Blogger is being rather difficult for me. When I try to do key things like comment my fellow bloggers it tells me to log in.... when I am in fact logged in... so confusing.

but anyway, On with the magical gardening fun! I have recently made a few adjustments to how my sisters garden gets water. My sister and brother in law are both rather busy with their one year old, and work, and many other numerous things. So I decided to take one thing off their mind for them. The watering of the garden.

What I did was simply purchase a battery powered water timer. You set the time, and turn the fancy yellow knob to how often you want it to water, and your off to the races! This particular one will water your garden everyday at 6:00 AM for 15 min intervals for up to a full hour. I have it set to 15 mins every other day, the lowest setting.

 If your looking at the picture on the right above wondering what the heck it is, I'll tell you. It's the water faucet with a splitter, then a on/off nozzle on the left, the watering timer on the right, then another splitter. I know it is a bit much, and I think I'll break it down to a more simple design, but I was thinking we would need water at more places then we do.

Anyway, once the watering timer is set up, you run the hose out to the garden, and (in my case I have ANOTHER splitter) you attach the Soaker Hoses.

You then run the hose(s) to all the plants you want to live.

Then with all your plants surrounded by the drip hose you simply set it and forget it!

I realize that some of you folk might still be a little lost as to why I'm running a hose around my garden. The magic part of what this hose does is drip water. That's right, I'm actually advocating buying a hose with holes in it!
In fact Soaker hoses are one of the best ways to water your garden. If you have a big enough plot of land ,and you use exclusively soaker hoses to water the US government will give you a tax break because it saves on water.

Growth, at night too!

When you first plant your garden you get really excited. You have grand ideas of the crops and produce you will be picking. You go to bed and dream not of sugar plumbs, but buckets of tomatoes and bushels of corn all garnished with the great healthy herbs your growing! Then you wake up and realize that you put them in the ground and they have not grown but more then a few inches.

So you get your camera out and document every little change you can find.

What I found was that my green bean plant had stretched out it's tentacle and grasped onto part of its cage. It was finally big enough to use the cage. Made me happy.

So as you can all see, the little changes make all the hard work worth while. Very pleasing to see the plant filling out its living quarters.

But once the thrill of your tiny growth has worn off you start to get bored. and at this point there is almost nothing you can do but wait. Sit and watch them grow.

I deal with this problem of boredom by going and buying more fun things for the garden.

I went out and purchased 10 of those solar powered lamps that are super cheap. I actually went to the dollar store to get them! great buy. I was thinking when I got them home I would have about a 75% rate of success. But to my great surprise all of the one dollar lights worked. HOWEVER they are not very bright. They really look cool but stay light for about 3 hours before dying out.

 If you want some of those cool lights


OK, thank you all for reading! have fun, and get out there and plant some solar lights!

OFF TOPIC POST

I know this has nothing to do with my topic at hand. However I was wondering if anybody ACTUALLY knows what happened last week with blogger?

Last week blogger was down for it seemed like a full day. I know about maintenance and all that stuff, but does it really take a FULL day to back up everything? I mean come on, its google for toasts sake!

So, Just wondering, leave me a comment with an explanation please, and I will be very very happy!

OH, and here is a quick update on my basil in my garden.

It's not liking its new home, as you can tell. However it does have some leaves left, and that makes me happy. Thus all is not lost. There is still hope for it to come back! just gotta nurse it.

KK! thx all for the reads! and leave me a comment about what happened if you know, please.

It's MAY! and still too cold for short!

http://youtu.be/lOfZLb33uCg
Classic Weird Al

ITS TOO DARN COLD!

62°F | 50°F

63°F | 49°F

67°F | 48°F

71°F | 49°F

Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu

SO! I'm not happy with the whole GLOBAL WARMING THING! It's just not working. It seems to be colder this time of year compared to what it has been the previous years!

I'm sad that my garden will not do as well I as want it to, and I blame AL GORE! His global warming awareness campaign has really messed up the weather. Used to be nice and hot! perfect for my tomatoes, and peppers and WATERMELON! but not anymore! BLOODY TAMIS!

But on a serious note, my garden seems to be rather stunted, and is not doing as well I as had hoped. The weather is kinda too cold to grow the stuff I have planted. Only things doing well are the herbs.

From this picture you can see how my plants have really not grown much since being in the ground for about 2.5 weeks now. Kinda sad. My grandfathers plants are doing better, but still going at a really slow pace.

BUT! you can see the cages for the tomatoes in there!
I'll make another update showcasing those soon.

So check in again soon! Thx for the reads all!

Let's Show in detail What I have planted At My sisters house.

I eat uno, dos, tres, quatro burritos
Pretty soon I can't fit in my Speedos

-Weird Al

I know I have told you in text what I planted. But I figure you might like to see pictures too. they are more fun anyway.
I planted a variety of Tomatoes; Sun Gold, Early Girl , and 3 Roma's. Also I put in a Watermelon and a canalope. 3 different kinds of pepper , jalapeno red bell and orange bell pepper. and a bunch of herbs/spices, oregano, chives

The Sun Gold tomato is really just a new thing to try for me. I typically don't like the flavor of tomatoes that are not red.

 The Early Girls Are a good choice because they will produce earlier in the year and allow me to have a harvest for a longer period of time.

 I like to use the Romas for cooking. One of my favorites for sauce and on sandwiches they are perfect!

You gotta have your spices. I consider Onion a spice , haha, also cilantro because I plan on having LOTS and LOTS of salsa this summer! Home grown salsa is the Plan, well see how it works out!

 I Am not sure I will have the room to put the strawberries into the garden itself, so I stuffed it into a pot. However I do think it should do OK there for now. Once I see how big the watermelon and cantaloupe are going to get I might move it. But it seems to like living in it's pot.
The Watermelon and cantaloupe are going to get huge, assuming they get the heat and water they need. I just wish I had the materials I wanted when planting. I was thinking of putting a whole bag of chicken manure under the watermelon and cantaloupe. dig a deep hole, pour manure in, cover with 1 foot regular dirt with veggie fertilizer mixed in. then plant them. For first month or so they will grow normal. Then when the Manure starts breaking down in the soil under the plant and releasing heat it will give them a huge boost. To top it off when the plants roots hit the pocket of manure it will be at just the right time and they will get a second boost. BUT, I did not have the two bags of manure to do this. So sad. Maybe next year.

 For now I'm battling the strange weather. One day it is 90Degrees(F), the next its raining and about 50 Degrees (F). When it levels off and starts to become hotter my peppers will will do much better. For now they are just above dormant then get growing with hot days and get knocked back on cold. two steps forward one step back.

Next Post I will show progress of how my plants are doing. I will Also have my cages set up, so you can see my set up 100% done. Well... it's never 100% because it is always a work in progress. BUT I'll give my opinion on what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong!

So, thx for reading all! Tune in next time for a more complete view of my garden, and the TOMATO CAGES!

I'm sure you are all well aware that the only "gardening" I do at home is with my single tree. It is held up in a 15 gallon plastic pot in potting soil. I try to take good care of my fancy little Navel Orange tree. Bu as things go I went a little overboard and added some stuff to the soil that I should not have. (mainly coffee grounds, the ph of coffee is anywhere from 5.9-6.2 MOST citrus like about 6.5-6.8 ph) This lowered the soil PH to a point that rendered the iron in the soil to be inaccessible to my favorite little tree. Thus it could not produce the needed chloroplast to produce healthy GREEN leaves. In a previous blog I showed pictures of what the leaves looked like when I first started to try and fix the problem. to compare those pictures click Orange Tree Trouble 1   .

My tree is doing much better then before. The leaves are getting darker, and it's even putting out flowers, which with any luck will turn into my first years orange crop! click the link to my other blog post to compare the leaves from 1.5 weeks ago to now.

All I did was run water through the soil for a good 2 hours. This washed the soil and leached out all the extra coffee and anything else that might have been effecting my tree. THEN as an extra precaution I added some Liquinox

This Stuff is liquid Iron/Zinc . It's in a form that is easily accessible to plant, and tastes great!(not for human consumption) . All you do is pour 4 TBS into 1 GAL of water, and pour onto the soil which contains your plant. then water in thoroughly.

So, tune in next time to see the update on either my tree, or how the full on garden at my sisters house is doing.

As Always, Thx for the readz guys!