A gardening goal

Since I'm doing an actual garden this year, I figure I should start looking over the area I'm planting in.

I started with my herb/rose prayer garden this afternoon. Yes, its a bigger mess then last year or the pic above. My lavendars need clipped back of dead branches and I cleaned up one while I was there. I also noticed that the rose bush that was small last year and had black spots ( I cut off the infected leaves but didn't do the soap mixture for black spot that I do), is growing nicely and no black spot as of yet.

My rosemary bush has really over grown, and I noticed that the rose bush that is in front of it is still rather small for a minature so I cut back the Rosemary quite a bit.

I've labeled my herb/prayer garden on FB as to who is who so if you are friend on FB and I tag you in the photo, that's your plant! (If you aren't there, don't fret, I probably have you indoors!) The herb/prayer garden is from a past bible study I was in and a few women from a message board I'm on that have encouraged me over the years.

The main area that I'm going to be working on this year I do need to find new homes for my daisies. The mums have run its course out there so I'll be digging them up in the next few weeks. I'm studying what type of soil I need for the ground.

I did discover a few days ago that pouring a little lime on the soil where an Oregano is planted helps with the acidicy of the soil for the plant. I don't know if I'm transplanting my Oregano yet this year in the herb garden. It might grow better out there as it didn't do much this past year but is still alive. Funny thing was, I have it under the same florecent lamp as the basil, and when the first basil died, the oregano grow about a couple of inches. It stopped growing when I replanted the basil again. And they are in different pots!

So my goal is to try to spend at least 20 minutes outside investigating my garden area for the next few weeks. I still need to do the two small bags of weeds everytime I go out to start toning down my weed problem. Clover has really taken over in many areas of my yard where it was not a problem in past years. Not liking that at all!

Started Herbs indoors

I decided to start my herbs early this year indoors. I have a florescent light that I read gives off the right kind of light for the plants to grow indoors.

I went out into my garden yesterday and my chamomile didn't survive. I replanted that and also my basil for the third time this year. I am still refusing to buy the plant when I know I can grow it. When these are mature I will put them in the garden pictured above for a second round.

Still planing on taking out my daisies in the next few months in the back and putting in a real garden this year. Even though I liked the smaller peppers that I got off my pepper plants as well as my zucchini and my yellow squash, I think they'll produce better in the ground then in containers. I'm still going to do the tomatoes and lettuce in the containers as well as my beans and peas.

I started a compost pile

After much deliberation (Yes its taken years to take this step!) I've started a compost pile. I will post pics up in a few weeks as we've had several storms pass through in the last few days.

I cleaned up my container garden of my dying peppers, squash and tomato plants and put them in my compost pile. I didn't realize that I had actually started one along the way with the stump that was already there and the bark that was decomposing on its own.

I'm thinking of starting another basil plant indoors. I brought in the one that I started from seed and its still trying to grow.

My vegetable garden is still thriving :)

We have had the strangest weather system here this summer. Very rarely was our days nice and sunny much less warm enough for tomatoes to blossom. Around the Middle of August I started getting blossoms and by late September tomatoes were forming on my Cherry Tomato and my BeefSteak Tomato. My Early Girl even made a second appearance and picked on ripe one last week to put in a tuna salad.

My peppers have been producing madly and I've picked about 15 of them from the 4 plants that I planted so far. I'm freezing them whole as they are small, most just the right size for stuffing with rice as a side dish. I used a couple of red peppers for tuna salad finger sandwhiches I made for our women's tea we had Sunday night. Also added to the tuna was basil from my garden. I used the lettuce I had growing as well.

My zucch, yellow squash, and the two cuke plants have come to an end. I was able to get only one zucch and two yellow off the plants, and about 3 cukes from the two cuke plants I had. I decided I will be digging up my back area where the daisies are for a garden next year. I will probably do zucch, yellow squash and my cukes on trellises.

My beans are producing quite a bit and I love how the vines are wrapping around the tomatoe cage that I planted with it. I did also get some pea vines and bean vines wrapped together as they merged with in a couple of days. I will probably keep them in containers next year.

I will do peppers again next year and will do them in the ground. Most of my herbs that are surviving I've been transplanting. I have two basils that I started from seed and I will bring them inside and hope to coax them to make it through the winter season. My Thyme is doing wonderful and I dryed my first small patch of chamomile for tea the other day.

I've got pics of the begonias I planted in the back yard that I'll post later. It was an inspiration from my mom as we were discussing my back yard plans. They look nice around my azalea tree.

Making bath oil out of herbs

Finished one thing on my memory list Today: Found a website on how to make bath oil. So I went to cut lavendar and rosemary and had sage drying in my dehydrator and mixed them together pressed down in a small jar and pour Canola oil over them using a knife on the sides to remove airbubbles. Its suppose to sit for 2 weeks in a warm area and today that is next to the sliding glass door in my family room. Supposively the scents from the herbs mix with the canola oil.

After about 2 weeks, you strain the oil through a cheese cloth into another glass jar and let it sit for another 7 days. After that you can pour into gift jars for gifts or use for yourself.

What I used for this one as I was limited was I did Rosemary, Lavendar, Sage. I'll post pics of how I did at a later day.

There are other oils such as sesame seed, almond and olive oil that you can use as well.

Update on my prayer garden

My prayer garden is the one I have for a profile pic. I know it looks rather messy hense the title of the blog abiggermess.blogspot.com.

I went out there today to do some clean up that didn't get done before I left town last week to a prayer conference in Mesa Az. My Wine and Rose thyme was very much on their last legs in the containers having not been watered while I was gone. My fault as I had only instructed my hubby to water the veggie garden.

I decided that I needed to plant my thyme before they were totatly dry and root bound. Glad to have them in the ground, and their location is not going to deter from putting in the fence this weekend.

Finished cleaning up the pulled up weeds that I left in a pile as I figured I'd just do one clean up when I was done.

The prayer garden does look as if its not been tended properly and that is true and I hope in the next day or two to get out there and pull back some more weeds.

While in Arizona at the motel I stayed at I spotted a similar design that a friend suggested I do for my back yard. Below is a picture I took.

My plan from the Prayer Garden to the front was to have a continual walkway going to the back yard from the front. Costwise using pea gravel such as what is used inbetween the slate in the photo and then as a ground cover made sense to me to do to help this project along as to where my patio set sits by another flower bed and close to my birch tree. My big plan is to not have to move my lawn furniture to mow the lawn underneath.

My veggie garden is doing very well. My basil is having trouble and I don't know why it won't grow past a certian point. Every time I walk by Fred Meyers I want to just break down and buy one but then I come home and replant another crop in the pot hoping something will take hold.

Someone I met on the trip going with us said that he was doing some landscaping this week and had 5 gallon buckets for plants he was using and said I could have as many as I want. I figure in a couple of weeks I'll need to tranplant my two tomatoes, peppers, beans and peas into bigger containers and just have them line up alongside the driveway next to the porch. Its not going to work to dig up parts in the daisy garden like I planned as it would take me several days to just clean that area up before I felt comfortable planting my garden there.

The weather is still cool here which is why some of what I planted is having trouble growing properly.

I bought a beef steak tomato plant and a crookneck yellow squash today(In the chair on the left). I sure hope I'm done!

I moved my starters on to the stand again to make things easier for watering for later in the week. The plan is when the zuc and the two cukes up on the top start to grow out more, they'll cascade down the stairs. I'm not sure where the other garden that is there already is going. I'll be adding the yellow squash up there also. Not sure why my pickling cuke is holding back. (the top left). I found if I move the table under the stand a little more, the overflow of watering the peppers falls into the begonia.

I picked up some soup cups at the misson to use for my plant drainage and to also bright up my plant area a little bit more with the mixture of containers I have already on the plant stand.