Today Was A Lazy Day

This weekend I had so much stuff to do but I did not get much done. Today I got up early after a ruff night of almost no sleep and hurting joints. (No I am not getting old, just not in good shape.) I got up early and pruned back some more of the black spot on my roses. I then Sprayed my Roses with NEEM. I am not sure this will help with the black spot but, it will help with the aphids that were all over one of the Knock Outs. As the day got hotter I went back in and took a nap. When I got up, I went to store to take care of some personal business. I stopped by Lowe's to see if I could find an organic fungicide that actually says it will help control black spot.

I went to the organic gardening sections to see what they had. I found a several products and finally went with Safer Brand 3-in-1 garden spray. Its label says it helps control black spot. Tomorrow morning I will get up early and test this product. I will let everyone know how the test works out.

After I got back, it was just to hot to get anything done outside. Since the wife was having a girl's day out with one her close friends, I chose to have amovie day for me. Its been months since I set down to some violent action movies! I watched The Marine (not so good), 3:10 to Yuma, (Not bad, a lot of good actors, Christian Bale and Russel Crowe rocked in this movie), and The last Legion ( not bad, will have to watch again, lots of violence, and sword play!)

After the movies I was in a man mood. I went out and worked on my truck for a while. I got it running a few months ago and thought I would get the last bit of engine work on it done and make sure things looked / sounded right and take it out for some wheeling out in a field near the house. I normally do not do those type of things, but that field has been calling my name for 4 months!

The truck needs a lot work, but its suppose to look bad, its an old farm truck my brother and I rescued from rusting out and ending up in a land fill or junk yard some where.

Here are some pictures after my fun in the mud. Its not much, I just wanted to test the 4 wheel drive out and check out the fishing hole near by.

1982 Chevy K5 Fullsize Blazer 4X4

Finally Back in Town!

Its been about 2 weeks since I have done any posting. This month has been a busy one. Almost every weekend we have been out of town. We have put nearly three thousand miles on my car. This past weekend we went to the family farms and visited my grandmothers. They would make some great gardens. But thats another post.We visited family in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Stopped by Memphis Tennessee for some BBQ Ribs. To bad they are over eight hours away.

After getting back Tuesday night, I took some pictures of the garden. I do need to cut the yard. But I did have some more daylillies and coneflowers produce more flowers. I lost a lot of my seedling in the 3 and 4 inch pots. Because of all of the rain the last few weeks my roses even my knockouts are infested with black spot.

Today I removed the spent rose buds and removed as much of the infested leaves. This weekend i will have to plant the rest of my seedlings, trees, and cut the yard as well.

Pictures of the garden:

First bed of cannas.

Bed 2 of cannas

For weeks after Zinnia seeds being sowed.

Bed of Purple Coneflowers and daylillies.

Mandevilla X amabilis 'Alice du Pont'

Spent the weekend at Lake Palenstine, TX

Just got back into town. Last weekend, my wife and I celebrated our first anniversary! We spent the weekend out a little B&B with a view of Lake Palenstine TX. The place was great. great food, great view and within 20 minutes from almost everywhere we wanted to visit.

Saturday we got in the morning to watch the sunrise and eat breakfast on the lake. We then spent the rest of the day visiting all of the Wineries in the area.

On Sunday we spent the day at the Tyler Rose Gardens. The gardens were beautiful. The museum was closed for the day and most of the roses were spent. We are planning to go back during the rose festival in October when all the flowers are in bloom. Once we finished up there we went out and visited some of the rose nurseries and some of the other local nurseries.

We ended up bringing back a clearanced out rose for $2, Pink Mandevilla, cherry tree, peach tree and a Japanese Maple all for less than 45 bucks.

I will post up some of the pictures of our adventures once I have the time and I get over the alergy attack that just started up when I started this post.

Oleander, it needs some help

This a picture of the Oleander in my backyard. Its flowered so well, that its to heavy for it to support itself. It looks like I will be staking this guy.

Harvested Yellow Columbine seeds

Today I harvested seeds from my Yellow Columbine plant.

First I went out and pulled all the dried seed heads from the plant. I had a hard time not spilling the seeds all over the place.


I then took the seed pod and pored the seeds onto a paper towel. I then split the pod open and scrapped the rest of the seeds out.



After poring out all of the seed pods, I have more seeds than I know what to do with.

I then bagged up my collection and stored them in a coin bag until I am ready to trade or sow the seeds in the garden.

So far this is what I have been able to collect since last summer. I will post a trade soon. If you have anything up for trades, let me know.

Oleander is Blooming!

Last year we only had one or two blooms. This year our bush is so heavy w/ blooms, its sagging. I will post a picture later this week. I have a love hate relationship w/ oleanders. I love the way they look and the way they produce and you can almost ignore them and they do great. These guys are poisonous to us and to our animals.

First Daylily Opening of the Season

I received these yellow Dayliley last April during the Fort Worth GardenWeb plant swap. I cant wait for the rest of them to bloom!

Got Some Cuttings Today!

Last week I received some cuttings from a woman who cutting back her overgrown garden. She gave me a bunch of different plants and most still need to be planted or stuck in rooting mix After sitting in water for a week, I got to to take some of my cuttings and put them in rooting pots.

The first thing I did was cut the large branches she gave me into 8 inch sections and I through a way the hardwood sections. After cutting the branches down I found had10 more usable cuttings to put in the rooting mix tomorrow. Next I took those cuttings and removed all the leaves from the bottom 2 inches. Once the leaves were removed I dipped them into the rooting solution and put them into the smallest nursery pots I had.

Rosmarinus officinalis 'Prostratus'

In about 3 to 4 weeks I should have a some new plants. Once they take root, I will move the to larger pots. If most of them take, I will have extras for trade! I will keep you posted on my cuttings.

Finally got my seed trays finished and ready to plant

I finally had time to plant out my seed trays. Over the Christmas break I bought 2 72 cell Jiffy biodome seed trays. I setup my first in early March and finally got around to planting them out. My first experience didn't go so well as you can tell. But I did get 6 tomotoes and bunch of herbs.

As you can see I lost most of them....

The potted up herbs. I can not remember them all right now, but I will give updates later on.

Part of my little herb garden.

And now my second attempt, I only lost 5 or 6 cells. The most important ones were the hot pepper mix and the Tomatoes that are doing great.

These guys are sitting under the trees in deep shade harding off.These guys turned out very well.

What I have been doing the last few weeks

In the last few weeks, I have been so busy that I haven't had the time to work in the garden or post any new posts. Last weekend we went to Houston. The actual city we were in was Sweeney TX. Out near all the oil refineries. The area is all small town and country farming. We were visting a friend that works out there and was moving to Los Angeles. We spent the weekend eating BBQ from a BBQ competition and drinking a lot of beer.

Because of that fun weekend, I lost a whole weekend and I was so exhausted that it took almost the whole week to recover. During the week, I did some work on the garden but that was nothing to brag about, mostly maintenance. Hopefully things will slow down enough that I can start posting most more often.

This past weekend I finally got almost all of my beds prepped and the seeds sowed. I have 1 and 1/2 beds to complete and that will be done sometime this week. Once I get the garden cleaned up from my disaster area, I will show what the beds look like. I sowed several types of zinnias, cosmos, wild flower mix, cosmos, and impatiens. I will be adding several other in the next weeks, I just do not know where and what is needed.

I also got my all my tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers planted.

I still have 6 hot peppers and tomatoes to pot up. I am also going to plant 4 sweet potatoes and some winter squash. Once I get them all potted up I will work on evening this out and staking up everything. I have some ideas for a homemade trellis using cattle panels, bamboo and some stock posts. More to come on this project in a few months.