May 17...
It's pretty late in the evening for an entry- it's coming up on midnight, lol. But today was a work day, a split double shift that I ended up being asked if I wanted to close, so I said yeppers. Got a nice break mid-day, but still an 11 hour workday kind of is long.
Yesterday I got a bit done before going into work. Picked up a couple more coleus- mostly black dragons which are divine. A four pack of sweet banana peppers and a three pack of hot hungarian wax- now I have to figure out where to fit them into the pepper patch, lol. But those are really damn popular around here, and I didn't want or feel the need to waste growing space on them when I knew darn well I could pick them up super cheap and help support local growers.
I also picked up a mosquito plant/citronella- a plant that's not really either of those, but is really a lemon pelagonium- pelagoniums are better known as true geraniums. It's a fine healthy plant that I'm going to be taking a couple of early cuttings from- they propagate easily, but are very not hardy plants. I figured for the $4.25 investment and some careful gardening, I could have these lovely bug repellent plants going on for years to come.
I also picked up my roll of fencing to make tomato cages with yesterday. 55 bucks to make 8 cages that will be 6 feet tall each, and sturdy as hell. So a little less than 7 bucks a cage- well worth it considering good sturdy crappy cages run between 5-7 bucks. And today I picked up my first sets of tent spikes to pin the cages down. 4 bucks per 4 pack, but they are 12 inch spikes. I'm only going to be pinning down with 2 spikes per cage at first, on my next paycheck I'm going to be picking up another 4 packs so I can have the cages pinned down properly. So at the end of the day with fencing and spikes they will run me 11 bucks each- still not too bad.
I also picked up a jug of Sluggo- Iron phosphate. I think it's slugs that are killing my beans, and I know damn well I got snails and pillbugs too. So this is an organic way of nixing the little fuckers so they stop nixing my plants- or at least I'm hoping that's really what's killing my plants. I think I might have lost my Musquee de Provence squash to the little snippers, but it's still early enough that I can direct seed a few more in tomorrow morning, and that should be fine.
Been collecting boxes from work and getting ready to start selling plants this week- I still need to do my plant tally tomorrow, and get stuff like signage made up for setting up the roadside stand down in the front yard. Need to either make or get an honor box too, and figure out how to mount it down on whatever it is I'm going to end up using for a display table. And I need to get some cleanup done down in the pole barn area to set up display.. lol. According to the weather reports right now, it's supposed to stay dry though to Sunday, so keeping my fingers crossed for that, good sales, and honest people. I'm planning on marking the plants 2 bucks each, or 3 for 5 bucks. With any luck, I might make up at least a bit of my gardening expenses for this year.
May 18....
A lot of sweating and not a lot done, lol. I gotta break early today to teach my sister how to make biscuits and gravy.
But today I put out little skewer stakes around all of my beans and squashes that are in the ground- now that I did the sluggo last night, today I needed to take care of the cutworms. A couple bits next to the stems of the plants prevents the cutworm from circling the stem and cutting it. I also reseeeded the Musquee de Provence and decided to pop a couple extra Futzu Black seeds into the ground since there was only 1 plant going there. And I reseeded 5 pots of bushel gourds since the two pots I started never did anything.
Took three cuttings off the pelagonium and got those potted up with root hormone- I put the pots into empty kitty litter jugs I used for wintersowing to act as propagators. Took 10 kitty litter jugs of wintersown wildflower mixes down to the fairy hill, but the hill proved to be a bit too tough to easily plant- so I left the jugs down there to sit, and I will dig them in on my day off in a couple days when I have the proper time to do the project.
Got the chamomile planted into it's area- hopefully it will survive there like it did last year.
Emptied out a bunch of null wintersown kitty jugs into a container so I can reuse the dirt- pity that the seedlings didn't survive, I will have to try again next year.
Got the final plant count done on the tomatoes and peppers- so tomorrow I can do up the everything that needs to be done so I can set up the sale table on Wed.
Took a look at the new beds out front, and looks like everything is doing right fine so far- the hibiscuses are even starting to really pop out with their new foliage, yay! The sweet potato containers are going great too, I can hardly wait to actually plant the darn things in to grow me some taters!
I also took an hour this morning to snip all the dandelion flower petals I could find in the yard- yielded 4 cups.. gonna make me some dandelion jelly out of the resulting tea in the next day or two. Mama N provides, and I can't help myself but to try to use what she gives me.
And now my ass is tired.. I need to take a shower and get the clove oil off me before I can get ready to do a cooking class, lol.
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