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.