Whimsy on Wednesday: Winter Fairy Garden

We took an old broken wheelbarrow filled it with dirt and created a lovely Winter Fairy Garden.  This is still not done.  It sits on kind of a slant so I want the lower end to be a pond for ice skaters, and I need to find fake snow that won't harm my plants.  Maybe cotton balls will work.  I slowly add new plants as I find them.  Trader Joe's has tiny plants at various times of the year, and I can find some at Walmart.  The solar-powered fairy lights are the same ones as the ones below.  You get 2 of them, so the second set is on our front porch.  I will probably be buying more of these.  I just love them.  This can be an expensive hobby, but with patience and creativity, it can be affordable and fun.  We change it out for different seasons.  This one will stay until Spring when it is time to decorate for Easter. 

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Our Winter Vegetable Garden

For those of you that read this blog on a regular basis, you know I have been working on getting vegetables to grow for the past several Summers. Our Summer garden was a bust. I did get to eat one tomato and something else ate the others. Same with the cucumbers. The biggest issue in the summer, is not only the heat, but the bugs that eat the plants. Since I am trying to grow without the use of pesticides it is quite a challenge. So, I decided we could try a Winter garden, when most of the insects and other pests are hibernating. I will tell you about each item below. I did not take pictures of our flowers, but most of them are thriving quite nicely. If I did not mention in previous posts, any natural garbage, like peelings, coffee grounds, etc, I save and then toss around the bases of the plants. This adds much needed nutrients to our awful dirt, without any added expense. Roses especially need extra potassium so potato peels and banana peels are awesome for them. We also have a rabbit, some of you know that, and when we dump his potty pan, we use it as a fertilizer for the plants. This actually works quite awesome.

Those are two of the four largest tomatoes.  I just found four or five more starting, and lots of buds.  Now this is peculiar to me, because tomatoes like it hot, hot, hot.  And while it has been warm here and there it definitely is not hot.  Tomatoes will not grow below 50, so at night I take the whole plant into the garage where it sleeps.  This plant is the same plant I had over the Summer months, and I just keep letting it grow.

That is a broccoli head starting to grow.  It is very small right now, but I am hoping soon we can eat it.  I had two other broccoli plants as well, but they didn't make it.  That too is quite peculiar, because I planted them at the same time, in the same dirt with all the same everything. 

These are peas.  I picked three today, that I will eat at some point.  There are at least ten others that are not quite ready to pick.  These were made from seeds, and peas seem to do quite well here.  No one really likes peas, but me, but these are sugar snap peas and I think they will note a big difference.  Peas will continue to grow, I am told, as long as I keep them picked.

These are carrots, again from seeds.  They are not ready yet, but I am hoping within a couple of weeks they will be.  These do quite well also, and we planted more seeds.  Behind you can see the beginnings of more pea plants that we planted just maybe a week ago.  There is also onions, but I am not sure if you can see them.  Hopefully they too will be ready in a couple of weeks.

That is one little tiny lettuce plant.  They say lettuce grows quite well, but it is very fussy.  It needs to be almost constantly moist in the dirt.  Though I do water every day, it seems to need more.  It is finally starting to grow a bit more now.  We planted these from seeds but only the one plant is growing.  I am hoping to get at least some lettuce.  We eat a lot of lettuce.

How Our Garden Grows!

Sorry, I am bored with Music on Monday, might pick it up again next week, not sure. I get bored very easy, LOL! Anyway I thought I would share some of our garden success for this year. Any of you who have read this blog through the years, know that gardening is something I really enjoy, but am not particularly good at. One thing I have learned is that our soil, sand actually, really stinks for growing things. So I bought a bag of good potting soil, and when I plant something new it goes in the hole with the sand and the plant. I also have been adding organic materials to the base of the plants, to help enrich the soil and feed the plant. Potato peels, banana peels, egg shells, orange peel, and any other type of peel all gets put around the base of the plant. Left over coffee, and the grounds are also used. The coffee is especially important in keeping bugs from eating your plants. It is not 100 percent effective, but it does pretty good. Roses especially love banana peels. The potassium in the peel, gives them all kinds of nutrients. I did not take pictures of all the things we have growing, but I will try to get the rest in another post. In this post is my very large yellow rose bush, taken from above. It is a really cool shot. It has been flowering like crazy this year, and is getting quite large now. Then I believe is Caitlin with her sunflower plant. Walmart was giving away free sunflower plants to kids, sometime ago now. It was about an inch tall then. We are hoping it will flower soon. You can also see my hibiscus, which I killed but it is coming back now. It is very sensitive to cool temperatures, and even though we had a warm winter, it was cool enough to kill it. I will have to be more careful with it this Winter. Then you can see my poinsetta plant, which was a gift from a friend last Christmas. Normally they die and that is it. I took mine and planted it in the ground. At first it looked real sickly, but I have been babying it. I was told it will get real huge, like a bush, if I am lucky. Last is my tomato plant, which is getting big and full pretty fast now. I kind of wanted tomatoes by now, but it is just starting to flower now. I have to watch for caterpillars that love to eat the tomato leaves. Oh, and the banana tree. We bought a four dollar banana tree around Mother's Day. It is growing pretty fast for a tree now. I am told they are very sensitive to cold as well, so I will have to watch it come Winter. I love bananas, and hope we get tons. It won't produce for probably three years or so.