My Poor Garden!!

Yep, those squash are goners!! But, that's not all. It looks like we had the exact same problem with the cantaloupe. The leaves on the vines have gradually been getting darker with spots in the last couple of weeks. Well, a couple of days ago, all the leaves were brown and shriveling up. It wasn't much later that we noticed the 6 different fruits that were growing started to also shrivel up and die.

We didn't even get 1 cantaloupe from that bed!! I was so prepared the over-abundance but was left with nothing. I think we had the same issue with the cantaloupe because we started out with those growing on the ground in the bed. They didn't want to stay in the bed so we kept re-directing back in. When we did that, they started growing on top of each and around eachother. I think this allowed the plants to hold way too much of the ridiculous amount of rain we've been getting.

What a bummer! Now, we are down to all the tomatoes and green beans. The tomatoes are finally starting to turn red and we have picked several good ones. We have also picked several handfuls of green beans that cook up nicely. I was surprised at the amount of green beans though. We planted 18 plants and have not had anywhere close to enough to feed the 4 families who went to together. Next time, we will probably fill an entire bed with those.

What Happened to My Squash?!!

I have no idea what happened, but I think I have somehow lost all the squash plants. They started to have a white mildew like look on the leaves last week and we sprayed diluted milk on them. Well, that didn't work.
Now, they are not only white on the leaves. Many of the leaves are turning brown and wilting up, the few squash that are on the plants have mold (white and black) growing all over them.

AHHHHHHH! I don't know what happened. We only got about 2 weeks of harvest and 20-30 squash. That sure isn't what I was counting on. I think we are going to have to pull them all out and that makes me want to cry :(

The green beans are finally producing a lot and we have eaten them a couple of times this week. The tomatoes are still growing and looking good, but the grape tomatoes are still the only ones that have turned red. The cantaloupe are growing big and there are several more coming along. But, the cantaloupe has a good chunk of leaves that have brown spots all over them. I don't know what that means. Too much rain? Not enough water? Obviously, we don't really know what we are doing.

Garden Journal - Week 7 - A Little Remodel

We have been working this week! Jess and I (mostly Jess), spent a good bit of Monday re-modeling the garden.

We decided the cantaloupe were in desperate need of a trellis. They were NOT staying the bed and they were growing on top of eachother causing the ones underneath to start rotting. There were also several bugs hiding under there that were doing damage to our great vine. Once we got all the vines untangled and laid out, we weeded out all the rotting and dead ones. We also put Sevin pesticide all over the plant (so much for an organic garden). Then we put a trellis on either end of the bed and connected them in the middle. We wrapped all the vines up the trellis and this is the new look...I'm not sure if you can see it in the picture, but there is 1 cantaloupe that is already about 3 inches long laying on the wood in front in the middle. There are lots of other small cantaloupes coming along as well.

The green beans are looking great! No bugs there anymore (we didn't even have to use the Sevin). We actually were able to pick our very first green bean on Monday. We cooked it up and split it in half :) There are lots of other beans that are coming and should be ready to harvest soon.The squash needed a lot of work too. They were growing on top of eachother and all the squash on bottom was not getting pollinated and was dying. So, we went through and cut out all the dead, rotting branches and squash and decided to tie the squash up a little and go a little more vertical. We read that vertical is possible with squash. We did have to be VERY careful though because the stems break extremely easily. The squash were also showing signs of mildew on the leaves. We are hoping that the clearing out will help some with that. If not, I read that diluted milk is a natural anti-fungal and I will spray that.The tomatoes continue to look pretty good. They needed a little weeding as well, but there are lots of little tomatoes growing. We did pick off about 5 of the green ones and made some fried, green tomatoes. They were very good and we fried some squash along with them.To read the entire garden journey, just click here.

Garden Journal - Week 6 - Cantaloupe Are Taking Over!

Here is a picture of our cantaloupe bed. They have completely filled out the bed and are overflowing. We keep having to re-direct the vines back into the bed. I have seen bees several times moving their way throughout these and there are flowers everywhere! I'm sure we are going to have a crazy amount of fruit here soon. They have only grown 1" in height, but have spread all out.

The Green Beans had a good week. They have grown from 12" to 17". They are very bushy and there seems to be lots of blooms. Still no bean buds.

The one and only Green Pepper. This is the only one we were able to salvage and I don't think anything else is going to grow because the plant looks like...

THIS (what is the problem with the peppers?!) This was the last one and I think it is about to make it's way to the green pepper grave yard :(

The squash continue to multiply. The stems have broken off into many more stems and there are baby squash all throughout the bed.

Here is what they look like all together.

The tomatoes are so close to being ripe. I can hardly wait. There have to be about 10 tomatoes this size and another 20 baby ones.

We also have 1 tomato plant that is grape tomatoes. These are filling out nicely and should be ready to pick soon.

They have grown from

23" to 34"
25" to 40"
49" to 53"
24" to 34"
33" to 46"

To see the journey of the garden, just click here.

Garden Journal - Week 4 - First Squash and Attack of the Caterpillars

Here is the update for this week. It has been amazing to watch how much the plants have grown in the last 2 weeks. Today, I actually picked our first squash and cooked it up and ate it. It was DELICIOUS!! They grew from 12" to 22"!! (They're HUGE!)There are several others that should be ready to be picked tomorrow or the next day. I guess my squash were properly pollinated :) I did find 2 of the squash plants with aphids all over them. I sprayed them with soap water and they seem to be doing a little better. I think I need to spray again though because I sprayed the same day the rain started.

On another note, we have been attacked by caterpillars. A couple weeks ago, I noticed about 3-4 small ones on our green bean plant. No biggie, we had the kids pick them off and we were good to go. I haven't really seen anymore since then.

Well, I don't know if the 5 days of straight rain brought them or what... but we picked off 30-40 of those little buggers today off the tomato plants. These were almost solely on the 4 big plants on the end. The smaller ones only had 1 plant with 2 on it. Why did they move 2 beds down?. We followed the advice I have read on several gardening sites and crushed up those caterpillars (sorry Jackie) and put the remains around the plant to deter others from coming. I don't know if this will really work, but we are going to get some organic Bt also to make sure they don't come back.
The tomatoes have grown from:
17" to 23"
20" to 25"
36 to 49"
24" to 33"

As far as the green peppers go, we are now down to only 1 plant out of the 9! I'm not sure why they did so poorly, but they sure did struggle. The one remaining still looks fine, but I'm not holding my breath. The one left grew from 12" to 25".The Green Beans still look pretty good, but I still don't see any beginning of beans. The maturity is 48 days, so I guess I have a couple more weeks before I really see anything significant.
They grew from 11" to 12"
The cantaloupe look great! They have lots of vines going all over the place! The cantaloupe and squash were the 2 plants that didn't seem to mind all this rain at all! In fact, they thrived off of it. I am starting to see small flowers and I am hoping that I will be able to distinguish the male from the female blooms soon.

They grew from 7" to 9" tall, but have spread to almost fill the entire bed and parts of the plant are hanging over. I think we are going to have a lot of cantaloupe.

To follow the whole gardening adventure, click here.

Rain, Rain, Go Away!

I'm sure we are in the middle of some sort of drought right now and this will sound completely selfish. But, we have not seen the sun in 3 days here! It has been raining almost non-stop. Now, you may be thinking that I just would like to get outside and play. Nope, I'm just obsessed about that dang garden. I just have this bad feeling that by the end of this rainy week, we are going to drown all our little plants.

I already went out yesterday and had to tie up several of the plants and throw one away completely. The squash and cantaloupe don't seem to be affected at all yet. I am nervous about the tomatoes though. I only time will tell.

Praying for a little sun tomorrow :)

Hand Pollination for Squash and Cantaloupe (and appartantly many other fruits)

I had no idea what I was getting myself into when we planted squash and cantaloupe. Who knew there could be so many things to consider when growing a garden. So, from what I hear, I can be in serious trouble with these 2 fruits if I don't have enough bees around.

They are supposed to come in the early morning (shortly after sunrise), so maybe I'm just not seeing them. You know I'm not awake that early. But, I really have not ever been aware of bees around our house. We have plenty of wasps and love bugs, but I rarely see a bee. So, I had to try some hand pollenation. I found this site that gives a great step-by-step and in a humerous way. Maybe I am just in a haze of gardening, but see if you find this as funny as I did...

Hand Pollination:
Jokes about hand pollination abound, both in the internet and in the field. Does anyone object to helping their plant to have sex? Okay, with that said, on to the learning....
By pollinating your pumpkin by hand, you assure a number of things. First, you use pollen from a male pumpkin from a plant you select(versus Mother Nature- -random?). This eliminates breeding a giant pumpkin with a nearby Zucchini Squash. Second, it significantly increases the likelihood of successful pollination of the female flower, although nothing is an ironclad guarantee. Third, it will increase the likelihood of pollinating all segments of the female flower.

Step by step:
1. Time pollination for the day that a female flower opens it's bud. With a little experience, you can usually tell the night before when it is ready to open.
2. Pollinate the plants in the early morning. The female flowers will close later in the day.
3. Select a male flower. Pull off the petals to expose the stamen which contains the pollen.
4. To make sure the pollen is mature. Touch the stamen with your finger and see if tiny yellow specks(the pollen) come off on your hand.
5. Using the stamen itself (some growers opt to transfer it to a soft paint brush). Gently rub the pollen onto the inside stigma of the female flower. Make sure to come in contact with all segments of the stigma. I leave the stamen inside the female flower. It is not necessary.
6. Hand pollination is now complete! Was it good for you?(Ooops. Sorry, but I could not resist!).

Keeping Out Skunks and Raccoons

Around here we tend to see those criminal little raccoons sneaking around at night (it might have something to do with the crazy neighbor who fed them when she lived here). Anyway, I have been looking at ways to keep these vandals out of my garden once the cantaloupe start to grow. We have planted pineapple in the past and have lost every single one to a raccoon. This is very frustrating when a pineapple takes 2 YEARS to produce 1 pineapple!! So, I am thinking ahead and ready to keep them out. I also don't want to pay a fortune for an electric fence. But, I found a site called ghorganics and it has a great list of how to keep those (and other critters) out of your garden. Here is the list for raccoons.

Raccoons and Skunks

NOTE: Skunks have been known to go after sweet corn just like raccoons! To add to that not much will stop raccoons.

Raccoons usually have litters of between two to seven babies. They travel what we call "runs" and will use the same runs generation after generation for decades. They can easily scale high wooden fences. They are nocturnal and do their scavenging at night.

Skunks are also nocturnal or nighttime marauders and can claim up to 10 acres in their territory! Skunks habitually use old borrows left from other creatures or like to make a home in hollows underneath buildings and porches. They will, on occasion, dig their own burrows.

1. Plant anything with prickly foliage to deter them such as squash plants, oriental poppies, globe thistle, pumpkins, Kentucky Wonder pole beans etc. Raccoons have incredibly sensitive toes. Glad to know they won't be after our squash.

2. To keep them from corn plants: put 2-3 drops of Tabasco sauce near the tip of the ear at least one week before picking.

3. To trap raccoons: use baits like sardines, marshmallows, or honey soaked bread.

4. Surround the area with a horizontal border that coons and skunks don't like to walk over-crumpled up black plastic, newspaper, or aluminum foil. Hold these in place with some rocks, landscape pins, or soil. I think I may try this one.

5. Use mesh fencing or chicken wire as a horizontal barrier. Raise these slightly above the ground with some bricks to make it even more of a hassle to cross. We've talked about doing this too.

6. Spread naphthalene flakes or balls around, raccoons hate the taste of this in their paws and they are said to also aid in repelling skunks. No idea what this is, but I am going to look into it.

7. Put paper bags over ears of corn and fasten shut with a rubberband.

8. When the ears are getting close to harvest time tape them to the stalks with masking tape!

9. Use any kind of old netting: fish netting, tennis net, whatever as a barrier. Stake loosely to hold in place.

10. Use rose bush trimmings as a barrier, or anything with stickers.

11. Plant cucumbers with your corn. Both raccoons and skunks hate cucumbers for some reason. Interesting. Unfortunately I didn't plant these.

12. Sprinkle a barrier of lime around the perimeter to be protected. Definitely going to do this!

13. To keep raccoons from getting the fruit in your trees: wrap a barrier of aluminum or sheet metal 2 feet in height around the trunk of the tree. Be sure not to make it tight you want to let your tree trunk breathe.

14. Soak old corn cobs in vinegar. Place them around the plant to be protected. Supposedly once they chew on these they will not come back. We found that last season this worked on both skunks and raccoons for about 2 months. Apparently after that they got wise and were up to their old tricks.

15. Skunk Spray: Make a spray out of 1 quart of 3% hydrogen peroxide, 1/4 cup baking soda and 1 teaspoon dish soap. Spray this around areas where you would like skunks to steer clear of such as garbage cans. Don't get this on foliage.

16. Sprinkle flour around suspected nesting or sleeping areas.

Getting Rid of Bugs on Plants - The Natural Way

So, I have seen on numerous sites an easy and effective way to keep away those aphids and other bugs that you don't want on your plants without harming the plant or any of the bugs you do want.

All you have to do is mix dish soap and water (or use your leftover dish water) and spray all over the plant.

We have 1 green bean plant that seems to be covered with these and I am going to put this method to the test.

Garden Journal - Week 3 - How to Care for Your Squash Plant

Everything seems to growing well. We measured all out plants again and here are the results:

Tomatoes (there are several more flowers still blooming, but no buds yet. Jessica pinched off the suckers last week.):
Celebrity - 17" (up from 11" last week)
Beef Steak 1 - 20" (up from 18" last week)
Beef Steak 2 - 36" (up from 34" last week)
Beef Steak 3 - 24" (up from 19" last week)
Beef Steak 4 - 24" (up from 19" last week)
Green Beans (front 2 rows) - 11" (up from 6" last week). I decided to thin these a little. There were 3 plants that looked like they were struggling a little. So, I pulled those to allow the other 15 to thrive more.Bell Peppers (back row) - 12" (up from 8" last week). We did lose all but 2 out of the 9 of these. The 2 left still look good. I'm a little bummed, but good learning experience.

Cantaloupe - 7" (down from 8 1/2" last week - they still look great so I am not sure if last week was recorded correctly)Squash - 12" (up from 7 1/2" last week).I started researching more about how squash grows and here is what I found out:
Both of the above pictures show male and female blooms on squash (these are not from my garden - we are not that close yet). We do seem to have the beginnings of both the male and female. I don't think it will be long before we start to see some flower blooms.

The only way that squash will produce fruit is if bees transfer the pollen from the male flower to the female flower.

Male squash bees look like they’re sleeping in the open squash blossoms (and in the mid mornings when the flowers close they are), but they are actually waiting for the female bee to visit the flower so they can mate. If you want to know if you have squash bees in your garden, and don’t want to get up before dawn to see them, try pinching some of the closed squash flowers after mid morning. If you get a buzz from the flower that means a male squash bee is resting in the blossom, and then you’ll know that females are in your garden doing their job pollinating your squash. (from Urban Bee Gardens)

If your squash are not lacking the pollination transfer from bees, you can try to do it yourself. There is a great step-by-step here.

I found some great answers to questions about growing squash plants here.

We have noticed one of the squash plants appears to have tiny black ants crawling around the base of the plant. From what I have read, these are harmless. If I start to see any deterioration to the plant, I should try to get rid of them. So far, no harm.

How Does Our Garden Grow?

The garden is coming along very well. Everything seems to be growing and thriving, with the exception of the green peppers (we are down to 3 out of the 9 planted). We missed 1 week of measurements because we were out of town. But, we headed out today to measure and record any changes. Here is what everything is looking like now:

This is a close-up of the tomato plant. I was trying to show the small yellow flowers on them. The 4 larger plants on the end have about 8-10 flowers a piece on them. The smaller 8 plants have 1-2 flowers so far.
The beef steak tomatoes (ones that we bought larger) grew from 8" to 11", 24" to 34", 12" to 19" and 11" to 19".
The celebrity tomatoes grew from 3" to 11".

Here is a picture of the celebrity tomatoes.

Here is a picture of the beef steak
Here are the some of the squash plants. The leaves on these have really gotten big. These plants have grown from 3" to 7 1/2 ". They also have small clusters of buds right at the base of the leaves.The is one of the 3 surviving bell pepper plants. The 3 that are left look great. It's just the rest of them died. They have grown from 7 1/2" to 8". The ones still doing well have small buds starting to form.
This is the green beans. All 18 are still looking good. I've heard that you may have to thin them out once they get a little bigger. So far though, I don't see any that are weak. They have grown from 4 1/2" to 6". These also show several buds forming under the leaves.
This is the cantaloupe plant. It has grown the most proportionally. It started at only 1" and is now 8 1/2 inches!!

Keeping the Spiders Out!!

When we brought free soil for our garden and started to put it down, we noticed something. Actually, we noticed a lot of something's. There were lots of small wolf spiders in our dirt. Now, I have grown up in Florida and I am very familiar with this nasty little species. In fact, I found one in our current house about a year ago that was approximately the size of my hand (no exaggeration). I also grew up in a house that had a constant problem with these guys.

So, when we first saw the inch-sized spiders, I thought "Oh, these aren't that bad. They're tiny". Then, I remembered that I canceled our pest control service when Cory lost his job. The wheels started turning and realized how easy it would be for these small spiders to look for a new home in MY home and grow to become big spiders and make lots of baby spiders.

So, I started to research. I don't want to use a lot of chemical pesticides close to my organic garden. So, I was looking for some of those home remedies. Well, I found a consistent answer and I am going to give it a try. Apparently, spiders taste with their feet. And, they hate the taste of citrus and essential oils (lavender was the one I kept coming across). So, I headed to the store and bought 2 bottles of lavender, some lavender pouches and 1 32 ounce bottle of lemon juice. I am going to spray both of these around the outside of my house and hopefully keep my 8 legged friends in the garden.

Speaking of, I really don't mind having them in the garden. I have read that they are actually quite helpful. They eat many of the bugs that might harm your plants and they aerate the soil. But, as much as I read that they are also helpful to have in your home, I am NOT interested. I don't care if they eat bugs inside. Honestly, I wouldn't care if they cleaned my house. I don't want them inside.

We have already applied the lemon juice outside. Before I did that, I saw 2 small spiders INSIDE in the same day. Since I put the lemon juice down, I haven't seen another one. I will still add the lavender and see how things go. I hope this works. I love finding cheap, natural ways to treat things.

Starting our Journal

We headed out to the garden today to start our garden journal. For today, we just measured each kind of plant and wrote down the height. In the future, we will also include any details we see (flowers or buds, bugs, wilting, etc...)

Here is Sydney measuring one of the green bean plants (4 1/2 '')

Recording her findings on our chart

Jordan measuring Beef Steak Tomato Plant 3 (12'')
The Celebrity tomatoes came in at 3'', the BS 1 was 8'', BS 2 was 24'' and BS 4 was 11''

Jordan recording his numbers

Morgan measuring squash (3''). She also measured the cantaloupe, which is only 1'' right now.

Avery measuring bell peppers (7 1/2'')

Everything is Planted

We spent most of the day today in dirt and manure. Btw, we were able to get both of those things for free through some great hook-ups. With 4 beds (4' x 8'), those donations saved us $100's of dollars.
Here is a picture facing the back of the house with all the beds finished. To see how we built these beds, check here.After filling the beds about 3/4 full of dirt and 1/4 full of manure (mixing the 2 together), we planting everything and then put shredded paper on top as mulch. This is a great, free way to mulch your garden. We took old phone books and newspaper and went to town. Actually, we even used some full pieces when we ran out of the shredded stuff.
I am planning to keep a weekly account of how the garden is doing.
Tomorrow, I am going out with the kids and we are going to start a garden journal. We will measure all the plants and record their growth every Sunday.
I will putting updates here. This may be more detail than you want, but I had a hard time finding detail when I was researching what to do. I hope this is helpful to somebody. Either way, I look forward to seeing how things progress.

This is Bed # 1.
Here we have 9 Cantaloupe plants. We are probably going to build some type of cage or cover to keep raccoons away. We have lost every pineapple to those critters in the past.

This is a close up picture of our cantaloupe plant. These are the smallest of all the plants we bought. Bed #2.
The first 2 rows are bush green beans (18 of them). The back 2 rows are green bell pepper (9 of them) and 1 tomato plant.Cl0se up of bell peppersClose up of green beans (these look like they already have tiny pods on them)Bed #3
This is all squash. We have 9 plants and, from what I hear, we will have more squash than we know what to do with.Close up of squashBed #4
This bed is all tomatoes. The 2 rows on the left (8 plants) are Bonnie Celebrity. The 4 on the right are Big Beef.We bought different sizes to see how well each does.
These are the small baby ones.These are the fairly mature ones.
The kids worked really hard during the first part of the day. Then, we pulled out the slip and slide and them have fun while the grown-ups finished up.