Garden Creative: Lucky for you, no poetry!

Ha. So I stated that this day I wanted to be creative, and the plan was to do poetry, because I usually have a million nature inspired words to write upon that could be considered poetic, but then I realize hours later is pure... well, compost.

LUCKY FOR YOU, I instead have been creative in other garden crafty-useful and fun ways.

I keep my gardening boots in my sunroom, which is not airtight, but a relatively safe place to set plants away from too much sun or wind and other elements that can be problematic if I need to neglect them for a while.  In the process, I have introduced all sorts of flora and fauna into the sunroom, namely spiders which I am in constant battle with to keep their webs and children at bay.  I really need to institute a weekly clean up and purge of that area to make things saner in there...  Plus this might encourage the spiders to just MOVE OUT and not continuously making homes in my baskets, under the table, in the corners of stands and etc.

The biggest problem I have, that I can't ignore are spiders in my boots.  I get very bad reactions to spider bites, when, depending on the spider the bites can grow to the size of a grapefruit, or the itching is so intense that its take a month for it to stop and then months or a year for the bite bruise to heal.  So, I keep a good eye out for spiders.  I'm not scared of spiders, I'm just nervous about being bitten by them.

To combat accidental boot biting I've taken to stuffing rags into my boots so that I can foil the crawlers from nesting inside them and then surprising both of us when I put the boots on.  Sadly I have found the rags to ineffective in completely keeping spiders out as the rags tend to slide down, exposing the top part of the boot, allowing for some space to exist between the top of the boot and the slipped stuffed rag.

I also wanted to be sure that my boots could stay upright and keep their shape, so, in deference to fancier boot devices, I thought and thought and decided that I need to make some sort of stuffed/filled boot shape keeper/spider obstacle.  It needed to not be able to rot or mold (so the easy cloth tube sock wouldn't do it), and not attract pests/feel like a waste of food (so no beans or rice as filling).

I remembered that I saved an old heavy plastic duty rice bag:

and had some extra sand sitting around for random acts of soil mixing.  So I began winging my little spider preventer.

Measuring? What measuring?  Mostly I just halved, then quarter this plastic rice bag, retaining the stitched part to my use.  I then halved that to form each "boot bag" that I'll fill with sand.

Essentially I restitch the already loosely stitched part to reinforce it, and made a bag with an opening to fill with sand.

After filling with sand I stitch up the top and tada...! It doesn't fit the boot, properly (too big down the bottom) because I don't measure.

Brill.  So I squish some of the sand up and adjust the bottom half to be a little smaller and tighter with some cursory stitching and FINALLY it works! woohoo.

Round 2 worked out a lot better (do things in pairs, and finish the first one before going onto the next half of the set so you can learn from your mistakes I say!)

Hurray, now my boots will stay in shape and the spiders won't dare to build webs at the mouth of my boots and can't get inside!

One final bit of creativity:

I've been getting these beautiful multicolored cage free eggs from my farmer's market.  The egg shells themselves are too pretty, so I decided to make something with them as a gift to the vendor people who I get my eggs from (since one of the them is unfortunately having to deal with bad luck left and right as of late).  Plus, they're "pay what you can" eggs and the concept of this is so wonderful to me I think they deserved a little gift:

On the back of one for the lady who's been having issues in life I also wrote: "So things stop clucking up!"  The metal chickens shown are also a slightly modified version of what I made for her originally (this is a round 2).  The originals had the phrase written on the chickens, here I decided I liked using extra soda can metal to make small signs to say it.

Pretty much free little garden craft for me: stolen borrowed recycling soda/beer cans from neighbors, dired lawn clippings, wood glue on hand, eggs shells after contents had been used, bottle caps from already drunk beer, and special "Dark Dancer" red clover that I've been growing and has spread that insures 4 leaf clovers for true luck ;)

Happy Wednesday and hope any of this helped or was interesting!

Tomato fertilization: crazy talk?

A little early to be talking about this, but when there is a vegetable garden involved, tomatoes invariably come to mind (if you don't like tomatoes, BLASPHEMY! ;)

Anyways, the first year I ever grew tomatoes was embarassing.  I didn't quite understand the concept of pinching off the suckers/off shoots/axis shoots, and ended up with a BARE tomato stem with a mere 3 leaves per tomato plant.  So stupid...

The year after that (and learning to be smarter, I did real research) I planted my tomato seedlings to their first axis and gave them a cute foil ring around the base and just below the surface of the stem to prevent dreaded cut worms (which I have never encounter, yea!)  Prior to planting the tomato seedlings though, I placed a whole uncracked raw egg at the bottom of the hole.

I read in theory, there's sulfur in the egg and nutrients such as calcium in it that will make your tomato grow well.  I admit, the tomatoes went GANGBUSTERS that year (though anything compared to my first year might be considered awesome).

I would like to add that after I pulled up my tomatoes at the end of the season my dog got VERY interested in the hole the tomato was in and as it turned out, at least one egg was still uncracked and chilling just fine where I first placed it so many months ago.

Of course until my dog decided she wanted to eat it.

Then the egg cracked and the smell proved that no, not fresh anymore ;P  Ick.

Anyways, as I continue to read and learn about gardening (because it never stops?!) I keep running into all sorts of random thoughts and ideas as to how best to fertilize or give your tomato plants a good start. 

A recent tip was to add hair to the hole you're planting your tomatoes in, because of the "trace amounts of sulfur" in your hair (your hair does smell sulfur-y when it's burnt).  Unless you've been saving your hair... (which I do... I always figured that it was compostable anyways and it's so easy to save when it's in your  brush or on the shower floor, sorry for that image, I know some of you are squeamish about hair), but I also can only assume my dog's fur/hair would work in the same concept and considering the way she sheds, it's great to find the dog is still finding ways to pay her way in this house!

If only she was a reliable hole digger...

Another tip was to use leftover raw fish parts/bones to bury in with your tomato plant.  You think cats like fish? Well so does my dog.  Actually, she LOVES fish. She ended up having to be quarantined from the yard for some weeks after that. 

Anyone else have any interesting or bizarre "How to fertilize your tomato plants?" ideas/tips that I might be unaware of?  (compost tea, and seaweed excepting)  It's interesting to see what our tomato-phile loving culture does to make the best and most delicious 'maters!