Cinnamon who new ants dont like it.

Cinnamon repellent who knew if you put it in your pots it deters ants from the pots. I tried them on the pots I had ants in and so far I have seen non on the bottom and non on the top where they normally hang around. I put some water in the containers. Just a word of warning it seems to have killed off my mint plant so cinnamon doesn't i guess does not go well with mints. Anyway I place them in my pepper plants with no affect as far as growth.

Purple Bell Pepper from the Pearl Farmers Market.

I was at the farmers market at Pearl and they have some pretty cool veggies. Stuff you can't get at your grocery store. I got some portobellos and some other good stuff. The food demos were pretty cool

San Antonio Herb Festival tomorrow October 16 2010

If you like Farmers Markets or never been to the Farmers Market at the Pearl Brewery then come by this weekend and check it out. Here is a link for tomorrows Herb Festival which will be in conjunction with the Farmers Market which takes place every Saturday.

San Antonio Texas Herb Festival

Pearl Farmers Market

Love the Weather for San Antonio Bok Choy is on the way

I will be growing Bok Choy since the weather has gotten a lot better. I had good success with it in the summer without it bolting and tasted rather good in my stir fry. They do pretty good with out to much pest problems from my experience but easy and fast to grow.

My Lettuces such as the baby bib lettuce came out somewhat ok but the bugs seemed to have gotten to them before I got to enjoy them. I will more then likely place a net around my plants. Winter should be good since you don't see to many out there having a buffet with your lettuces, What are your experiences? Please comment.

Outdoor paint kills Mosquitoes

If you were in San Antonio you know we got a pretty good rain. Needless to it was much needed rain. Anyway my dad and I were working on the wall on our house and forgot to throw away a container I had with left with left over paint filled with water. What I found unusual was that there were a lot of dead mosquitoes in the container. Not a few but a lot of them. Gonna try it again with another container and I may have a solution to kill mosquitoes.

Bee Keeping Class

I was provided with a link on how to create a 10 frame Hive plans. Here is the link. Its a pdf file on how to build a bee hive.

Bee hive Plans
http://www.beesource.com/files/10frlang.pdf

Bee Class

I went to a bee keeping class tonight and they provide a lot of useful information on how bees not only produce honey and bees wax but are crucial to plants in general. Granted there is much to learn on the subject but I will post a few things on the topic on my next posting.

Still battling ants in my pots

after all was said and done my tomatoe plants grew a few much to my surprise. Last year I had no luck growing tomatoes. That being said after digging out my tomato plants at the bottom of the pots were carpenter ants. I shook most of them off the roots and used orange oil. I did notice that my pepper plants had none at the bottom I guess that's a good .

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Snake in my compost bin

Yup you read right I had a snake in my compost bin. Although after identifying it I wish I had not killed it. It was was plains blind snake. Apparently I think it was attracted to the ants that were in the bin and it was having a field day. They are harmless and look sorta like an earthworm with a metalic look to it.

Check it out what I saw. Its a link to a website on the little critter.

So next time you see one don't kill it. Its not venomous and certainly does some good getting rid of termites and and ants.

Ants in my Pots continues

 Seems my little experiment has drawn ants in one of my pots. I put cow manure compost in as one of my pots for my pepper plants and only to discover ants at the bottom of the pot.

I'm assuming this is because of the cow poop. Anyway I repotted the pot and sprayed the ants with orange oil and was able to kill them off.

Check out DirectGardening.com

Ants in some of my pots

Seems I have been getting a lot of ants in some of my pots. The problem is I don't want to use a pesticide to kill them. I read online that using cinnamon works to ward them off. I will try this and see how it work. I will give you an update and let you know how its working if it does I hope.

Building a raised bed for your urban garden

My green tomatoes and a brown paper bag

I got a few small tomatoes from my garden. Problem is they are still green. Unless you like fried green tomatoes and I'm not talking about the movie I want them to be red for us to use. So a friend suggested to put my tomatoes in a brown paper bag. Will see in a few days how my green tomatoes turned sooner rather then later.
Time to go outside and water my plants. Its one hot day in San Antonio.

Cutworms and prevention in your garden

I read this good tip on how to prevent cutworms. Cutworms pretty much eat your plants such as squash from the root and destroy your plant. I read a tip in this book I have to wrap some newspaper around the transplant and then planting it. This will allow the plant to develop and grow much more full and deter cutworms.

A farmer told me to also try putting a match stick at the bottom of where you will place your transplant. He said he has never had problems with cut worms.

My Vegetable Garden made with wood pallets and cement blocks

As you can tell my container garden is not the prettiest but heck it works. Now you may be wondering why I just didn't make a raised bed. Well I have a dog and he loves to get into anything he can if its on the ground. The pallets were free and the cinder blocks I got from Homedepot for about 2 bucks each so I got a cheap table for my plants. The pots I got at a garage sale for 1.50 each.

square foot gardening review on the book

I had gotten this book a year back and its a good book. The only thing I didn't find in what it ask is perlite which is hard to find in San Antonio. What I understand Perlite is a vocanic substance with porus components which allows for better growth on your veggies. Forget about looking for it at homedepot and lowes and if your lucky to find it let me know. So I reverted to another way to create your soil which is potting soil, cow manure, peed moss. Now I use potting soil because I use these for my container garden but if your making an actual square foot garden I would recommend getting garden soil.

I used the same recipe they provide in the book but substituted it with potting soil.

So would I recommend this book? Yes I would but just be aware that perlite is hard to find.

Anyway I got a link to some of the squarefoot books

Potato planting in Texas

I found a simple article on how to plant potatoes. I bought some a while back which I hope still work and plant to place them in a barrow.

Anyway here is the link. http://www.digfortexas.com/2010/02/time-to-get-those-potatoes-off-couch.html

I placed pots on top of my my make shift table for my mini garden

Its been around 2 1/2 weeks for my make shift garden and so far its done a good job. The location I chose does get some shade around 12pm but with the Texas heat it has done really well for my tomatoes. I tried to use a container variety for planting tomatoes. I would of built a raised bed garden but with my dog and how smart he is. He will find a way to get inside the garden.

Its not the most eye pleasing garden but heck it works. I'll post a pic of it tomorrow.

Broken Tomato Plant update

I think the rain water did well for the broken tomato plant stem as you can see. As you can tell it rooted from the picture. I went ahead and planted my tomato stem in a container and it seems to be taking well. There are some types of tomato plants that do not take to water rooting so test test test. Just to let you know I didnt put anything special in the water.

My 3 small tomatoes but more on the way.

For my first time as a container gardener I got three tomatoes. I got a few small ones on the way so I'm happy to have not used any extra fertilizer other then the composted cow manure I got at Lowes. For some reason I think the lowes cow manure is broken up smaller then what I found that home depot. Just my two cents.

Another Canning site.

Nothing worst then having to many veggies and not knowing what to do with them.

Here is a link I found on canning your veggies for your extras

Canning vegetables.

Rainbow Gardens what a wrong time to go lol.

Went to rainbow gardens only to find that most if not all their veggie transplants have been sold out. It seems like the August month is here so veggie plants are not to be planted I assume.

I did find some tomato plants that are tolerant to the Texas heat called solar fire and heatwave, and another called phoenix tomato.  I did get one heatwave and a few flower plants. I'm not much of a flowery type but I heard putting flowers around your vegetables helps the pollination so it will be worth a try.

So far I have 4 tomatoes unlike last year I got none so its quite and improvement.

My soil recipe seems to have been working which is gardening soil, cow manure(composted
) and peed moss.

Update on my banna Plant

Broken Tomato Plant

A few days ago we got a really good rain. Unfortunately the rain and the wind broke one of my cherry tomato plants.

Rather then throwing the limb away I decided to experiment with what I had once read about placing the limb in water. Luckily I had plenty of rain water I captured from the rain we had. Anyway here is a picture of what I have.  So far it seems to be rooting so once I get enough roots I plan to place it in a pot and we are back in business.

Canning your own stuff

Found this cool link on resources on canning your own fruits and veggies.

http://www.pickyourown.org/peachescanning.htm

Thank god for the rain

It rain pretty good yesterday. I was able to fill a few of my buckets with rain water for use later when the week gets hot.

 My cucumber plants and my squash plants I had in small pots for transplants did not make it for the bigger pot I had planned to plant them in. I think the heat got to them or I just took to long to transplant them. Anyway its always a relief when it rains in San Antonio. I put in a few more to replace the ones I lost so the waiting game begins.

My Bell Pepper

Its growing eventually I hope to get some bell peppers out of this plant. It did really well last year in a shallow pot like this one so its easy to grow in a container.

Useful Resource I found for those Texans.

I've looked online for resources on what grows in the State of Texas and there really isnt much until now. Well I'm sure the sites been around before but I just found it and wanna share with those who read my blog.



If found this garden plan from Texas A&M so check it out.

Another useful resource is Plant Answers. You can pretty much find anything you want to know about what grows in the State of Texas.

Ants in my Compost.!

I had some left over veggies and went over to my compost bin only to find a whole bunch of ants inside the bin. I went ahead and place the left over veggies and turned my compost bin a few times. After two days I came back to add more veggies with my surprise there were no more ants. I'm thinking the composting taking place in the bin fried them or deterred them from coming back. Needless to say there are non in the bin anymore after the few turns.

My Composter

I assembled my composter yesterday and it was a hot day in San Antonio Texas. Much less my dog licking my face while I worked on it. I do recommend if you assemble one of these to use an electric screw driver. Setting up this composter will save you a lot of time.

My Basil

Another easy to grow plant during the summer that did well for me was basil. Easy to grow and can be place in containers with no problem. I have this on my deck with shade.

My Chives

Chives do really well in San Antonio. I haven't really taken care of them and they still keep thriving.


 Here is a picture of my chives. I grew these from seed. Burpee is the brand

Picture of all my used pots.

Since I'm on a limited budget I chose to get what my aunt had for sale and made off with all these pots at a deal.

Got me some pots for my plants

Went over to my aunts in Hondo and bought some of her used pots. Will be posting pics soon.

creating an upside down tomato planter

This is a DIY on how to create a tomato planter

My First Tomato

Yup you heard it my very first tomato

My Banana Plant.

I got this plant about a month ago. Its a dwarf banana plant. Got it for 15 dollars. It came in a small container.

Dinner Garden

Check out their site. They help people start their first garden. Donate to them they are a good non profit.

http://www.dinnergarden.org

Interesting article on moon phases for planting your garden.

Check out this article. It has an article on when to plant your veggies according to the moon phases.

Planting your veggies according to the moon.

Found this cool site to plan your garden

I'm on facebook and I found this cool application that plans your garden. Well you have to input your stuff in it but its a pretty cool tool

Click on Veggie Garden Planner.

Found a community program in San Antonio

I was looking online on any type of information in San Antonio to develop a garden for a small area.

I found there are a few community gardens in San Antonio which I would like to check out.

http://greenspacesalliance.org/

I've contacted the coordinator via email to see more of the details on their programs.

Hello everyone and welcome to my garden journal

I'm writing this as an online journal as I begin my adventure in urban gardening. I'm new to growing my own vegetables so it will be interesting growing vegetables in the San Antonio Texas area.

My current seed list which I'm growing from seeds is lettuce, baby carrots, bok choy, squash,
and two type of tomato plants, pepper plants.

I will be growing them in containers and a few experiments I will have in place.

One of my experiments is to have a handmade self watering container. I will post pictures as I progress.