Tag Archives: garden

Garden Update

Well, our garden was doing great for a while… and then we kind of neglected it and it totally died. In June life got busy, we had some lawn woes, and it was 100 degrees on the daily. And to be honest, we just wanted to be lazy most of the time instead of tend to our garden.
It’s a complete jungle now! No tomatoes, no peppers – just small remnants of herbs and really tall weeds. I think the downfall was actually a combo of neglect and outrageously hot temperatures. I will say that when we were tending to the garden, we produced some pretty delicious tomatoes and peppers. We also have lots of garden herbs frozen in ice cubes in our freezer.(Ray standing in our raised bed that’s mostly full of weeds)
(Even among the weeds, our rosemary is still going strong) We’re thinking about a fall/winter garden, but that can be kind of tricky in Florida. It’s not unusual to have 90 degree weather in October, but it’s also not unusual to have 40 degree weather in October. If we start this month, I think we can do another round of tomatoes, carrots, onions, and garlic.
How did your garden do? We seem to do better with inside plants, but we’re going to keep trying!

Up Close and Personal: Indoor Plants

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A few years ago Ray got really into gardening. He researched, bought heirloom seeds, built a raised bed, used natural homemade pesticides, and took care of our vegetables. With Ray having multiple surgeries and feeling relatively awful for the past 9 months, we majorly scaled back on our outdoor garden this year. We only planted tomatoes, peppers, and herbs.
To unintentionally make up for our smaller garden this year, I think we’ve doubled (tripled?!) our indoor plants. I love having something alive and growing in our home. Ray lives like a vampire with all curtains closed all the time, which isn’t very conducive to growing house plants. Thankfully, we have a tiny sun room at the front of our house, too small for furniture but perfect for plants.
The other day I was playing around with macro lenses, not planning on posting or using these photos for anything. But guys, look how fun they turned out!
And now the best part! Teeny tiny cactus spikes! We had a cactus that was a little beat up by Black Cat. He usually doesn’t mess with our plants too much, but I guess he really liked this one. We moved the sad cactus outside in hopes of reviving it. After it didn’t improve, Ray cut it into strips and left them in the pot. Several weeks later we discovered teeny tiny baby cacti growing from the cuttings!!

Around Big Brown

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Spring has arrived at Big Brown! Allergies have also arrived at Big Brown! Despite allergies turning both of us into snotty, itchy, sneezy monsters, we’ve been spending a lot of time outside in the beautiful weather. We even started our garden last week! We’ve decided to be less ambitious than we’ve been in the past, only planting tomatoes, peppers, herbs, and marigolds to keep pests out. We’ve been spending time with our families, making dinners at home, working on projects, and marathoning Buffy the Vampire Slayer. What’s been going on at your house?

Alliray Garden 2014

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Alliray Garden 2014 has officially started! Last year our garden didn’t do as well as we would have liked, so we’ve changed a few things around, added some bug repelling plants in the mix and are looking forward to this years bounty!
Last week my in-laws brought over some tiny herbs and flowers. We’re in the process of re-potting. I’m hoping to find some cute planters for the sun room and have most of our herbs growing in there.
Somehow our mint from last year is still thriving, which is crazy because we literally haven’t touched in about 8 months. Our rosemary (roots shown above) isn’t doing too bad either.And, in case you were wondering, tiny Valentine’s garden is doing very well! Isn’t it cute?!

Garden Update

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Okay guys, lets talk about a garden. So we wrote in the spring about how I was building a raised bed, and we were planting all kinds of heirloom tomatoes, peas, beans, cucumbers etc. I’m not sure if we mentioned this, but we also wanted to try and grow everything as organic as possible.
We are now reaping a few of the benefits of our first garden. So far, we’ve harvested about 50 small cherry tomatoes. All the other tomatoes (and almost everything else) were eaten alive by stinkbugs.
First they attacked our cucumbers, which up until that point were growing beautifully! Huge vines and giant leaves, tons of yellow buds, it was looking like we were gonna have cucumbers for months. Then, I started to notice some yellow and brown spots on the leaves. It took me a few weeks to figure out what was going on, and by that point the bugs had already taken over. They moved their way over to our peas and beans and a few of the tomato plants. Worms keep eating our bigger tomatoes, although our cherry tomatoes do seem to be thriving!
I’ve decided maybe for our fall garden and next years summer garden I’m going to grow some trap crops and then pesticide the mess out of those dirty bugs!
So any ideas on what to do for my fall crops? Or what kind of struggles I’m going to deal with then?

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