Garden check-up, some flames, and a snack.

On Wednesday, July 4th, we hit the two-week mark since we planted our vegetable garden using the square-foot gardening method in raised beds. It was also time to plant another box of corn. So Chris and I trekked up to the garden to take a peek at the garden's progress (we're up there pretty much every day, but this time I took the camera) and to plant four more corn seeds.

Four healthy corn plants!

Lots of healthy bush beans plants - nine per square!

Grape tomato plant.

Chris points out sprouts in the carrot square.

Sprouts in the radish square.

Zucchini plant.

Five healthy pepper plants (l to r: Serrano, jalapeno, yellow bell, orange bell, and red bell peppers).

Roma tomatoes - I can't wait for them to come in...I have an AWESOME salsa recipe!!!

Park's Whopper tomatoes for sandwiches and burgers!

Cilantro and cantaloupe plants.

Butternut squash sprouts (left) and cucumber plants (right).

Everything is looking great; Chris and I are very excited and pleased with the garden's progress so far. As usual, the garden really perks up after we get rain. It's so funny...we can water every day and the garden does well. But the minute it rains, I swear the plants grow by several inches!

Closer to the house, the Jackmanii Clematis Chris bought in 2008 and planted next to the deck (along the lattice work) looks spectacular!!! 

Between the ivy and the clematis, all of the lattice work has been filled in creating privacy on the deck. The Clematis is growing into the tree near the pond, so Chris has some pruning to do.

My hummingbird/butterfly garden has been doing its job! Both Great-spangled Fritillary and Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterflies have been visiting the garden and enjoying the plethora of purple coneflowers.

Great-spangled Fritillary butterfly.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly.

This Easter Tiger Swallowtail visited no less than eight different coneflowers while I watched it!

Bees have been enjoying the bee balm in the hummingbird/butterfly garden, and we've spotted a male Ruby-Throated Hummingbird flitting about the garden, visiting both the bee balm and the hummingbird feeder.

Bees on bee balm...shocking, I know!

Bee mid-flight on the left!

For the Fourth of July, Chris and I celebrated with the inaugural fire in the new fire ring that Oscar and I got for Chris for his birthday. We lit a few small "magic fountain" fireworks and enjoyed a few fireworks set off by some neighbors.

Chris' birthday present - a concrete fire ring! I foresee lots of mountain pies will be made in this new fire ring!

Chris and Oscar enjoying time around the fire.

Magic Fountain!

Finally, today I made one of my favorite summertime snacks - basil-tomato-fresh mozzarella skewers!!! Since the grape tomatoes haven't come in yet, I used store-bought grape tomatoes (and fresh mozzarella), but I used fresh basil that I'm growing on the deck! Simply slice up the fresh mozzarella and skewer up a basil leaf, a piece of cheese, and a grape tomato. An optional twist is to drizzle some EVOO over the skewers and then top with some fresh ground pepper. Either way, the skewers are easy and refreshing! They're a delicious way to use fresh basil and grape tomatoes (or halved cherry tomatoes). Give it a whirl and let me know what you think!

A plateful of YUM!

How is your garden doing? What have you harvested so far? What are some of your favorite summertime recipes? Let me know in the comments below!

One bug, two bug, bad bug, worker bug...er, bee.

Several summers ago, I bought a cold-hardy hibiscus plant from the Farmer's Market at 142nd Street in Ocean City, MD while on vacation. The next summer (2009), the plant didn't come back until almost mid-June. I'd started thinking the grower was wrong when he said the hibiscus would survive Pennsylvania winters. The next year, it came back at the end of May, In 2011, it emerged on May 19th. This year, I noticed it sprouting on May 17th. 

At this point in the season, this is what the plant should look like:

Mid- to late-June hibiscus (2011)

If you look at the 2011 photo, you'll notice a little leaf damage. I didn't think much of it. As the plant began to grow this year, there were some holes in the leaves. Again...I didn't think much of it. And then this happened:

Hibiscus on June 24, 2012

This damage happened within a matter of days! I am so sad. I did a little research and have figured out that it is hibiscus sawfly larvae that are feasting on my plant. It may be too late (although I certainly hope it isn't!), but Chris is going to treat the plant with Sevin insecticide tomorrow. I am really hopeful that we can salvage the plant. I will be really upset if I completely lose this hibiscus! It'll be an interesting few weeks as I wait to see if the plant can recover with a little Sevin help.

On a decidedly lighter note, I spent about 90 minutes weeding my hummingbird and butterfly garden while listening to the Sunday Polka Party on Q102. Not much tops that perky polka beat at keeping me motivated while I weed! I made short work of the weeds in the garden with our "Action Hoe." Chris bought it two years ago and it's our go-to tool when we have serious weeding to do. 

The Action Hoe - find it at a Lowe's or Home Depot near you!

Chris came outside to help me and spotted a worker bee on one of my purple coneflowers (which, by the way, have spread like crazy in the garden...much to my delight!). He ran into the house to grab his camera to snap a few pictures.

You can see the little specks of yellow pollen in the head of the coneflower.

The worker bee is on the backside of the head of the coneflower collecting pollen.

Look at the bee's back legs where the hair-like baskets for pollen are located...
this bee was loaded down with pollen!

The pollen that this bee will take back to the hive will be combined with the honey in the hive and used to feed the next generation of bees. With colony collapse disorder plaguing hives in recent years, it's encouraging to see honey bee activity in my hummingbird/butterfly garden. And right now, only mountain bluet and the coneflowers have bloomed. Once the balloon flowers and bee balm bloom, it should be bee-a-palooza and that will be A-OK with me!

While we were weeding this morning, Stewart - our resident bullfrog - was hanging out among the water lilies, which have begun blooming and adding color to the pond. 

Say "Hi" to Stewart!

Don't forget the contest I'm running (it ends Tuesday, June 26th at 8 PM). Details regarding the contest can be found in the "Better late than never..." post from last week. 

Better late than never...plus a contest!

Back in early April, Chris and I were in Lowe's and we came across the book "All New Square Foot Gardening: Grow More in Less Space" by Mel Bartholomew. We'd already decided that we were going to transition to raised beds in our vegetable garden. The soil up there - despite three years of tilling and adding compost, peat moss, and sand - is absolutely dismal. Not to mention no matter how much time we'd spend up there, we could never stay on top of the weeding each year. Raised beds seemed like the answer. Then we thumbed through "All New Square Foot Gardening" and saw that not only might raised beds be the answer, but with the ANSFG technique, we might only need two raised beds instead of the four or five we'd been planning.

Our new gardening "bible."

When we got home, I found a copy of the book at the Schlow Library and that Monday I made a beeline for the library at lunchtime. Chris read the book very quickly and began to tell me about Mel's methods and "Mel's Magic Mix" - a mix of vermiculite, peat moss, and compost - that he recommended as planting medium in the raised beds. Once Chris was done with the book, I started reading it but wound up having to return it to the library before I was done reading it (even after renewing it!). I found the book for $11.42 on Amazon (list price is $19.99), so I decided we should just own a copy.

With all of our recent travel, it wasn't until last week (once we were back from our Michigan trip) that Chris was able to construct the boxes, stain them (on the outside only!), and purchase the vermiculite, compost, and peat moss. We'd purchased the wood for the boxes back in early May but when we called Nature's Cover on the Benner Pike in Bellefonte in search of vermiculite (the only place we knew that carried it), we were told they were sold out and that they didn't expect more until after Memorial Day. There was no sense in building the boxes only to have them take up room in the garage until we could acquire vermiculite, so we waited. But last week, vermiculite was back in stock and we had information about purchasing Penn State compost, so it was time to get crackin'. 

Mel recommends using five types of compost for his "Magic Mix." We only used three - PSU compost (more on that in a minute), mushroom compost, and hummus and cow manure compost. Did you know that the Organic Materials Processing and Education Center (OMPEC) at Penn State manufacturers compost from food waste from the dining commons, hotels, and daycare centers on campus? And did you know that on Fridays from March through June, that compost is available for sale to the public from 9 AM until 12 noon? Well, if you didn't, you do now! The price is $15 per cubic yard; the price will rise to $18 per cubic yard for 2013. And it's good stuff! Like...REALLY good stuff! So naturally, we had to get our hands on some of this really good stuff - two cubic yards worth. 

On Saturday evening, Chris and I moved the two boxes up to the garden area. Chris and I took turns hoeing the ground where the boxes would be placed to remove weeds. Chris stapled weed blocking fabric to the bottoms of the boxes and we tried to place them on as level ground as possible. Chris mixed all of the "Magic Mix" components into the boxes.

Earlier in the day, we'd gone to Lowe's to purchase our plants for the garden. Ordinarily, we go to Sammis' Greenhouse in Centre Hall or Martin Garden Center in Tyrone, but I wanted to start with Lowe's simply because it was close to home and we had a few other local errands to run Saturday afternoon. If we could be successful in finding our plants at Lowe's or Home Depot, that would save some gas and some time. Between the available plants and seeds, I was able to find everything I wanted for our garden. I'd sat down Saturday morning, made a list of the vegetables and fruit we wanted to grow, double-checked the planting and spacing requirements according to Mel's book, and laid out the grid for our two boxes.

Box 1

Box 2

Our boxes are 8' x 4' giving us 32 square feet of planting space, or 32 individual squares. You'll notice in the pictures above that plants like zucchini and tomatoes need nine square feet of growing space for one plant. Notice, too, the number in the parentheses in the other individual squares. That number represents the number of individual plants that can be grown in a single one-foot square. Pepper plants each get their own square, but you can grow four stalks of corn in one square, nine bean plants in one square, and even 16 carrots in a square! 

I was very pleased with the selection of plants at Lowe's, considering how late it is in the planting season! For peppers, I bought five different varieties - red bell, orange bell, yellow bell, jalapeno, and serrano. For tomatoes, I bought three varieties - grape tomatoes for snacking and salads, roma tomatoes for salsa making, and Park's Whoppers for tomato sandwiches and hamburgers. I bought two varieties of beans - green bush beans and yellow bush beans. You can see that I'll also be growing carrots, beets, lettuce, cilantro, butternut squash, cantaloupe, cucumbers, radishes, and okra. 

Yesterday, Chris used pushpins and cotton twine to create the one-square-foot grid in both boxes. 

Box 1 with its twine grid. 

Box 2 with its twine grid.

Tonight, we planted everything. On the hottest day of the year so far, of course! But you know what? As hot as it was while we were planting, there's something oddly satisfying about sweat on my brow and dirt under my fingernails!

Plants placed in their respective squares.

All our different seeds.

Box 1 with everything planted and the grape tomato plant caged.

Box 2 with everything planted and the Roma and Park's Whopper tomatoes caged.

Box 2 will get a vertical frame at the end in the foreground of the picture above. This vertical frame will support the vine plants - the cucumbers, the butternut squash, and the cantaloupe. We'll be building the vertical frame this weekend. 


I'm really excited about this new gardening venture. I am hopeful that we will have more success with our garden than we did when we were planting directly into the ground. As I said, our soil is just awful - typical Pennsylvania rocky clay dirt. Yuck. But Mel's Magic Mix...that has lots of potential! I'll definitely keep you posted on the progress of our new raised beds!


And now for a contest! 


Between initially being inspired by the ANSFG book we saw in Lowe's; to purchasing the wood, screws, and stain for the beds at Lowe's; to finally purchasing all of the plants and seeds at Lowe's...well, it's almost as if our 2012 vegetable garden is sponsored by Lowe's! Therefore, as a way of saying thank you to YOU, my readers, I am giving away a $10 gift card to Lowe's to one reader who leaves a comment on this post. This contest will run until Tuesday, June 26th at 8 PM. At that time, I will assign numbers to each comment (in the order that they are received) and use a random number generator on the Internet to pick a winner. 


Here's what you need to do:

1. Click the "0 comments (click here to comment)" link at the end of this post. (The number will obviously change as folks leave comments.) 
2. Choose the "identity" you wish to use to leave your comment. If you have a Google, WordPress, AIM, etc. identity, you may use that. You may choose Name/URL and simply type your name (you can leave URL blank). Or you can choose "Anonymous". If you choose "Anonymous" be sure to leave your name in the body of your post. 
3. Leave your comment.

At 8 PM on Tuesday, June 26th, I will draw the winner. If I can, I will notify the winner directly in addition to posting the winner's name as comment on this post (that is, if I know the winner personally and know how to reach them). If I don't know the winner personally, I will post the name of the winner and the winner will have three days to contact me by clicking the "About Me" link at the top of the blog and then using the "Contact Me" link to send me an e-mail. Then I'll get your mailing address and send you the gift card. If the gift card is not claimed in three days, an alternate winner will be chosen and the same procedures will be followed until the prize is awarded.

So go ahead...leave me a comment. Tell me about your vegetable garden for this year. What are you growing? Have you heard about square foot gardening before now? Have you tried it? I'm anxious to hear from you!

A little dirt under my fingernails...

I spent the majority of Saturday afternoon planting all of the flowers I bought in the last 10 days. The Thursday before Memorial Day, I hit Home Depot for some impatiens for the front garden. Six-packs of impatiens were $0.98 each, so I bought 12 packs. That's right...when it came time for planting, I had 72 individual impatiens to plant. Surprisingly, once I laid them all out along the front sidewalk spaced "just so," the actual planting only took about 45 minutes. I alternated white and purple in two rows and I am hopeful that with a little rain and a little sunshine, they'll spread out and fill in the entire space. 

72 little impatiens along the front sidewalk.

To add a little more "curb appeal" to the front of the house, I put my double shepherd's hook in the front garden where the spring daffodils were and hung two pots - one with purple trailing lantana and the other with yellow trailing lantana. The flowers should both fill in the pots and trail over the sides of the pots and hang down quite nicely. I bought the one-quart lantana plants at Lowe's last weekend for $3.98 each and I already had the hanging pots.

Yellow and purple trailing lantanas.

Finally, based on an idea I found in Lowe's Creative Ideas magazine, I did two flower pots with "shade-friendly" plants. I bought the two flower pots at Wegmans for $3.49 each last week. Each pot has a dwarf coleus, four wax begonias, and a licorice plant. I bought these plants last weekend at Sammis' Greenhouse in Centre Hall. I really like the selection of plants at Sammis'; the staff is friendly, too. In one of the pots, Chris added the little garden gnome I bought at Wegmans recently. (Chris sprayed him with Rustoleum clear-coat first.) I put a pot on each corner of the front of the porch. These should do well in the morning sun and afternoon shade.

Front porch "shade-friendly" pots.

My little garden gnome - he's so "cazh" with his hands in his pockets!

Finally, I put out my newest garden flag acquisition. At the end of April, I went to Ocean City, MD for a weekend with my parents that morphed into the ERAPPA "Summer" Board meeting that Monday through Wednesday. While I was visiting with my parents, we went to The Kite Loft on the Boardwalk. They have an incredible selection of garden flags in all kinds of themes. I probably had six different "favorite" flags in my hands while I was looking through all of them...until I found THIS one. THIS one became my favorite and came home with me!

Flip flops!!!

Around back, I planted some basil in a pot, as well as planted several plants in my large square pot. Both of these pots will eventually reside on the deck, but Chris is in the process of power-washing the deck ahead of staining it if we can string together a few nice days for drying. The basil and the plants for the square pot were also purchased at Sammis'. The plants in the square pot are rosemary, another dwarf coleus, some wave petunias, and calibrachoa. Again, the idea for this pot came from Lowe's Creative Ideas magazine. Subscriptions are free, so if you don't get it, you should! You can sign up to receive it at the bottom of the Lowe's Creative Ideas webpage.

Mmm, basil...and my big square pot for the deck.

A few other items of note "around the Homestead" from the past weekend:

Some "bunny" came by for a visit...

...and then hung out in the front garden among the foxglove.

Stewart the Bullfrog continues to enjoy live in our pond...

...and may, upon further inspection, be a girl. A girl named Stewart!

Our "left-most" bird box has BLUEBIRDS!
Here, Momma Bluebird sits on the nest of two babies.

The grapevine our friend Clay sent us last year is growing! Homestead vino, anyone?!?

It was fun to play in the dirt Saturday afternoon, despite how dirty my fingernails were when I was done. Besides, it's nothing a little soap and an old toothbrush can't conquer! 

Bird Central Station

Saturday morning, I refilled my backyard bird feeder; I put two new suet cakes on the ends and filled the center with mixed bird seed. Since then, the bird feeder has been "Bird Central Station!" I have seen multiple Blue Jays, a Tufted Titmouse, a Red-Bellied Woodpecker, a Hairy Woodpecker, a male Northern Cardinal, a male Brown-Headed Cowbird, several Common Grackles, and a Mourning Dove. It's been crazy-busy at the feeder!

I also spent some time in my butterfly/hummingbird garden Saturday morning doing a little weeding. Well, OK...it was a lot of weeding! But in the course of my weeding, I had two butterfly visitors! The first butterfly was a Question Mark Butterfly; the second was a Red Admiral Butterfly. I was really excited because the only thing blooming in the butterfly/hummingbird garden right now is my Mountain Bluet. 

Question Mark Butterfly

Red Admiral Butterfly

I'm really excited that the plants in my butterfly/hummingbird garden are doing as well as they are. Nearly everything is spreading and the garden is really filling out nicely. If butterflies are already flocking to it (and only one of the flowers is in bloom), I anticipate it will be teeming with butterflies when everything is bloomed out later this summer! Now I just need to mix up some nectar for hummingbirds to start drawing them in, too!