Read the Directions

0

Posted by Aimee | Posted in Garden Planning, Plantings | Posted on 13-08-2009

Tags:

Attack thy Neighbors!

Attack thy Neighbors!

Now, I have been gardening since I was a little kid and you would think by now I might know what I was doing, however, I have found that gardening is an ever learning sort of experience. No matter how much you learn it seems to me there is that much more to learn out there. All you can do is share what you do learn and keep reading and experimenting and learning from others. Why go to all this trouble? Because as you learn, your yields tend to improve, your costs tend to go down, the taste of your harvest tends to improve, and the effort expended tends to lessen. In my experience that is how it works at any rate.

I tell you this because I, being a rookie to the Texas garden, didn’t bother to read the plant specs carefully on a plant I decided to grow and these pictures show you the result. This plant is called Luffa Cylindrical, it is where those wonderfully fantastic luffa sponges come from. I read that it was a natural for my new environment and that it was highly ornamental and would grow vertically. What I failed to notice was the actual height this beautiful plant can get to, 30ft! So, as you can see it is taking over my house.

Climb Luffa Climb!

Climb Luffa Climb!

I would still recommend this plant to anyone even though I have not harvested any sponges as of yet because it has required almost no care, the bugs that have eaten everything else haven’t seemed to bother the Luffa, and because the leaves are very ornamental, they are bigger than my head even. Just be ready for the size of this. It was planted by seen on May 7th, and now, August 8th, just 3 months later it is taking over the world. I keep forcibly pulling it from the neighbor’s side of the fence every couple of days and I keep trying to find places to poke the searching shoots back into the jumble to keep it contained. I am especially surprised this plant has done so well since I had no room for it in my garden bed and had to plop it right on top of the sod I covered with some newspaper and a couple inches of dirt and then mulched them. Also, believe it or not, this mass of growth you see in the pictures all came from only 2 tiny seeds.

I am sort of thick headed though so it is good that I am reminded now and then to look before leaping. Next year, I am not sure how but I will be prepared before I plant my luffa, even if that means investing in a good machete to protect the neighbors!

Sweet Potato Quest

0

Posted by Aimee | Posted in Plantings | Posted on 21-05-2009

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Quest completed! You have attained gardening level 3! Woot! Is what I have to say to all that. I have been quite nervous about making the sweet potato bed. I have never grown sweet potatoes before, especially since back home in Missouri it was a tad cold for growing sweet potatoes, of course over the last decade or so they have come out with newer more cold hardy varieties.

Left half is beauregard and right half is O'henry

Left half is beauregard and right half is O'henry

Also, sweet potatoes are very healthy for you and they like to grow in the heat which makes them ideal for the Houston, Texas area. With sweet potatoes there are no seeds to plant, instead you plant rooted cuttings. These are very easy to make too, all you need to do is get a good looking sweet potato and put it in a flat or shallow pan half filled with damp sand, keep the sand damp, do not let it dry out. Or if need be you can just keep the flat half filled with water, however you may not get as many shoots this way. The important thing is to keep them warm, perhaps on top of the refrigerator. Once the shoots are 2-3 inches tall break them off at their base away from the potato and place them in a vase where the base is in the water and the leaves are above water. In a few days they should start to root.

After your cuttings have rooted it is time to plant them in the garden, the best method is to plant them into a generously deep raised bed, with organic time released fertilizer mixed in. Plant 9-10 inches apart and provide something for the vines to grow up if you can. The vines will root if they get a chance left against the soil. Now that I have started mine and they are planted let’s see how they do. I will be sure to update on them this fall. I am only doing 16 square feet of them. To start with I built a 4ft X 4ft bed of untreated lumber and covered the roughed up sod with newspaper. Then I dumped a 55 gallon drum of homemade compost into the bottom and covered it with peat moss and top soil mixed up and applied MicroLife fertilizer mounding the dirt up in the middle to give the plants even more room to grow. Once established plants are drought hardy, these are plants you do not want to over water. Sweet potatoes will continue to grow until overnight temperatures reach about the fifties. I will be mulching and installing some trellising for the vines tomorrow.

If I find any more pertinent information for other first time growers out there I will update that as well as my personal experience with the plant. I am still nervous even after having researched these fellows extensively just because it is a plant that I have never grown before and unlike most fruiting vegetables you cannot see the products of your labor you just have to sort of trust that they are under there. Just like my beloved Irish potatoes, you just have to trust that the beautiful plant that is growing has equally yummy tubers forming down there under the dirt. So for me getting the bed built and filled and planted was overcoming a huge hurdle of my own doubt. I could almost swear I heard the level up ding playing! =D I think that is a feeling a lot of us are coming up against, for the first time gardening isn’t just a hobby for us, but our families may depend on our productivity for sustenance. The booming of the recession garden is all over in the news as well as talks of victory gardens and for so many of us the pressure is on to make a lot out of very little. Have faith though, we can do it. We may stumble and have much learning to do but we will find our way in the end. I will have more on producing a lot of vegetables (loot) for very little cost soon.