Category: gardening

Garden Update

On By thefunkyfrugalistaIn gardeningLeave a comment

On Thursday I was feeling marginally better thanks to Donny giving me two wonderful back massages. I’m thinking it’s my psoas muscle so I’m just going to have to wait it out and try not to overdo it which if you read this you will know this is extremely hard for me.

On this morning Donny found several chickens in the already damaged pumpkin patch. They were all happily taking dust baths and no plants survived. We headed to Jake’s Feed Store to pick up more pumpkin seeds. I am right at the tail end of them being ready for Halloween, but I’m just going to take that chance.

I zip tied the little fence together to make it stronger and then we put up the hard chicken wire and regular chicken wire and zip tied that to the fence. I replanted seeds, gave them a good water and crossed my fingers that the chickens couldn’t get in.

Because I was already sweaty and gross I decided to go ahead and think out our side garden that had gotten overgrown. Our sunflowers had to be staked up along with several tomato plants and zinnias. As always there was morning glories that had to be taken care of.

It’s always sad when the summer garden is coming to an end.

Even though the tomato and cucumber plants are looking worn out we are still getting produce from them. I found this cucumber hiding in the mess.

We aren’t doing a winter garden so I decided to plant more pumpkin seeds on one side of the enclosed garden just to be able to see something growing.

Watermelons are still going strong. They take up so much space, but we have 4 in the purple bed that are still going strong. We had 5, but Donny was checking one and it fell off the vine.

The two baby pool also have watermelon growing. Donny found one hanging on the fence that needed an immediate sling. I found an old run pad and zip tied it to the fence and our metal rooster.

We’ll see if this will even work. The hot Texas sun may burn up a lot of my plants, but watermelons love it.

We’ve had a lot of luck with our sunflowers this year so I also planted some more seeds just to see if they will grow. These are the last blooms of the ones that we grew earlier.

We also cannot forget about our pollinators. They need water also. I had gotten the flower bird bath and over the summer it had gotten rust spots. I spray painted it, washed the stones and put a plastic planter water catcher in it.

The Patch

On By thefunkyfrugalistaIn gardeningLeave a comment

I am trying not to make the same mistake I made last year by starting our pumpkins too late. The space that I would normally plant the seeds is where our watermelons are growing now so I had to come up with another plan. Pumpkins, like watermelons, need full sun. The only place I had that I knew might work was the back of the backyard. So I grabbed my pickax and got to work.

First I had to get all of the weeds and grass dug up and figure out how big I wanted to make the garden. We chose 3 different types of seeds.

It was so hard work and extremely hot. I got as much done that day as I possibly could.

Donny had brought the huge bag of potting soil out to the area when I got home from work so the next morning I was ready to start tilling up the area. I mixed the soil into the dirt that was already there. I decided to make two different gardens.

I had to come up with some type of barrier to keep the chickens out. They love nothing more than digging in fresh dirt.

I used our baby gate that we use when we have new chicks and a tomato cage that we aren’t using right now.

I pulled the garden fences from the front because we didn’t need them there anymore since the plants are big. I always think I can remember where I planted what, but I always forget. I took the seed packets, covered them in packing tape and attached them to wooden skewers. I’ll removed the barriers once the vines start growing. It’s amazing how long they get.

Ever since the neighbor behind us accidentally cut our string lights when they were cutting the trees down, I have wanted to put more lights out there. We found these solar lights at Harbor Freight. They are 66 ft long and are pretty bright.

It’s hard to tell in this picture because my phone takes such crappy night photos, but they look pretty good and stretch the whole fence length.

When I tell you it is EXTREMELY hot and that I’ve been working outside for the past several days, it’s no joke. This is how I have been looking most of the summer. My shirt is soaked in sweat and this is after the second shirt change.

I actually don’t mind the heat. What I do mind is my freaking carpal tunnel. I will be sleeping like this until winter.

My poor wrist brace has been through it. Whatever works.

TCB

On By thefunkyfrugalistaIn gardeningLeave a comment

On Donny’s two days off we were taking care of business outside. I started on Wednesday by washing the windows and the house. White siding on a North facing house means washing it every 2-3 months. I found the perfect combination to get it done and it’s whiter than it’s ever been.

I like this Castile soap so much better than Dr. Bronner’s. Look how clean it got the house.

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Since it was such a beautiful day I decided to go ahead and clean out and wash the car.

We consistently have cat paw prints all of the hood every morning.

And just because I love to torture myself, I weeded the enclosed garden. That was a workout in itself, but it looks so much better now.

Thursday we wanted to go get more strawberry plants. I looked online at all of the big box stores and the nurseries around town, but they are apparently out of season. We had some spots in the purple planters that needed filling. We found some bell peppers at Home Depot. We have some bell pepper sprouts going, but we really like bell peppers so hopefully these will grow some.

And because neither one of us had our glasses on, we ended up with three bell peppers and one Jalepeno. Oh well, we like those too.

Oh, and Home Depot did have strawberry plants. They were $15.98 for one medium sized one. Not worth it. We have 3, but next year we want to plant about a dozen. We are getting berries off of them though.

On Friday Donny realized that something, probably a cat, had been digging in the raised bed that didn’t have the fence around it. Our goal that day was to find affordable fencing. I got the black one that’s around the other bed at Dollar Tree. I knew there wouldn’t be any left there so we went’ to Family Dollar to try to find it there. No luck, but they had some great pots on sale and the cutest solar mushroom. We left empty handed and headed to Home Depot. Our plan now was to get small pickets and just build our own little fence. Well, Home Depot doesn’t carry the small pickets so since Lowe’s is right next door we headed there.

We found some! They were a bit more expensive than my Dollar Tree ones, but not too much. Also Lowe’s has THE BEST oops paint selection. I found a gorgeous purple color that had no price tag. I told the worker that I really love their oops paint and I use to to just paint random things and I really needed this paint for a mural I want to do. He came back with a $10.36 price sticker and that was a deal because the other oops paints were over $17.

The fence works perfectly and there has been no more digging.

We had to run to Walmart to pick up some groceries and I found, what Donny calls, my half dead pansies that I think I can revive. Well, I really didn’t have room for pansies anywhere and I really needed to get bigger pots for my cilantro, lavender and rosemary. That meant another trip to Family Dollar. How cute are these pots?

I decided that I DID really want the mushroom light. Of course, I chose yellow.

I just planted the pansies in the old pots. Plus some bachelor button seeds that I had picked up.

Donny made some pickles with some of the cucumbers.

We tried them today and they are so good. We did, however, cheat in how we made them.

The past few days have really felt like summer. It has been so hot, which I don’t mind if I’m dressed to sweat.

If you follow me on instagram then you have already seen this picture, but I found this baby eating the cat food. So cute!

Speaking of cat food, for the last week I’ve been making Mr. Whiskers an egg cooked in coconut oil. The first day he could finish it in one sitting, but he would come back for the rest. He’s now up to two eggs and he will patiently wait outside for me to cook them for him.

This morning I saw that it looked like he got into another fight. This time with a cat, but it opened the wound on his cheek. I slathered it in neosporin and will keep an eye on it.

Sorry this blog is so long. We’ve just been pushing hard these last few days and are worn out.

New Patch

On By thefunkyfrugalistaIn gardeningLeave a comment

The main crop that I want to grow this summer is watermelon. I love watermelon, but I really only like the seeded ones because the seedless ones have become tasteless in my opinion. We planted seeds in both of the baby pool and there are some coming up, just not as many as I would like. I’m still holding out hope that it just hasn’t been hot enough for the seeds to all sprout.

When we were working on the garden on Thursday I had an idea to put another watermelon patch in. So that’s what we started and we actually finished it yesterday.

The plan was to use the boards, that we got for free, as the border and then plant more seeds. We went to Jake’s feed to get seeds but they actually had watermelon plants. They also had this cute chicken bar to mix treats for you chickens.

It was so tempting to not pick up more chicks because our girls are getting older, but we decided to wait until later in the summer.

We then headed to Home Depot to pick out the paint for the border. We knew what color we wanted and Donny made the final decision and it was perfect.

The color is Behr Classic Walz and it is the perfect shade of purple. You didn’t think we were going to get some boring color did you?

After I made sure the boards would fit, I marked the outline so I would know where to dig the trench and Donny would know how far to lay down the weed barrier. We layered the soil, organic garden soil, sand and then more garden soil on top.

I still need to level some of the outside boards, but I think it’s looking pretty good.

I also painted the outside border that I added. It’s not finished yet because I need to level it out more, but the pick axe I use is super heavy and I can only do so much in one day.

Donny and I were both beat after spending all day in the sun. We decided to go on a little date dinner to a place I saw on my social media that’s in Gilmer.

The special that night was the catfish plate and it did not disappoint.

It was only $9.99 and there was so much food I couldn’t even finish it. They also had free strawberry margaritas and you could BYOB if you didn’t want those. We will definitely be back.

One weird thing about me is that I love rocks. I have since I was a kid and one time when I was about 4 and was camping with my parents in Leakey, I filled our whole trunk up with rocks. My parents had to take most of them out so we would have room for our stuff and I remember being so disappointed. Anyway, anytime I’m at a place that has rocks I always grab a few of them.

Another weird thing is that I can’t just take one. There always has to be at least two because that rock will be lonely without another rock from where they lived.

Another picture of the zinnias because I just love all of the different colors.

In the Zone

On By thefunkyfrugalistaIn gardeningLeave a comment

When I set my mind on something I have to get it done. Yesterday while Donny was treating the ant beds (we are trying baking soda mixed with powdered sugar) I decided that instead of getting the weed eater out I would just dig up the weeds and make a sort of trench around the house and front beds.

I had no idea what these were as I was digging on the side of the house. I did a Google lens search and it turns out that they are Chinese artichokes. You can actually eat them. We planted a couple in an extra pot that we had to see what will pop up.

Our elephant ear bulbs are finally sprouting and growing quickly.

I then moved on to the garden area. It’s so hard to mow around the door to the fenced garden and right up against the barrier. I pulled all of the grass from around the door and laid down some of the wood that we got from a neighbor down the street.

I think it will make mowing so much easier. I also made a little “deck” for the pots that were just kind of sitting Willie nillie around the raised beds.

I’m going to replace the shorter board with one that actually fits, but I needed one there for the time being to make sure the extra boarder I added fit correctly. Those boards are going to be painted red. I wanted to get that done last night but ran out of time.

I removed the wire fencing that I had around the front trellis because it did not deter the cats one bit and my cucumbers in the front all got dug up. We were having to put boards over one of the raised beds because, for some reason, the cats loved to dig there also.

I checked it this morning and no dig holes were found. We still have work to do today because I want to put in a new bed where I dug up a bunch of weeds. It was thundering when we got up but hopefully the rain will hold off.

We finally have some cucumbers to harvest.

I planted two varieties and this is the pickle cucumbers.

On a different note, how beautiful was the sky last night?

I love how our hanging light makes the kitchen glow at night.

Donny and I watched Send Help last night. We thought it was okay. There is one cgi scene that is badly done and it has some really gross gory parts but Rachel McAdams was good in it.

Growing Up Big

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Last Thursday Donny and I felt it was time to get all of my seedlings planted. We planted tomatoes, bell peppers, rosemary, oregano, marigolds, zinnias and wildflowers.

The purple beds were mostly empty because we were waiting to plant was was in the seed trays. I didn’t realize how many tomato plants I had started. Last year we our tomato plants hardly produced anything. I think we maybe got 5 tomatoes all summer.

This season we have an abundance. We made trellises for them out of the bamboo sticks and some wood I had. I was planning on putting tomatoes in the orange tire, but decided on the zinnias and wildflowers. Having the flowers seems to have helped with the pollination which is what I think was missing last year.

The summer squash is starting to fruit and so are the cucumbers.

So after we finished planting and weeding everything was looking good.

Friday night we got a storm. A big storm. The winds were insane and then it started hailing. All I could think about was our poor plants getting pelted to death. The next morning when I went to check on the damage, this is all I really saw.

My avocado plant that used to have dozens of leaves was now bald. That was the only plant damage (shockingly) so I’ll take it.

I cannot express how relieved I was.

Not only did the garden survive, but we are getting blooms on so many plants.

Started off as seeds and now look at the zinnias.

Our lavender plants are blooming and they smell so good.

I didn’t think the hydrangea was going to live through the winter but it did.

We also though the hostas were dead and even tried to dig them up. Ooops, they are just beautiful.

Now to just keep the bugs off everything.

Progress

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It seems lately I’ve only been posting about our garden, but truthfully, that’s what we’ve been working on the most. We’ve gotten some decent rain lately, like today it’s been raining all day, so the plants have really taken off.

The squash and radishes are getting so big. I had to use Google Lens to see what one of the plants was because there seemed to be several popping up and they didn’t look like the traditional weeds I see normally. Turns out it’s Morning Glory which can be very invasive, but if it’s grown on the perimeter where no other climbing plant is, is is a great pollinator.

The tomatoes, zinnias and basil are still doing well. Donny went in and pruned all of the sucker stems off of the tomatoes so that should help them grow taller.

We decided it was time to build the trellis for the tire cucumbers since they have gotten so much bigger.

We also added bamboo stick so the potted cucumbers will have something to adhere to.

The cats have started digging in the raised beds so, even though it’s not pretty, we put some of the reclaimed wood across until the plants get bigger because they don’t seem to dig where there are larger plants. There is a lot of unplanted areas in the purple beds because I still need to plant my seedlings and we needed a space to do that once they get to the stage where they can live in a larger bed.

How do we know that the warm weather is here to stay? We have a seasonal cat. Monkey stays inside as soon as it starts getting cold. When the weather starts warming up she will only go back outside once there is no chance of cold weather. Every. Single. Year.

And I don’t know if I have mentioned it on here, but I despised my watering can. It is supposed to sprinkle water out, but it sprinkled out of the top holes and poured out of the bottom ones. Drove me crazy!

I found a different one at Walmart and it’s works perfectly. Just the right amount of sprinkle that doesn’t drown my plants. It’s also in my favorite color.

I also wanted to add that I have NEVER been able to grow cilantro from seed. I now have two plants that are actually looking like cilantro finally.

Crazy Storm

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I check the weather every day. Several times a day on 3 different weather sites. Yesterday there was 20% chance late in the afternoon. Nothing crazy. At 4:45 we got alerts on our phones of a tornado warning. Donny called right after that and said they were closing down early because the weather was supposed to get bad. As I headed up there it started raining. Big heavy raindrops. The wind was also whipping around. When I got to Donny’s work it was pouring so instead of me getting out and going to the passenger side he just jumped in and we left. By the time I pulled out of the parking lot I couldn’t see, even with the windshield wipers on full speed. Then the hail started. We were inching along with all of the other cars. We all had our hazards on because you couldn’t see the road ahead of you. I started panicking. I was in the middle lane with hail, cars and rain I couldn’t even see through. Donny told me to get over and turn into this big parking lot because it had an overhang. Another car was already parked underneath and then another car joined us. Just as quickly as it hit, it went away. This was a crazy fast moving storm.

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Luckily there didn’t seem to be too much damage in the garden.

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The wind was so bad! There were things just flying around. It was a mess.

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We lost power right at 5:00. We didn’t even get hit the hardest. White Oak had thousands without power. I think we had around 800. Luckily we have my candle tray. It came in really handy.

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We finally got power back around 11. The wind was still gusting like crazy. It ended up blowing our backyard swing over which has never happened in all the years we’ve had it.

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It was still going strong this morning. The whirlie gigs were whirling.

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The electric company is replacing the power poles in our neighborhood. We have a transformer on ours so that meant that we were not going to have power for most of the day while they replaced it. I did have fun watching them put the new pole in. It’s fascinating.

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We live in the gardening zone 8. That means that we should have already had our last frost and plants can safely be planted.

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And then Mother Nature said, “hold my beer”. It’s supposed to be 32 degrees the next two nights before we hit the 90’s on Friday. Yeah, that’s not weird or anything. So, I got to cover all of the plants.

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The patio plants went to their cold weather home in the laundry room. The other plants that are just now sprouting and our flowers are all inside along with the seed trays.

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Now to just keep Baby Ruth, our kitten, out of them.

Poppin’

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It’s only the second day, but this time change is kicking my butt. It always takes me at least a week to get back into rhythm. I couldn’t fall asleep last night and then both Donny and I overslept. Ugh. But on a happier note, the garden seeds are a Poppin. I was a little leery about buying these flower seeds.

I picked them up at Walmart and luckily that had a pack that was for the more shady areas as well as full sun. Every pot I planted them in looks like this.

It’s almost time to start planting my seed trays.

We had to run to Walmart yesterday because Donny’s reader glasses broke. I had seen online how if you put fake snakes in your garden it will deter birds and critters. I don’t know if this is true, but I found these to use.

We’ll see if this actually works.

The one thing I love about the time change is that it gets dark later. I was able to do the first mow of the season at 5:30.

I put one of the snakes where the iron trellis is and it gave me a start when I was mowing.

I’m getting ready to do the winter summer clothes swap out so I was going through my closet to see what I didn’t wear. I had picked up these men’s vintage Dickies overalls a couple of years ago for $1. They were hanging on Donny’s side and I had just forgotten about them. Since oversized overalls are in style now, I just cut the legs off to the length that I like and they are almost exactly what I almost paid over $100 for.

Gotta love a bargain!

Impatient

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Yesterday I had to run to Home Depot to get the rest of the soil I needed to finish up filling the raised beds. The front garden is so shady that it takes forever for something to grow. I found out that Impatiens and Vincas do well in shade so I looked for some there. No luck so I headed to Walmart where, online, it said the flowers were available. I could not find any of those flowers inside or out. I did find some tomato plants. I do not like the beefsteak or any of the large variety tomatoes. I prefer Roma but the smaller tomatoes are so hard to find for some reason. I picked up the last two that they had. Even Home Depot only had the large variety. While I was there I also picked up some strawberry plants.

Strawberries in.

I really dislike buying plants and prefer to start them myself with seeds, but I was very impatient to see something growing the the gardens. I am nurturing my seed trays and making sure they get enough sun. I keep the lids on at night but I have to leave them outside just because we don’t have the space inside.

I added a few more seed trays to the bunch.

My celery is starting to grow. I just plant the bottom part that I cut off.

I don’t know how my green onions are still alive. I just left them outside during all of the freezing weather.

Since I have planted seeds in the raised bed where I normally keep the seed trays at night I decided to just line them up outside the border and hope no animal gets into them.

Two things really irritated me today.

I went to move the weed sacks and the bottom dropped out of the bigger one.

This is the biggest one that I just don’t know what to think about it.

The city is putting in new electric poles and changing out the street lights. The light across the street has been burned out for a few months. At first it seemed so dark but I got used to it and actually started liking it because we could really see the stars so clearly

The light that was there before gave off a wonderful amber glow like this one down the street.

Did they put that kind of light back in? Oh, heavens no. We got a blinding LED light that is turned the wrong way so it looks like aliens are trying to beam up my neighbors house.

I guess I need to be careful what I wish for because I did call the city to let them know the light was out. Why Longview why?!?