10 Shade Tolerant Edible Plants

Wood Pallet Garden – Harvesting Lettuce

May 25, 2013 7 Comments

With the rain and cooler temps this past week, our pallet gardens have been growing like crazy!

So far we have harvest 3 heads of endive lettuce.

It’s a little bitter {that’s normal} but it sure is pretty to grow. Kind of artsy if you ask me.

I think I’ll be replacing the endive beds with some Ruby Red Swiss chard once I get it all harvested.

The strawberries are coming along nicely too. We have strawberries growing in 4 places this year. In the greenhouse, along side the house, in a hanging basket and in a wood pallet. So far the strawberries in the greenhouse are doing the best.

Last year I planted strawberries in a vertical pallet and I had it standing up for awhile, but eventually placed it flat on the ground so it would be easier to manage.

The spinach is rockin’ too!

Lucy the lettuce dog taking her job seriously. Sampling is her primary duty.

Have you ever grown your own celery before? Homegrown celery has a totally different taste. We don’t use any chemicals on our vegetables, so I’m guessing that’s why they taste a little different than conventionally grown stuff you get in the stores.

And remember the red speckled lettuce and how I couldn’t figure out what variety it was? Well, it’s actually a romaine lettuce and the variety is called Freckles. If you ever find the seed packet at your local nursery center, grab one. It tastes just like regular Romaine only it’s prettier.

No matter how you do it, gardening is cool!

Have a great weekend everyone.

~Mavis

Want to learn more about wood pallet gardening and how I put mine together? Click on the pallets above and it will take you to my first pallet garden post of the year. You’ll also learn what to look for when choosing a pallet.

Filed Under: Gardening, Pallet Gardening Tagged With: Gardening, lettuce, pallet gardening

Friday Night at the Movies – David Vs. Monsanto

May 24, 2013 6 Comments

Tonight The Girl and I are watching David Vs. Monsanto. It’s a documentary about a man who goes up against the agricultural giant Monsanto when GMO seeds blow into his crops, causing Monsanto to claim proprietary rights over his crops.

I usually get pretty worked up when I watch stuff like that {and for those of you that have been asking about my stance on GMO’s, I’m definitely working on it}, so hopefully I don’t turn my relaxing Friday evening upside down.

I’d love to hear your comments below!

Happy Friday,

Mavis

Amazon Prime Members can watch David Vs. Monsanto for free.

Filed Under: Amazon.com, Friday Night at the Movies, video Tagged With: David Vs. Monsanto, Friday Night at the Movies

Raised Garden Beds – Beans, Tomatoes, Beets, Carrots, Peas and Radishes

May 24, 2013 14 Comments

It’s been raining all week at our house. All stinkin’ week. And you know what? The cool season crops like cabbage, radishes and peas are loving it. The vegetables are growing like crazy!

Check out this gorgeous head of cabbage. Don’t you just want to give it a big kiss?

The Swiss chard has really taken off too. If you have a favorite recipe that calls for Swiss chard, please leave your recipe or a link in the comment section. I think I’m going to need as many chard recipes as I can get this year with the amount we are growing.

Even with all the rain we’ve been having, the tomato plants are still looking pretty good. Water on tomato leaves is not ideal, but hopefully they’ll be okay. We’ll see.

Beans! From now until the end of July I’ll be planting green beans every two weeks to make sure we have plenty to harvest {and preserve} throughout the summer. Do you do this too? These beans were planted 2 weeks ago. This weekend I think I’ll plant some Roma beans.

The garlic isn’t anywhere near ready to harvest, but it sure looks cool.

These are our beets. I thinned these bad boys last week, but with all the cool weather and rain we’ve been having, I may have to go out there soon and thin them again so they have some room to grow.

Carrots. Ugg. I’m not sure what happened, but not all of the carrots germinated. So last week I had to plant some more. Growing carrots takes a lot of patience and it’s a total crap shoot when you plant them super early like I did this year.

The napping gnome is doing a fantastic job.

The potatoes are looking great and before too long we’ll be enjoying our favorite fully loaded baked potato soup again.

Here is the view from the back of the garden. Pretty cool huh?

Now, if we could just get the sun to come out I’d be happy.

How is YOUR garden doing these days? Everything growing as planned?

~Mavis

Keep Calm and Garden On T- Shirt

Filed Under: Gardening, Raised Garden Beds Tagged With: Gardening, keep calm and carry on, Raised Garden Beds

David’s DIY Potato Tower

May 23, 2013 4 Comments

Check out this cool Potato Tower David from Alabama shared with me on facebook recently.

Davis and his wife Darcy started a potato tower back in February using some scrap wood. They planted 6 seed potatoes at the bottom of the potato tower and as the potato plants grew, David and Darcy added a little dirt every week.

David estimates he has emptied about 14 wheelbarrow loads of dirt into the potato tower and he’s hoping to harvest at least 50 lbs of taters in his tower the fall.

Way to go David! Your potato tower looks awesome! Let us know how many pounds you end up with.

~Mavis

Looking for more potato tower ideas? See how I built my potato towers and get the latest updates.

Filed Under: Gardening Tagged With: Gardening, potato towers, potatoes

Growing Vegetables in a Greenhouse – Tomatoes and Peppers

May 23, 2013 5 Comments

I was planning on lining the inside perimeter of the greenhouse with pepper plants like I did last year but when I went to grab the pots, I discovered they were all gone.

The Handsome Husband thought all my free planting containers I snagged from the Home Depot last spring were garbage and recycled them. Aww how nice. What a total stinker!

Now I have to go hunt down some more so I can get those pepper plants planted.

This week I also pulled all the gutters from the left side of the greenhouse out. We have four total. I still need to transplant the Swiss chard starts out to the garden {but where?}.

After harvesting the last of the spring spinach that we started in gutters we washed it out and filled it back up again with cucumber starts. I plan on trellising these up to the rafters of the greenhouse with netting or twine {not sue which yet} once they get going. We did this last year and it looked really cool.

The side of the greenhouse. Ugg. I totally forgot I planted potatoes in the bed. So now we have chives, potatoes and lilies. What a great combo.

Lucy hard at work.

The tomatoes we planted in the old stock tank chick brooder has been planted with green zebra tomatoes and onions.

Tomatoes and onions in a recycled pot.

I can’t remember if these containers hold 10 or 20 gallons, but we planted 3 pepper plants in this one. Our pepper plants don’t get super huge, so I’m hoping there will be plenty of room for them to grow.

Strawberries in gutters = awesomeness.

And last but not least, Lemon, our Meyer Lemon Tree. She’s blooming! Wahoooooooo. This is a good sign. With a little luck, we should have some fresh lemons to pluck from her branches next February.

No matter how you do it, gardening is RAD!

Peace Out Girl Scouts, have a great day,

~Mavis

Garden Wisdom and Know-How: Everything You Need to Know to Plant, Grow, and Harvest

Filed Under: Gardening, Greenhouse

Gladys Moves In and Andy the Plant Whisperer Gets a Haircut

May 22, 2013 7 Comments

Andy was pretty quiet last week–in fact, I almost sent the HH down to the basement to do a welfare check. Just when I thought he’d disappeared for good, I spotted him out back whispering to one of the yard gnomes. Turns out, he’d just been homesick for Gladys. He said he’d spent the week in downwarddog trying to recenter himself.

Lucky for Andy, Gladys showed up later that afternoon. And, um, well, she’s not quite what I expected. To be honest, she looks like she has sin written all over her. {Lucy looked a little scared.}

Gladys had a real quick look around, and downed a can of what she called “the sweet nectar of life.” Yikes.

Then she turned all of her attention to Andy. I didn’t take pictures of their reunion {you’re welcome}. Gladys could see that Andy had really let himself go in his state of depression and lectured him for not maintaining his “gorgeous coif.” She immediately opened her suitcase and pulled out a cape, scissors and hair clips to get Andy “back in the game” with a haircut.

I’m not going to lie, I really wanted to see what else was in her suitcase while her back was turned, but Andy looked so scared, I thought I better stay and offer moral support. Guess Andy was right, Gladys is his “very own little hurricane.”

To be continued…

Filed Under: Gardening Tagged With: andy the plant whisper, Container Gardening with Andy the Plant Whisperer, Gardening

How to Protect Your Strawberries From Birds

May 22, 2013 14 Comments

If you are tired of walking outside to find your strawberries {or any other fruit or vegetable for that matter} with chunks missing, you might want to give bird netting a try.

Bird Netting is highly effective in keeping birds and other smaller critters out of the garden beds and away from the fruits and vegetables we all try to grow each year. Not only is it safe but bird netting can be taken down at the end of the season and reused the following year.

For the netting be effective, you’ll need to give it a little support so it’s just not laying on top of the plant foliage. You can do this by using wood stakes at either end of the row and draping the netting over the berries. Be sure and anchor the bottom of the netting with rocks or something of the like. The main goal is to keep those pesky birds reaching the berries and to keep them from getting caught under the netting.

Unless of course your hoping to catch a bird for a nice pot of stew.

How do you keep the birds out of YOUR garden?

~Mavis

Need some bird netting to protect your fruits and veggies? Amazon sells it in various sizes or you can probably find it in your local hardware store too.

Filed Under: Garden Tips, Gardening Tagged With: amazon, bird netting, birds eating my berries, garden tips, Gardening, how to protect strawberries

How to Grow Your Own Food – 5/22/2013 Garden Tally

May 22, 2013 9 Comments

This year I’m on a mission to grow 4,000 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables in my suburban backyard. In 2012 I was able to grow 2,028 pounds, and in 2013 I’m going double or nothing. I have absolutely no idea if I’ll be able to achieve my goal. But, as with any adventure, half the fun is getting there. ~Mavis

*******

This past week we were able to harvest a little over 5 pounds of radishes, 4 pounds of lettuce, a wee bit of bok choy and some chives. Oh and eggs, let’s not forget about those.

It’s starting to get a little exciting around here with the summer planting almost done and the garden boxes filling up with shades of green. It won’t be too long before I’ll be hauling in buckets of peas and zucchini’s.

I don’t know about you, but I’m excited!

~Mavis

Here is what I have harvested so far this year:

Basil – 4 ounces

Beets - 14 ounces

Bok Choy – 4 oz

Check out this Asian Noodle Salad with Bok Choy I made. It’s pretty awesome.

Carrots – 3 ounces

Chives – 8 ounces

Egg Count – 1,171

We collected 80 eggs this past week. Do you have chickens? Do you have a fancy container to collect your eggs? We just seem to use whatever is handy. A box, a basket, a planting tray, sweatshirt pockets, whatever. Sometimes I think we need to have a designated container or something.

Lettuce – 6 pounds 8 ounces

We basically had a salad every day last week. Homegrown lettuce has a totally different taste to it. Growing your own food is kind of weird that way. You learn what real food is suppose to taste like.

M icrogreens 5 ounces

I need to grow some more of these. My favorite way to eat microgreens is with egg salad sandwiches.

Oregano - 2 ounce

Potatoes – 2 pounds 9 ounces

Radish - 6 pound 4 ounces

My favorite radish of all time is the French breakfast radish. The taste is very mild and they are fun to look at.

Spinach – 3 ounces

Sprouts -1 pound 2 ounces

Here are instructions for growing your own sprouts.

Swiss Chard 11 ounces

Wheatgrass - 7 ounces

Total Food Harvested in 2013: 20 pounds 4 ounces

Total Eggs Collected in 2013: 1,171

If you are new to gardening or just want to learn more on the topic of organic gardening, my #1 favorite book is The Gardener’s A-Z Guide to Growing Organic Food By Tanya L.K. Denckla.

Filed Under: 2013 Garden Tally, Gardening Tagged With: garden tally, Gardening, Mavis, one hundred dollars a month

Bob and Sherle From California Share Their Vegetable Garden Photos

May 21, 2013 6 Comments

A big THANK YOU to everyone who has sent in their photographs and stories. I hope by sharing other peoples pictures and stories here on One Hundred Dollars a Month we can all have a rock star garden this summer. Keep them coming!

Check out this story and the amazing backyard garden photos Bob and Sherle from California sent in:

Hi Mavis,

This year we decided to grow 2,000 pounds of produce in our garden. This meant that we needed to expand the garden somehow, our current garden being about 20′x25′. We started all our plants in our little greenhouse again this year. We love being able to save so much money and grow exactly what we want.

In the front yard we took out the flower patch, except for the roses, rosemary and oregano, and put in peas, three different types of kale, swiss chard, 2 varieties of lettuce, 2 varieties of cilantro, ten sunflowers and 3 genovese basil. The area isn’t very big, not quite the length of a garage and about 6′ wide, and we were quite surprised at how much we could pack in. Everything is growing beautifully and we have picked quite a lot of greens and peas.

In the main garden, plus one row, we have planted 6 varieties of tomatoes, cayenne and jalapeno peppers, zucchini, yellow summer squash, pickling cucumbers, green beans, broccoli, baby pumpkins, and more basil. I’m a little behind on the sweet potatoes, but they’ll go in by this weekend.

Since we had three old tires sitting around that we had used in prior years to grow potatoes and since we needed to expand my garden we decided to plant in them. We divided up the space in the tires and started planting. Since we still had more plants in the greenhouse and wanted to start some other plants my husband and I went on a small adventure to get more tires. As you can see our tire garden has grown quite a bit from the three we started with. The tire garden has beets, carrots, radishes, garlic, onion, tomatoes, melons, squash, cucumbers, dandelion greens for the bunnies, dill, parsley, and pepperoncini peppers. My son just brought home three more tires as we have more broccoli that needs to be planted and some other goodies.

Some friends of ours from church have a rather large field that they aren’t doing anything with and invited us to start a garden there. We would love to have even more gardens put in, but we can’t afford all the irrigation that will be needed as of yet.

We are putting in corn and peanuts. Corn because it’s easy and we don’t have to be there every day to make sure there’s nothing needing to be picked and peanuts because we’d like to give it a try and they provide the nitrogen that the corn is very busy removing.

Our neighbors bring us grass clippings for our compost bins and newspaper to put down under the straw. We lay newspaper and straw down because it gets pretty hot here and we need the “mulch” to help the water not get leached away by the sun, plus there are no weeds, which since we hate weeding, is very nice. Also the plants seem to like the color of the straw and they grow happier.

We still have pumpkins to put in the front yard. We will be prepping the area this weekend and then we have to figure out how to build some raised beds for the plants. I don’t think we can use tires in the front yard, not sure what our neighbors would think so we have to come up with something else. I might be able to scrounge up some old wood from somewhere.

So far this year we have picked 3.5 lbs of peas, 10 pounds of greens (kale and chard), and ¾ of a pound of radishes.

You can see more pictures and read some how to’s in a little book Sherle made through Shutterfly, though this is a digital version at: http://www.gospellearningcenter.com/resources/Garden/Garden.asp

Way to go Sherle and Bob! Your garden is magnificent!

~Mavis

Sylvia From Salem, Oregon Shares Her Garden Photos

If you would like to have your garden, chicken coop or something you’ve made featured on One Hundred Dollars a Month, here’s what I’m looking for:

Your Garden Pictures and Tips – I’d especially like to see your garden set ups, growing areas, and know if you are starting seeds indoors this year. If so, show me some picture of how you are going about it.
Your Chicken and Chicken Related Stories – Coops, Chicks, Hen’s, Roosters, Eggs, you name it. If it clucks, send us some pictures to share with the world.
Cool Arts & Crafts - Made from your very own hands with detailed {and well photographed} pictures and instructions.
Your pictures and stories about your pets. The more pictures and details the better.

If I feature your pictures and the stories behind them on One Hundred Dollars a Month, I will send you a $20.00 gift card to the greatest store in the world: Amazon.com.

Go HERE for the official rules.

Filed Under: Garden Tours, Gardening, Mavis Mail Tagged With: garden tours, Gardening, mavis mail

10 Shade Tolerant Edible Plants

May 21, 2013 3 Comments

Got shade? A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine was saying that she only has a small area in her backyard for a garden, and it is not ideal because it’s mostly shady. She wanted to know what I thought she could grow in the shade.

While it’s true, most edible garden plants prefer full sun, there are a couple that will give you yummy produce and tolerate the shady areas in your yard.

Here’s a few for her and you to try:

Celery–try this one in the heat of summer, when most gardeners can no longer grow celery. The shade can provide a cooler place for the celery to be happy.
Asparagus–asparagus is a semi-shade plant, but I know lots of people who have been successful growing it in full shade. Keep in mind, though, that it takes a couple of years before you get a crop.
Mint–mint is almost impossible to kill. A lot of gardeners avoid it all together because they say it is invasive, spreading like wild fire. It makes a great edible ground cover for a shady area though.
Bush beans–they actually prefer full-sun, but they can totally be grown in shade if you don’t mind lower yields.
Spinach–spinach loves the cooler weather, and the shade provides it long after spinach season would otherwise be over. Try the New Zealand variety for even more success.
Arctic Beauty Kiwi–I really want these! Apparently, it’s a vine that produces 10-15 pounds of fruit per year. You’ll need 2 of them for pollination, but they are shade tolerant and cold hardy.
Swiss Chard
Kale
Lettuce–this is another one to try in the heat of summer. Since it will normally bolt in hot weather, the shade can provide it a cooler place to thrive.
Honeyberries–I haven’t ever tried these, but apparently they are a cross between a blueberry and a grape. You’ll need two of these for cross-pollination, though.

What do you grow in the shade?

~Mavis