Tag Archives: gardening

Garden, anyone?

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For any of you who enjoy the posts about gardening, I’ve started a new blog centered around the garden and home life. I’d mentioned splitting this off a while back and finally have done it. I still plan to post comics and dog-related things on the Trixie’s Tales site, although these may be a bit more sporadic now. This is the time of year when the garden and nursery start ramping up and taking over my entire life. Lucky for me, I really enjoy the outdoor work :)

Here is the new blog: The Woodland Gardener. I would love it if you might pay it a visit.

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It’s all coming together

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Eric built an irrigation system for the potted shrublings today:

irrig

The whole thing cost about $30. That includes the PVC pipes, valves and other miscellaneous pieces. Each row has its own valve which lets us adjust the water flow and each pot has its own 1/16″ hole for the water to drip out. It’s super cool!

It is controlled by a timer, which is connected to the water spigot on the house (timer purchased previously and not included in the cost).

 I had applied for an Ohio state vendor license early in March and received my certificate of registration last week. Now just waiting for the nursery inspection. It’s starting to feel like a ‘real’ nursery. :)

Closer to a veggie garden

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It did appear that spring had arrived, but winter just keeps hanging on. Calling for 2″ of snow tonight, sigh…

More progress was made on the raised bed:

window

The PVC hoops will support plastic netting which will (hopefully) keep the deer out.

As an aside, if any of you are familiar with Denver, you might recognize the Blue Bear looking out the window. The real Blue Bear is located at the Colorado Convention Center and stands 40 feet tall! I fell in love with him while I was in Denver for business last October and decided to take a mini bear home with me.

Is Spring really, really here?!?

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Looks like it – both on the calendar and in the great outdoors. The first day of spring here in the Cincinnati area was beautiful! Sunny, warm(ish) and blue skies.

The daffodils are popping up:

photo 1

Those leaves on the ground are from a nearby oak tree that keeps its dead leaves attached all winter and then drops them in the spring when the new buds are pushing out. It’s the oddest looking thing – when all the other trees look like barren branches, this oak appears to have a full head of fluffy brown leafy hair.

Some of the baby shrubs that are in leaf. These weigela are going to be beautiful when they grow up:

photo 2

All this gardening deserves its own blog. I’m soon going to give it its own space, and this blog will go back to being strictly about cartoon Trixie, with occasional sprinkles of real Trixie, and other cartooning related posts.

Til next time…

More seedlings & a brand new garden bed!

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The tomato seedlings are getting big enough to be moved into larger containers:

tomatoseedlings

Cute!

And the peppers are soon to follow:

pepperseedlings

And guess where they will end up – in my brand spanking new raised bed! Expertly constructed by my very talented husband in, oh, 30 minutes this past Sunday, it seemed like.

raisedbed

It is the structure in the front. It measures 3′ by 8′. Still needs to be set into the ground. I’m waiting for the next sunny day  that also happens to be an off-work day. That is to say, I’ll need to spend the day monitoring the sun to be sure to get the best position to keep the veggies happy. This is one of the few open spots near the house (which is surrounded by trees). I’m pretty sure this spot gets at least 5-6 hours of sun, and hoping for more than that.

The wooden structure in the back is my compost bin. And beyond that is a leaf bin. The pots to the far right are some of the  “shrublings” (hydrangeas, burning bush, forsythia, among others) that I’m growing to sell later this year.

Happy growing to my fellow gardeners!

Big deer & cabbage seedlings

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There is a family of deer that kind of hangs out on our property. It has been fun to watch them. One is a lame female. Her front left leg was maybe broken, or otherwise damaged. She gets around pretty well. Each year we are happy to see that she is still with us. This afternoon, we saw some HUGE deer. Man, they have gotten really big.

This photo is looking down the driveway. The deer are pretty far down there, maybe not easily visible. It’s a “Where’s Waldo” thing. Can you spot them?

deer on ridge

Here is a closer view. There are 3 deer in this photo. Should be fairly easy to see them all.

deer on ridge 2

Beautiful!

Meanwhile, the seedlings are doing pretty well. The new veggies I’m adding this year are cauliflower and cabbage. Here are the cabbage seedlings:

cabbage seedlings

It is still pretty amazing to me that these will one day become FOOD!

Spring is just around the corner :)

Early seeds planted

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Sowed some of the early vegetable seeds today… tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, along with some herbs. We got 5-6 inches more snow dumped on us last night, and it’s kind of funny to seed the seed trays against a backdrop of snow. Here’s to spring!

seeds

This is the most south-facing window we have, which is the least obstructed by trees. Good thing the window ledge is deep. :)

I am still fairly new to vegetable gardening (3rd season) and still keeping it kind of small. Each year, I try to add one or two new vegetables. And to date, I’ve only done container gardening, which has worked out just fine. It’s nice to go out onto the deck and pick some food. But this year, I’m planning to do a ‘real’ garden…directly in the ground, that is. We are on 4 wooded acres, but there are some spots that are clear enough to get the needed sun.

If you are a seasoned gardener and have any tips, please feel free to leave them in the comments. Thank you, and stay warm!!

 

 

Butterfly Garden – milestone!

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This evening I got the first plants into the to-be butterfly garden. After finding out how much it will cost to have bulk top soil added to the space, I realized that I may have to really go piece by piece. So, I planted 3 coreopsis and raised the bed with 3 bags of topsoil. Add mulch, and voila!

bfly1 bfly2 bfly3

ok, looks pretty puny when I see the overview.

No matter, it’ll get there :)

Butterfly Garden (to be)

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butterflygarden   butterflygarden2

Getting started on the future Butterfly Garden. So far, we’ve tilled the space. Turns out the ground is such hard clay, that we will need to have some top soil added. When I called to price that, my jaw hit the floor. The space is approximately 20′ by 70′, and that is a lot of top soil. I’ll have to do it in thirds. But that’s ok, it’ll get there :)  A big thank you goes to our very good friend, Jon, for parting with his heavy-duty tiller. It got the job done!