Putting In The Garden

This past weekend I was busy putting in my garden. Here in the Ozarks the ground is very sandy and rocky. So I have four raised gardens that I attempt to grow vegetables in every year. It seems every year the rain has won! I really want to put some PVC pipe and garden plastic that is retractable so each garden is a little green house. This would allow me to start a little earlier and have a longer growing season. The big advantage would be that the rain wouldn’t flood out my gardens. That will be my goal for 2020!

I was excited this year to use some wine corks that I had in my craft room to use for my garden markers. I simply put them on wooden skewers that you would use to barbeque on the grill and slid the cork on them. I used a black sharpie to write the name of what I planted on each. This gives my garden a custom look that I really like.

This year I am trying some different vegetables. I am going to try to grown brussell sprouts for the first time. I have planted half a garden with them. If you have any tips, let me know! On the other side in that garden is onions. Now onions seem to be really simple to grow, only I have not been successful for four years in a row! I am not sure what I am doing wrong.

The garden closest to the house I am attempting to grown zucchini. I planted the seeds five days ago in little mounds like I do every year and every year the squirrels come and dig up my seeds. Yes, you guessed it, day two and my mounds were knocked over and most seeds gone! I went out and redid my mounds and seeds. So far so good.

I also have peppers, green beans, oregano, chives, basil, cilantro planted. My new addition this year is the Topsy Turvy tomato planter. I have never used it and found it on clearance. Last year my tomato plants were attacked by horned worms that took all my plant down to nubs in one day. I thought maybe this would give me an advantage. I planted also tomato plants in the garden beds too. So far it seems that the plants are doing well growing and I am very excited to see the progress and how many tomatoes I can harvest from this. Have you every used one of these before? Send me some comments below and let me know if you had any success with them.

This is the first year that I planted so many herbs. I want to do more and have fresh herbs for cooking. Besides the ones that I have planted in the raised gardens, I have also planted in containers on my deck lemon grass, mojito mint, and spearmint. All of these put out scents that bugs dislike which is why I put them in containers on the deck.

My goal this year was to landscape the yard and really make it a place that I want to take breaks from my home office and go outside get some vitamin D from the sun and relax. You can see the spinner in between my gardens, which was supposed to scare the squirrels from my garden. That didn’t work! Do you have any tips on keeping squirrels out of your garden?

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