If you are wondering why I am writing about gardening, it has come extremely easy
Starting out as I had when I was just a little Bumblebee, my mom gave me a little area from her garden and a few seeds and I build a beautiful garden, all perfect straight lines, looking like a pro. Then I looked at my moms and hers was a mess, no clue where what when why, but boy could she grow things and they tasted so darn good!
So I know you are a pro also by now, because if you have grown anything and it looked beautiful or you could eat something from your veggie garden than you are a pro in my eyes!
It is so much fun to watch something grow, especially, beans, you can literally sit there and watch them grow. And nothing is more fun than watch a child grow something and see their big eyes when they watch their veggies grow and start a lifelong love of gardening, even if they stop for a few years because human things start growing as well, they will always return to their root love, whether it is Jesus, the garden, horses, dancing, or fishing. What they learned to love as a child will remain with them forever, that is why it is so important to give them a good start.
How do you grow cilantro from scraps?
First you need a pot, a couple of little rocks, a bag of veggie potting soil, and organic heritage seeds.
Now you place the rocks in the bottom of the pot, put the soil in the pot up to the very top, use a spray bottle to water the dirt well, sprinkle your seeds on the moist dirt, add more dirt on top and press down ever so gently, now spray again with the water bottle. The dirt will sink down somewhat so no worries, that is why I said fill it to the top!
Place it outside in the shade for a few days, making sure no pests can get to it, the porch you are thinking, yes, half way ok, but for some reason there is just not enough sun light and they seem to grow the way toward the sun long long stems and break off or die off, so outside with the shady side of the sun there is still more sunlight but not direct burning sun.
In a few days you see something moving in the dirt and the first sign of life begins. It is a fantastic phenomenon to watch your veggies or herbs grow. Once the cilantro is bit bigger you can gently put it in the early morning sun and evening sun for a little bit at a time to accustom the plants to the sun or it will burn in hours.
Now you can, if you so desire, dig up some of the smaller plants in that pot and start new pots to let the others grow stronger and fuller and give you more to eat. The potting soil comes with fertilizer so I wouldn’t worry to much about it, but if you have some good homemade compost laying around or some old chicken manure, add a few sprinkles now and again whenever the dirt rescinds.
And here we go, all of a sudden you have your cilantro and it is ready to eat, so simply cut half of a stem and put in water put in the fridge to last longer for cooking. The plant’s remaining stem will recuperate and often give you more of the same joyous food.
Talk to your plant when you visit and let it know how wonderful it looks, that you are thankful for it and how good it taste, and it will bring you such abundance you never dreamed of. God is good.
Hoping you enjoyed my little answer and you will join me for other episodes of gardening fun.
Is having a vegetable garden a good idea to reduce food spending costs for somebody’s household?
No!
The cost of all the necessary gardening tools, the dirt, the fertilizer, the insect killers, the shading, the water supplies, the weeding, the worrying, the seeds, the seedlings, the pest control, the predators, the soil kit, the garden bed, the shading, the fence around it all and on top, the root starters, the time.
You do it because you love it, not to safe money. Same for chickens, you are trying to safe money on eggs, that’s a laugh, it cost thousands by the time you are all set-up for your flock.
If you are not a passionate gardener, get a couple of herb plants and put them in the kitchen window and buy the rest fresh from the health food store.
Of course a child wouldn't need all that to start out.
You are now a farmer and you can only grow pinto beans or peanuts. Which one do you choose and why?
Peanuts, because they yield over 3,000 pounds per acre and bring more than double in price per lbs.
Pinto beans yield around 1500-1800 lb per acre and bring only half of peanuts in profits.
Furthermore, the peanuts are a wonderful crop because you can grow a different crop such as corn and yield a much larger amount because of the benefits the peanuts leave behind from the previous year.
I have grown both, of course in a much smaller scale, and I love peanuts the yellow/orangy flower is so pretty and no matter how hot it gets the dark green leaves always look lush and happy and they are so easy to harvest.
So now you know the rest of the story.
Why does my philodendron Birkin not have stripes?
In most occasions it is a natural phenomenon and only temporarily, however, if you like to speed up the process put your plant where there is more light not necessarily direct sun light, but more indirect light. Simply more! :)
It also helps if you give it a bit of a low level nitrogen fertilizer.
Talk to it, caress it and love it, pray over it and show it that you care.
There was a professor that made a test with white rice. He had 3 glass jars with lids and put the same amount of water perhaps 2:1 to rice, closed the lid and put them on a shelf in a storage room.
Every day he came buy and said I love you, you look beautiful to the first one and good morning to the second and ignored the third. He repeated the test for 30 straight days. The results on the last day were astonishing and breathtaking.
The first one was beautiful soaked up all the water and pure white like freshly cooked rice.
The second one didn’t look as well and was half the size and not really white more grayish kind off.
The third one was completely black and had mold on top.
So this was absolutely amazing, I had always known that plants have feelings, but to see it with your own eyes is something else all together.
So try my suggestions and let me know how you get along.
What should organic gardening beginners do?
If you are set on an organic garden you probably have gardened before and know something about gardening and might have started a compost area already. It is always wise to make sure your soil is truly organic and do a soil test, real easy to get at Lowes, Walmart, or Home Depot. When you have the results and everything looks good, hoping you have a plan what to plant and when you want to begin. There are summer veggies and winter veggies so you need to find out what grows well in your area what region zone you live in, mine is 9b I am lucky theoretically I can grow all year round.
The most important part of your framework/plan should be protection! How can I protect my veggies? Because if you a piece of land to plant veggies, you have veggie predators that will destroy your garden in no time. Tears, money, stress, disappointment, time is a wasted! So having said that build something strong, don’t say, oh its just temporarily, I will build something better later on it is time to plant soon. NO! You must do the right thing first! If you can’t now wait for the next season to start and just have a few kitchen herbs until then.
Your garden bed, hopefully its a waste high one so you don’t have to bend down! Believe me it is worth the money, you don’t really grow your own veggies or keep your own chickens to safe money because we all know better, but we love to grow our own and eat it. My garden is build with cement blocks, all the dead wood on the property in the bottom of the plot, then rake up all of your leaves and grass cuttings until it is filled to the rim let it sit for a few month until your next season or in preparation for now. Once it is settled a lot add your good compost and buy a few yards of good organic soil from a very reputable vendor. I bought mine and it was horrible, 3 invasive weeds, and 2 nuisance weeds that two years later I am still trying to pull out everywhere I had 5 yards of it. If you have nuisance weeds you cannot get a license to sell your veggies or flower plants etc. Add some aged horse or chicken manure in the mix and all is well.
Warning: If you mix your good dirt with all the other stuff in your bed DO NOT STIR, it will be like cement the next day, believe me, I have done it. I hade a huge pot 75 gallon and added 5 different dirt of the finest quality watered it really well and mixed it all up it looked great, right after I planted my super expensive shipped rare seedlings and forgot to pray over them, the next morning they were all dead squished by the hardening dirt. So please be careful!
Then find out the organic seeds that you wanted and ordered and received should be planted, many should be planted at a specific moon schedule. So make sure your ground is moist so the seeds you will put down don’t fly away with the wings of the wind. Of course all your tools must be completely sanitized at all times. Every time you use them you must clean them, bacteria and microbic insects etc. are too easy to transfer from one plant to another. Make sure it is not to hot when planting best in the evening so they have the whole night to adjust and that you planted to the seed packaging's instructions. Water well. But from that point on its best to water in the mornings, its ok to have a day of not watering to avoid root rot, but if it is hot every day you need to water every morning.
Don’t fertilize right away, give the plants time to grow a bit stronger and only use gentle organic fertilizer best from your compost and mix it in with the soil around your plants. Occasionally, put cinnamon all around your plants insects and bacteria don’t like it. Also, put some insect obstacles as barriers for those plant destroying bugs. Whenever you water you want to keep and eye out for those nasty critters and feed them to your chickens or wash them off with a wet paper towel being careful not to touch any other plants. Throw them out carefully not to drop any insects etc.
Furthermore, it is necessary to weed constantly whenever you are watering is the perfect time to pull those weeds out while you see the insects or damaged leaves. And every year plant different veggies to give the ground time to recoup.
Cereus
Do marigolds keep bees away?
You know that is a very good question. I plant marigolds to keep pests away every where, but thank goodness bees love the marigolds and come a flocking.
So keep planting them all around they are so pretty and all the seeds you can use to restart the marigold planting season immediately. As soon as you have some dried up flowers dead head them dry ‘em for a day or so and plant right away.
Just keep the different colors separate and mark the container so when you plant you know better where to put which color to match your design easier. Also some marigolds colors seem to grow larger than other or bushier so make a note of that so you don’t have different sizes in your nice arrangement.
From my garden, Mango in the middle
I’m planting a brown turkey fig in a container. Can I avoid the hassle of repotting if I use a 16-inch pot? I live in the tropics.
Yes you can, however, I found that it is more of an advantage to go through the growing stages and the repotting in spring it is really that much hassle? For a gardener it is a quick routine on a nice cloudy day, the birds chirping, the chickens clucking, the fish jumping in the pond. Ahhh, life is delicious.
Living in the tropics of course helps a lot you don’t have to worry about moving the pot in the winter or covering everything up so its ok to plant it in the big pot right away. See with the figs its easy to repot because you need to prune the branches off every year anyway because the fruit grows on the new branches so a lot less weight to carry if you chose to move the pot!
Actually, I have several different fig trees started from cuttings in several different sizes pots and in the ground, and all are doing very well in Florida. My brown turkey fig that I traded in for an extraordinarily beautiful Mammy treeling, which I thought I was allergic to its fruit, because I ate it without it being fully ripe because of the tannin it created havoc in my mouth, just as with Persimmon and Cashew Apples. I regret it a bit later, but I got over it because I finally like to eat figs. It is so strange to see a tree growing fruit without buddings or flowers, but that’s life.
I do it with my dragon fruit with a little cutting because they grow tall and heavy very quickly and you can’t move a gigantic thorny cacti like that as easily as a fig seedling or tree.
I hope I didn’t confuse you too much :)
Photo by Pixel 2013
What is the importance of applying fertilizer to a tree?
Good question, is the tree young or old, shady or in the sun, what kind of tree? Citrus or Dragon Fruit?
If you can afford it use organic fertilizer, find out the dirt quality how much fertilizer it needs if any, the ph level, sour or sweet etc. It is always safe to sprinkle some mature manure around the tree but not to close to the trunk because the roots branch out and that is where the fertilizer should end up.
Air the ground around the tree with a straw fork sticking it in the dirt all around the tree as far as the branches are wide. I would also suggest to fertilize only when it is the right time of the year, the moon, the weather, always right before it rains its the best.
Water well in case the anticipated rainstorm was only a damp drizzle sometimes the fertilizer is to strong for the roots and they could burn if you don’t dilute it depending what type of fertilizer you use, liquid, pellets, powder, sticks?
Is it possible to grow two different fruits in the same spot?
Oh yes, I do it all the time. Whenever I have a seed and I walk back to my chickens and I see a large pot that has some space available I just stick it in and forget about it, after some time passes I am often pleasantly surprised to have another mystery plant coming out. Most times I know what the seedling looks like and can identify and other times I have no clue and the anticipation is a wonderful journey to partake in.
In many cases with the veggies it is even recommended to plant two together they help each other out, for example the tomatoes and the asparagus. A couple of years ago I was looking some pairs up and there are many friends, there have even charts to follow online.
But when it comes to fruit yes you can grow two different fruits in the same pot, I had a cocktail tree once with five different apples species. Phenomenal! One specialist was able to graft successfully 40 different stone fruits on one tree and after years of trial and error found a way to make them bloom at almost the same time. Can you imagine the colors, it is significant!
If you want to plant two together, I would suggest for them to be in the same family so they need the same dirt, fertilizer, sun, water etc. I took 3 lemon citrus seedlings bread them together and planted them as one tree two months ago, can’t wait to them grow up together.
Photo by Mesha Mittlamansala
Is much of gardening learned by trial and error--mostly by error? What is an example of an overlooked gardening mistake?
Plant in heat of the day
New seeds in an open garden without shading
Too much water
Not enough water
No fertilizer
Using fresh manure instead of matured one
Not protecting your plants from wildlife
Not praying over the plants and talking to them
Not weeding
Not airing
No drainage in pot
Not pruning
Letting insects be
Planting wrong time of year
Planting the wrong plants next to each other
Planting the same thing year after year in the same spot
Harvesting too late
Wrong size pot
Not repotting
Not checking for root rot
Knowing a problem and hoping it goes away
Not asking others for help
Not protecting from frost
Planting winter crop in the summer
Planting collected seeds you find in the woods and finding out they are nuisance and vines
Not filling up the dirt to the very top of the pot
Too lazy to learn new things
Losing hope if a plant looks down, throwing it out too early
If planting in the ground not tilling it deep enough
When prepping the ground for planting not pulling out all the weeds and grass roots
Often doing something temporarily and not doing it right in the first place
Buying the wrong seeds (GMO) and not heritage
Not understanding the difference between annuals and perennials
Photo by PhotoAC
What are the benefits of planting a native species-only garden?
Native plants do not need fertilizers and require fewer pesticides, less water and help prevent erosion, they also help reduce air pollution and provide shelter and food for the wildlife. Plus you safe money.
These plants are resistant to local weather and provide nectar to the insects and pollinators as well.
Hope this helps, blessings,
Liane
Photo by Cherry_Tree
How do you make a lemon tree thrive?
It needs lots of sun.
No weeds anywhere near the tree.
Water away from the trunk.
Give it special citrus fertilizer.
Air it with a pitch fork all around the area of the tree.
Remove all pests all the time.
Watch out for caterpillars.
Talk to it all the time how beautiful it is growing, what a good job it is doing, that you love it.
Pray for it.
Hope this helps, please click follow for more adventures.
Blessings,
Liane
From my garden
What is the best way to grow black mulberry trees?
Find a friend that has a tree and get some cuttings, cut diagonal for better water absorption.
Scrape off the bottom of the cutting a bit dump it in cinnamon to kill bacteria.
Thank your friend, go home and stick them in a pot in a shady area water them well and forget about them until the soil gets too dry, then water it until next spring you see tiny fruit and every year after the fruit grows bigger. You can plant them into the ground in spring on a rainy day after they were introduced slowly to the sun a couple of months before hand.
Eat and enjoy.
Photo by ByRev
Why is rice grown in flooded paddy fields?
Because the believe is that the flooded paddies kill the weeds and some pests. However, not all pest, and already flooded if the monsoon hits or even a regular rainy season the crop can rot with too much water and no sunshine.
So I don’t really understand why, it is not necessary and the risks are high, but they do it in Asia 90% of the worlds rice is grown in the that side of the world.
Clay seems to be the best dirt on flatlands since it can absorb a lot of water. So it is truly strange that we don’t grow more here in the states.
Who knows what arrangements have been made with Asia?
Photo by Enslater
How do you grow a Meyer lemon tree from cutting?
I grew several by just scar the bottom part a bit put cinnamon and stick it immediately in a pot of dirt and place it in the shade, water it and forget about it for a while until its dry then water it again. After a few month you can gently pull on the stem a bit if firm you got roots and can introduce it slowly to the sun, I mean very slowly, in the morning sun and evening only at first. Then in spring you can plant it where you want it permanently or repot it in a larger pot if you know you might move.
Photo by Hans
How do you start Brugmansia cuttings?
Super easy! I have many different kind. And all I do is stick them in the pot and water them occasionally. They grow like weeds and if you cut them down on purpose or by accident, they will be back! They are the most beautiful poisonous weed. And if they freeze in the winter they come back in spring and bloom like nothing happened.
Photo by Adriyawan
What do you think of my Brugmansia Trumpet blooming for the first time grown from a cutting?
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