How to save your rotting squash or zucchini crop

Every year something new happens in one of my garden beds... Last year it was the cucumber beetle, this year it's rotting zucchini and squash plants. When my plants got nice and big I was looking for first signs of female parts on the plants. I found actually plenty of them and got very excited. When I checked back in two days later, all the tiny zucchini and squash were rotting away. 

(sorry I don't have a picture of that - who wants to remember disaster stage right?)

So what do you do when this happens in your garden? (Also read below pictures how to prevent it) Sprinkle dry egg shells and mulch all over the plants base and water throughly. Yes, it's that easy. It worked miracles. See, what the plant is lacking, is some calcium and the egg shells will fix just that!

The next zucchini that showed up after I sprinkled the egg shells looked like this and went all the way. So did the next dozen zucchini and squash!

So how can you prevent this from happening? My grandpa used to collect dry egg shells and kept them in the freezer at all times. Then when he was ready to plant the squash seeds, he would sprinkle the shells in the hole directly with the seed. This way the seed would have plenty of calcium supply right away from the start!

Hope this helps! 

My organic fertilizer

This is a picture of nicely brewing organic fertilizer I use in my garden. 

What it really is, is some chicken poop that I put in plastic bucket and poured water over it. It was about  quarter of a bucket of poop and rest water. I covered it and let sit for 2 weeks in shade behind our chicken coup. When I opened it, I was amazed because the solution was literally boiling. I pour a little bit into a watering can and add more water to it. The smell is... ehm... interesting, but it works nicely. One more thing - I use it in the evening so it settles in over night and doesn't stress the plants in the hot sun.

My way to stake up the tomatoes and why

Another garden bed that is simply thriving this year! You might remember a picture of my experimental garden bed, where I used Tomatoes, Carrots, and Basil for companion planting.

This was only few weeks ago.

And here is the bed now. You can't even see the carrots (luckily they don't need a whole lot of sun do mature... they are just comfortably growing between the tomato plants)

Here is my giant basil.

Since the tomatoes grew rapidly, I didn't quite keep up with trimming them and getting rid of the suckers. Well, really I was busy at work and with the kids so I didn't actively go into my garden for about a week and it was done... Those plants were massive.

So I asked my lovely and handy husband to make me a trellis. I am not a fan of cages... First of all this is more appealing to my eye and looks more natural than a piece of metal in my garden bed (just my opinion, many people successfully use them and they work great for them - no judgement here)

He got some wooden sticks (maybe there is a better name for it... I wouldn't know it ;-) and some nails and he went according to my tomato plant setting. I think it looks great! And since our garden beds are the same size, we will be able to move it to the next year's tomato bed.

First of all the reason why you want to stake up your tomatoes is to keep them off the ground so they don't start rotting. The structure is close to 6 feet high on 3 sides (I have three rows of tomatoes). I took a string and tied it around the stem of each tomato plant that needed support. Make sure you don't tighten it too much because the stem will thicken as the plant matures. Then tie it to the top but don't pull too hard so the plant doesn't get pulled out of the ground. Here is a detail.

There is no wrong way to support your tomato plants. It is your garden and you decide what your method should be :-) Happy Staking!

Why Marigolds are beneficial for your garden

Early in the season I had some major problems with some of my plants getting eaten by bugs ( I haven't found out what the bug was :-( ) Since I am strictly an organic gardener, I refuse to use any toxic sprays to solve the problem. So what is the best way to maintain your garden organically? 

Companion Planting!

If you haven't heard yet, Marigolds are one of the best flowers to plant in your garden for that purpose. They are very easy to grow and they look pretty ;-)

Marigolds take care of:

- Aphids

- Mexican bean beetles

- Squash bugs

- Tomato hornworms

- White flies

- Thrips

- Root rot nematodes (attack roots of strawberries, potatoes and tomatoes)

Look at my bean trellis now!

And when the season is over, don't remove the Marigolds. Just simply leave them in and turn them over. They will rot and kill anything harmful that might have entered your garden. Next year I will plant them everywhere!

Zucchini garden

Whoa - look at my zucchini/squash/cucumber garden... Few days of rain and high temperatures and these plants took over.

In the front here are some squash plants and cucumber plants.

And here in the back are the zucchinis. 

I am very paranoid this year and watch every morning and evening my plants in case I would see some cucumber beetle. So far so good - with a lot of prayer...

Look at these baby squash... too bad they all rotted. As of now I found only one good squash and one good zucchini. 

Pickling cucumbers one jar at a time

Hello everyone! With all these cucumbers coming out of my garden I am ready to pickle!!! I am so excited mainly because last year all my cucumber plants got killed by cucumber beetle and I believe I had only one to enjoy :-( So this year I am taking full advantage of healthy crop and I am going to pickle them... One jar at a time!

My grandpa back in Czech Republic used to collect them and when he had a good amount he would pickle them all at once. he gave me his recipe but that will just not do for me. Not only do I not have much time to spend a hole afternoon to pickle but also I don't have much fridge space (see he had a cold cellar where everything lasted forever ;-)

Go over here for the recipe and make one jar. Let it sit for a week and then taste it. That is what I did. Although the recipe worked very well and everything sealed properly and the pickles were nice and crunchy, I needed a bit more spicing. I think that is very individual and that is why I recommend making one jar first and try it before you go do next one. You can add or take away some ingredients to  meet you taste buds ;-) (I will be adding more garlic and dill) Good luck!

My Veggie Garden in June

I have been very active in the garden and on my Facebook page and I feel very bad that blog slipped my mind for the past few weeks. So here I am, back at my keyboard and how else to begin again than with some garden progress report ;-)

Here is my new experiment: Companion planting all the way in this bed. I have 4 rows of carrots, 3 rows of tomatoes, and 2 basil plants. I heard that all of these go well together so I am hoping for the best results. I bought some organic tomato plants (the bigger ones on the picture) and the smaller you see are from my indoor green house. They looked dead when I was putting them in but I guess they caught their second wind. Next i need to get tomato cages.

Here is the basil beauty, doing well.

Climbing beans got hit by some bugs early in the season... the first leaves got eaten. So I planted some marigolds and that took care of 90% of the problem as you see.

This year is the first time my raspberry bush got huge. We have tons of small berries starting to show but I hope the birds will not eat them before we do. The bush is in a remote spot in the garden so it is easy for them to get to it without being disturbed :-(

I love these visitors!!!

Some snap peas coming up on their trellis. 

and so are the climbing beans... well slowly...

Last year I had great luck with the soy beans (edemame), and it so happens that we love this vegetable so much that I devoted most of my bed to it this year. I am hoping for the same result... you can see cauliflower peeking out right by the fence in the same bed.

Oh, how I love my irrigation system... 

Cucumbers (I already pulled the extra ones out.. with heavy heart)

Squash and some more cucumbers... I will have to come up with a trellis for these cucumbers. I just love this ladder bed...

Say hello to my volunteer tomato from last year... I don't have the heart to pull it out so it will be keeping company to the eggplants. They like each other...

You can see most of the garden here...

My strawberry bed is by the porch for the kids to access it easily... First year for those!

This is the only snail I will let stay in my garden ;-)

How is your place coming along?

How I planted my eggplants

Few weeks ago I finally got to start planting seeds and seedlings in my garden. It took me a long time, I think I did one garden bed at a time, weeding and watering them, and then planting what I wanted to harvest this year. I also had to figure out which garden bed use for what veggie. You are not suppose to plant the same plants in the same spot year after year so I had to create a careful plan for each vegetable. That took forever. But here it is... I have great success with eggplants so I grew a bunch of them from seed this year (usually I have only 1 or 2 plants).

I used organic soil and non-gmo seeds purchased from the seedsnow.com. The eggplants are one that actually grew nicely and were in good shape for transplant. 

As you see my irrigation system is in place and so I first find a hole in the hose and dig right next to it. This is where the eggplant roots will have the best water supply. I make sure the hole is big enough to fit the eggplant and the soil that comes with it straight from the yogurt cup (I gently removed it by squeezing the sides and then turning the cup upside down to spill the contents out). 

I placed it in the hole and covered with soil. Make sure you watered the spot before and after you plant. If you can, space them about 2 feet apart because the more space they have the more crop they will produce. I will keep you posted on their progress.

Little house in our backyard

I love cute little knick knacks in our garden and this little bird house was given to me by a special friend... She was really getting rid of it so it wasn't meant to be a gift but it still feels meaningful to me. We hung it at the end of our yard by the pond so the birds would have some privacy and could raise their little family in piece in a little "pond house".

 Only sparrow could fit in the small opening. They even built a comfy nest in there. We like to watch the bird families that move into our backyard!

Here, take a look at the mommy!

Look what I am getting for my porch!

I am always looking forward to decorate my porch in the spring... Couple years ago my husband put up  a bamboo on our sides to make it more cozy but then we had to take it down because the porch was being painted. I had no idea he saved it so last year i didn't mention anything about it. But this year I told him I would like to buy some again and he said we still have it in the shed. You know how fast I chased him up that ladder ;-)

Right now the porch is on a good way to being finished, only few minor touches! How are you decorating your porch or patio? Attach a link to your comment for all of us to see!

We have a new turkey!

We actually have 4 baby turkeys right now but that's only because we are keeping 3 for someone else till next week. We are not sure which one will be ours even though I feel the white one is the best and most friendly. However that one will be going away and we have to keep one of the dark ones. :-(

We had the idea to put them together with the new baby layers, hoping that since they are all babies they will get used to each other faster and there will not be a need for us to build a separate house for the turkey. So far it has not been working out so good. The chickens, especially Brownie, are pecking at the turkeys' backs and when the turkeys hide they actually go as far as looking for them in the corner just to get a peck. Can you see Brownie viciously eyeing the white turkey?

I will be googling what to do but so far we are keeping our fingers crossed that they will get over the introduction and become friends. I feel bad for the turkeys because they look a bit scared. Anyone has experience with this kind of friendship that happens early on? I know that adult hens will not like anyone new in their flock but babies.

Chicken tractor

Now that you know from my previous posts that we have several new baby chicks, here is an update on our broilers. Since they have been growing very fast and started to fill up the box they shared with our tinny layers, we had to take that next step and move them outside. The temperatures started to climb so we felt confident to do that. I will tell you more about their new home that my husband built - the chicken tractor! 

It looks pretty cool, doesn't it? It took him three evenings to complete it but he didn't spend a dime - which we both like ;-)

He found some left over pieces of wood in the chicken shed and used a piece of left over roofing and our left over chicken wire fence from the coop. He figured out the space our 10 chicks will need in the next few weeks to be comfortably growing and have a happy life. 

He followed the Joel Salatin - Polyface farm chicken tractor model. 1.6 sq foot of space per bird. Due to the small size of our yard we decided on a 5ft x 5ft version.  It can hold up to 15 birds.

After looking for hinges for the top gate and not being able to find any around the house he just improvised : )

He got these wheels from our kids old toy cart that we were no longer using. Wheels make it easier to move the tractor around our yard. 

Fun in the sun! The Natural Heat Lamp. 

Replanting some seedlings

In one of my previous posts you learned a bit about planting seeds indoors using green house and some other supplies. Now I am back with some update and new experience. First take a look at some of my pots.

Do you see the difference in the plant size? I will give you little background on these. All the plants are the same age, actually the ones on the left (bigger) are transplants from the ones on the right. I planted 3 seeds per pot just in case something didn't catch and ended up with all of them coming up. i felt sorry to waste perfectly good plants and so I replanted them. They went from the paper pot into plastic pots I got in dollar store. I left for two week vacation and came back to this.

The transplants flourished, grew into beautiful plants while the original in the paper pots stopped growing at some point and actually started loosing leaves.

I wonder why this happened... what was the reason for the plants to stop developing? The only factor that changed was the kind of pot I used. All my plants in the plastic pots or yogurt  cups look great. The ones in the paper are dying. 

I wouldn't use the paper pots anymore. I will stick with the plastic. Not only can you reuse them but they also maintain the plants strong and healthy. I replanted them all so now I have to see if they catch up. Good luck to you!