Garden Stakes: A Tutorial

Here is the tutorial on how to make the garden stakes!  It's not a hard thing to do, but it does take some time because of the drying in between layers of paints.

What You'll need:
Wood Slats (7 9/64" x 2 13/16" x 3/16")
Dowels (1/4" x 12")
Pieces of scrapbooking paper (min size 6 1/2" x 2 1/4")
Paper letters (1" high)
Acrylic paint
Modge Podge
Hot glue gun
Spray sealer

First, paint the signs on all sides.  2 coats is best for good coverage.  (you can see the sugar scrub jars I was making at the same time, hehe)  While the boards are drying cut your paper and your letters if you need to.  I used premade letters.  Cut your paper into rectangles measuring 6.5" x 2.25".

Once you have all your boards painted and dried, time to pull out the Modge Podge!  First, paint a layer of Modge Podge on the front of your board.

Next, paint the back of your paper with Modge Podge and place it centered on your board.  Cover with another coat of Modge Podge.

Place your letters on the paper and coat with yet another layer of Modge Podge.  Let dry and enjoy peeling the dried Modge Podge off your fingers! This is one of my favorite parts.  Brings back memories of first grade when my best friend and I would coat our hands in glue and then peel them when dry.

Either during the rest of the painting or while you are waiting for the modge podge, paint your dowels.  I also recommend two coats of paint.  I painted the majority of them with 2 coats, and then once they were dry painted the bottom two inches.

Here are all the finished signs.  As you can see two of them are different.  My stepmom's cabbage was eaten early on by critters and she's growing peanuts.  

Unfortunately, this is where I run out of pictures, and I apologize.   After everything is dry, put a double line of hot glue up the middle back of the signs.  push the dowels into the glue.  

Then, outside (please) spray the signs with the spray sealer.  I did 3 coats on each the front and the back trying to catch the sides as well.

Stick them into your garden and Voila!

I bet you could use this method for signs for holidays and stuff too.   Even a cute little garden quote.  I might have to try that!

Dinner gone bad and Pests in the garden

So, today hasn't been the best of days.  I've got some family stuff going on and a new sick kid.  Peanut didn't eat any dinner and then returned the other food she ate earlier today.  She spent the rest of the evening in the love sac.  Dinner was pretty much a bust.  I thought it was decent, but Papa B didn't care for it at all.  I made Pan Fried Chicken with Fresh Tomato and Corn Salsa and Herbed Couscous.  The salsa is made of tomatoes, corn, onions and basil on top.  The chicken was dipped in flour, buttermilk, and then a mixture of bread crumbs and basil.  He didn't like the corn in the salsa and didn't like the couscous.  I guess the other 2 boxes of couscous I have will get donated.

After I got dinner cleaned up and the kids put to bed (for the first time of the evening but not the last) I went outside to harvest and investigate the pests.  My cabbage and broccoli (Papa B happily just pointed out that I called the dog "Sproccoli" as I was typing this and trying to yell at him) and have been getting eaten.  The most obvious culprit would be the cabbage looper, but I hadn't seen any little green caterpillars.  With my organic pest control spray in hand, I went out into the garden.  Upon further inspection of the underside of the leaves of broccoli, I found the little buggers I was looking for.  I am relieved to find definite proof of what is eating my plants.  I also found the fuzzy caterpillar that was in my carrots a couple of days ago.  He's now hanging out on my broccoli. 

After some intense google searching I found out he's a Salt Marsh caterpillar and is not friendly.  As you can see in my picture there's a hole in the leaf right where his head is, most likely as a result of his little caterpillar teeth.  I'm sad that he's no friend of mine.  The spray I got is supposed to take care of him.  That makes me both happy and sad.  I guess I'll go see what happened tomorrow.

Garden June 29th

So, it's been just about 1 month since I last took pictures of the garden.  Well, posted some, anyway.  I've been busy watering almost daily and stalking all my plants looking for vegetables.  I'm happy to report that things are going really well.

Garden on Memorial Day

I've been using my garden as an excuse for not blogging a bunch lately and so I thought I would share it with you.  Also, its kind of fun to chronicle how it grows over the summer.  The top picture is of the full garden, fence and all.  In it are sugar snap peas, broccoli, green beans, lima beans, carrots, yellow onions, red onions, cabbage, cherry tomates, beets, roma tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, red peppers, green peppers, jalapenos, banana peppers, pickling cucumbers, salad cucumbers, pumpkins, and zucchini.  Phew!  Did you catch all that?

The middle row on the left are 2 cucumber seedlings.  The middle top are green bean seedlings with a picture of some of the cabbage and beets below.  Then on the right is a pepper plant growing my first pepper of the season!

The bottom row is a picture of my grapes (already here) and then on the right is one of my 2 marble pots.  This pot has all my herbs in it. There is basil, thai basil, 2 kinds of rosemary, flat parsley, curly parsley, cilantro, spearmint, thyme, chives, sage and dill.  The other pot (not shown) is full of lettuce.  I also have a couple small pots that contain more cucumbers, peppers (green and serrano) and my potato bucket.

All of my seeds started sprouting the last 2 days.  It is very satisfying to put a seed in the ground and then watch it sprout into a big plant.  I can't wait to pick some veggies and eat them!  I also hope that by including Peanut in all of this that she'll be more willing to eat the veggies versus when we buy them from the store.  So far she's just excited about the pumpkins.

Stay tuned for more garden updates!

Bucket Potatoes: Day 1

Spring has finally sprung here in South East Michigan.  We have finally passed the danger of frost and so for the past week or so I've been working in the garden every day.  I've planted tomatoes, pepper, peas, squash, cucumbers, pumpkins, beans, cabbage, lettuce, carrots, and broccoli.   Today I put in the herbs (12 kinds!) and started the potatoes.  I'm pretty much a novice when it comes to gardening, but I've heard that potatoes are easy.  After doing some research I decided the best method that worked for me was growing them in a bucket.  This is how I set it up.  Check back later for updates on whether or not it works.

I used a bag of potting mix (8.99), 2 yukon gold potato seeders (.39 each) and a 7 gallon bucket from the hardware store (4.99).

First I put a couple inches of potting soil in the bottom of my bucket.

Then I put my potato seeders with the chits facing up in the bottom.  If you don't know about chitting (I didn't) I suggest you google it like I did.  It's easy!

Next I put just enough potting mix in to cover them up.  Then I watered a whole bunch.  Now I wait to see little potato plants popping through!