35 + uses for milk jugs & Gardening frugally

While looking for a link to show you how to make a green house out of a 2 gallon milk jug I came across this site with 35 uses for the humble milk jug. Quite cool. Viva recycling!

This site shows how to use water filled jugs as "bricks" to make a type of heat regulated greenhouse.

http://www.ext.colostate.edu/hort/Newman/publications/v22-sgreenhouse.pdf

also, Toppers instructions for making milk jugs into planters.



BHG also has a page on 25 Low Cost ( or no cost) Gardening Tools

Tomatos and peppers are in!

Our last frost date for this area is March 21, but I'm terribly impatient and my seedlings were getting leggy, so since they have been hardening off this week I went ahead and put them in the ground. The weather suddenly cooled, from being around 80 to only around 70, but I'm hoping my little heat lovers will work on putting down roots before the sun comes out full force. Its supossed to drizzle too this sunday possible which would be nice. I have a bunch of 2 gallon milk jugs washed and ready to go to use as mini greenhouses if it seems like the cool weather is bothering them. I started some squash seeds in peat pots and they were already poking thru so I set those in the ground as well. I can't wait for some squash blossoms to stuff and eat...and baby tender squashes, yum! Now lets pray we don't get some freaky random hard freeze!

Local Gardening events this weekend and beyond

For anyone who may be interested:









Dr. Kyle Brown will give a tour of the Cal Poly Pomona Center for Regenerative Studies on Saturday, March 15, 2008 at 10:00 a.m. For directions and a map, go to their website (under "for visitors"). People do not need to pay for parking on that day, if they park in the Center parking lot.




Claremont Armstrong Garden Center735 E. Foothill Blvd.Claremont, CA. 91711 US
Telephone: 909-445-0744

Heirloom Tomatoes with Steve Goto

Saturday, March 15: 1pmONLY AT Armstrong Claremont

Discover the taste, color and shape of heirloom tomatoes. Tomato guru, Steve Goto, will teach you about the various heirloom tomato varieties and how to grow them.

also coming up:
Container Veggies Armstrong Garden Center

Saturday, March 22: 9amSelect the right vegetables, herbs and pots for an edible container garden.



35th Annual U.C. Riverside Botanic GardensSpring Plant SaleSaturday, April 5, 2008 from 12 to 5 pmSunday, April 6, 2008 from 9 am to 3 pm


It's spring & it's time for the Inland Empire’s biggest plant sale event!
Including colorful landscape trees and shrubs, flowering perennials, vines, shade plants, lots of herbs, cacti and succulents, house and patio plants, miniature roses, orchids, easy-to-grow wildflower seeds and much more
Enjoy a large selection of showy, water-efficient and heat-loving plants, just in time for the spring planting season
Many rare and hard-to-find plants and old-fashioned favorites
Expert Botanic Gardens Staff and Master Gardeners will be available to answer your horticultural questions.
Planting demonstrations and a display by the U.C. Riverside Entomology Department
Gardens T-shirts, sweatshirts, hummingbird and subtropical trees posters, composite urns, and Armadillo arm protectors
Preview Sale for Friends of UCRBG Members only -- Saturday, April 5, from 9 a.m. to noon
Click here for a partial list of plants that will be available for the spring 2008 sale. For more information on the Sale or on joining the Friends of UCRBG - contact us. Proceeds from this sale benefit the Botanic Gardens' many deserving projects. We need your support!

I got some strawberry plants for free...now what?

While my hubby was up in NorCal he visited his brother and his family near Lodi. They have a huge garden and animals and a huge lot (yum!). She sent Chris home with a large bag packed with strawberry plants. Apparently she planted less then a dozen plants last year and with all the runners they sent out she has hundreds now. When Chris showed me my mouth started to water dreaming of sweet fresh from the ground berries covered with fresh wipped cream * wipes drool off desk*. First things first, I need to plant the little buggers.

I have no idea what type they are, so I'm kinda stumped where I should plant them. I'd love to put them in a strawberry pot, but if these are very aggressive in sending out runners I'm not sure how they would do there. I don't want to put them in my vegetable garden since I don't want to rip them out at the end of the year. That leavesme with the 3ft by 40 ft planter I grew my tomatos and squash in last year. Everything I've been looking up on strawberries says planting berries where tomatos were last year is a no no since they can contract some nasty soil viruses- but its the only area I have with full sun, already installed drip system and not going to be walked on. Its also the only area thats ready for planting on short notice. These are live plants in clods of dirt straight from her garden, and I don't want them drying out.

So thats what I'll be up to tomorrow, you know, after I cook, clean up after, do dishes, wash diapers, dry diapers, clean kids, sweep floors, mop floors, feed/clean kids again, fold laundry, write birthday invitations and maybe get a minute to go pee myself!.

Hooray for a productive weekend!

This is kinda a train of thought kinda post since I am so exausted after dealing with the kids and gardening all weekend, but I'm too jazzed from all I got done to sleep yet, so bear with me.

My husband was up in NorCal this weekend for his engineering geologist state exam, so I was stuck at home with the kids. The original plan was to drop them off for a weekend with the grandparents so I could garden my little heart out all weekend.

Then my parents got the flu. boo. hiss.

As any parent knows life is hell when your stuck at home with 2 little ones who miss daddy, so I did what I had to do to stay sane.

I went shopping.

You see OSH was having their " Annual Annuals Sale", basically buy one get one free of their 6 packs of annuals. I'm desperate to add some color and flowers to the front yard. We've been so busy working on the backyard the front was been pretty neglected, other then some irises,wild alyssum and random bulbs I have scattered around.

For about $30 I had 28 6 packs of flowers: impatiens/begonias/coleus for my north facing window box in full shade, alyssum/viola/impatiens for the partially shady area north facing area under Aurora's window, and petunias/pansies/snapdragons/dusty miller for the sunny areas around the yard. I especially loved the alyssums, I have the white variety running wild all over from a wildflower seed mix I threw around last year, but I got some packs of the more colorful shades in violet, lavender and magenta. I * heart* color. My color scheme for the yard is white/purple/blue/pink since I find those colors the most calming.

Let me let you in on a little secret: I've never planted annuals before. Yup, for me annuals was scattering wildflower "Butterfly Mix" seeds around and enjoying whatever decided to grow. I had always shrugged off the idea of buying plants you had to replace every year as a waste of money. I sewed some annuals to start from seed this year, and man, I had no idea how slow soem of them are to grow. :( paying 1.09 for 6 plants ready to go NOW seemed very appealing and affordable ( time vs money here). When some women get stressed they buy food, or clothes, or expensive handbags. I buy cheap stuff/stuff on clearence.

I went to Big Lots and found all sorts of nifty cheap stuff, like plastic gardening tools for my daughter ( even a mini wheelbarrow!), landscape fabric, some new garden tools, a bag of grass seed, and a garden kneeler foam mat thingy to save my poor aching knees. Its not 'name brand' stuff, but I really have never had a problem with the stuff I've bought there. Its where I get my plastic pots and window boxes too for 2-4 bucks each.

I hit Lowes to "window shop" for ideas and see what plants they had and stalked their clearence section. Yup, its all the damaged/half dead/old plants on 75% off. I found a nice pot with 3 purple calla lilly plants, reg price $13 I got for $3. Woot, I wanted some more calla lillies for a damp partially shady spot. It even had a nice plastic pot I washed and reused to make an arrengement of impatiens and coleus.

This year I wanted a little more control over what was growing where colorwise. So all the flowers are white, purple or blue. I forgot to take "before" pictures, and I worked until we were out of daylight so I don't have any "after" pictures yet either.

I kept the kids amused with sand toys and a planket on the grass with snacks and toys. Luckily the weather has been awesome, warm and sunny but not too hot yet. I even got a chance to pull all the 'old' mulch from the planters, rototill & add some slow release fertilizer, and covered them with come cheap landscape fabric I found at Big Lots for $4.00 WAY better deal then the $25 a roll at lowes for the super high end stuff. I cut "X"s in the fabric and used a bulb planter to cut out planting holes for the plants. Worked like a charm. The mulch was mainly for decoration around the sad rose bushes in front, so once the petunias and alyssum fill out the effect should be quite nice. I added the mulch back on top of the fabric and watered, and it now loosk way better. I'm also going to make a better effort to keep the roses well tended. I hadn't pruned them since we bought the house so I really cut them back this winter, and they are full of new growth, which I think is good. I'm no rose expert. I added some rose food around them as well.

I also installed some garden lights I had bought last year and never had a chance to install, I love the soft glow the little lamps give around the yard. Very nice to sit out on the swing and look around. I'm planning on planting some fragrant moonflower vines this year around the front porch area to enjoy on our evening swing chat sessions. Once the weather warms up a bit more I have a large packet of morning glory seeds I want to plant along the *cough*ugly*cough* chain link fence for some nice color and added privacy.

So all in all I spent about $100 to landscape the front yard and got the landscape fabric I needed for my vegetable beds. Hooray for being frugal!

Spring!

Every year I await the first blossoms from the fruit trees. Growing up my parents had an apricot tree in the front yard and no matter what the calender said it was not spring until it bloomed.

Now I have apple trees which bloom even earlier, so when I started seeing the buds swell I was like a proud hen checking on them every day, talking to the tree, giving my husband "blossom reports" when he got home from work.

I bet he thinks I'm nutts, or sick of winter. I guess its a bit of both.

Not that we get ice and snow, theres plenty of green here even in the winter. Thing is I love fresh fruit, all the stuff in stores right now its bland and tasteless. Fruit trees in bloom are full of promise, that the sun will be out for months straight, I'll get some desperatly needed sunshine and this year I'll have the big vegetable garden I've always dreamed of having. Plus they are so beautiful, yet short lived. I try to enjoy them while they are there, I show the kids, explain what they are and why they are important not only to the tree but to the bees, butterflies, and other insects.





Yesterday I awoke to see the apple tree just covered in lots of beautiful blossoms. I had to get some pictures and fiddle with the digital macro option to try and get some nice desktop wallpapers. The ladybug on my blog header was taken on my apple tree last spring. I haven't seen any ladybugs yet, but there were a couple of bees, which is good. With the whole collony collapse disorder thing I was sad we might not have enough bees to pollinate much of the trees. I'm hoping as the weather brightens up more will come. I'm not an early morning person at all, but to see blossoms at their best I get up at sunrise to walk outside in the nippy morning chill to snap a few pictures. The apple tree isnt even fully blooming yet, more buds then anything, and the plum had 2 little early flowers, as did my peach. It was warm and sunny so hopefully tomorrow I'll have more photos to share.















plum tree:

Tree Roots Suck

Apparently I didn't get all the mulberry tree tree roots last year. 2 weeks ago I spent more time digging this monster of a tree root out then getting anything else done. it splits into 3 branches then went straight down, so there was no way to break it off in pieces easily. I had to wait till Chris got home from work to get a small saw in there to get it out in pieces.

I think the tree's spirit is laughing at me from where evere tree spirits go. Today I hit a root that went clear under the concrete slab, revealing while its been lifted up on that one side. I had to follow its windy path thru the yard with my spade so I could get it under the root, stand on the handle and try and left as much of the root in one piece as possible. I still ended up with a big pile of roots, but one piece was taller then my daughter. I had to get some pictures as proof of my victory. Luckily after 2 years they've started to rot to they somewhat 'pop' out of the ground with a spade and some physics, but sheesh. At this rate I'm still spending more time digging out roots then anything else. On the bright side, does that count as exercise? Cuz my arms and thighs sure feel like they got a workout.

War On Weeds!

I haven't been able to work outside these last 2 weeks because of the ever changing weather. It rained, it was windy, it was overcast, I was sick...and today I finally was able to get outside again.

Lo and behold, my beautiful newly rototilled vegetable beds were speccled with weed seedlings, some almost as big as my lettuce transplants.

Boo. Hiss. I wanted to cry and swear at the same time. Swearing was quicker.

Its my fault, I told myself when I tilled them to spinkle some preen or plastic or something so I wouldn't have this issue while waiting for the soil to warm up and hardening my seedlings.

I'm trying to prevent weeds in my garden with as little crazy chemicals as possible and without spending a ton of $$$. Make that next to no $$$.

Last year we experimented with solarizing one area of grass to kill it and it worked really well, and it must have killed the seeds too since theres only the occasional weedling here and there. The rest of the yard that was crabgrass/st.augustine/bermuda grass up to 2 weeks ago is a while nother matter. Even tho we soaked it with roundup weekly for a month, rototilled the dead grass under and raked and handpicked as much of the grass as we could theres little shoots of some sort of grassy plant coming up all over. I'm not sure if its from seeds or rhizomes or both. UGH.



The other side of the yard that gets the brunt of the Santa Anas is a hotzone for weeds with so many seeds blowing there. Everyspring the whole area is green, and it looks pretty for a few weeks, until I realize its not grass or clover: its tumbleweeds, purslane, common mallow, and some crazy tangled vine thats a royal pain in every orifice of your body to pull out.



I've been soaking wave after wave of tiny seedlings a week after every drizzle we get to try and sprout/kill all the surface seeds, but theres no shortage of them. Of course, I've also rototilled the area 2 times already this year since our soil gets hard as a brick on top when it rains when gets really hot the week after. Silly me forgot tilling brings up years of other weed seeds...*gulp* We're in an area that was orginally a desert chaparel, so the plants out here grow fast, grow deep, and are next to impossible to kill once they are established. Only was I was able to pull most of them out slowly over winter was after the roundup killed them and the roots finally release some of their grip.



I hate using roundup, but I needed some serious help getting control over the yard. Now that the soil is warming up and every weed seed is trying to sprout I'm trying to get control over the situation best as I can so I spent my summer picking vegetables and not bent over for hours every day weeding. Even tho I started at the end of December getting the yard ready I feel like I'm falling behind. I have drip irrigation setup but as my newly dug beds proved the weeds are just denser closer to the emitters. I really need a way to suppress the weeds so they don't overtake my vegetables and herbs.



Our original idea was to use this really nice dupont heavy duty weed prevention fabric they have at Lowes. It lasts for years instead of months, a nice plus for an area we can garden in year round, it lets in air and water and guarentees weeds can't grow thru. Sounds awesome, but its $25 a roll and for the area of yard (west side densely planted vegetable beds) we're covering it would cost us around $400 plus the anchoring pins. Thats just one side of the yard. Yikes. Great idea, not financially feasible at this time.



Another common solution is mulch. I like mulch, its simple, it keeps roots cool and moist, blocks weeds...but the cost, sheesh. I can't use hay because in the winds out here it would just blow away. I'm looking at some sort of a nice shredded bark that won't blow away and isn't too "chunky" for kids to walk on. 1 bag at Lowes is about $4.50 and covers 12 sq ft of a 2 in depth. Our yard (total) is about 2,000 sq feet. Thats roughly..*pulls out calculator* $730 worth of mulch. Preen came out with a cool mulch thats color treated not to fade and has a chemcial to prevent weeds from growing, but thats over $5 a bag. ($913 total for the whole yard). Great idea, too expensive for our needs.



I tried to see if anwhere local offers free mulch like the City of LA did, and to my dismay San Bernardino County does not. I called my local waste division, got passed on the phone to a bunch of people before I got to a guy in Riverside who knows of a company that makes mulch/compost in a huge facility but when I called its for professinal use only and not availible to the public, sheesh. He had heard of a facility on Riverside Ave that has a sign in front that says open to the public but he didn't know if it was free or not or the exact address. Riverside is about a 45 minute drive for me, so I'm not sure if its worth all that hassle. It its nice quality stuff ( as in, no trash, animal droppings or a splinter hazard for the kids) I might be tempted. I need to do more research on that place. But for the time being it looks like if i want mulch I have to buy it.

Today I rototilled another 1/3 of the yard and marked out the 3ft wide beds and 18in wide pathways with mason's twine. I love the look of the neon pink lines. I'm serious, I love bright colors. I had a jug of preen I bought last year and forgot to use and had a grand ole time shaking it like a polaroid picture until all the beds had a sprinkling of it. I didnt sprinkle any over my lettuce, peppers or chard tho. Freaky named chemicals don't belong sprinkled on my veggies, espcially as I like to pick the outside leaves off for salads. I made sure my daughter didnt step on it or touch it, I scrubbed out shoes when we got inside at the end of the afternoon and I watered the whole yard to activate the stuff. I hate using chemicals anywhere near my kids, but I needed something to control these damn weeds and I had already bought this stuff. I hope it works.

Tonight I stopped by Lowes and got a jug of Preen's Organic Vegetable weed preventer, which is just corn gluten. Much safer around kids. Hopefully it works well around my leafy greens and the seedlings I'm going to set out at the end of the month. I tried to do some research and see if I could just use cornmeal on the coil, but everything I read mentioned corn gluten, not corn meal. I'm sure Preen is ripping me off at $13 per jug, but I have no clue where else to buy that stuff in bulk.

We also picked up a box of heavy black plastic to solarize the small section of yard we aren't planting ( yet). Silly me got black since when we used the clear stuff last year our neighbor said black works better. Then I got home and looked it up and all the sites say clear plastic warms the soil faster and deeper. Gosh Darnet. So tomorrow I'm going to take it back and exchange it. OR I could put it out where I had wanted to put my squash and melons and cucumbers and try to get a head start in case it gets cold again. I'm not sure.

Supossedly black plastic is great for warming the soil but out here where the summers are really hot the trapped heat can bake the roots, not good. So I'm still debating whether to use it to get my vines started and remove it, get them started and leave the plastic ( and hope for the best) or maybe by the time summer rolls around I can get some mulch to cover the plastic so it doesn't get so hot? Or skip the plastic altogether. LOL I dunno! Its not even the spiffy garden plastic, its just heavy duty contractor's plastic. My concern with the vining plants is I have to space them out so much for room to sprawl that until they are all filled out the dirt and all its nice added compost is prime weed real estate unless I do something. * le sigh*

Ah the joys of gardening. Not only do I get to pour over catalogs and websites obsessing what I WANT to grow, but I have to plan a stratagy of attack to keep stuff I DON'T want from growing. Oh well.

How to make seedling transplant/starter pots out of newspaper

FarmerCathy on MDC mentioned making newspaper pots for her seedlings and I loved the idea. ( Thanks for the Inspiration!) I plant my seed trays all at once and of course some plants grow faster then others so I'm left with some plants root bound and others not. In the interest of saving $$$ and not having to store a million little plastic cups when not using them I did a bit of research and found a site that shows how to make square newspaper pots and a how to video on how to made round newspaper pots. Enjoy!

How far my backyard has come: The 2nd Summer (2007) More Fruit Trees

Our first summer focused on cleaning up the yard and drawing up a gameplan to tackle all we wanted in our yard. It was a huge improvement with the new trees and trimmed ivy, it didnt even look like the same yard. We still couldnt really let our daughter play outside tho, we kept finding dog droppings everywhere and the ground was still very uneven and a huge trip hazard. Late summer brought the usual 100+ degree days so we hid inside with our Fans when the AC broke down as well. It was too hot to plant anything new without it roasting to death, so we just watered what was out there and prayed for the best.

Winter dealt us a cruel blow. We had a hard freeze in January, which for this area is a once every 30 year event. A week of temps in the upper 20s ( the norm is mid 40s, 30s rarely) killed the papaya, lime,avacado, and mango trees. There was ice on our cars and on the driveway. People's pipes burst. By a stroke of luck we didn't have any sprinkers installed at all so we didn't have that problem to contend with. It also killed the bougenvillas down to the ground. I was able to bring in my potted hibiscus, but even so they got kinda cold shocked and dropped all their leaves. I brought in the mango tree and it still died, I guess it had gotten too cold for it even before the freeze warnings. My jasmine vines in the front yard died down to the ground too. Spring was pretty bleak with everyones yards full of tender tropical plants killed by the cold. Goes to show how little people know about whats planted in their yards around here. Even all the store parking lots looked drab with almost all their plants dead. Back east where ice and snow its common people have enough sense to cover, burlap, or otherwise protect their precious landscape plants. Out here in SoCal tho, worrying about the cold bothering our plants is next to unheard of.

Spring brought even more hope of sunshine and flowers then usual, and I was eager to have a full season to work on the yard. I started some vegetable seeds inside, our dining room ( a former enclosed patio) has a wonderful southern exposure and plenty of sun for starting seeds. I picked up some tomato seedlings from the local Armstrong nursery and made plans to replace what trees we had lost. I was pregnant and due at the end of March so gardening was my nesting activity. I searched the internet for info, spent hours reading books,and must have talked my poor husband's ears off about cultivars, grafting, drip irrigation, and type of fertilizers.

The big patch of yard directly in front of our living room had no grass left after the freeze and from all the mulch chips as a result of grinding out the mulberry tree stump. I envisioned an arbor type area made of of 4 fruit trees that would eventually be shade in the center. The trees would also give some shade to the house, especially the dining room which is poorly insulated and because it gets so much direct sunlight gets very hot in the summers.

After a winter's worth of research on fruit trees in southern California I realized I needed to focus on "low chill" varieties if I wanted trees that could survive the intense summer heat,drought and still give plenty of delicious fruit. Citrus wasn't a problem around here. Growing up out here I remember being surrounded by miles of citrus fields and grape vineyards before development wiped it all off the face of the earth. If I wanted apples or pears I couldn't just go grab what the local Home Depot had....if anything they carried all the wrong varieties for this area. Being a big box retail store I wasnt surprised. Looked like I'd have to search mail order catalogs and the Internet. To conserve space even more I was really curious about getting some 3-in-1 and 4-in-1 combo trees, where they graft different varieties of a fruit onto the same tree for cross pollinating. Armstrong can special some 4 in 1 trees but they are very big ( in 25 gal containers) and around $300. Ouch. My biggest problem was locating a mail order nursery that could ship to CA. Apparently since we're a agricultural hotzone the USDA cracks down on plants/trees being shipped in from out of state. Luckily I found a very cool company called Bay Laurel Nursery that not only had "low chill" fruit trees but it also had "combo" grafted trees and since it was in NorCal shipping to me wasn't a political nightmare and the trees were very affordable as well. I got a 3-in-1 Low Chill Apple, a 4 in 1 'Fruit salad' tree and a 3 in 1 low chill pear. They also had bareroot grape vines for $5 so I got 1 Thompson Seedless. I found a fuyu persimmon and a dwarf avocado tree variety called 'Holiday' that does well out here at Armstrong.

In February when we went to dig the holes for our trees we got a rotten surprise: tree roots everywhere from the mulberry tree. Apparently even the stump grinder couldnt get the roots that spread out for over 10 feet in every direction. We thought of just sawing out the roots where we needed holes, but I was worried the rotting roots could negatively impact the new trees growing there. Armed with a spade, a shovel, and a mantis tiller my wonderful husband Chris ( with some well intentioned help from our 3 year old daughter) spent a couple of backbreaking weeks digging, tugging, sawing, and swearing at many, many tree roots. The poor yard looked like a warzone with holes and mounds everywhere. I was fat, pregnant, and frustrated all I could do was sit and watch. I tried to help as best as I could without overtaxing myself. So everytime my husband found yet another root, I swore for him. He's not a swearing man, and it made me feel useful in my own little hormonally crazed gardening fanatic sort of way.

We finally got enough cleared out of the ground that we could rototill without getting it thrown back at our gut from hitting yet another root. The trees were shipped well and in great condition, I was thrilled. I'm wary of ordering from catalogs and not handpicking plants myself, but their customer service was excellent. Luckily for my husband they were sold out of every other tree I had wanted to try so he was spared having to tell his pregnant wife no to another crazy whim.

We replaced the dead Mexican lime with a bearess lime and moved the orange alongside it to the west wide of the yard, where they have more sun/heat then the south side in the shadow of the fence. The trees we planted in the first year that survived the freeze leafed out and flowered quite nicely.