JULY GARDEN UPDATE

Hey guys! Just took a quick walk through my garden to see if anything was ready for picking and I think I found some blue ribbon material! Feast your eyes upon my enormous zucchini! It’s currently a little over 2 feet long and heavy! I’ve never seen one this big and I’m on the lookout for a competition to enter!

I also have some tomatoes, green beans, corn, bittermelon, cilantro and chives ready to be picked!

Here are a couple roses that went a little crazy after months and months of no rain. We finally had 3 days of showers!

I hope your gardens are doing well! Happy growing! 🌱🌹🌿🌺

MY GARDEN – MAY

I love seeing the seedlings emerge and get secondary leaves! But what I don’t love is weeds! Bleckkk! I spent a good part of this morning weeding my little garden and trying not to pull any seedlings out. After cleaning up a bit I got my camera out and thought it would be fun to play a little game! Can you guess the plants from the pics?

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Alright I can’t wait to see who can guess them all!!  I know number 17 will confuse alot of people 😀

FRUIT ASSASSIN FOR SALE!!

SO… I am putting my 3 year old daughter up for sale…no seriously.. my little ‘angel’ picked all of the young peaches off of my peach tree except one and then stood there smiling at me! She thought it was hilarious! I guess the culling lesson went a bit over her head, I mean she is 3 after all 😂… I’m still furious 😲😒😒 but she’s lucky that she’s cute, maybe I’ll consider keeping her.

The criminal escapes!

So anywayyyy in other gardening news, I have an apple on my tree! Only one apple you say? Well somehow I felt my little ‘angel’ also had something to do with this! Grrrrr!! 😒😒

The blueberries are ripening. She helped herself to the ripe berries yesterday. Thanks kid, such a great sharer!

The hubs and my 4 year old son tilled the soil in my raised bed and added supplements and eggshells.  I am so grateful for that because I still feel pretty blehhh. They did a great job with my micromanaging of course hehehehe!

They found a rogue tomato plant that must have sprouted from last years seeds, so they moved it to a safe place in the corner and it even has a cute little tomato on it already!

I’ve moved my seedlings outside to get used to the weather. At this time last year it was still freezing and as I write this its 90F!!😰

Once again I am trying my hand at herbs. I think they dislike me and things go awry and they always end up dead. Am I an herb murderer?!? *gasp* I just don’t understand it! I can keep difficult orchid species alive and prospering but I can’t keep basil alive!? BASIL!!! Come on Natasha! Get yourself together for heaven’s sakes!

I hope that the weather is lovely where you are and that you’ll be able to get out and garden soon! What are you planting this year?

Happy Gardening! 🙂 🍄🍄🍄

MY ROSES

What beautiful weather today in SoCal! Just warm enough, blue skies and flowers blooming everywhere! I took Nicky *my camera* out and about in my back and front yard to see what’s going on.

My roses are doing great this year! Especially the multicolored bush. Take a look! 😁

LEMON EVERYTHING!

My lemon tree is totally covered with lemons and no matter how many neighbors I share with or random people I meet on the street *don’t you judge me!*… I just can’t seem to use these bright yellow babies up fast enough!

Soooo I’ve decided to make every lemon recipe I have plus a few new ones! So be on the lookout for lemon bars, lemon meringue, lemon brownies, lemon chicken, lemonade *spiked of course* and many more!

Also if you have any lemon recipes please send them my way!

A TIME TO REAP AND A TIME TO SOW

I was comfortable, relaxing on the sofa, icy water in one hand and my phone in the other, playing scrabble and obliterating my competition * Yeah.. I’m calling you out Kirtney and Chad*. The kids were building a puzzle on their leap pad. All was going well until *BZZZ*, then darkness!

*kids start screaming* “OMGGGG THE WORLD IS ENDING SAVE US MOMMM!”

*Me* “Chill out dudes, the power is out! We’re gonna live.”

*Kids still whining* ” But now we’re gonna miss Paw Patrol on tv!!”

So I sent them to get dressed and announced that we were going outside! This power outage was a sign that we needed to be outdoors, because it was beautiful and it was also the push I needed to finally sow my seeds! The kids were more than happy to help, so we got all the things we needed and got to work.

How convenient is it that you can just buy these dried pellets, add water and fluff a bit and you’re ready to plant! So much easier and less messy than filling dirt into pots!. We planted a lot of seeds, a couple types of tomatoes, bell peppers, hot peppers, carrots, jalapenos, pimentos, okra, eggplant, cucumber, zucchini and we have others that we plant directly in the ground like lettuce, beets, corn, onions, ginger, garlic, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and some other veggies.

Here are some pics of the kids working hard, and guess what!?!? As soon as we were finished planting, the power came back! ….*Cue Twilight Zone music*

I found this Jiffy Greenhouse at Green Thumb, but you can also get it in Walmart or any garden store really. I usually order the refill pellets on Amazon. com and just save the trays for next year’s plants. * Reduce, reuse, recycle right!*

My handsome son Myles ❤

Soaking the pellets with warm water, and waiting for them to magically grow!

My fireball Hailey Bailey ❤

Look at the concentration 🙂

Teamwork makes the dream work!

I did the fluffing!

We labelled the box and planted the seeds.

And now we wait… 🙂

What’s going on in your garden!? We’d love to know what you’re planting 🙂

Freesia, Clivia, Iris

Every year in early spring we go to Home Depot, Lowe’s and Green Thumb to replace our annuals. Last year I discovered the insanely perfumed freesia!The scent is amazing! Almost like a rose on steroids! I bought 4 plants and I planted them near my front door so everyone could smell them while they came up the driveway.

I also wanted them planted there because that’s where I love to sit or have my evening tea. My hubs bought a falling apart bench and he totally refurbished it and even got me a fancy pillow 🙂 But the best part was the price! He paid $5.00 for the bench! And now I have a comfy place to sit and read or play Hay Day and Candy Crush * don’t judge me*, and the best part is the smell of freesia in the air, which I think smells like heaven!

Clivia is another favorite of mine because of the shocking orange color! It reminds me of home in the Caribbean and the bright blossoms that can be found almost anywhere.

My faithful Iris returns every year bringing forth more flowers each time. The amazing blue-purple with a bright spot of yellow contrasts so beautifully and stands out in my front garden. I just wish its flowers would last all year long!

MY BLOOMING BACKYARD

Imagine my surprise when i stepped outside to have some tea! My bulbs are blossoming! The colors are so vivid! Some of them don’t even look real!

My raised vegetable bed also got a facelift, thanks to the hubs and the kids 🙂

Belly rubs are goooooddd!!

Raina is very good at playing dead! She needs to be on TV! Hahaha

LADY BUGS

*Cue Sesame Street music* “The ladybugs twelve at the lady bug picnic!!” http://youtu.be/Xr8vUTm64h0  * Good luck getting that out of your head! Ha!*

I love ladybugs! They’re so cute and so helpful! When I put my seedlings into my garden, a swarm of aphids and mealy bugs quickly descend onto my poor plants! But I have discovered a safe and pesticide free way to get rid of them! May I introduce 1000 hungry ladybugs!!

Luckily I have a Green Thumb store near to me and they usually have containers of ladybugs, they cost around $5.00, and that is so cheap considering the huge job that they do in my garden. I find that broccoli and cabbage attracts the most pests, so I always release ladybugs if I have those planted.

They come, they eat *all the pests*, they mate and then they move on! You know what? I like their style 🙂

MY GARDEN

Ahhh spring is coming! I can smell it in the air! I’ve already started weeding and pulling out the last of my cilantro, lettuce, carrots, onions and garlic.

This weekend I plan on adding crushed eggshells *great source of calcium! especially for tomatoes and peppers* and some fertilizer to get the soil ready for my new seedlings, which I also have to start indoors.

Then I’ll have the hubs till the soil *don’t tell him he doesn’t know yet 😁*. I’ll probably have to bribe him with some sort of treat to get him working! MEN!! Geez!

Here are a few pics of my garden from last year. I planted pretty much everything! Corn, tomatoes, eggplant, carrots, sugar snap peas, long beans, okra, bell pepper, habaneros, jalapeños, pimentos, chives, onions, cilantro, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower and the list goes on! I grow more than my family can eat and I give bags of fresh veggies to the neighbors 🙂

There’s such a sense of satisfaction when you can grow your own food from seeds! Plus the kids love being a part of the process and watching the plants get bigger everyday. They actually like eating veggies more, now that they play a part in the growth.