Leaf Bug

There is a Leaf Bug that doesn't want to go away on my Pineapple Sage plant.  He has been around for a couple of weeks.  I see him almost every day.  Not in the morning when I water, but in the evening.

Can you see him in these pictures?

Can you see him in front of the top leaf on the plant.  I moved the leaves to make him go up to the top.

How about now?  See the legs?

Now you can see his antennas too.

Plant Pictures 6-15-13

Some of my plants.

 Purple Oxalis.  This is a houseplant the likes a lot of sun, so it is outside for the summer. I gets morning sun.

This is a green Oxalis.  I will be dividing both the green and purple before they go in for the winter.  Let me know if you want some of either or both.

Pineapple plants.  The back on I planted last year and it stays in the house.  The front one I planted a few weeks ago.  The back one used to look like the front one and it took at least 6 months to start looking like it was growing instead of dying.

Sweet Basil.  Just picked off a bunch more flowers this morning.

I picked these pieces off of the above plants a few weeks ago and rooted them in water.  This is the pot that will come in the house for the winter.

Pineapple Sage.  Not sure what to do with it, but it smells good.

Orange mint.  This smell good too.  I brought a piece in from last year and rooted it in water.  Here it is this year.

Stevia Plant.  Last year the cuttings kept dying, so I bought a new plant this year.  Haven't tried any cuttings yet.

Last picture for today is this.  The wind chime doesn't keep the birds away, but the pine cone does.  I got sick of cleaning up sticks that kept falling on the porch everyday and sometime twice a day.  No more birds on the light.

Some of my Yard Pictures 7-15-13

This is the Moon Flower plant at my front door.  It is getting huge.

Here are three seed pods from the Moon Flower.  The spikes are painful when they turn brown.  There are thousands of flat seeds similar to Holly Hock seeds inside.  If you want some let me know.

Going to plant lettuce, spinach and more carrots today.  Dug up some of the garlic Saturday and one bed of potatoes was getting too much water, so the plants started dying.

Here are the potatoes we dug Saturday.  Yukon Gold.  I have the hardest time getting very many of these.  All the other kinds do much better.

This is the other bed of potatoes.

Picked this onion and took a picture right away.  Lots of onions this size this year.  They loved all the water the the potatoes don't like.  Let me know if you want some onions.

There will be lots of purple grapes in September too.  They are growing good this year.

Lots of Elderberries for the birds.  We never get any.  To hard to protect from birds, because the berries on the top of the plants.

Some of the gourds from last year.  Larry is in the process of carving some.  They will be on a different blog when finished.

This Lavender plant is doing very well this year.

I put some lettuce in a pot to grow just for seeds.  Almost ready to put a bag on it for the seeds to fall into.

Now for some of my favorites.  I call these the self planting things.  I don't know where they came from, but I always let them grow to see what they become.

 Sun Flower plant in the back yard.

These were in the pot you can barely see in the background last year.  Seeds blew here from the pot.

The Holly Hock was there last year, but not the yellow flower on the left.  Didn't plant either of them.

Haven't planted Violas in 4 or 5 years and a few keep popping up somewhere every year.  It does quite well for getting no water.

One strawberry plant showed up 2 years ago and now it has turned into a lot.  Here are the ones that aren't hidden by other flowers.  These are in the front yard and I planted strawberries in the back yard 15 or more years ago.  No fruit on these or the ones in another flower bed that planted themselves 7 to 10 years ago.  Can't remember when they showed up.

Some of the strawberries

Here are some of the strawberries I have gotten this year.  I lost at least half of my plants over the winter, but have harvested more strawberries this year than I have in the past several years.

This is the second batch picked on 6-7.  The little kids ate the first batch (half-a-bowl) before I could take a picture.

 

A week later on 6-14, I picked these.

Garden Update

I can hardly believe it is June 6th.  I thought I had posted picture earlier in the year, but I guess I haven't.  I have been a terrible blogger.  Now it is time to do better, so here is the gardening news.

These are Isis Candy cherry tomatoes that I started indoors from seed on February 3.  I kept putting them into larger pots until they were outgrowing the gallon pots.  They sprouted faster than I was expecting and got leggy, so I planted them up to the fist set of true leaves on the first transplant into a larger pot.  I took them outdoors and back in for several weeks to get them acclimated to the outdoors.  Every time they were almost ready to plant it got down to freezing.  Finally on May 29 I planted them outside.  They were starting to die in the pots and needed transplanting again. 

Here is another view of the Isis Candy tomato plants.

Planted potatoes on March 2.  Some of them froze three times.  This group was the worst.  I watered one day and they froze that night, so they looked really bad the next morning.  Potatoes are tough.  They keep coming back.

 Found a little potato in the ground a month ago, so I planted it in a pot.

These are Walla Walla onions in the front half.  They were sick little onion starts that I planted March 2.  The back half is big German Red Garlic that I planted the same day.  Garlic should be planted in the fall.  It is only available in the nurseries in the spring and onions and garlic can no longer be sent to Nevada from the seed catalog companies.  I planted most of it and used a few pieces to cook with.  I like the flavor of this one.  Hope it does good.

This is what is left of the lettuce that was planted last fall.  The ones on the left edge (side and front) are transplant form seeds I started in the house on Jan 5.

I have spent the last 3 weeks moving my raspberries.  They were behind the fruit trees and get too much shade and don't produce very well any more.  Most of them seem to have taken the transplanting well.

My poor peach tree is almost dead.  It couldn't hold all the weight last year and broke in many places.  It is a semi-dwarf and about 17 years old, so it is about done producing anyway.

Here is what is left of the garlic I planted in August last year.  A lot of it got eaten by who-knows-what.  I did cover it all Winter when I found it eaten to the ground.  Now I see something is laying in there.  A lot of smashed plants.  Probably the cat.  I have smashed clumps of daffodils on the other side of the yard too.  The back half is carrots that I started about 1 month ago.  I didn't cover them until about 2 weeks ago.  I see a few starting to germinate.  I'm thinking that most of the seeds were probably eaten by the birds.

Planted Outside March 2, 2013

It was such a nice day Saturday and the day was right for planting root crops by the moon phase and astrology planting guide that I decided to give it a try.  Larry helped me plant Walla Walla onions, German Red garlic, Yukon Gold potatoes, Cal White potatoes, and Red La Sota potatoes.

I have never planted garlic in the spring.  It should be planted in the fall.  It is only available in the stores in the spring and last year it dried up before fall.  At $11.99 a pound I will chance planting it now.  Garlic, shallots, and onions can no longer be mailed to Nevada, so buying it in the stores is the only option.  I don't know why the change has come about.

Here is some of the compost I started last summer and am adding to the garden this year.

 What a difference in color from the compost and the soil.

A close-up of the above picture.

The lettuce and spinach is growing better now that the sprinkler line is moved and the frame fits closer to the ground.

It is so much warmer that a few million aphids found a new warm home.  Apparently it got too cold one day, because all of these aphids are now dead.

More dead aphids.

See What's Growing January 2013.

HERE IS WHAT IS GROWING INDOORS

I zoomed in really close on this pot in the house.  The Sweet Basil I planted Jan 5th is just starting to germinate.

Here is the lettuce I planted the same day.  This is from seed I saved last year.

Starting to get some spinach on the other end too.

Here is both pots under the grow lights.  Two days after this picture the basil wasn't looking very well.  I covered it with Press 'n Seal, but did not press the narrow ends to the container.  I looks better today (1/27).

HERE IS WHAT IS GROWING OUTSIDE

The lettuce hasn't grown much.  I'm surprised it is doing as good as it is.

Some of the lettuce near the edges froze.

A little more frozen on the other side of the bed.

The spinach is handling the cold better than the lettuce.

I meant to move the rock and sprinkler line months ago and forgot.  Now the wood frame fits against the brick better and the glass will press it down more.  Cleaned out the dead tree leaves and weeds.  I'm not sure how the tree leaves got in there.