Category Archives for "Grow Things"

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How to Grow Strawberries in a Hanging Basket

A couple Saturdays ago I headed down to Fred Meyer for their Fuchsia Saturday event. Each year, on the first Saturday in April, Fred Meyer gives away free potting soil at this event. Now it’s not just any old potting soil either, it is my favorite brand; BlackGold! This is a pretty popular event, but not something you want to show up early to attend! Last year I got up extra early to try to beat the crowds only to learn that gardeners are an early crowd!! This year I didn’t get there until about 2:00PM. The parking lot was still packed, but the lines were a lot shorter.

I took my time picking out various flowers from the garden center, then did my grocery shopping, and then got in line to get my free potting soil. There was only a handful of people in line ahead of me and I got my potting soil and headed back to my truck in no time.

Truck felt a little out of place in the crowded parking lot. We found a place to park in the very back corner, but it sure was tight!

When I got back home, I gathered my pots, new plants, and old plants together to make a plan. I wanted to put as much as I could in my hanging baskets to avoid letting things sit on the ground in reach of chicken feet and deer muzzles. Macchiato jumped right in to help me out with the spring planting.

I had some old strawberry starts from last year. I had taken these off the mother plants and put them into individual pots to establish themselves before planting. When I was cleaning out the greenhouse this spring, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for these starts and wonder if there was a way I could save them. They really didn’t look very good after sitting in pots all summer and through the winter too. I decided to try!

Grabbing my largest hanging basket, I cut holes in the coco fiber liner all the way around the sides. I would poke one strawberry start out each of these holes and then plant flowers up on top. The strawberries wouldn’t take any extra space in the flower basket. Just making good use of the space I already have.

Now to prepare the plants! Pulling off the dead leaves from each strawberry start was the first step to reviving these little guys and giving them another chance. Once I removed the dead leaves, I carefully removed as much of the old soil from the root ball as I could. They were potted in clay soil mixed with potting soil and they were obviously ready for a new home.

I’ve never had very good success growing strawberries because they love well draining soil. My soil has always been thick clay that compacts on the tender roots and either holds too much moisture in the spring, or won’t soak up water at all during the summer. Well, since I am planting in a container this time, I get to make my own soil conditions! I grabbed a bag of rose sand and mixed it 50/50 with regular potting soil. This made a very crumbly soil texture which I’m confident the strawberries will appreciate. Only trouble is going to be regular watering during the summer months.

Trying to be gentle with the plants, I gathered the leaves together and poked their heads through the holes in the sides of the basket. It’s really important to strawberries to keep their crowns above ground so I tried to be really careful how far I poked them through. I filled the container with my 50/50 sandy soil mixture as I went, allowing the dirt to support the roots of my starts. Once I had them all planted, I cover their roots with the mixture and then topped it off with pure potting soil.

 

I had a hard time deciding which of my flowers to plant out the top of this basket. It is the biggest basket I have, so I decided my biggest flower needed to grow in this pot. That ended up being my Voltage White Osteospermum. This flower grows up to 15 inches wide so I figure it will have plenty of room to grow here. I also wanted a flower that would spill over the sides of the planter so I stuck one of my wave petunias in this planter as well.

The rest of my planting was easy. Just a matter of grouping tall, short, and spilling plants in an attractive manner for each pot. Once I got them all planted, I set out to find homes for each of them. I hung as many as I could up high to keep them safe from the deer, especially the strawberries. I set the pots that couldn’t hang up about 3 feet off the ground so the chickens can’t get to them at least. I made a bit of a blockade to discourage the deer, but I’m mostly just keeping my fingers crossed that the deer will leave my precious flowers alone!! So far so good. I’m sure it will be more of an issue later in the summer when they don’t have as much to eat.

If you’d like to see exactly how I planted my strawberries, more details on making a sandy soil mixture, and making holes in the coco fiber container lining, watch the YouTube video I made of the process below.

What have your grown successfully in pots and containers? Let me know in the comments! I was really happy to be able to make good use of the space in my hanging flower basket to grow some food!

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Transplanting Herbs from the Garden to Containers

Spring has finally arrived. The sun is starting to shine, everything is turning green and starting to grow, and I’ve been getting really anxious to do some gardening! Tending to plants brings so much joy into my life. Join me today in the beginnings of my first attempt at container gardening.

I’ve been so thankful for the privilege of a very large gardening space these past 6 years. So much food has been grown, harvested, processed, and enjoyed at our dinner table. No matter how big my gardening space, I always seem to want MORE SPACE!!! Well, this year I get to practice self control because I’m going to be doing container gardening! I’m excited about this new venture, as well as a bit nervous. I’ve never been good with house plants, my chickens love to eat perlite out of my pots outside, and there are so many deer that hang out close to my house.

First things first, I pulled all of my favorite herbs out of the garden we had last year and gathered them up on the tailgate to keep them away from the chickens while I organized the potting situation. My favorite herbs that survived the winter include: Oregano, Chinese Chives, Thyme, Tri-colored Sage, Orange Mint, and some good old Catnip for Macchiato. The Catnip didn’t actually survive the winter, but I found some new starts coming up so I grabbed those.

I remember it being very difficult to get the Chives growing strong so I don’t want to risk loosing those. I dug out all 3 clusters of them, carefully avoiding their roots. I also pulled my most productive Oregano plant. The Thyme was just pretty, thriving, and calling my name. (Can anyone relate!?) I don’t actually use it all that much in my cooking, but I love the tiny pink flowers when it is in bloom.

The Oregano and Chives were given to me by a former piano student along with some Strawberry starts. I saved the Strawberries too. I have a hard enough time keeping Strawberries alive in the ground, I’m not very confident with my ability to help them thrive in pots, but I will try my best! Maybe they will even do better for me!!

My Tri-Colored Sage was a favorite herb last season. It makes some of the most delicious breakfast gravy and it is my husband’s favorite herb (probably because of the breakfast gravy!). We are still using dried sage that I harvested from this plant. I was shocked to see it had survived the winter, though it doesn’t look too good right now. I’m sure it will improve in time with some tender loving care!

In my digging around, I came across 3 volunteer pansies and 2 succulent type plants (no idea what they are!) so I saved those too. There is something about plants, I just want to give them all a happy place to grow and thrive! It is so hard for me to thin my veggie starts, or pull up unwanted volunteer plants in the garden. They’re trying so hard to grow, I wish I could just give them all a home!! Well, these 5 plants won me over this time. I don’t have very many plants yet so, for now, I have room for them and will take care of them.

I made a quick run to Wilco for potting soil to make sure I’d have enough soil to pot everyone up nicely. What an adventure that was! Wilco is pretty new to town, and they moved into an existing old building with a TINY parking lot!! Just two rows of parking, with the busiest main drag of town out front, and not much space back to the building either. Then of course they have their load out zone in the corner of the parking lot too. Very crowded space to say the least! I don’t think they were anticipating full ton, dually farm trucks pulling in and out of there like I was today!

After inching my way back and forth out of my parking space, I was speeding back across the countryside to my precious herb plants that were waiting for their new home. I was pushing for time too because I only had about one good hour of daylight left. The late evening sun helped to brighten things up until it would disappear behind the distant coastal mountain range, so I knew I had some time and it was just beautiful out!

I decided to plant most of the herbs in the planter box I built last year. But first, I was going to have to move the planter into a sunny location. Do you ever go out and start working on a project, determined you will do it by yourself? Without needing to ask your husband for help!? Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like I’m always asking him for a tool, some of his wisdom, or a strong arm. I’m so glad he’s there for me, and he’s always happy to help, but sometimes I just want to do it myself without bothering him! Well, I tried, but moving this planter was not one of those things I could do alone! I dug all the soil into the wheelbarrow to make it light enough to move, but then discovered the wood was sopping wet and the bottom was starting to fall out….so I gave in and asked for help. 🙂

 

I was able to fit most of the homeless herbs into this planter. I did my best to arrange the plants attractively, keeping their full grown size in mind. Of course, I can keep these herbs trimmed back to be whatever size/shape I want, but I wanted to balance the tall plants mixed in nicely with the short plants. I’m sure it will look better after the plants have established themselves and filled in a bit.

Placing some of the herbs in the planter, and some of the herbs in the wheelbarrow with the potting soil, allowed me to visualize the end result as I arranged the plants, swapping one out for another and getting them all placed just right. Working from left to right, I made sure to get the potting soil in firmly around all corners of the plants. I added another handful of soil to the top of each plant, right above it’s original root ball, underneath the greenery. This helps to keep the plant from drying out, by having the same type of soil on all sides, especially the top.

These herbs were living in some pretty hard clay soil, so I tried to carefully remove as much of that soil as possible without disturbing the roots too much. This accomplishes a couple of things. First, it encourages new growth from the slightly damaged roots. Secondly, it takes off the bulk of the root ball, allowing me to plant them closer together in their new planter. Third, these herbs don’t exactly thrive in clay soil, so I am glad to get rid of it!

With these guys all planted, I turned my attention to the flowers that I just couldn’t resist buying on my quick run into Wilco! I’m planning to get lots more flowers next week at Fred Meyer’s Fushia Saturday, but I was more than ready for some spring blooms!!

As you can see, these little beauties are pretty much root bound too! When this happens, it can be tricky to get them out of their pots as the roots kind of grab onto the sides of the container. Just give them a gentle squeeze from each side, flip them upside down, sliding your fingers around the greenery to catch the plant as it comes out of the pot, and then flip the pot upside down and give the bottom a little tap. The plant should come right out! If not, you could also try sliding a knife or another thin object around the sides of the container, much like you would get fresh baked muffins out of the muffin pan.

Once you get the plant out of the container, if the root ball is this snug, it’s a good idea to tease the roots a bit. I just grab the bottom of the plant, and pull the sides away from each other, as if I was cutting the root ball in half. I only let this tear go up about 1/2 inch. Then I turn the plant and repeat the same idea. This leaves me with a 4 way break in the root cluster. If you don’t free the roots in this way, they may not figure out that they have lots of room to break free and reach deep into the soil for water and nutrients.

And then finally, my work was done. A satisfying planter filled with tasty herbs, a beautiful pot of flowers on the porch to serve as spring eye candy, and a happy gardener. Spring is officially here. I have gardened, and summer can come on over!

What have you been up to as you welcome this wonderful season of spring? I’d love to hear about your projects too! Please share in the comments.

 

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From Bare Land to Garden in 6 weeks

We arrived at our new home site at the end of March, 2014. The weather was just turning beautiful and I was anxious to get outside and plant a garden again. We didn’t have much to work with financially, with no regular income, and no job leads. We really weren’t sure what we were going to do and were laying as low as possible at the time. Some health issues had set us back significantly, and drained our emergency savings as well. I felt that a garden was a necessity for us since there was land available for us to use.

This would be our second Garden plot together. We had learned some things the first time around when we built our first garden from scratch at our previous home. There were some things we wanted to do differently this time, and one requirement was a flat gardening area. The garden site that was designated to us was not flat to begin with, but we did our best to make it work.

Now, I know the picture makes it look like our gardening area is right in the thick of a blackberry patch, but that’s not really the case. The blackberries are just above the plowed area you see in this next picture.

100′ long by 50′ wide. That was another thing we learned from our previous garden, we wanted something bigger to work with! Yes, this is a pretty good sized garden, but I loved it and would be thrilled to triple the size next time I put in a garden. 🙂

This was the first plowing. What a rough and bouncy ride behind the rototiller!! I’m so thankful I have a strong man to live life with. There is no way I could garden without my man and all his hard work. As I continue showing you pictures here, you will see a lot of work from him and not much from me. That’s because I can’t do this kind of work! But later on, once it is time to tend to plants and harvest, you will see a lot more work from me and less from him. We make a great team and balance each other out, both in what we enjoy doing, and in our strengths and weaknesses.

You can see that our garden plot is on a significant slope. Not quite as steep as our first garden was, but we really wanted to get as flat as possible. Our rototiller has a handy dandy little snow plow blade attachment which my hubby was able to use to push the dirt around and encourage a flat gardening space. In order to accomplish this, he ended up making 3 different garden tiers, which ended up being pretty fun on the landscaping side of things as we worked in the plants. Boy oh boy was it ever a lot of work to move all that dirt though!

With our property overlooking several hundred acres of wildlife refuge, a tall and sturdy fence was going to be a must! I’d never seen so many deer in my life. The deer come through every morning and night, and sometimes throughout the day as well! And they are not afraid of anything. Once again, a job for my husband!

Since we didn’t have the money to be investing in fencing materials, Jonathan brainstormed a plan to build the garden fence using wood and branches from the property. We had recently cut a few trees down, and there were plenty of nice rails to work with. The only expense to build this fence was fuel for the chain saw, a few nails, and a couple rolls of deer netting to go around the perimeter.

This job would have been significantly easier with some nice Tenon cutters, but Jonathan made it work with his chain saw and hand drill. Sometimes you just have to get the job done with what you’ve got! I helped dig the holes for the posts as best I could, but I never could get them deep enough. Thankfully we did have a post hole digger to make that job easier.

Check out that view! To be enjoyed every day as we gardened here. I never get tired of looking out over this view. Originally, this was to be the main entrance to the garden, as there is somewhat of a road coming down to this gate. Whenever a truck load of compost/fertilizer is needed, we are able to back the truck right up to the garden’s edge. And with the acidic soil we are working with here, we brought in several loads of compost and fertilizer!

Here is a close up example of the fence assembly. Jonathan used the chain saw to cut the 4 sides, and then used his drill to hollow out the center, as well as a hammer and some chisels. What a lot of work! As always, he gradually found a faster approach as he continued working his way around the garden.

You can see here that this hole goes all the way through the supporting log. Later on, our support beams weren’t big enough to allow making a hole all the way through without weakening the beam too much. If I remember right, the solution was to shave down the rails to fit into a smaller hole.

It was fun to watch this fence march it’s way around the perimeter of the garden! Since I couldn’t offer much help with the construction, I made sure to supply lots of drinking water, and I packed many a lunch and dinner out to the garden area as Jonathan worked non-stop building this fence so we could have the garden protected from the deer by the time planting season came around.

These pictures give you an idea of how the fence was made, cutting the holes in the support beams with the chain saw. Yes, it was a lot of work! Yes, it took forever! Yes, it saved a lot of money on fencing! Was it worth it? That is debatable. 🙂 In our situation, it’s what we had to work with at the time. We made it happen.

The best of the fence building, in my opinion, was the gate. Jonathan took this from the tree, all the way to a gate in one day. Yes, you read that right…all in a day’s work!! He cut the wood, hand milled it down to size with his chain saw, squaring it up as he went. Leaving the bark on one side of the wood gave it a very artistic and beautiful look! He even hand carved the latch and handle!!

Finishing it off with some chicken wire and a few pieces of store bought hardware, he hung the gate in the entryway to complete the hand built garden fence.

This gate has received more complements than anything else in our garden! Everyone just loves the rustic look and artistic addition to the garden. It has served it’s purpose very well. We did have to add some deer netting across the top of arbor/gate in order to keep the deer from jumping over the gate to enjoy some luscious garden snacks.

At long last, with the fence in place, I could finally start planting! My little starts were getting a bit impatient waiting for the completion of the fencing project. I couldn’t plant until the fence was completed or the deer would be sure to finish off my precious plants in one evening!

The tomato and pepper plants were the first to go into the ground. I’ve grown them from seed before, but it’s just as easy and economical to purchase the starts, so long as heirloom varieties are available locally.

Later in the season I knew I would need to add plenty of compost and fertilizer to the garden soil, but the plants were nearly root bound so I went ahead and planted. It worked out fine even though this was very clay soil. The main trouble I had was with watering. The soil got so compacted that the water wasn’t soaking into the ground. Spreading mushroom compost on all of the beds solved this problem nicely.

In my first garden, I double dug every bed by hand with a pitch fork and a shovel. Since then, I’ve learned that you can get the same affect by raking the rototilled dirt out of the walk paths and onto the beds. The roots can still grow deep, and it is so much easier on your back! After marking out where I wanted the walk paths, I raked the beds into approximately 8′ x 4′ sections and started planting!

This girl was one happy gardener! I had waited 6 weeks for this day to come. The day I could play in the dirt, put my happy little plants in the ground, and grow my biggest vegetable garden yet! Yes, I was very happy. I love every minute of productive hard work, which is practically the definition of gardening.