Category: garden

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Another Garden Update-Flowers and Veggies and Critters and an Outdoor Hour Challenge Update


Do you see the short fence around the box? Yes, we had critters get in last week and dig holes and uproot all of our onions. We think it is our resident skunk since we can smell him at night and early mornings. So far the fence has deterred him from digging anymore holes.


Many of our day lilies are blooming and this one is our newest variety, Lemon Sachet. It is gorgeous!


The coneflowers are just about ready to burst out in Amanda’s garden box. I love to have a fresh bouquet of these flowers on my dining room table since they make me smile.


Amanda’s zinnias and cosmos are growing tall and the cosmos have flower buds…it won’t be long now.


My flower garden is cheerful and colorful this year. I have black-eyed susans, roses, alyssum, sunflowers, morning glories, a hydrangea, and gladiolas all at varying degrees of maturity. The hummingbirds are already making themselves at home.


The green beans have perfect little blossoms and lots of them! I can hardly wait to have some crisp green beans for dinner.


Look at those baby tomatoes. I think they double in size every day now that the weather has turned hot.


Squash blossoms are a favorite of the bees in the garden.


Monster zucchini plant! The little ones next to it are winter squash. This is a new area to my garden this year and it receives a lot of sun…perfect for squash.


Last but not least, here are some peppers and blossoms. We have three varieties of peppers this year and they are all looking good so far. We tend to have puny peppers so I am hoping that this time I picked varieties that like our soil and weather.

I hope you enjoyed a glimpse into this week’s garden. I am working on a post where I share our hiking/wildflower/camping adventure from last week’s trip to the Oregon Coast.

Gardens ebook Outdoor Hour challenge

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New Beginnings: Square Foot Garden Updates


Our garden has always been grown in raised garden boxes using the square foot gardening techniques but this year we replaced all of our string grids with wooden grids. Wow! It looks great and I am anxious to get started on this year’s garden.

You knew it was coming…the transition from wildflowers to garden talk. I’m so predictable. Now that we think our last frost is past, we will be spending more time in the yard with our hands in the dirt. We have a few things sprouting in pots on the deck but not much. My dad has been busy sprouting seeds in his garage for a few weeks and he always shares so I’m not worried.

My son had a zucchini seedling from his grandpa that he wanted to put into his box and I asked him if he would show us how to plant a seedling. I thought some of you might enjoy viewing a little video with your children to inspire them to get out and garden.

This guy has been my gardening partner since he was able to toddle around the garden. 🙂 He was a little nervous on the video but he is a very confident gardener. His favorite things to grow? Zucchini and pumpkins.

Here are some other views of our new grids on our old boxes. The second box in the photo does not have a grid…it is almost all filled in with strawberries at the moment. It will have dahlias as the summer progresses.

This is my box and it has been totally wiped clean and freshly composted. We are going to try some different veggies in here this year and we will see how it goes. I still need to fill in with a little more soil to level it out but we are all exhausted and it will have to wait until the weekend now…..I would rather play in the garden but my hubby has to go back to work tomorrow. He will haul some soil up from the other side of the yard where we are composting and building up some mulch in a stash.


Here is a view from the other side. The closest box is Amanda’s box and she grows mostly flowers in her garden. You also can see my new bird bath which the dog thinks is a doggie drinking fountain.


We added a new section along the fence for some more veggies. What do you think? How about pole beans in the back and something shorter planted in front? This area gets about 6-7 hours of sun in the summertime.


I also noticed that over the last week, I have a whole crop of sunflowers that have volunteered in this garden bed. I am not surprised at all because this is where we had the really tall sunflowers last year and I left them in pretty much all fall for the birds to eat from. We shall see how many plants we have as time goes on. I had quite a crop of sunflower seeds to save for the birds which was really nice. The boys enjoy harvesting the seeds for me and it is an easy job.


This is my flower section from last year that I started from seed. Read this entry to see how we did it and I encourage you to give it a try.

We are going to be adding two more sections of veggies this year along the other fence so we should have quite a bit to harvest once we get going. It is all on an drip irrigation system so it makes my life easier. The kids help with the little bit of weeding and the upkeep of the boxes. I give them ownership of their own box and that helps keep them interested. I also let them pick what goes in their box as well as let them decide how to plant the squares.

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Outdoor Hour-Weeds or Plants? Another Weed Post

“A weed is a plant growing where we wish something else to grow, and a plant may, therefore, be a weed in some locations and not in others.”
Handbook of Nature Study, page 512

This week as I was watering the garden and flower beds, I spent some time thinking about weeds. The boys and I discussed the definition of a weed and how our yard is filled with plants that we call weeds that others might actually cultivate in their gardens. The unidentified weed above is growing alongside a few things I planted and it has proven to be healthier and more prolific than anything I intended to grow.

The definition of a weed and a plant in my yard come dangerously close. If the plant has some redeeming value like a pretty leaf or a pretty flower or a colorful berry, I sometimes leave it in the ground.


The unidentified plant from above looks like it is covered in beads to me and it is hard to really call it a weed but since it is growing in my flower bed where I didn’t plant it….it is a weed although I left it again this week and didn’t pull it out.


This beauty of a weed actually is growing in the gravel along my walkway. It is so green when most of my yard is turning brown already. It has a delicate white flower with a little yellow trumpet center. The leaves are a pretty shape. I left it in the ground too.


This weed is found all over my yard. It has the softest velvet leaves. I hate to pull it out…so I don’t. It is actually easier to pull it up when it is larger so leaving it in the ground really is a timesaver in the long run.


This blackberry vine is creeping under the fence from our neighbor’s yard. We have a constant battle with blackberry vines. I do have two places that I let them grow in the corners of the front yard so I can harvest a couple dessert’s worth of berries each summer. My husband whacks the vines as soon as he sees them. My husband considers this a “weed”.

This little tiny red berry is on a creeping plant under my crepe myrtle. I have spent a lot of time pulling it up but decided it can just stay. It is no longer considered a weed but a ground cover. (See the tiny mimosa trees also growing among the rocks? More on mimosas below.)

Right now, the plant shown above is my biggest “weed” in the garden and lawn. Tiny little mimosa trees are growing *everywhere*. We cut down a huge mimosa tree earlier this year but the seeds from the leftover seed pods are sprouting by the hundreds, if not thousands. I was making progress pulling them up by making it a goal to weed out fifty seedlings a day but I grew tired of the chore and now they are everywhere again. I need to get back to working on them a little every day. My point is that some people might consider a mimosa a great tree in their yard and actually encourage its growth but for our family the mimosas have to go and so they are considered a “weed”.

For more information on the weeds and seeds challenge, here is a link.

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Black-Eyed Susan, Daisies, Tomatoes, Lemons, More

This week’s garden update is full of colors and surprises. My daily watering routine is always rewarded with something new or interesting to look at and think about as I spend a few minutes enjoying the growing things in my yard. This is the time of year that gardening is at its best….all those hours spend cultivating and sowing seeds, pampering the delicate plants as the summer progressed, and then feeling the surge of joy as you peek under a leaf and see something delicious to eat or something to raise your spirits with its colors and textures.

Here are your garden treats this week.

Morning glories in all their glory. This is the color that they are in real life…a sort of radiant pink and the camera just enhances that rich color.

My Black-Eyed Susans are just starting to bloom along the fence and they make me smile.

“These beautiful, showy flowers have rich contrasts in their color scheme. The ten to twenty ray flowers wave rich, orange banners around the cone of purple-brown disc flowers.”
Handbook of Nature Study, page 523 (Black-eyed Susan)

This is a hover fly inside a wildflower. He is the perfect size for this trumpet shaped flower. I have been on the lookout for insects in the garden since that is the focus of the Outdoor Hour Challenges right now. This one I recognize from our fall study of insects.

This creature is my constant companion as I spend time in our backyard. She is always curious about what I am looking at and many times I have to shoo her away in order to get a good photo of something in the garden box. In this photo she is watching my middle son fly his RC helicopter on the lawn. She isn’t afraid of it but I don’t think she exactly knows what to think of it either. Always curious….

This beauty just started to bloom today. It is in a pot on the back deck and it came up from a plant that I had last year. Gerber Daisy…what a color it is!

Now we are to the edible update for the week. My patio tomatoes growing on the back deck are really starting to produce. Can you just taste the yummy sunshiney taste of these beauties? Next year I think I will grow two of these plants so we have enough tomatoes for everyone.

Last year my hubby bought me a lemon tree for the deck. He put it in a beautiful pot and it was loaded with lemons. We harvested those and then over the winter we pampered this tree through rain, wind, snow, and ice. Come springtime it blossomed like crazy and it smelled so delicious. Then the cold weather came back and I worried that we wouldn’t get any lemons at all since the blooms fell off. Well, hiding under the bottom leaves there were some that made it through and now we have some fairly good sized lemons on the tree again. I think there are eight lemons which is better than nothing. 🙂

Hope you enjoyed the garden update for this week….so many things to share. I wanted to mention that I usually look up everything in the Handbook of Nature Study as we go throughout our week. Many times I am surprised to see something listed in there and then we take the time to read and discuss the information. It just seems so natural to find something we are interested in and then learn more about it when it is fresh in our mind. Even though the focus this week is on insects for the Outdoor Hour Challenge, many other subjects come up and we take that opportunity to learn about them too.

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Garden Update and Outdoor Hour #18 Pollen

This week has been a very busy week outdoors. We are busy tending the garden which mostly means watering and weeding.


I don’t mind watering but weeding is endless and frustrating. I have been getting up early to get outdoors before the heat but the job never seems to end. 🙂 My son has lots of herbs in his garden as usual and he loves to trim a little to add to each meal. He has oregano, basil, chives, cilantro, and dill growing. Herbs are so easy for a beginning gardener and they stick around from year to year so you don’t need to replant them.


All of our climbers are waking up and the bean poles are getting entangled with green bean vines.


The morning glories are starting to climb up too and I think I am going to have to add some string to my poles soon. The grapes are growing like crazy on the trellis and I can just imagine all the sweet little grapes we will be eating in a month or so. I plant eating grapes and not wine grapes so we can enjoy the fruits as we spend time in the yard. We have one vine that grows next to the pool deck and I love to take a swim and then enjoy a few grapes.

The garden is really growing now that the afternoon temperatures are hitting up in the 90’s.


We have baby zucchini.

Here is our first tomato of the year.

I even have okra sprouting up for the first time. I love okra and a few batches over the summer will make me happy.


The sunflowers are starting to look like sunflowers and thanks to the birds and the birdfeeders, I have volunteer sunflowers that planted themselves in the oddest places in the yard. I am letting them go for now and we shall see what happens.

Outdoor Hour Challenge #18
Now for our pollen assignment. We looked carefully for some insects on our garden plants and we were not disappointed. We saw an earwig, some ants, a grasshopper, and we heard lots of bees thanks to the lavender that is blooming like crazy.

Here is a blossom on our trumpet vine that the hummingbirds love but in this particular bloom you will see ants if you look carefully. If I were an ant, I would love to crawl into a trumpet vine blossom.


These are something new in the garden and I can’t remember quite what they are but aren’t they pretty? They are so buttery yellow and the pollen is easy to spot.


This is what happens when you leave a bag of walnuts on your back deck overnight. Some critter came and decided to have a nut-fest and leave behind all the shells. We are not sure but we think it may have been a raccoon. I am not exaggerating when I say that they ate half a grocery sack full of walnuts in one night. Oh well, I wasn’t in the mood to crack nuts anyway. 🙂

That is just a glimpse into our week this week. We had an afternoon hike at the San Francisco Bay last Thursday but I didn’t get that many photos. We were at a wildlife refuge right on the bay and it was a fantastic place to explore. We will be going back with our binoculars and field guides again soon.

https://naturestudyhomeschool.com/2009/07/new-outdoor-hour-challenge-ebook-garden_27.html

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Sweet Peas-Green Hour Challenge #15

My daughter helped me out this week by drawing sweet peas in her nature journal. She used colored pencils to make this beautiful drawing.

We also spent some time planting more seeds in the garden this week. We are using a fantastic idea I found on Cocoa’s blog for challenge number 12. If you go over to her blog, make sure to scroll down towards the bottom of the entry to see their flower garden project.

We prepared a small flower bed next to our morning glories, put some potting soil in the wheelbarrow, opened the packets of seeds and sprinkled them. We mixed up the seeds and the soil and then took handfuls and spread them on top of our new garden bed.


Here is the flower bed all seeded and ready for some water and sunshine.

We are hoping that we get a sort of wild looking mix of flowers here over the summer.

Here is a beautiful bloomer we have in a pot on the back deck. I just love the bold colors of this flower.

We are getting quite a collection of garden flower drawings in our nature notebooks. So much color and variety are found right in our own backyard.