How to combat the cold

I know you all are wondering how you will ever make your garden survive the winter. You just planted all your favorite annuals , and want them to survive their first winter so you can have a wonderful production in following spring. Well, here are a few tips to survive the cold.

Hello All! It has been a while. But as winter has taken hold the garden has basically died off an left me with only my few indoor plants to talk about. Here goes my briefing on my bamboo . 

I bought this fancy little bamboo stick for a full DOLLAR at my local 99Ranch Market. The store always smells like fish, because they have a huge fish department, but I might have to go back in to get a new bamboo because I seem to be killing my first. 

 Bamboo is supposed to be one of the toughest plants around, but I guess if you do things wrong you can kill just about anything. haha. Poor bamboo, it's got yellow leaves and even the steam is changing color a bit.

I know, lots of you thought I had a green thumb, and maybe I do have it a little, but relying only on talent will not be enough I have
found. I need to learn enough to keep my plants healthy.

 But I was able to email my aunt, who is crazy smart, and she told me what to do after I told her what I was doing. I was using a liquid fertilizer, probably in excess, and the plant was burning, or it was a bacterial infection and changing the water and replacing it with a solution of 1 TBS Bleach to one gallon water is about all you can do in both cases

The next step is to sit and wait, and hope for the best.







So, that is about it, I might have an update on my basil soon, or perhaps my Orange tree again, I am thinking of giving it a trim for the first time!

Thanks for reading all! and come back again soon!

Blasted Weather STILL!

This is the weather I'm dealing with here. Live in Norther CA, and IT'S RAINING IN JUNE!
why is the darn weather being so bad! When I was a kid I would be getting out of school around this time and I could go swimming at the pool , or walk around in shorts... NOT AN UMBRELLA AND FREAKING PLASTIC PANTS!

Weather for Walnut Creek, CA

58°F | °C Sat Sun Mon Tue Current: Shower Wind: SE at 5 mph Humidity: 95% 66°F | 52°F 71°F | 54°F 65°F | 50°F 71°F | 52°F

Because of the rain I have not had much of a chance to get out and tend to the garden. If nothing else I dont need to water it. Save a few pennies there I guess. However I did start some sun flowers from seed that I'll show you.

I started a few different kinds of sun flowers

You can see them poking their way out of the soil, and getting ready to get nice and big!

One of the more interesting of the sprouts was when it poked out of the soil with the seed still intact. Getting a little ahead of itself there. Silly thing!

As they grow I will document them, and update you on it. I plan on moving these guys to my sisters house and to my grand fathers house. Should Add a nice little bit of color to the garden, as well attract some bees!

OK! thx all for the reads! come back again soon!

When it's broken...

You all remember my last post about the drip system right?

Well, it was not working! so, I'll show you what I did to fix it!

I changed the batteries! I'm o smart! haha. I think I was tricking myself into thinking that it had a generator built in, and it would run off the water passing through it, and charge the batteries at the same time. Guess I was wrong!

Oh well, Maybe I will invent that, then make Bunches of oats... er dollars...

Another sad note. One of the stepping stones already broke. When you go out to buy square shaped bricks, you think they will be cheap, like $.79 each... but NO!!! they were closer to 4$ each! such a rip off! but least it still works even when broken. I just can't move it.




KK! thx all for the reads!

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.