Hot, Humid and Stuck Inside All Day: Poor Garden

It is suppose to rain today, but I'm not holding my breath. On a good note the cucumbers and the pumpkin are doing well. The cucumbers, now gently tied to the tee-pee trellis, is climbing up the poles quickly and the pumpkin is spreading wide about its mound. As for the watermelon... it really doesn't have much of a chance of survival. It will probably last one more week if at all. My husband is very disappointed about this and wants to just ho over the watermelon mounds, but I keep hoping for a good rain to bring them back to life. He is positive it is our clay like soil and the lack of rain keeping them from growing. Since we are on a neighborhood watering restriction right now, we can only water so often. I really wish we had rain barrels. I read the other day that Terracycle sells some of their barrels at Home Depot. Their products are sometimes affordable so we will have to take go to Home Depot and take a look. We need to do a lot of things, but we have just been so busy...

The cantelope is struggling too, but may still produce something. The potted Okra is taking a while to grow, but doing great. I would love to show updated pictures of our organic garden, but my 6 month old snatched it and dropped it to the floor, before I could stop him. The camera is broken beyond repair and now I can't take a picture of him (he's learning to crawl) or of the garden. However, I'm saving money to buy a new one. It may be a while though....Oh, well.

It seems our CSA farmers are suffering from the lack of rain too. The weekly newsletter mentions it all the time and it shows during the pickup. The veggie CSA pickup is down to giving us enough produce to only fill one bag again, sometimes not even a full bag. This week our new vegetable was one bell pepper. We also had onions, tomatoes, basil, and squash. The tomatoes seem to be picked early because they aren't very sweet. We are tired of squash, too tired to even talk or write about it anymore. The basil comes in abundance. It smells great and taste great when cooked in foods like tomatoes sauce. Our own basil is doing well too. It is the best looking herb in our herb planter. Our cilantro...poor thing...looks like it has been torched and set to decay standing. We will have to try it again soon now that we have an idea of what we did wrong. We never did move the plants to the new spot in the garden. In fact since the temperatures here began to rise to the mid 90's or more we began to do less and less outside. It's too hot! We tried but would come back in burned or dehydrated despite or water intake. It's hot inside too. Our AC isn't the best and our old house isn't well insulated.

The Topsy Turvy still has two tomatoes and are just now turning red. Our neighbor's Topsy Tuvy though is filled with red tomatoes. Next time we will try the pinching technique we read about in the gardening books from the library. I love library books. It's a great way to read a lot of books about the same subject without having to spend a dime. Just don't make the mistake of turning them in late like I did this past month. Wow, the charges will add up.

The meat CSA was dropped off at our door on the 27 of June. This is what we received:
2 New York Strip
Boneless Porkchop
Pork Italian Sausage
Beef Shoulder Roast
Por Cutlet
Pork Shoulder Roast
Pork Bacon
2 Ground Beef
Hot Digity Dogs
Whole chicken

Yesterday, I used the CSA bacon and the CSA Hot Digity Dogs plus a CSA onion, CSA tomato and a jalapeno to make frijoles a la charra. I cooked the ingredients above in a pan on the stove and then added them to a pot of almost ready cooked beans. I finished cooking the beans and then served it as a side dish with our meal. It was a tasty dish, but not as spicy as my husband and I are used to. My girls loved it.

I din't forget it is the fourth of July. Happy Fourth Of July Everyone!

More Interesting Stuff to Read


Is Organic Food Worth The Cost

AIR-igator: Collects AC Water For Your Garden

Food Independence Day
http://www.foodindependenceday.org/

Eating Organic On The Run

I've come to discover it is impossible to eat organic on the run around
here. It's all fast unhealthy food. I really wish my hometown had more eco-friendly and organic options. Maybe one day. I'll keep spreading the word. In the mean time I will have to take my organic lunch with me or just deal with eating what's around.

DIY Findings For Organic Gardening & Conserving Water

Below are very informative sites I have found online. I thought I would share with anyone interested in organic living or gardening. I hope it helps.

1.DIY Gardening: Making an Upside Down Tomato Planter
I thought this was great and I plan to show my husband as well as my neighbor. It looks so easy.

2. How to Build a Rain Barrel
It seems so simple. I posted a question on Gather and other social networking sites about large containers and the advice given so far is to find food grade plastic barrels from places like Dunkin Doughnuts, restaurants and so on. That's a pretty good idea. There are also a few cheap ones on eBay that cost about $25-$45 plus a few dollars to buy the parts. That is a lot cheaper than already made barrels. Still in an effort to conserve every dime and be as eco-friendly as possible I would like to buy or get a free used barrel. I would also like to find some locally.To reduce my carbon footprint and keep some money in my pocket. Shipping something like this can get expensive.

3. More DIY rain barrel step by step instructions

4. And another one here
5. Seasonal Ingredient Map
This is a great site to refer to each new season. It is very helpful and I can't believe I haven't already told or emailed my husband about the site.

6. Food Dictionary
I have used this site many times already and thought it a great idea to share if I haven't already.

7. Community Garden

8. Farmers Market Online In Season

9. Organic Food and Beyond: 18 à la Carte Tips to Green Your Meals

Rain Brings Happiness To My Baby's Daddy

It rained today on the way home!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was a light rain with a rainbow painted across the sky. My husband shouted out in happiness as we drove into it. My girls asked about finding the fog at the end of the rainbow. I wanted to say it was growing in our garden, but instead I took pictures of the rainbow. What a beautiful ride home.

Happy Father's Day!

Where is the rain? Thanks HEB

The lack of rain is making all of us grumpy and the days are hot. This is the 3rd week or more without rain. My flower garden is thirsty and we are still trying to find ways to water our vegetable garden without bringing up our water bill. This is proving to be hard because these plants need a lot of water.

We also still have not found free or inexpensive wooden barrels for container gardening nor have we found free large plastic or tin barrels to contain the rain when it comes....if it ever comes.

On a very positive note....during our shopping trip to HEB right before our CSA pickup we stopped by the corn on sale and my husband noticed a large box of empty corn husks right next to the corn stand. He said, pointed at the box and looked at me, "I want this!" A light bulb went off in my head and I remembered a tip from one of the many gardening books we have checked out and I said, "go ask the manager". He smiled swung his pointed finger in the direction he would walk to to find the manger and said, "I will!" Off he went. When he came back he said they gave him the rotting melon too. I had mixed feeling about that. I didn't want rotting melon in the car in the heat. Imagine the smell, but he seemed happy so I went a long with it.

When we got inside the car I could smell it. It was nasty and we still had to pick up the CSA veggies then drive all the way home. At the CSA pick up we finally had a bag of tomatoes to pick up with the rest of the veggies. I was excited because we love tomatoes. We still have only one bag full of vegetables, but at least we no longer have that nasty lettuce. Unfortunately, we are now growing tired of the squash too.

When we arrived home. He took the large boxes of rotten fruit and husks out of the SUV and to the back yard to place in the compost. Naturally he spilled some of the melon juice in the back of the SUV. I was upset, but he cleaned it and aired it out. The smell is gone now. Next time we will bring flattened cardboard boxes with us. When he spoke to the manager there she was fine with allowing us to pick up more rotten fruits and veggies later. She says a lot of gardeners have asked them. My husband says one of the other managers there was a little nervous about letting us take the rotten food. My husband reassured him we wouldn't eat it. I guess the other manager was worried about a lawsuit or something. I can understand that. There are some bad dishonest people out there. They ruin it for everyone. I told my husband, if they are still nervous. to tell them he is more than willing to sign a paper letting HEB know we wont sue. I'll post it here. HEB we wont sue you over this rotten food. We are only using it for our compost pile and I appreciate you willing to take the chance. You are helping us out and helping the planet at the same. Thanks to you, our compost bin is full and in six months to a year we will have rich dark black soil to put in our vegetable garden.

I wish all grocery stores would do this. I hate the idea of all that compost material going to waste and to the landfill. It's a shame that so much of it does when it can be turned into compost. If grocery stores were smart they would turn there waste into compost and then sale it to their costumers for a dollar. A dollar more for organic compost.


By the way our pumpkins, cantelopes, and cucumber are thriving, but our watermelon is struggling. My husband says they do better in sandy soil. We have clay soil. He plans to mix it with a bit of sandy soil next year. This year we will just see what happens. By the way did I ever mention we once lived in Alabama for a year many years ago and we tried gardening there. We planted a few things: corn, carrots, watermelon, and tomatoes, is all I can remember. Our corn died. Only one carrot grew, but we picked it too soon, cute tiny little thing. We had some yummy tomatoes for a few weeks. They were absolutely delicious. I think I made the best spaghetti I have ever made with those tomatoes, but then before we knew it the watermelon grew over everything and choked everything out. Still, we were happy. We picked a few watermelon at first, but discovered it was too early to harvest. We finally researched how to harvest watermelon and a few weeks later we had so many we were giving them away. I would love to reach that point in our vegetable garden, the point when we have so much food to harvest we can give it away to our family and friends.

Back then we didn't know how to garden at all. It was pure luck and wishful thinking. This year we decided to learn about gardening first and then plant. Well...honestly it was a little of both. We are still reading gardening books. We are still asking gardeners questions. We still have a lot and I mean a lot to learn, but I think we will be okay. If we succeed then we save money on food and we feed our family fresh organic healthy food. If we fail, it isn't really a failure because we learned new things and we enjoyed doing it, my husband most of all. After coming back from Iraq and still searching for a job I believe this calms him. This calms me.

My children enjoy it too. They get so excited about these things. This is what I love about kids, simplicity and nature still excites them. Materialistic things and vanity are way back on the back burner. I say let us as adults help them keep it there. We all need to take a break and give simplicity and nature another try. Maybe we would all be happy for it.

Epson Salt and No Rain for Days

It hasn't rained for days. It is hot, humid and our grass is turning brown. We are only using our water to water the plants that can't take it without water. Still our water bill has gone up. The forecast does not predict any rain for the next ten days either. Meanwhile we are still looking for wooden barrels to make into planters for our organic container gardening and plastic barrels to make into rain barrels which would have done us a lot of good these days had we already had them. Not much luck. These barrels are expensive and no one is willing to give any for free. Who would want to? These barrels are valuable.


In the mean time this is what I have found on Epson Salt. I read many tips about the benefits of Epson Salt in the gardening books I checked out from the library. Take a look below:

http://www.ehow.com/how_2364086_fertilize-garden-epsom-salts.html

http://www.gardenscure.com/420/plant-food-nutrients/93140-epson-salt.html

http://gardening.about.com/od/organicgardenin1/f/Epsom_Salts.htm


By the way if you have your own garden register it here for free.