Can This Garden Be Saved?

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My focus is all about reducing cost and labor in the future. I tell you what, this body is getting old, and if I don't find ways to cut corners and achieve either the same or better, I'm going to be crying "Uncle" from some hammock in a very cheap area south of the Border, trying to live on 4o bucks a month and learning to love, and I mean REALLY love, rice, beans, and naked chickens hanging from questionable tin roofs.

One of last weeks projects was to see if we can bring any of the garden in with us to live through the winter and get a head start next year. I've known that peppers are actually a perennial, in tropical climates, so they can be saved in a pot indoors. I will do that as soon as I'm done harvesting peppers.

I've been also taking pinchings and cuttings from just about everything. I have simply never been good at making them grow, but I've certainly been doing a lot of practicing this month.

Here are some failings. These little plants never thrived up there, but they were tough. It took me 4 years to kill them, but they finally died completely about year ago. So I figured it might be time to dump them out.





Do you remember the houseplant I grew so frustrated with, that we whacked it off and stuck the branches in a vase? That was 6 months ago.

Some of those branches were still alive and had grown roots.









So, not having a clue what to do with them, I laid them to rest in this pot.





And covered them up.





Then refreshed myself with a blueberry, strawberry, banana smoothie.





Since I was in a transplanting and cutting mood, this little grass-snuggling-errant from the compost bucket caught me eye.....





Nah. Don't go crazy girl!

The first week of September I planted these lemon seeds. And after about 2 weeks I had a little lemon tree!





As of today, I have a 7 tree lemon grove, and my tangerines and key limes are just about to break free from the soil that buries them, and reach for warm blue skies in Florida. Boy, are they in for a surprise.





And the ginger roots I planted are doing well!





Here are some philodendron (those are easy, except for the time I failed at that, too) I am sprouting for friends, the celery heads are doing well, and..... I'm not sure what else is there in the tiny drag-and-drop view I see. I'm going blind.





So now I'm heading down to the garden to take tomato, pepper, and eggplant cuttings. There's that evil wild amaranth with all the spikes and billions of seeds on every branch.





The tomatoes are feeling better now that the weather cooled off, but it's too late to get much from them. Next year I'll set them up a little better.





I end up with a few tries at tomatoes.









Some peppers.









And the missing giant Jalapeno made a marvelous home for the eggplant I decided to give another shot at life.









The ristras are still coloring nicely.





A special treat, a couple of latent watermelons to enjoy.





I've found my mind wandering more and more to how nice it would be to have a thermal, double-paned, glass greenhouse built all along the south side of a home, about 10 feet wide and 75 feet long. You close it off to the rest of the house, keep it toasty warm, maybe add a few grow lights, and you've got a perfect garden to grow things all year round. Nice seating areas, a fountain, yada-yada. No more of this seasonal prepping, planting, harvesting, and preserving madness. Open it up and cool it off when you can plant a small garden outside...

ah........





Minus the pool.
Maybe.

Reality calls.

~Faith

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Mulching, Planting, Strawberries!

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You should know that a couple of weeks ago I had a discussion with Michael, where I was pretty much ready to quit this huge garden endeavor. I wanted to forget about it, and not try to bring in a big harvest, but just be satisfied with a small garden to get a few things from. Michael actually pushed for the larger garden. He likes the work, enjoys the food, and is looking forward to learning more, doing more, and hopefully being able to sell things at Farmers Markets. So we are sort of cheering each other on through this very busy garden building time.

We are SO proud of this path! The side of that bed is about 18 inches high, and that USED to be right next to the peas, covered in lots of weeds! I hope it stays put fairly well once we get it mulched. I expect some erosion, I've done raised beds before, but never on a hill, so I hope it doesn't turn around and bite me.





First thing after morning chores, we planted melons.





We worked in some holes into the lowest bed that we had mulched.





And labeled 5 different watermelon plantings.





Then it was off to get more rotten hay. Michael does most of this, as I have to avoid the poison ivy.





Which means that in between helping him, I get to find more lovely things to photograph!





Including him.





He's listening to Bible study lessons that he enjoys.

After many trips, and battling an embedded nest of very angry ants in the third round bale we found, we had enough to cover 5 beds.





We also planted the next melon bed toward the house with a variety of muskmelons, including an old fashioned Banana melon.

We were pretty tired - seems to be a theme of ours lately, and we still had office cleaning to do that night.

I thought - HA! - that I could quickly shower and wash my hair while Michael went out and picked a few berries and we might still make it to part of our Bible study first, though.

By the time I was out and ready to go, Michael was nowhere to be found. I saw a bowl of berries in the kitchen, I called inside, I called outside, I went to all the windows and looked in every direction.

Finally, his iPod laden head popped up beyond the tool shed. He was STILL picking berries!

Poor guy. I sent my exhausted child - well, young adult, really - on what I thought was a 10 minute chore, and it turned out to be an hour, while I was enjoying a nice shower! Needless to say, I went out and helped him finish.

Here are 3 gallons of sweet labor. We did not make it to Bible study.





He still loves me. LOL

~Faith

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