Back to Sowing…

I’ve been feeling ill since Saturday. It was like I had severe allergies and a flu all in one. I was so stuffed up and had such a hard time breathing. It sucked!… I had a 4 day weekend and wasn’t able to garden any of those days.

Although, I don’t quite feel 100% better… I planted a whole bunch of seeds in these cool cell packs I got last week from Big Lots. The 12-pack Mini Greenhouses were 99¢ each and the 9-cell packs were 97¢ for six. As an added bonus, eight 9-cell packs will fit perfectly into my Jiffy (72 pellet) Greenhouse.

Six 9-packs   12-pack Mini Greenhouses

Here’s what I planted:

– Mighty Red Oak Lettuce (3)
– Simpson Elite Lettuce (6)
– Maiko Garland Chrysanthemum (3)
– Smooth Beauty Luffa (6)
– Zinnia (saved from Fall 2005) – I think it’s ‘White Profusion’ (9)
– Thai Lemon Basil (3)
– All Red Edible Amaranth (3)
– Red Stripe Leaf Amaranth (3)
– Borage (3)
– Large Leaf Korean Perilla (3)
– Tia To Vietnamese Perilla (3)
– Fordhook Giant Swiss Chard (12)
– Lemon Cucumber (8)
– Sikkim Cucumber (4)
– Gold Dust Alyssum (4)
– Orange Cosmos (4) (thank you treebreeze :)
– Poached Egg Plant Meadow Foam (Limnanthes douglasii) (4)
– Plains (Bicolor) Coreopsis (4)
– Envy Zinnia (4)
– Candy Cane Mix Zinnia (4)

Guava Blossom…

Our Tropic White Guava has finally started to blossom. Hopefully we’ll get guava fruit soon.

Sometimes I feel like an idiot… I planted a sunflower bed ( pic ) back in June 13. Well… The sunflower seedlings I transplanted were Zinnias!!!!… and now they are starting to bloom. Luckily, there were some bare spots where I planted sunflower seeds… so we should still get some sunflowers.

Sunflower… err… Zinnia/Sunflower bed

The Profusion Zinnias that I planted as a border

Tuesday’s Gardening…

Yesterday (Tuesday) I just did a little gardening, this time in the front yard.

I checked my sunflower bed and a few didn’t make it… but I think a neighborhood cat scratched it up, since there were some cat poo in it. I added a layer of coffee ground on it to deter the cat. I also planted some sunflower seeds that I harvested from last year in the bald spots. Don’t know if it’ll grow, but we’ll see…

I also planted the last 6 packs of a white mini zinnia and some-other flower I can’t remember in the front bed. I amended the soil a bit and sprinkled some random annual flowers. I’m not sure if they will grow, since I have bad luck with sowing seed directly in the soil.

In the back, I checked the newspaper mulch I placed the day before. It turned a light brown instead of that newspaper gray color, so it doesn’t look that weird. I’ll probably add some newspaper mulch in my other beds and maybe add some coffee grounds on top to deter the cats and to also dye the paper brown so it looks a little more natural.

I also got a email reply from our local newspaper editor and he confirmed that the do in fact use soy-based ink in their paper. He gave me the name of their recycling columnist and said to call them if I wanted more info on mulching. He also added that “Wednesday Appetites section is particularly good for helping you grow food for thought” which I thought was funny. He answered my question, gave me a number to call if I wanted more information and also plugged the paper… What a good editor! :)

Oh yeah… one last thing… I learned that they will build a Super Wal-Mart in the old lot where K-Mart use to be. They will then close down the Wal-Mart that is 2 minutes away from our house and guess what will replace it… I freakin’ Home Depot!!! I’m so excited! Imagine, I’ll be 2 minutes away from a Home Depot!!! It’ll probably be in 2 years, which is prefect timing, because that’s about the time when my neighbor will sell his house, which I want to buy… (I’ll write more about the house in a later entry)…