I was out of town for a few days and worried that my garden would suffer while I was gone. I watered it well just before I left, and crossed my fingers. When I returned, here were some of the goodies waiting for me.

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Usually in mid-May, I’m just starting the garden. We usually start by putting out tomato plants and zucchini seeds around Mother’s Day. This year, I gave early-spring planting a whirl. In March started seeds in the new-to-me Aerogarden and it worked a treat! After the seeds started, I tucked some of them into my GreenStalk and the composting Garden Tower. They’ve grown so well that we’ve enjoyed many salads in the past two months, and we’ve shared with friends. You can grow lettuce just about anywhere!

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It’s garden time here at the Savingsinseconds house! Now that spring is in full force, I am in the garden almost every free moment. I try to plant something daily — whether it’s seeds, bulbs, or starts. It’s fun and rewarding. This morning one of my zucchini seeds was just barely visible in the pot where it was planted….by evening, it was an inch tall. Crazy! I have something growing in every space I can find.

I’ve been home more this year, so it’s been easier to do succession plantings. The green container on the left was harvested just last week and is already grown back enough for a big salad. The blue pot in the corner was planted 3 weeks ago, and the green pot on the bottom right corner was planted with lettuce seeds 2 weeks ago. It’s such a treat to go out and cut a fresh salad for lunch or supper.

I never thought of myself as a food snob before. True, I have certain tastes and textures that I prefer as much as the next person, but generally I eat pretty much everything (as evidenced by the state of my thighs.) When it comes to fresh veggies, though, I must admit that my garden has me spoiled. My parents had a small garden plot when I was very young, but once we moved to a basement apartment we had no greenery other than a few meager houseplants.   As far as I knew, cucumbers were always green, potatoes were always white, and tomatoes were always red.  I should have known that there was more variety in the world than that limited rainbow!  Now that I have a home of my own, I really enjoy having a garden filled with many varieties of our favorite veggies.  Here is a pic of one section in my garden last year:

Many of my friends have commented that they wish they could have a garden, but…Insert your favorite excuse here.   My question is, what’s stopping you?  There really is NO good reason for not getting your hands dirty and growing some delicious produce of your own if you’re interested in trying it. [Read more…]

Whenever a new year begins, I get super excited to start getting ready for my garden.  When the winter hits, I really miss having those fresh flowers and veggies each day.  I pacify myself by saving small jars and bottles all winter long.  I’ll post about my favorite freebie containers later!!   For now, my focus is on my gardening catalogs and websites.  I am trying some new plants this year, but my old standby veggies will always be with me (lemon cucumbers, squash, and tomatoes).  The kids and I spend our time looking through the catalogs and circling the seeds we want to try.  We make lists of our must-haves.  We read every description then plan out the way we’ll set the plants.  My husband has promised to design some raised beds for me this year, which will allow me to expand to some new plants.  I’m sooooo excited, can you tell?! [Read more…]

Fourteen years ago my husband and I got our first house.  It was a tiny bungalow in the bad end of town.  We loved it.  It had a small backyard with a little retaining wall.  We didn’t have the tools to create a proper garden, so when I got a little pamphlet in the mail advertising EarthBox I decided to take a risk and order one.  We set it up in the backyard and planted two tomato plants in it.  I quit watering it around September when school got busy, but the tomatoes kept growing!  I was taking Ziploc bags full of tomatoes to my friends at work.

When was the last time your plants continued to thrive when you quit watering them????? [Read more…]

Since I’m a teacher, I get to enjoy a few weeks off in the summer.  In the past few years, my gardening has been limited to some hanging plants on the front porch and a couple of tomato plants in Earthboxes.  This year I had a lot of extra garden space due to the construction of our pool, so I decided to utilize it by planting more veggies.  I took to the Internet to do some research on organic gardening and came across a garden blogger who uses fish fertilizer.  I have NEVER heard of such a thing!   I was fascinated by the benefits of using organic fish fertilizer and couldn’t read enough about it.  Neptune’s Harvest sent me some of their organic fish fertilizer to try and I couldn’t wait to get started.    Basically, this natural fertilizer provides your soil, and therefore your plants, with nitrogen compounds from the breakdown of the fish matter.  Nature’s Harvest uses a cold process to manufacture their fish hydrolysate.  Using this cold process creates a better product and doesn’t destroy any of the helpful compounds in the fish fertilizer.

To get started, I filled a spray bottle with tap water and added the required amount of Neptune’s Harvest.  After shaking the bottle to mix the contents, I thoroughly sprayed the leaves of my veggies.  I was concerned that the fish smell would be awful, but it wasn’t bad……no worse than cooking fish in your kitchen.  I sprayed the leaves of my plants and waited for a week.  Hooray!!  My plants seemed to really respond to the fertilizer treatment.  I had one cucumber plant in particular that was having a hard time growing.   Here’s a picture of the before and after……in two weeks, my cucumber plant grew this much.  I couldn’t believe the difference.   It even has two cucumbers on it now!

On the same day that I sprayed the cucumber plant, I sprayed my sad little hydrangea and this verbena plant.  They were all dry and crunchy. In fact, my husband teased me about them and said they were already dead, why was I bothering to water them anymore?   I just couldn’t give up on them, so I sprayed them liberally with the fish fertilizer.  Just look at them now!!  All kinds of new growth and the verbena is even blooming!

I’m planning to plant several blackberry and raspberry bushes this fall and I’m definitely going to give them a head-start with Neptune’s Harvest.