of the four crowns seems to be producing right now. I am going to give them a little more time before I dig them up and start over. Asparagus is suppose to be really easy to grow. All the YouTube videos and Pinterest pages I pinned said so! (http://bonnieplants.com/growing/growing-asparagus/ for example). Welcome to my world of gardening! Ha! It never seems to turn out how they say! Oh well. They still have some time to prove themselves. 

...And speaking of things blooming that are easy to grow, here are a couple of pictures of our recently moved Meyer Lemon Tree. 

Meyer Lemon Trees are suppose to be very easy to grow here in the Sunshine State, I guess very easy is a relative term. We put it in a beautiful pot my mom bought, and it did produce fruit. The tree later on became unhealthy. Probably my fault. So that is why we moved it. As you can see in the picture below, there are tons of blooms on it. I even captured a bee in the photo pollinating it for me! Bees are great, no, they are essential for a good garden!          

More on bees next time. Time to go dig in the dirt!

The Beginning

In an effort to garden more and be more productive in the garden, I thought a blog might help. Maybe not but I am going to give it a try.

Our first effort to make our yard more for food than decoration was about four years ago. We did pretty good see photos.

 It was exciting and beautiful to watch seeds grow into plants then plants produce fruits/vegetables. I was hooked! I wanted to plant every season. I wanted to make my garden better every year. I read a couple of books: http://amzn.com/0811872211 and  http://amzn.com/1591865484. I also really enjoyed http://amzn.com/0756671639. They have all been helpful in gardening each year. Now, have I used them each year...well no, but I should have. Did my garden get better every year? A little I think. We have fought fungus, caterpillars, stink bugs, and cats. Yes, that's right cats. We have two cats and they are always eager to break steams or eat our bounty. This year we have a new addition to those that are breaking steams and eating the bounty. He is our "little boy". Our little 18 month old ball of energy. He is super helpful. *wink* wink*.

This year's beginning is going to be different though for us. We are trying to go all organic with our gardening and I am using only heirloom seeds. We also have done some remodeling to our backyard garden in hopes that it will grow more food!

Here are some photos of what our garden looks like now pre and post remodel.

We went from three to two raised beds with a patio area for a table I hope to get to be able to plant seeds and store equipment on.
Here is a picture of my current work station:

We also have three other raised beds on the other side of our house that my husband made of cypress wood last year. They worked out great! Two of them are 4x8 feet and the other is 4x5 feet.

 I heard about an organic garden store here in our area and we went to visit http://www.wormsway.com/en/. It's a really neat little store with a lot of hydroponics gear if you are interested in gardening that way. They also have tons of organic and natural fertilizers and pest control products. I ended up getting some soil testing kits.
Well, wish me luck. As you can see in the photos above the seeds have been planted!