Transplanting Beans

I made a teepee for my beans today since they're growing so fast! I transplanted my 4 plants but one of them is starting to shrivel up :( Hopefully it likes the bigger bed better and recovers soon.

The teepee is made from the stakes I collected the other night and some twine I had left over from making the other trellises.

So I've never grown anythign before so I really don't know what I'm doing when I make these structures. It's all trial and error. If they don't work I can make a better one next year I suppose! :D

Mother's Day Gifts

I got my mom a vegetable gardening book in Japanese. For my boyfriend's mom I decided to share some of my seedlings :D I saw this on an easter article where you plant seedlings in hollowed out eggs. SO CUTE!! All you do is cut off the top, empty out the egg (and eat them of course!) and poke a hole in the bottom with the tip of a knife and tadaa! An organic and compostable seedling planter. When you want to plant it in the ground, all you do is crack the egg a bit and directly plant it into the soil. The egg shell will now become nutrients for the soil and your plant :) Amazing!

There was one problem with this though... while I was merrily replanting my seedling into the eggs, a robin swoops down and perches onto my trellis right above me, literally a few feet away! It was staring at me for the longest time until I realized that I had broken eggs in my hand D: I had to yell for my boyfriend to come shoo it away since I thought it was going to try to attack me!!! Next time I'm going to make egg planters INDOORS. haha.

A Teepee For My Peas

My peas were growing so fast they were pretty much bulging out of my starter pots! D:

I quickly built this teepee (wig wam) out of iron rods that were lying around the backyard and some twine left over from the trellises I made. The rods were SO long, it's probably jammed at least 2 feet into the ground, but it still stands to be 7-8 feet tall. I don't know if I'll be able to reach that high come harvest time, but I also don't know how tall my peas are going to get... so I'm hoping it all works out.

I planted 3 plants per pole and sprinkled lime around them to hopefully deter the slugs and snails (I read this online somewhere). And the big plant behind one of the poles is NOT my peas, it's actually a blackberry bush I need to yank out. It's a bit discouraging though when they keep coming back, esp with the neighbor letting it grow so big along our fence... that big bush hovering above the fence is all blackberries :(

Making Plant Markers

The other day I went to go buy some plant markers (They're currently labeled with post-it notes which obviously DON'T work too well esp. when I water them lol). The price was about 3 bucks for a pack of 10 or so? Maybe I'm being a little overboard cheap but I don't know... I was hoping to buy a pack of 100 or more so I can use them for gifts and such too so I was not expecting to be spending over 30 dollars on plant markers.

So instead I decided to do a little arts and crafts! After a bit of brainstorming on the materials to use, I ended up choosing an empty juice carton box and some plastic forks (We have a big Costco box of them that rarely gets used).

I am highly pleased with my final product :D I made them big enough so I can even write down the specific type of whatever plant. I also cut up a bunch of thin skinny pieces for labeling starters. Everything's written/drawn in permanent ink so they don't wash off and if I lose them they really won't be that big of a loss.

One carton made enough signs but I'll probably start saving and cutting them up for future use as well.

My First Seedlings!!

Top left: parsley
Top right: squash
Bottom left: peas
Bottom right: radishes


There's signs of life all over my garden!!! :D OMG this is so exciting!!! Everything is starting out so beautifully! These were taken about 6-9 days after their sown date. As you can tell, I went a little overboard when sowing the radishes so I probably need to thin them out by 70%. Same for all my vegetables I seeded directly into the bed (lettuce, spinach, broccolli, turnips, and carrots).

Half of the seeds in the starter pots are starting to sprout but I'm a little worried about my peppers. I wonder if it's not warm enough or maybe they just take longer to germinate. I think all my herbs have started sprouting (parsley, basil and cilantro), while my spinach started sprouting but my lettuce have not. Either that or I'm just really bad at distinguishing between weed and veggies.

While I was excitedly snapping photos of my seedlings, I almost missed this pest!!!

Dun-Dun-DUUUUHN!!!!

This little rascal was just hanging out on my strawberry plant right across from my vegetable patch. He is the start of my evergrowing snail population in spring :(


Well this time, they're not going to have such a fun time in my backyard like they did last year! With leftover beer from last summer's countless BBQ's, I've set out beer traps by my garden so hopefully they like beer bars better than salad bars!

I want to try and avoid a store bought snail killer the best I can (Mostly for it's cost, but also for the fact that I want to run my garden on household items and steer clear of any chemicals and such)


I can't wait for my seedlings to grow into big tall veggie plants!!! :D

A Cup Of Coffee A Day Keeps The Snails Away

Our backyard (and front yard for that matter) has always had a very bad slug/snail problem. Since I was never really into outdoor gardening, I let them enjoy our uncut grass and overgrown weeds. However, now that I have a garden to take care of and precious plants to protect, I must do something about these pests.

To my surprise, I was told used coffee grounds does the trick! Very organic, yet very effective. And the best part is that it is great compost material and adds plenty of nutrients to the soil.

Now this doesn't kill the snail, just repels them so I need to start venturing out on wet nights to go snail hunting... They still give me the heebie jeebies though so I'll probably make my boyfriend pick them all up :D And I hear leaving out bowls of beer attracts and drowns them so I'll probably try that out too.

I don't have a soil tester but I the dirt beds were covered in pine needles during the winter so I'm guessing the soil is a bit acidic. If I understand correctly, lime helps in lowering the PH.

Being the frugal self that I am, instead of going out to buy lime, I've actually collected all the little packets in snacks that keeps food dry. Those "do not eat" packets? Apparently what's inside is... lime! :D



I accidntally went overboard and covered the entire garden with lime.... even though I've read that I shouldn't add lime to root vegetables, which I've planted already. Oops. Hopefully they still grow okay!

Starting a garden blog...

This is more so for my personal use, to keep track of dates, what I'm planting, how things are going, etc. But if this expands and I meet new friends that's pretty cool too :D



So this is my garden so far. I bought my house 2 years ago, and it already had raised beds in the backyard. It was filled with rose bushes and weeds though so last fall I dug up everything (I replanted the roses in various parts of my yard) and added compost and rabbit manure to it. So hopefully it's good soil for vegetables.



I built the trellises myself. It's a bit flimsy but I hope it'll stay put. I think I'll put bricks on the bottom to better support it. I'm planning to grow my squash, okra, eggplants and cucumbers on it.



I've sowed most of my seeds already. Half are in a mini-green house and and the other half are directly planted. I sowed on 4/20/09, and I can't tell if the stuff sprouting up are the actual veggies or weeds >__>;; Well, I'll try to update this regularly. Wish me luck on a bountiful harvest in the summer!! (Or at least a tomato... please?) :)