Another Garden Added

As mentioned before, we wanted to do something with the rocky area along the side of the house. Looking at this 1st photo - behind us - are the salsa gardens, and the corn, cucumber and other plants on the side of the hill. To the left would be the long wall that we've dug up and planted the pumpkin, watermelon, squash and sweet potatoes. 

Here we started to plant the devils claw, and other plants with the white rocks laid out in a circular pattern.

This area is just out from under the house. The idea is in hopes that it'll get rain water coming off of the roof. We dug down not too far - since its close to the house. not sure what pipes are where. We filled the bottom with straw, fertilizer, coffee grinds and crushed egg shells. 

From Left to Right - Parsley, Lettuce, Cabbage and Not so Hot Jalapenos. in front of all of these our costco bough garlic was growing small stalks in the bag. So we planted the bulbs for fun and to see what they would do. 

Also added were 3 misting heads from our watering system. We have a hose and piping running underground feeding the whole back yard and gardens. We added 3 drip heads to the edible hibachis, devils claw and Seuss plant. 

A little concerned that the lettuce might be to little going into the ground. So Diane had cut down the hibiscus tree last month, but saved the sticks for a project. She let me use a few and built this little structure. The black top is weed guard, and hoping that it'll keep the direct sun off of the little plants during the hotter parts of the day. 

Yard work is dirty, yet rewarding and gives a good workout

(blisters too!) Over my left shoulder is the glass corn.

Shopping Trip! 

 While @ SafeWay I took a few snaps of the produce and the prices. Just to compare to what we have and what we would be saving - IF we were to buy what we've been growing in the garden. 

Granted - these eggplants were HUGE, but not Organic - $2.99lbs. Our Eggplants are about 1/2lbs each

Tomatoes (not shown)- $2.99lbs, we can't stop picking ours every day. Have not weighed the Beefsteaks... hmmm

Sadly our cucumbers have died, and we've replanted. But this crop isn't too expensive if we had to go out and buy a few. Currently we have 4 cucumber plants in the ground. still a month or so out before we get anything off of them. 

This one knocked our socks off. $9.99lbs. seriously?! Our one plant has been pumping out the peppers. We've frozen a few, used a few and given away a lot. I wonder what Ghost Peppers would sell for?

Morning Harvest

and I forgot to post what was picked while walking around the garden this morning.

And I missed this eggplant but Diane found it! and it weights in at 13.5oz! 

this guy was hiding in the wild flowers yesterday...

Sunday Morning

Yesterday was spent all day in the yard - re weeding the weidelia that was growing back on the side of the yard. once that was done, we reseeded with grass seed and put down the rest of our bird netting. hopefully that'll stop the vultures from eating our seeds. 

then we cleaned up and made room for the Pumpkin, 

Watermellon (seeded yesterday), Squash, sweet potatoes, purple basil, and stevia. There may even be a few sunflower seeds thrown in for good measure. 

these boxes have strawberries, ghost peppers w. , Swiss chard, bok choi and 2 trypes of kale. 

 here we are trying to make use of a very very rockey soil/area. part of it is under the house so it's dry and gets little/no rain. Today will be spent adding a drip system to those areas that don't get any water.

we planted a devils claw - which is flowering now. the flowers look like purple orchid flowers. 

not sure of the purple/pink plant next to it and WAAAY in the corner we planted the edible hibiscus. 

the part that gets rain from time to time, will be prepped for cilantro, peppers, chives and such. 

our glass corn has really grown. it even has tassels at the top. but I don't see any silk yet. 

Diane is very happy with her sunflowers that are blooming along the fence. 

Hiking: Aiea Trail Loop

 This weekend we left the garden to go camping and hiking in Aiea. The trail was a bit muddy - but not too bad for the 4.8miles. We got a little rained on towards the end which helped cool us down. We saw lots of guava, lilikoi, and other beautiful plants. At night we had wild pigs come into the campsite.

 A few more photos of the hiking and views -

It's us!!

Strawberry Guava

View of Pearl Harbor

H3 from Trail

H3 closer

Raining

Fairy Tree

Muddy Trail

eggplants

we weighed them tonight on the food scale. 9, 10, and 11oz. (a pound would be 16oz)

we have 3 good strong plants in the garden, and they all have about 8-12 eggplants on them... each. 

I'm wondering how much say Times or Safeway is selling tier eggplants for? it'd be interesting to see what we are saving if we were to buy them. 

two more pumpkin plants went into the ground, as did 5 cucumber seedlings. I used the last earth box to plant Diane's Kale. 

sorry for the lack of pictures, it was getting really dark outside. :) I'll post them tomorrow. 

Papaya

Two of our papaya have this white powder all over them. Seems its some sort of bug that has this waxy coating over them. they say it's best to spray when they are moving or active... whenever that will happen.

So we sprayed our garden bug spray all over the fruit and stalk. In two days we've seen a drastic improvement on the biggest plant. Today we sprayed them down again. hopefully we can get thm clean and rid of the pests.

Diane was given a Thai Papaya fruit at work. she said it was Huge! She saved the seeds and tonight I rinsed them and set them out to dry. This weekend I'll try planting them and see what we get. 

If anyone would like seeds, shoot us an email. I'm dying to try out our new seed packets. Diane was reading a blog over the weekend and this last from Wahiawa had it posted to her flicker account.

I did some searching and found a template and tried printing a few out after I edited the template in photoshop. it wasn't anything fancy, just trying to add our photos from the garden and give some detail to the seed packet.

Flowers

Diane has a bunch of flowers growing in her garden. I wish I could name all of the different types, but I can't. So i'll just post them and show you what they look like.

We also have an edible hibiscus growing as well as this flower - still in the seeding stage. Again - no idea what type of flower it is. But it was growing at the Makiki community gardens. The seed pods were on the ground, so I picked a few up and seeded them. 

The Garden is our Oyster

 So for Father's Day, we grilled up a few T-bone steaks, russet potatoes and threw on a few oysters as well. Oh, and dessert was a cherry cobbler cake and low fat ice cream. It was awesome 

 We saved the shells for the garden, because as you know, they are a little like egg shells (Calcium Carbonate). Plus it can balance the PH in the soil. Now, make sure the shells are fully washed before you start using them as they might have  salt on them and that would be bad for your garden.

 Here add a few ways to use the shells

 Crushed - the shells can be crushed up and spread along the path in the garden. I hear it make for a beautiful landscape and that people on the easy coast do that. 

 Crushed and added to the garden in potted plants on on top of the soil. If you use it in the pots, the chips and pieces will create air pockets in the soil, and after a while it'll break down and add that calcium to the plants. If it's on top of the soil, the chips and pieces will help guard against slugs and snails. 

 

Stupid birds...

We have... Let me rephrase that - we had grass seeds starting in containers. These were inside our garden shed. The birds came in and devastated them >.<

I guess we need to put bird netting over them as well, until they sprout. I noticed even our broccoli starters got hit as well.

Stupid birds

The bottom shelf containers had pits in the soil, unlike the top shelf containers that are nice and even. 

  We have a new sprout in our edible hibiscus tray. 

   New silk on the corn. We took the top tassel of one corn and sprinkled them on the silk of the corn next to it. Just incase the wind or nature doesn't do its job. Not all the corn had silk, so over the next week we will check them and repeat the process.

   This is the glass corn. Not as tall as I would have hoped for it to grow. Not sure if that's the way it is, or if it's lack of *something* that we've missed? It looks totally heathy and gets watered everyday/other day when needed. The silver boxes have carrots growing in them. 

 The one next to the corn was planted 1st, and then 2 weeks later the 2nd box was planted. These are watered every day so. The soil - which we used direct from the yard, doesn't hardest up. This Mililani dirt can dry up fast and hard.

   Ghost peppers and some type of flower that Diane planted. I'm just forgetting what that was.

I guess we will need to wait and see what type of flower comes out. Haha

    Raspberry plant. No fruit. Just tons of thorns and growing strong. 

   Sunflowers and baby nasturtiums along the fence.