Hi everyone,
I am toying with expanding my outdoor garden this year!
I have found that with only 5 more fence pieces I can double my garden space!

Last year I found it hard to weed, and the plants were all too close together. Especially in mid-summer when everything gets to be a bit of a jungle out there.

I will keep you posted on plans. For now you can have a look at the picture on my “Fall Plans” post here and envision adding on two more fence pieces to each side to bring it out into the yard more, and placing the gate at the side (in between what is the old side pieces and where the 2 new ones would be added).

Thanks for stopping by,
Sara

So, I noticed a big difference when I used dirt from my garden to grow some of my indoor garden this year!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And it wasn’t good. 🙁

I now highly recommend using only sterile, baged indoor potting soil for indoor gardens. Either that or you have to go through a process for preparing your soil to be indoors. (Such as treating it with a pesticide for a few weeks every 5-7 days and then letting it rest or washing it before bringing it inside. – much easier to just get some potting soil!)

Same is true for wintering over. If you have an indoor garden *and* you want to try to winter over some plants from your pots or garden I highly recommend keeping these plants separate from each other.

This year I used some soil from my garden for my indoor garden and I brought in a lot more than just soil for my garden! I also brought in some pests that put my indoor growing season way behind. There are bugs in that soil!!!

In particular Spider Mites and a type of Fruit Fly were what did the most damage to my indoor garden. I actually had to resort to using pesticides to get rid of these little buggers. (I got some that were highly recommended by organic gardeners that are specifically for food, and specifically for indoor use.)

So! Grab that potting soil, you’re not doing yourself any favors by trying to use raw outdoor soil for use in your indoor garden!

Thanks for stopping by!

Sara

Hello fellow gardeners!

I haven’t been around in a bit, but I am ready to dig back in and get started!

For this first (gardening) post back I will show you my indoor garden that is thriving this year!

Here’s a picture:

In the top left you can see the carrots. Some of them are just about ready. They are the long thin Danvers variety. I tried a few types in the garden last season and these are the best growers so I decided to see if I could get them to grow over the winter. They’d better hurry up though because I need the space and the light for some seeds starting in February!

On the bottom left you can see my herb garden. I recently restarted it. It was getting over grown and got destroyed by some spider mites before I realized what was going on. I have new Sweet Basil and Cilantro seeds/seedlings in there.

On the top right I am wintering over my red Geraniums. Two of which fell victim to the spider mites before I had a chance to stop it. They are doing great though. I don’t water them very often and they seem to like that for wintering over.

On the bottom right (in back) I have some thriving Broccoli, which also had better hurry up and get some heads going! The plants them selves are doing great, so any time now!

On the bottom in front I have yellow onions. These guys need a lot of sunlight so I will probably not do them again over the winter. They are doing just great, just going very slowly and I have a feeling the layers are going to be quite thin because they need the sunlight to get them pumped up.

The dead thing in the front was a really nice Petunia which was on it’s second life with seeds from the original plant! It got taken over by the Spider Mites like crazy. I have a feeling that either the Basil or the Petunia was the origin of the infestation.

Notes: There are several safe controls for spider mites and other bugs for indoor gardens out there in the garden centers. Look for ones especially for vegetables and edible plants. They are the safest.

Look at the calendar for the seed planting and starting and other important dates!

Thanks for stopping by,

Sara Murray

This post is pretty much completely unrelated to gardening, but it is what I have been doing over this long and snowy winter here in MN!

I found this cool website in September called FLY Lady, http://wwwflylady.com

It’s a site that walks you by the hand through getting rid of clutter and leaves you with an amazing way of keeping your house nice and clutter free! So I dug in and I am almost done de-cluttering the entire house. I have re-modeled several rooms in the house, and even got a small “bagster” (it’s kind of like a dumpster) to throw all the garbage and unnecessary stuff away. I have also made several trips to the thrift store near by to drop off donations of all sorts!

I have re-modeled the upstairs bathroom, the downstairs office, and the junk room is now a beautiful princess bedroom for my daughter. Every closet is cleaned out, my storage area under the stairs is cleaned out, stocked up with nice labeled bins. I also cleaned out a space in my garage and bought nice plastic shelving for them and it is all stocked up with nice labeled bins as well.

Here are the pictures!

Bathroom before:

And here’s the Bath room After!

After

Here’s the Office Before:

Before

And here it is AFTER!

After

And Finally The Junk Room:

Before

And here it is AFTER!!! (There’s no sound in this video, it is a flash video)

[flv:http://www.freeyouup.com/allison/maddiesroom.flv 480 368]

So you can see I have been extremely busy!!! I do have an indoor garden this year though! So look for the post coming soon! I will also be updating my calendar with seed starting, transplanting and planting dates so go check it out!

Thanks for stopping by!

Sara Murray