Tag: Urban garden

Midsummer seed order

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My midsummer seed order has arrived, and I am excited! I took advantage of MIGardener’s 20% off sale because the deals were really good. I was impressed with how quickly I received my order, too! 😁🌿

I love watching their YouTube channel. I have learned so much about gardening and growing food within a year’s time all thanks to Luke, owner of MIGardener!

The seeds I bought

Parisian carrots, purple carrots, midori soybeans, painted pony beans, flor de mayo beans, light red kidney beans, midnight black turtle beans, Charleston Wakefield cabbage, gold rush wax bush beans, sugar beets, peach melba nasturium, and Tom Thumb dwarf pea.

This time I focused on foods we can grow in our grow bags and get started end of June.

We also wanted to try crops we haven’t grown before such as sugar beets, painted pony bush beans, and midori bush soybeans.

I just love MIGardener’s seed packagaing. 🌿

It’s all a learning journey

Last year, when I did a late summer seed order, I bought fall crops such as lettuce, green onions, spinach, carrots, bok choy, and collard greens.

The problem with that was I planted the seeds too late in the growing season, so we didn’t have a fall harvest. 😕

It was a learning experience for me, though, so I wasn’t mad about it. It taught me how and when to plant seeds for a fall harvest.

And I still have a bunch of seeds from last year’s order, so I am ready to plant our fall crops on time this year! 😁

💜 XO

P.S.—here are our new garden blooms so far and the new herb shelves Travis built for me. 😊

Happy Friday

Three things to reflect on in honor of September 11th.

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Toad pool

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Every summer, we get quite a few toads in our garden beds.

In the middle of summer, if you go on a night walk in my neighborhood, you can find a bunch of toads hopping about the sidewalks and in the grass.

You actually have to watch where you step sometimes because you could accidentally step on a toad! 🐸

A toad we found hopping in the grass near our garden.

Toads help the garden

I always love it when I find toads in the garden because they help keep some of the pests away.

So far, I’ve counted five toads living in our garden—three in the front garden and two in the back patio garden.

Sometimes I will find a toad hiding near one of my fairy houses with its body halfway snug in a little mound of dirt.

Can you find the toad hiding? 🐸😄

Collecting rainwater

We keep a five-gallon bucket in the garden to collect rainwater. I like to water the garden with the stored rainwater, especially on really hot days.

It’s not much, but at least it’s a little something for the plants when it’s time to water them again.

Here is Mr. Toad! 🐸 Camouflaged next to the pink fairy house and blue VW hippie van. ✌🏾❤️🌼

Mr. Toad swimming in the rain bucket 🐸💦

Mj (24) found one of the toads swimming in our rainwater bucket.

It was such a funny surprise. At first, we thought the toad was in distress, but he was perfectly fine. 🐸😆

Although I do think maybe it was hard for the toad to hop out since the bucket was a little deep for him.

But then again, I don’t know if toads can jump that high. 🤷🏽‍♀️

I gently scooped the toad out of the rain bucket and safely placed him back in the garden.

We’ve named the toad Snake because his patterns remind us of a snake. 🐸😂🐍

Making a toad pool

So, Zaya (5) had an idea to make the toads a toad pool in the garden.

We repurposed a small, clear storage box, and Zaya collected rocks, sticks, and leaves to put in the box. Then, she filled it up with a little water.

We haven’t seen any toads chilling in the toad pool yet 😂, but I did see a couple of Sparrows take some sips of water from the box. 🐦

I like to imagine maybe at night when we’re sleeping, a toad hops in the pool for a quick dip. 🐸😄

Next week, we’re supposed to have excessive heat in the high 90s. 🥵 Perhaps Zaya’s little toad pool can be helpful for our garden toads…and the birds.

💜 XO

Happy Friday!

Four fun things for Friday, including a new art exhibit I’m excited to see.

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New blooms in the garden

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I love how one day I will check on the garden and I can’t seem to find a single new bloom.

But then the next day, all of a sudden it seems like a flower has bloomed, there are green beans growing, and little green tomatoes have appeared. 😅

Yesterday, I noticed we now have green beans growing. 😍 I am so excited to see so many green beans sprouting, even though I don’t like to eat green beans. 🤣

My kids love fresh green beans, so I am excited to grow a food that I know they love. I can’t wait to harvest the green beans and cook them for the kids!

This is the first time I have grown spider flowers (cleome). I found the the unique flowers at a local farm store.

I intentionally planted four spider flowers near the food plants so it could attract pollinators to the garden.

I wanted to add something different to the garden this year, and I think the spider flowers were a perfect addition. The magenta petals are so beautiful!

And the tickseed flowers have bloomed, too. I actually planted these seeds last summer, but the flowers never grew. So, this was a nice surprise!

💜 XO

New herb plant shelves

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I’m so excited because I finally have outdoor shelves for my herb plants! 😁🪴 Travis worked on building the shelves all weekend, even on Father’s Day.

He was so proud of his work that he snapped a picture of the shelves and said, “Now when I go to work and someone asks me what I did this weekend, I can show them I built garden shelves.” 😄

We’ve been finding more efficient ways to grow food in a small space. Growing vertically, like with our new herb plant shelves, makes it possible for us to grow a great variety of herbs without taking up a lot of ground space in our small patio garden.

Now when I am cooking and need herbs from the garden, I can just walk out on the patio and reach for the pot I need on the shelf.

I love my herb plant shelves! 😍 Travis did a great job building the shelves. I said, “Now that I know you know how to build shelves, I’m going to ask you to build more shelves all the time!” 🤣😁

💜 XO

Tattoo collector

American traditional tattoos—I love the classic, vintage imagery and bold colors and lines.

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Our happy place this spring

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All we do is spend our spring days at local greenhouses, and I’m perfectly happy with that! 😊🌿

Soon it will be officially summer (next week to be exact! 😲), and I’ll be focusing on maintaining the garden and transplanting some of my plants that I started from seeds.

Also, the season for buying fruit/veggie plant starts is starting to wind down. It’s a good time to catch deals on leftover plants.

Today, I stopped by one of my favorite farm stores and took advantage of a BOGO sale. I bought candy onions, celery, romaine lettuce, Italian parsley, and asparagus (just for fun 😉 because I know this crop won’t be ready this season).

I’m trying to fill in some empty spaces in our garden! 😄

How’s your gardening going so far?

💜 XO

P.S.—here’s what we bought at the beginning of garden season.

Sunflower Rescue

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We found volunteer sunflower sprouts growing in between the sidewalk. It was such a random thing to see that at first I thought they were just weeds.

But as the sprouts continued to grow taller, I inspected their leaves and told Travis, “I think these are sunflowers!” 😲🌻

I didn’t even know sunflowers could grow in such a tight space. Haha! But some plants are known to grow just about anywhere, I suppose. 😄

I do wonder if we hadn’t of “rescued” the random sunflower sprouts, could they have survived growing in between the sidewalk?

We did have two sprouts that needed more time to grow their roots, so I’ve been giving them some TLC in a repurposed honey jar.

This morning, I checked the sprouts, and one is finally ready to go in a pot of soil. Once it outgrows it’s pot, I will transplant it into a grow bag.

Sunflower sprout I’ve been growing in a repurposed honey jar of water.
Look at that phenomenal root growth! 😲🌻
Grow, baby grow! We’re all “rooting” for you! 😄

We have five of the volunteer sunflower sprouts currently growing in our garden beds.

They weren’t too happy about being transplanted, but after a few days and some good rainy days, they perked up and are now happy and thriving in the garden!

So, where did the volunteer sunflowers come from? My winter bird feeder! 😂

The birds/squirrels must’ve dropped the seeds, and once the weather warmed up, the sunflower seeds germinated! 😲🌻

What makes this sunflower rescue story even funnier is I said I wasn’t going to grow sunflowers this year.

We grew beautiful sunflowers last year, but I didn’t think we’d have the space for it this gardening season because we needed the room for our grow bags.

I guess the sunflowers said, “Make room for us!” 😂🌻 #sunflowerswin

💜 XO

P.S.—the feature image is of one of our sunflowers from last year.