New Beginnings for 2012!

The new year is here and I've been thinking about what 2012 has in store for me. I've never really been one to make resolutions, although I think I might try a few this year. I always end up breaking them so I gave up a long time ago.

Although November was very cold in Arizona (about 45-50 degrees during the day), December has been the opposite. The beginning of December was about 60 degrees every day and I figured it was the perfect time and temperature to try and grow some lettuce again. I planted some about a week ago, but since then the temperature has gone up more- to about 75 degrees during the day now. I'm not sure what the weather change will do to them and I'm also not sure if the we will have another cold snap.

To protect the seedlings, I thought I would try planting them in my Jiffy seedling tray, and I figured at the time since it was colder, that they would enjoy the warmth of the tray. However, now I think it might be too hot for them after all, because only one has sprouted. I also planted some in regular trays and left them outside. Those have been doing much better and nearly all of them have sprouted.

The Jiffy Seedling Tray. I have some metal stakes holding the lid on.   

Only one little sprout in the Jiffy Tray. It has become way too hot inside for them!

Meanwhile, the 'outside' lettuces have begun to sprout and appear to be doing well.

I'm really excited that the lettuce has sprouted in only a week! (And that it even sprouted at all). As soon as I saw the sprouts I became very excited and began to plant a bunch more seeds. Some of these seeds I acquired from my moms collection when I went home last year. I'm very excited about them. (Can you tell I'm excited yet?)

Yay for new seeds!

Now I have a whole bunch outside. Currently planted:

• Various colors of zinnias. I obtained the seeds from my mom.
• Marigolds - from mom.
• Lettuce, as I have mentioned. I planted "Caesar's Favorite," "Red and Green Romaine Blend," and "Mesclun- Gourmet Greens Mixture."
• Attempted some Lavender seeds again.
• 2 Mammoth Russian sunflower seeds (these are the kind I grew last year) as well as 2 Giant Gray Striped Sunflowers (from mom's garden).
• 2 Crimson Sweet Watermelons
• 2 white pumpkins for fun. (I think I'm actually supposed to plant them for fall, but oh well! =)
• zucchini (oh no!! not again!! but I have to plant zucchini just because its so simple to grow!)
• yellow (summer) squash. I tried to buy and grow yellow squash last year, but in both cases the plant died. I may as well try again, though.
• Large Fruited Cherry tomatoes- the kind that grew super-duper tall last year.
  
  Last but not least, I have planted 4 new seedlings. These seeds are very special. Why you may ask? Well because they are Blue Tomatoes!! Actually, I prefer to call them purple because they look more purple than blue. But apparently these special tomatoes were developed at Oregon State University, and it was only 2.99 for a pack and so I had to get some! One blogger says this:
  
  "This experimental blue tomato (sometimes going by the name P20) is being produced by Oregon State University in an attempt to create an uber-healthy tomato with a high level anthocyanin, the powerful antioxidant found in blueberries."

As you can see in this picture, I received the pack of seeds from Solana Seed Company, as well as a baggie of homegrown popping corn from mom. I've popped some of the corn already and it is terrific! (LOL, I almost typed pooped instead of popped!)



THIS IS NOT MY PICTURE, but the Blue Tomatoes should look something like this when they are full grown.



I'm not sure what they will taste like. Others have said they are pretty good. But I don't care much. I just want blue tomatoes, baby!

Also, while cleaning out the fridge, I found several cloves of garlic that were sprouting. I figured I might as well try and grow them instead of just throwing them away, so I planted one in my old marigold pot and a bunch of others in the regular sandy/clay soil ground. The one in the pot is doing the best so far.

I don't know anything about growing Garlic, so this should be interesting.

The garden, aka grave is being prepped!

Things I've been thinking about: I've been thinking about where I will plant things this season, and I think I'm going to move things around a bit. I learned my lesson last time about planting my zucchini in my garden. It immediately crowded out the eggplants. This time I think I'll plant the zucchini away from the garden and actually near the patio. That way the zucchini will have plenty of space to grow, full sun and plus when we look outside we will see some greenery and not just dirt.

• I think I might try to grow a few herbs- but I'll probably buy them from Lowe's.
• I'm not going to grow eggplants again, because I just don't know what to do with them!
• I'm going to try and figure out a good way to water my plants easily. Yes, I do have the drip/spray hoses, but my plants did so much better when I watered them by hand, especially the tomatoes. Time is a huge factor, since I know I'll be busy with classes. but I think that I will try to water everything by hand as much as possible. So maybe I should dig some kind of water trench or something.
• I don't know if I should grow a lot of sunflowers or just a few. After all, some of them didn't even grow that tall...so maybe I'll grow a lot and plant them elsewhere? Who knows.
• I'm nervous about the watermelons and pumpkins. Those will be entirely new to me.
• I'm hoping that my seeds have been started early enough. Last time I planted in February I think. If the seeds will grow earlier, I think I can avoid the pests that I encountered late in the season last year. (like squash bugs)

Well thats all for now. Later!

Things to come...

I'm super tired and need all the rest I can get for work tomorrow, so I'll give you a little sneak peak of what's going on:



My squashes are getting either burnt or need more room. Sooo.....

Here is a little sneak peak of what I'm making for them!

To be continued...

DRAMA in the garden!!

Yes folks, there is drama in the garden! But first, I must apologize for not posting because I was really busy with work, and then I became miserably ill with a cold. I've also been busy with so many places to go and things to do. I'm seriously wondering if I'm busier here than I was when I was living in NYC. It might be true.

Some of my plants have died, are dying or are suffering. Here are the problems:

1. Our backyard hose busted. It was really old and worn out by the scorching sun and split when we started using a nozzle. I guess it couldn't take the water pressure. So I had to hand water everything until our landlady brought over a new one, and hand watered my lettuce which probably ended up displacing the seeds.

2. Aphid infestation! I looked closely at my potted flowers and noticed aphids going to town on my English daisies. I went and bought a bottle of poison and killed them, however I'm sure I probably killed a few honeybees as well. =(   Not good.  I found aphids on my little squash and killed them and tried spraying it with soapy water, but I think either the soapy water killed my squash or the aphids did, I don’t know- Either way, both of my squashes have died. It might also have been some kind of fungus that killed them.

3. The pots that I have my flowers in have started to split. They are recycled plastic pots and I don't know if all the rainwater we had made them split or what, but I'm very upset that they are cracking so I'll never buy any kind of recycled pot again, even if they are on sale for two dollars each!

4. My lettuce has never surfaced and as I stated before, my two squashes have perished.

5. There is something wrong with one of my tomatoes now too. Some of its leaves have become limp and yellow. I talked to my mom about this and she said that either I'm not watering it enough or I am watering it too much. I don't think I've ever watered it too much, so on Sunday I watered all of my tomatoes thoroughly, and I placed them all out into direct sunlight. Now my other two in plastic pots have now gotten droopy, so maybe I've overwatered those too!? This is crazy!

What is?!?

Here's a rundown of how each of my plants are doing:

Tomatoes: As I said before, one tomato was droopy and now that I gave them a ton of water, my two other ones are droopy as well. Also yesterday we were having high winds and so I immediately went out and bought wire cages to support them. (I'd have to buy them eventually.) I'm having trouble recognizing how much water I should be giving them and how often. I'm used to growing things that don't need to be watered often and now I'm relearning everything about taking care of plants. One guy on the internet said he waters his tomatoes in buckets everyday because they dry out quickly. I checked them today and the soil feels quite damp so I don’t want to touch them. I wish I had some kind of gage to tell me when to water them.

All in all, I've noticed that my tomatoes are growing, which obviously is good. They are much larger than when I first potted them a few weeks ago, so something must be working! I just hope that I don't lose them to anything. I haven’t noticed any aphids on them, which is great. I've also noticed that my tomato in the clay pot has done well and has shown no signs of under/overwatering or anything else. My two tomato seedlings in the small terracotta pot are doing well also, which makes me wonder if going terracotta/clay is the way to go. I suspect that the terracotta keeps the moisture more even than plastic does. The next time I plant a container garden I guess I'll save my money and go for the terracotta! Even though it's harder to move them around because they are heavier.

I don't know how I'm going to transplant my two tomato seedlings. Should I keep them together, or try to separate them?

Squashes/Zucchini: My little seedlings have perished, due to some kind of blight, aphids or by my own hand. I feel bad, but that's when it becomes LOWE'S time. I picked up two more zucchini plants that are much farther along than my little ones were, and they appear to be healthy. I haven't repotted them yet, since my mom said that they can stand to be in their pots for a while.

Just a few beaten up leaves- the rest looks great!

Lettuce: Never materialized. The heavy rains we had probably killed them along with me trying to water them by hand. I think it's too warm to try and plant them now. Maybe at the end of this year...

Potted Flowers: Some died from heavy rains and as I said before, their pots are starting to split. They look a little more old and scraggly now, but very worth what I paid for them!

Sunflowers: My sunflowers have given me hardly any issues whatsoever. It looks like some kind of insect ate some parts of the leaves, but it didn't do much damage. My main task now is to decide where and possibly how to plant them. Since there used to be a pool in our backyard, the ground is very rocky and shallow and I'm not sure how far down I'll be able to dig.

All of this makes me wish that I had my own house and yard because then I could make a raised garden bed, and do pretty much anything I want without having to wonder if I would have approval or not. Also I would know that my situation is much more permanent than it is now. If I had to move right now, I wouldn't be able to take everything and it would be a lot of money down the drain. I've yet to meet anyone else here my age range who is interested in gardening as well.

Yet another...garden update!

Once again, being now somewhat addicted to growing things, I decided to take on Lettuce. Right now is a great time to plant it, as the danger of frost is over and the night time temperatures are in the high 40's and 50's. I'm a little nervouse to try lettuce because it seems harder to grow than the other plants I have, but I'm willing to try it. So I went to the dollar store and bought two long pots. I hope that these pots are okay to grow in, because I could tell they've been sprayed with some kind of coloring. Well, they are obviously made in china, so I hope that no chemicals leech off the paint and into the soil and then into my plant of course. But I guess I'll just take my chances.

I went to Lowes and bought 3 large bags of planting mix. While I was there I also bought 3 packets of Lettuce seeds (I didn't really realize how many seeds came in each packet!- There are a lot!). Then I also decided to buy some more tomato plants, since the ones at Lowes were farther along than mine. I started my two tomato plants 2 months too late apparently. I'll have to compare all of my plants and see how they do when it gets hotter. But anyway, I was really surprised at just how cheap plants are! I got 4 tomato plants for 2 dollars, and their other vegetables were super cheap too. I had to refrain from purchasing anything else.



Lettuce!

 My gardening book told me that I should put the lettuce seeds in the fridge for a few days to prepare them for growing, but I was way too excited to wait for that. I immediately planted and watered them! I put in like 4 seeds per planter, so hopefully that won't be too crowded.



DEAL!!!



Later I had an urge to go to the D.I. (a favorite thrift store of mine) and take a look around. Of course I happened upon a terrific deal- this purple glazed pot for only 12 dollars! These things usually cost about 50. It's large enough to plant a tomotao in I think, which is terrific because now that I have 6 tomatoes, I'll need to find more places to put them.



So now here below is a picture of all my plants. I feel like my squash is really yellow, and I don't know if it's the chemicals in the soil or what. Maybe I planted my squashes in the wrong kind of mix. But hopefully when I transplant it then it will become more healthier looking. One of my pots of sunflower seeds never really made it. And so I quickly planted 3 more seeds and started again. Now all three have popped up and things are looking good so far! I'm going to wait just a few days before transplanting my tomatoes that I bought at Lowes.



Planties.



Speaking of one of my earlier things I noticed about Arizona....This is my neighbors tree behind our house...I'm pretty sure those are the same fruits on it from like a year ago. Why don't people pick the fruit offf their trees? It's incredibly annoying. Maybe it's because I heard that scorpions live in Citrus trees here, so maybe picking them is a dangerous operation? Who knows.

Pick your fruit already!!!



Sunflowers- so easy to grow!



The rains started coming and drenched my flowers a little too much, but I really enjoyed having the rain and I hope it rains again soon!

This is a picture of my bike, it was made in the late 70's I think. I LOVE my bike! lovelovelove. I added back double baskets to it to fit my laptop and all the other tons of junk that I haul to school when I need to. Brown wasn't my desired color, but the bike was in such excellent condition that I really had to go for it. So far it has served me well, and looks so much better than the typical cookie cutter beach cruiser that every 18 year old has on campus.

I made cookies for a baptism...just sharpening my culinary skills for my future family! And trying to be an exemplary member of the church by being a domestic goddess. (lol) Ghirardelli chocolate chips were on sale too! So they ended up being cheaper than Tollhouse for once.

While I was making cookies, a very cute neighbor guy came to my door to tell me that someone's car lights were on. I thanked him and he kind of chuckled at me. Later on I realized just how terrible I looked while making these. OOPS! I forgot to wear makeup and a cute dress while I baked these! Soooo I guess I'm not quite the perfect homemaker that I thought I was. Hopefully I will bump into the cute guy again. I thought about leaving my left over cookies at his doorstep and then realized that might be a little too creepy. *sigh!* oh well.

YUM



And last but not least I just want to complain how what you see when you blog on here is not what you get. My image formatting is way out of line!! Frustrating.

My new urban garden!

For a while now, I've wanted to spruce up my apartments backyard. When I first moved here, there were two cute pink young Bougainvillea plants growing back there. But aside from these there was nothing but a barren landscape of rocks and sand where according to rumors, there once was a pool which had been filled in. During the hottest summer months our backyard feels much akin to Death Valley, with heat radiating off of the unforgiving martian landscape. I was in doubt much of anything could possibly be grown out there, let alone in Arizona period. After a while a few weeds sprouted up, and once I even affectionately reffered to them as "the lawn."

I was even more disheartened when one of the Bougainvilleas died from roving poison from some nearby weeds and then the other died from (can you believe it?) a frost a few weeks back. Had I known how cold it would have been, I would have covered it. But alas, I had forgotten all about it and later found the poor thing dead. It made me pretty sad, because I had been watching it's growth progress through the year and a half that I have been living here.

I talked to a coworker one day who told me that he is able to plant all kinds of things here, and that it's very feasible. So now I've decided to start growing a few things. Not a lot, but probably a few of the hardiest vegetables. So after doing a little bit of research, I bought three 5 gallon buckets, some seeds and dirt. I've decided to start with a zucchini, yellow summer squash and tomato plant. I'm starting them out kind of early I think, but it's been in the 70's for a while now, and I think that it will be warm at night when my plants get to be larger. I planted two tomato seeds because they were so small, I wasnt sure if they would both even survive! It's hard to believe that seeds can even become such large plants.

I also had 3 pots I bought on sale at Joann Fabrics and so I also bought some flowers which were surprisingly cheap. I think I may have bought too many though, because they seem a little crowded in their pots. Hopefully it wont negatively affect their health.

Such pretty flowers, I love these ones!

Even our residential neighborhood cat Sasha loves to smell the flowers!

And now here are my vegetables:

There they are in their little pots. I planted them on the 15th and they have sprouted. I'll post pictures of them later as I keep up on their progress.