Goodness!!
The crabapple and aspen leaves in my yard are already starting to turn!
Needless to say, I am not ready for fall.
We’ve had a cool summer with rain and devastating hail… I hate to see our chances for warm weather come to an end.
I’ve been going through my Pinterest boards, looking for some fall inspiration.
I need a little help this year switching to fall mode :)
Hope it is still warm where you are… have a great weekend, friends!
I saw this wreath over at Cherry Hill Cottage awhile back. SO cute!!
It took a very LONG time to collect enough clay pots, though!
Simple to make… clay pots individually wired to a grapevine wreath.
A few notes –
Even with sales and 40% coupons the pots were around $30…. a lot more than I usually pay for wreath supplies. It would definitely be cheaper to hunt for them at thrift stores and garage sales instead.
(If you’re more patient than me).
This wreath is HEAVY!! It weighs much more than I imagined! So plan to have sturdy hanging supplies available.
You may need a few extra clay pots to replace any that are broken, say, by an errant baseball ;)
This post explains how the pots are wired to the wreath.
We are not supposed to be able to grow blueberries here. Blueberries ideally like a PH of around 4.5- 5.0 and our native soil is close to PH of 8.0!
Even my amended garden soil hovers slightly under 7.0.
Yet they still sell blueberry plants at the nurseries and big box stores in our area. Go figure!
I cannot seem to help buying them {ha!} and now have 3 blueberry plants, varying from 2-3 years old.
Here’s how I grow them in our alkaline soil: When digging a hole for the plant, I dig it larger than necessary and remove all the soil from the hole, to be used elsewhere. In place of the native soil I use a mix of about 75% moistened peat moss and 25% compost.
And every 3-4 weeks I water the plants with coffee “tea.”
It’s just a packet of the icky ground coffee they sell at the dollar store, mixed with about 4 gallons of water, in a 5 gallon bucket. It sits in the sun to brew for a few hours or up to a day, if the weather is cool.
Some leaves/twigs/whathaveyou always make their way into the brew, but I don’t worry about those :)
When the “tea” turns dark and rich in color, I just give it a stir and give each plant a drink – grounds and all.
So far they have produced only a few berries, but I’m okay with that. The plants are so pretty! I consider it a small miracle that they return each spring and any blueberries that come along will be a huge BONUS!
If you have slightly better growing conditions for blueberries, I think coffee tea would be even more beneficial. Let me know if you try it!
Have a blessed weekend!
So listen. Spring is never a picnic in our area. It’s typically pretty snowy/rainy/windy/cool {take your pick} and we can get a frost even in the first week of June. Sometimes even a final dusting of snow.
But this spring we have had more snow than usual + even colder temps and just a few days so far have even nudged toward the 70 degree mark! We were laughing the other day when it was 65 and we were burning slap up!! It just felt so hot. Ha!
There tends to be a lot of hauling plants outside for more light, only to shuffle them back inside when it gets too cold on the porch for them. Before, I used planting trays – but it is so much faster and easier carting them around in the greenhouse totes!
They are just regular clear plastic Rubbermaid type totes with clear lids from Walmart. I use them for both flowers and vegetables when they get too big for the grow light stand inside.
Here are some zinnias, marigolds and cosmos. They are pretty tough and probably could be planted out, if the nights weren’t still dipping into the upper 30s/low 40s. I leave them on the porch now 24/7 and make sure to put their lids on if it’s going to be much colder than 45 or so.
Even once the air temperature warms, it takes awhile for the soil to warm up enough to be flower transplant friendly.
The tomatoes and peppers have yet to spend a whole 24 hours on the porch. It was foggy and 52 in this photo so I just cracked the lid for you to peek in. But the wind chill stayed around 39-42 all day, so I left the lid on them. If it gets a little warmer, the lid gets perched halfway on the box and I take it off completely when the temp is about 55-60.
They would survive without the lid in their greenhouse boxes, even in 39 degree wind chill, but I’ve found it sort of puts them in a coma. They don’t want to wake up and get growing again after that kind of shock :)
And finally, these strawberries. I ordered them online and their available shipping dates were way too early for us! They were already breaking dormancy a full 3-4 weeks ahead of schedule.
Into the cups they went and I’m so glad I didn’t go ahead and plant them out when they arrived. Below zero temps and snow are tough for baby bare root plants to recover from!
So that’s it… Clear plastic totes. Lids for climate control. Handles for easy toting.
Let me know if you try a mini greenhouse in your garden this spring or fall!
Wishing you all a safe and fun holiday weekend!
I’m enjoying seeing many of your garden updates this spring! So far there is not much to report here on the high plains…
Snowy pine trees:
Daffodils right before the first 10 inches of snow (they may or may not have made a slight miscalculation in when to appear :)
This buried birdhouse is almost 3 feet tall…
And this, THIS is a raised bed – somewhere under there:
We have been blessed with 32 inches of snow {so far} in April 2013…
While April is our wettest month and we do tend to get some snow along with the rain…. it is usually a LOT warmer in April, in spite of the snow.
This was on my computer a week ago. Notice the {{minus}} before the wind chill. Brrr!!
Oh, and the 40 degrees on Thursday? Got my hopes up, but it. never. happened.
Today we have a winter storm warning for the next 24 hours, with 6-12 inches more snow expected!
Here are a couple things I’m wishing for considering for the garden (if it every stops snowing)!
For obvious reasons, I would love to have this greenhouse. Or really any greenhouse-type structure…
This pretty thing would be so much easier than the hoop houses I use now!
Has anyone ever tried this Fiskar weeder? It looks so ingenious, but do they really work?
I am longing for a bit of green in these cold and blustery days….
Just a couple of weeks now and I will be able to get the seed starting supplies out.
Which, Lord willing, will lead to this:
And then hopefully this:
This winter has featured snowy and gray days with way below average temps and lest I forget – it has been windy, windy, windy!!
We won’t even talk about wind chill, K?
I am SO ready to start plant those little seeds this year – a glimmer of green hope while we wait for spring to make an entrance :)
It’s just a few weeks away from being warm enough to plant my little seedlings in the actual ground :) Because of our short growing season, most seeds need to be started indoors, but I quickly run out of room and have to shuffle plants onto the porch. The porch is sheltered completely on the north and west and partially on the east, so they do fairly well there. Even so, because daytime temps are 40’s and 50’s and nighttime temps frequently dip into the 30’s, they need some protection from wind and cold -- occasionally even snow!
My old method was a frame made from PVC pipe, covered in plastic. It worked great, for the most part, but it was hard to cover in case of cold weather or snow and not portable.
This spring, I have a new method to house the little plants until they can go into the garden.. I first saw these on Pinterest. . . here’s my version:
Just clear plastic storage boxes from Target, but they are working out so much better!! I group the plants in them according to their cold tolerance. That way I can pick up a box and pop in the house when it’s too cold for them. It’s also easier to move plants around to find them more (or less) sun exposure.
The lids were all off the day these photos were taken, but they do add a lot of protection from wind and cold… like today, when the high was 39 degrees!
I can’t wait until they are all planted!!
Snowing. 8 degrees. A long way until anything remotely close to spring arrives.
And being an optimist, I’m finishing up my seed orders today.
Gardening in our high altitude zone 4 climate – complete with a long cold spring, early frost and incessant high winds - requires a lot of faith.
Faith and trusting for good results. But mostly, learning to take pleasure in the process, even when the outcome may not be so great :)
Have you started your seeds yet?
September 3. It was a little early, even for our high altitude climate. The forecast was for a low of 40 and there was no frost warning. Guess the meteorologists were wrong :)
Melon hoop tunnel.
We had already rewrapped the vine crops and tomatoes in their plastic hoop houses a few days before. It has been consistently dipping into the 40’s at night the last few weeks. I was so thankful we had decided to do put the plastic back on, as many people lost their entire garden!
We use a clip/hoop system for the tunnels. The clips and directions are from Pinetree Garden Seeds. The tubing and rebar are from Lowes. These tunnels are so easy to put up! Plus. Nothing blows away! We have A LOT of wind. It frequently gusts up to 50-60 mph, but our hoops and plastic have always stayed in place!
Happy plants under their tunnel.
Without the hoops and plastic we’d only be growing cold season crops. Nothing against them, but who can resist a few tomatoes, cucumbers and melons? Even if they are a bit of a gamble. . .
At 7200 feet, the summers aren’t very warm to start with, but over the last few years it has been trending even cooler. Mainly, the nights have been much colder. It may be 70-80 during the day, but doesn’t climb above 50 or so at night for the majority of the summer. And even the daytime temps are often not that warm :(
When it’s too cool at night, everything still looks as healthy as can be, but the plants don’t really grow or ripen until night times are consistently into the 60’s.
Which lasts, you know, for like 3 weeks.
So anyway. Here we are with the first frost behind us. Snow is likely not far behind. . . I’m still hoping we might have tomatoes, cucumbers and melons to harvest. Cross your fingers with me?!
These tomatoes have not been pruned and you can see how close the leaves are to the ground. . . a disease ladder waiting to happen.
Lots of bushy leaves still touching the ground, but I have at least mulched with grass clippings in this photo. Mulching your tomatoes is the first defense against soil born diseases and also conserves moisture. There are many choices when it comes to mulch: leaves, straw, grass, bark or even plastic. I like to use 3-4 inches of grass clippings. Please don't store green clippings in a bag. Trust me, it will smell pretty awful!! :) And if you use grass, make sure it hasn’t been treated with an herbicide or other chemicals.
I know it seems SO wrong to remove lush growth. But if you leave them, all those beautiful lower leaves will become fodder for tomato viruses. Just go ahead and remove the first 18-24” of leaves and stems, carefully leaving the main stem intact. You can snap off the unwanted growth, but I find it easier to snip them off with clippers.
I removed a huge pile of leaves from this row of tomatoes. It was a lot!! They have been pruned to create an 18 inch barrier between the ground and its leaves. As the tomatoes grow taller, I will snip off any leaves that droop or grow closer than 2 feet from the ground.
We had a very cold spring and even with plastic hoop tunnels, it was too cold to plant tomatoes until mid June! The temps abruptly jumped into the 90’s at the end of June. They were quite ‘shocked’ by the sudden warmth after the severe cold and are slowly recovering. . . but we only have about 30-40 frost-free days left, so they’ll have to hurry :)
I haven’t written much about the garden yet this year. It’s been extremely cold, windy and wet – even by the standards of our high altitude weather!
We do have a lot of “frost-free” growing days (up to 130). The problem is that at LEAST 50% or more of those days the temperatures hover in the 40’s and low 50’s… okay for grasses, trees and hardy perennials, but not nice for warm weather gardening!
So while I wait for something photo-worthy to happen in the garden, I thought I’d show you how to make a tiered planter.
You will need:
3 pots - small, medium and large (I use clay pots. They’re less likely to blow over in our heavy winds :)
2 smaller, but sturdy plastic pots
Filler
Potting soil
Moo poo
Your plants :)
I first painted the pots and then sealed them with clear spray paint, but plain is just fine, too. Take the biggest pot and place a smaller pot upside down, to later support the medium sized pot.
Stuff your filler all around the pot. You can use newspaper, packing peanuts or soda cans, anything light that will fill up the space. The roots don’t go all the way to the bottom of the pot and you can save all that potting soil for other containers! I use crumpled newspaper because it can go into the compost in the fall without having to pick out the packing peanuts first ;)
Repeat for the medium pot and stack – see the potting soil in the bottom pot?
There’s no need for a plastic pot inside the smallest clay pot at the top. But I do still crumple some newspaper in the bottom before adding the potting soil.
And finally…the planting! Don’t forget magic moo poo. A small handful mixed with the potting soil in each planting hole and your beautiful plants will thank you!
Here they are all stacked together with a few of the plants in place:
More photos to come, as they grow…
Remember my clay pot wreath from last year?
Sill LOVE it, but. . .
THIS happened to some of the pots and they needed to be replaced:
I thought I’d show you how the pots are attached. The method is the same, whether you’re making a brand new wreath or adding one pot :)
Start with a grapevine wreath, wire and needle nose pliers. Collect your pots… you can purchase new, but I love the character of thrift and garage sale pots.
Cut about a 10-12 inch piece of wire using your pliers. Slip it under a few vines, leaving an equal amount of wire on each side:
Decide which direction you want to the pot to face. In this case, if you use the wire on the left as the top, the pot will face to the right. But I wanted it to face the camera, so I used the portion on the right as the top wire.
Thread your top wire through the bottom of the pot:
Twist the ends together like a twist tie. Then use the needle nose pliers to roll the ends into a little coil:
All better…
The weight of the pots makes this wreath VERY heavy. Take care to hang it securely and enjoy!
Let me know if you make a clay pot wreath. . . I’d love to see it!!
The vegetable and flower starter plants are still inside in my homemade light stand…
Poor babies. Most years, they are at least outside in the cold frame by now, if not planted in the raised beds under row tunnels.
Not this year.
We have yet to behold 60 degrees, with most days only in the 40s.
Pretty chilly.
But back to the plants.
Needless to say, they are anxious to get outside and stretch their roots.
The tomatoes have grown taller than the lights.
Soon, my pretties.
