Gardening | One Hundred Dollars a Month

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

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

Giveaway – Enter to Win FREE Tickets to the Mother Earth News Fair

May 21, 2013 56 Comments

Thanks to the peeps at the Mother Earth News I’m giving away 5 sets of weekend passes to this years Mother Earth News Fair which is taking place at the Puyallup Fair Grounds Saturday June 1st, 2013 from 9:00 AM-7:00 PM and Sunday, June 2nd from 9:00 AM-6:00 PM.

The Mother Earth News Fairs are family-oriented, sustainable lifestyle events, packed with hands-on workshops and demonstrations on renewable energy, small-scale farming, green building, organic gardening, sustainable agriculture, green home building and more! So expect to get down and dirty at the MOTHER EARTH NEWS FAIR!

I’ll be hanging with my gnomies at the Mother Earth News Fair from 9 am to 5 pm on Saturday, June 1st in the Botanical Interests booth with my online boyfriend Ryan so come on by and tell him what a hottie he is and who knows, maybe he’ll give you a free packet of radish seeds.

I’ll also be having ~~coffee~~ tea with local gardener Erica Strauss from NWEdible in the food court area from 2-3 pm on Saturday if you want to stop by and join us for an informal garden Q&A session.

All you have to do to enter this giveaway is let us know in the comments below if you can yodel or if you know anyone who can yodle. Yep. Those are the entry requirements.

This giveaway ends Sunday, May 26th, 2013 @9 pm PST and the winners will be announced in the Monday, May 27th, 2013 edition of Mornings with Mavis. You will be notified via email and have 48 hours to claim your prize.

Good Luck! I hope you win!

~Mavis

For more information about the Mother Earth News Fair and their awesome line up of speakers and demonstrations, head on over HERE.

Filed Under: Giveaway Tagged With: Gardening, Giveaway, Mother Earth News Fair, Ryan

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

Planting the Dry Shade Garden: The Best Plants for the Toughest Spot in Your Garden

Filed Under: Garden Tips, Gardening Tagged With: 10 Shade Tolerant Edible Plants, garden tips, Gardening

Ask Mavis – Help! My Tomato Leaves are Turning Yellow

May 20, 2013 10 Comments

I have the most amazing readers, and most of the time, it is me learning from you, but every once in awhile, someone sends in a question that I think, “Hey, I bet lots of people would love to know the answer to that.” So, I am going to try to feature some of your questions and answer them, the best I can.

Shell writes:

Hey Mavis, my tomatoes have yellowing on the leaves…is that a nutrient deficiency? I planted them with egg shells for the calcium. What is also good for them? No bugs, slugs, or other creepy crawlies on them either…I’ve been watching closely.

Good question Shell. Unfortunately, the answer isn’t super straight-forward. There could be a couple of different things going on, so you may have to read through these and see if any apply.

Right off the bat, I would want to know the climate in your area when you planted them. If you plant tomatoes too early, the cold soil and weather will sometimes cause a shock that causes their leaves to yellow. You could try to use a plastic mulch or black paper to warm the soil the best you can.

Next, if the temperature isn’t the issue. I would check your soil for two things: nutrients and pH level. Check the pH level first. Tomatoes like a pH level between 5.5-7.5, depending on the variety. The reason I would check it first is that there is no reason to fertilize if the issue is the soil pH. You can raise or lower your pH using sulfur {to lower pH} or lime {to raise pH}. If you are good there, you may need to find an organic fertilizer or high quality compost that will add nitrogen into the soil.

Let’s see, what else? Are the plants getting enough sunshine. If just the lower leaves are turning yellow, the top might be shading the plant from getting enough sun. You can try trimming back some of the top leaves–if your plant is big enough. {Also, I am assuming you are watering enough, but not so much your tomatoes are constantly sitting in water?}

Finally, if none of those seem to be the issue, you could have a fungal or bacterial issue. There is a whole host of tomato diseases that each require different types of action, so you may want to take a couple of the leaves to the local nursery and get their opinion if you think a disease or fungus is the problem.

Those are pretty much all of the basic problems that come to mind. Let me know if any of these help.

Happy Gardening,

~Mavis

The New York Times 1000 Gardening Questions and Answers: Based on the New York Times Column Garden Q & A is awesome. I own it, and it’s pretty darn awesome.

Filed Under: Garden Tips, Gardening Tagged With: garden tips, Gardening, tomatoes

Square Foot Gardening – Lettuce, Kohlrabi, Peas, Kale, Radishes and More

May 20, 2013 5 Comments

Wowza! Take a look at the square foot garden. It’s growing like crazy.

I had absolutely no idea you could pack so many different vegetables into a 4×8 plot. The peas, carrots, radishes, strawberries, celery, onions, cabbage, kohlrabi, broccoli, kale, bok choy, tomatoes, potatoes, beans, cucumbers, Swiss chard, beets, and lettuce are all doing great together.

Check out the kohlrabi. You can see the bulb starting to form and I think it looks really cool. Last year I grew these successfully for the first time and I think I may have harvested them too early.

So this year, I plan on letting them get a big as the palm of my hand. I saw some pretty huge ones at the Puyallup Fair last fall so I’m going for it. The packet I planted contained purple and green kohlrabi varieties and I’m hoping for a couple of purple ones. We’ll see.

Kale. Whop T Do.

Even though I’m not a big fan of this leafy green, it sure does grow well in the Pacific Northwest.

First radish harvest from the square foot garden. Yum!

The bok choy bolted here as well as in the pallet garden. I think I might have planted them a little too early, but I started another flat yesterday so we’ll try again. I can still use the leaves in a stir-fry or salad.

The green beans are breaking ground. Don’t they look like little aliens?

The lettuce should be ready to harvest by the end of the week.

Here is a view from 6 feet up. The sugar snap peas in the upper left corner are about 3 feet tall, the bare looking squares in the center are where the beans are breaking ground and in the front row of the square foot garden grid, there are cucumbers starts I transplanted last week.

Pretty neat-o if you ask me!

Are YOU square foot gardening this year? Have you been surprised with your results?

~Mavis

Read more about my adventures in Square Foot Gardening.

Are you thinking about putting together a Square foot garden? See the how I built a square foot garden grid HERE.

For more information, check out All New Square Foot Gardening. It is an amazon bestseller and the author, Mel Bartholomew is basically the king of square foot gardening.

Filed Under: Gardening, Square Foot Gardening Tagged With: Gardening, Square Foot Gardening