Project Garden Noob - Year 6

Yes, that was a cheesy reference to Star Trek, which hubby and I went and saw last week to start our Memorial weekend off right.  It was great by the way. Things in our garden have been not so great.  I was taking a closer look at our broccoli and found this: At first I was thinking, maybe they aren't getting enough water.  But typically, if a plant is parched, it just gets wilty.  They aren't wilty.  Naturally, I call Grandpa.  He said they're sick - caught a virus.  Awesome.  I did some Googling, just to confirm what Grandpa was saying, maybe it was something else (hope of hopes).  Nope, Google Images confirmed it - our broccoli caught broccoli herp.  On top of the illness, I found some tiny aphids.  ::grrr:: Grandpa recommended Sevin Dust: So I see this takes care of bugs, but I needed to clarify if it takes care of the virus.  Are the plants salvageable (he said yes)?  Did a bug cause the virus?  And...

And by jerkoff, I clearly mean insect. We have been noticing these little holes in our baby spinach: I'm pretty sure it's a bug because,  1) If it were rabbits, I feel they would be at the edges of the leaf, not dead center, and 2) we haven't seen any bunny impress so what else could it be? I did a quick Google this morning - what insect is eating my spinach in Colorado - and I found some rather vague references to beetles, praying mantis, and "other leaf eaters."  I have caught no one in the act.  So my guess is some coward insect is going this at night. Two days ago I put on my natural pesticide of Dawn soap, Listerine, water, and cayenne pepper (recipe found here ).  So far I haven't seen new chew holes, but I plan to reapply this mixture every few days as I'm sure it washes off with our waterings.  The blogs I've found this recipe on make no mention of how often it should be used, so I'm just rolling with it. Other than this dev...

My husband came home a couple weeks ago from one of his many, many trips to Home Depot and presented me with this: I really hadn't given much consideration to our water set up.  I was thinking hose + maybe a wand thingy.  He said it cost around $25.00, so we both were pretty stoked and he worked on getting everything set up. Here are a few action shots: He then added some of these guys:   Super fancy huh? Hubby put these slow-soak hoses in and catastrophe struck - the water isn't soaking into the ground.  Our soil is so awful, that it's just laying on top.  Hubby's frustrated, I'm just plain perplexed and quite frankly just haven't had time to even research how to fix this problem.  Anyone out there have a suggestion?? In other news, everyone is growing.  We put in cauliflower and broccoli (and strawberries!) last weekend (5/11).  I was informed last night that something is eating my spinach.  So tonight, I'll b...

We are getting super close to getting our fancy french drains installed.  My husband has dug all the necessary trenches and our back yard/side yard look a dachshund obstacle course. Aren't these some beautiful trenches?:   Right now our only problem is rain.  It's been raining for two days.  This pushes back the install AND all this exposed dirt + puppies = really muddy house.  My weekend is going to be filled with lots of vacuuming and spot cleaning our abused couch.  There is literally perfect, muddy dog prints all over it. But it's supposed to warm up next week, so hopefully we'll get all this finished and can get back to working on the garden and taking care of our weed issue.  We have weeds.  Lots of them.

Thanks to the blogosphere, gardening is much more crafty then I ever imagined.  We already covered the trellises and strawberry pyramid my husband built. This weekend, I decided to wrap up some smaller crafts that are aimed at improving the garden. First, I made plant markers.  You never realize just how useful those things are until you don't have them.  I found a link using old spoons, print outs, and modge podge. Et voila, garden markers: We ended up going to Goodwill to get the spoons (10 cents each, woo) and I printed out the clip art veggies at work (shh, don't tell anyone).  Whole project was less than $5.  And I made 30 of them.  Yes, 30. Next up, another idea via Pinterest, was some strawberry stones .  You are supposed to put them in your strawberry bed BEFORE the strawberries grow, so birds try to eat them, realize they aren't real, and leave the real strawberries alone when they do grow. Here is my best attempt at painti...

Let's do a quick recap of April.  In addition to sharing our experience trying to garden, this is also a diary to help us remember next year what worked and what didn't. 1. Herbs - Herbs are running out of room!  We started them in late February and that was just way too early.  If we moved them to a bigger pot we would be fine, but I really just want them to make it another two weeks and they can be moved into their permanent home, the pyramid.  Our parsley is starting to look a little sketchy. Might have to start over on that one. 2. Don't start carrots inside - I think we covered that already, but we continue to see them flounder in the pots we moved them into.  So next year, let's not do that.  We planted carrots and parsnips directly in the ground on April 28th. 3.  Again, do not get over eager.  Potatoes should not have been planted this month.  We just had too many cold snaps and they just didn't make it.  We will start new...