Summer is Here!

So it's getting pretty hot here in Phoenix AZ, and the planting season is long over. My garden has experienced a few setbacks. First, caerpillars have been eating my gorgeous pea plants. I tried using some organic spray on them, but I'm not sure it worked. I think they are gone now though. They were also in my parsley and kale, which was really annoying. Next time I notice caterpillar activity, I'm going to get a fungus that kills them and sprinkle it on the plants.

My pea plants are kinda recovering. I don't think I'll use hanging baskets for peas in the future, I think instead I'll plant in a 4-5 gallon pot with some polls for them to climb.

The corn plants are making corn! I didn't think it would happen, but I see two ears growing! I'm not sure I'll do corn again, but I'm glad I'm getting something from my current plants.

My tomato plants are getting really big! I can't believe they were started as seeds. For awhile they were dropping all their flowers which was very frustrating. I moved them to be more in the shad and started shaking their cages to help with pollination. Now I see at least three baby tomatoes growing! I'm really excited, I hope I get lots of tomatoes.

I planted some kale maybe 8 weeks ago, and it seems to be doing OK despite the hot weather. These plants are in full shade.

I bought a jalapeno plant and kept it in the shade and watered it everyday, and it's growing but it dropped the flowers it had made. I thought maybe it was getting over watered or it needed more sun. I put it in the sun for a day, and it was SO droopy by the end. I watered it and moved it to partial shade. I hope I can get it to produce, I buy jalapenos from the store quite often and would love to get them from my garden instead.

Since it's getting too hot for most vegetable plants, I've decided to try focusing on planting herbs for the rest of the summer. I planted some basil and I bought a parsley plant. I figure it will be easy to move them inside if they get too hot. I'll probably start some more herb seeds indoors.

Corn, Beans, and Spinach Update Plus Okra!

The beans and corn plants that I plated 7 weeks ago seem to be doing great. They are getting tall! As I mentioned in a previous post, my dog destroyed one of my bean/corn containers, so I replanted and the new sprouts look very healthy. I'll probably have to thin out these new plants a bit by removing some, so they don't get too crowded. For the new plants, I used Miracle Grow Moisture Control Potting Soil. I think it's working out.

Check out this spinach I planted about 7 weeks ago. I expected it to grow a lot faster. I suspect the slow growth has to do with me using the wrong type of soil. I used "Garden Soil" instead of "Potting Mix" and mixed some of the local dirt in with it. I'm considering getting a second box container and planting new spinach seeds using proper potting mix.

I have given up on the orange seeds. There is no life at all coming from those seeds. I really would like some citrus trees though. This is the time of year when orange trees blossom and smell so wonderful! I want that on my patio! So I'm considering buying some trees from WalMart because they have them for only 15 bucks!

I also planted some okra seeds about a week and a half ago and they are just beginning to sprout. I love okra in gumbo, so I think it would be awesome if I can get some produce out of these plants. It's going to be an interesting experiment.

Destruction Dog

Arg, so my dog totally destroyed all the plants in one of my big red containers that had beans and corn in it. It took those plants a month to grow as much as they did! I'm going to replant, but instead of starting the seeds in those jiffy pellets, I'm going to plant directly in the container. The weather is much warmer now and there is no chance for frost. I'm going to have to protect my plants more carefully from now on! I'm pretty bummed about the death of my plants.

Beans and Corn in Their Final Containers

So this weekend was really rainy and cold, so I wasn't able to work on the garden very much. So today after work, I decided it was time to finish planting the beans and the corn since they are growing so much.

I put them in those big cheap plastic containers I mentioned in an earlier post. Before planting, I did some prep work to make sure the growing conditions are good for these plants. First, I created some drainage holes near the bottom of the containers. Then, I filled the bottoms with rocks so that water can drain easier. I put three corn plants and 2-3 bean plants in each container. I'm hoping the plants will have enough space to be happy and produce some veggies.

My big problem now is keeping my dog away from my plants! She loves to destroy plants, so I'll have to watch her very closely.








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From sprouts to small plants!

The beans are growing like mad! I'll probably try finding them a more permanent place to grow this weekend. Same with the corn, which is also looking great. I did a little research on corn, and it turns out one stalk ususally ony grows one to two (maybe three if your lucky) ears of corn. So if all six of my corn plants do well, the most I can hope for is 12 ears. I was sort of hoping that corn plants would produce more than that, but I'll take what I can get. I might not plant them again if I don't get a good crop.

I found some large plastic tubs in the garden center at Walmart. They are quite big and are only $5 each. I bough two for now, but will probably get more as I need them. I like how colorful they are.

No signs of life from my orange seeds, but I read that it could take up to six or seven weeks for these seeds to germinate. So there's still a good chance they'll grow.

A note about my patio feng shui... I've studied the principals of feng shui and I kind of subscribe to that kind of thing. It just so happens that my patio falls into the wealth and prosperity area of my living space (do a google search for bagua to find out more). This is really fortunate, because plants can really help increase the good energy of any area, so therefore, we can conclude that plants on my patio will help increase my wealth and prosperity. Also, the color red is really good to increase wealth and prosperity energy, and you'll notice that I'll be using a lot of red planters. Water fountains are also really good for feng shui, but I don't have any of those yet. I'll get one soon though.

The stuff I've planted so far....

So I've planted several types of vegetables from seed. I've planted all my seeds using Jiffy pellets. If you're not familiar with Jiffy pellets, they are little pellets of soil that expand when you add water. Then you plant your seeds in the pellets and one plant is supposed to grow in each pellet. I chose to start this way because I don't really have any large containers yet, and there was still frost warnings a couple weeks ago when I started, and these Jiffy pellets are easy to keep inside.

I planted my first seeds two weeks ago (I think, one reason for this blog is so that I can keep track of when I plant stuff). I planted tomato plants in 12 pellets, green beans in 6 pellets, corn in 6 pellets, jalapenos in 6 pellets, and I tried planting some orange seeds from a Valencia orange that came from my mom's orange tree. The picture above was taken about 6 days ago when things were starting to sprout. I also planted some peas last week because my little sister requested some. I planted 12 pellets of these.

So how have these seeds progressed so far, you ask? Well, let me tell you...


This is my corn crop today. I had to move them to these party cups because their roots were getting so long and broke out of their pellets and were invading other plant's pellets. The corn seems to be the fastest growing crop. I read that these can be grown in individual 5 gallon containers. I've also read that you can put multiple corn plants in a single large container. Not sure what I'm going to do yet. For now, they stay in the cups. They are sitting outside on my windowsill.



This is one of my bean plants. I planted "Tendergreen Improved" beans. They are "bush" beans rather than "pole" beans. I figured a bush of beans would be easier to manage than the pole variety. At this point, I'm not sure if multiple beans can be planted in the same container, or if each plant needs it's own container. I'm also concerned that I picked the wrong bean variety for container gardening. One website I found said these are not recommended for containers. I guess we'll see....



The pots you see here are the tomato plants today. They are on a windowsill on the front of my house. I have 12 plants total. I planted multiple tomato seeds per Jiffy pellet, and then removed all but the strongest plant in each pellet. While I was at the Walmart garden center I saw a package of Jiffy peat pots for like, $1.50 or something, which comes with 14 pots. I decided that I should move my tomato plants to these pots before their roots outgrow the pellets. I obviously need to move these to bigger containers eventually, but I'm also not sure if tomatoes need their own containers or if they can share. I also don't know how large of a container I need.

Getting proper containers for all these plants is going to get costly, so I'm going to get more containers each week to spread the cost over time. Yesterday I got some really large containers that I might try putting the beans in, or the peas (they are just starting to sprout).

No life yet from the orange seeds. Maybe they got frozen while on the tree, or maybe I planted them wrong. I'm still hoping they'll sprout, but it's not looking very good.


I planted some herbs (actual plants, not seeds) about three weeks ago. This is a picture of them. I have mint, chives, basil, and rosemary. The mint seems to have the most new growth since I planted these in this container. The basil and chives also have new growth, but the rosemary has pretty much stayed the same. Yesterday I put some basil, rosemary, and chives on a frozen cheese pizza to liven it up, and it was delicious. I've been using the mint in my iced tea, which is has been really good.

I'll be posting again within the next couple days. This has been a fun project so far and my goal is to get some vegetables out of this. I've also been working with decorative plants too, which I will blog about later. Please feel free to leave advice if you have any, I could use some! Also, comments are welcome :)