Oil and the Environment and YOU

We have a micro environment around us at any given time of the day. I am speaking of our lawns. I know we are a container site, and we container garden for numerous reasons. However, we can't grow our lawn in a container. If we could I would have it in one, guaranteed! The environment has us all buzzing these with the news of a disaster in the Gulf. We all have to cringe when we think of what is happening and what it will effect. So when you service your mower, what do you do with the oil? We have taken the time to link you to a website from Briggs and Stratton that will give you a location of their dealers near you to take your oil to. As long as we are on the subject of links, each of the advertisement you see here are free to you as a service to help you find things on the web. As always if you have a topic we can research, please let us know. We are good at it!

Tomato Blight ... Do you need to read this?

This fungal disease firsts manifests on a plant's lower leaves as very small brown on black circles with lighter-colored centers. Eventually, the number of spots increases and the leaves turn yellow. As the disease moves up the plant, it damages its ability to photosynthesize, flower, and set fruit.
You have to be ruthless to root out tomato blight. First, remove any damaged leaves you see; if too much of a plant has been damaged, uproot it entirely and dispose of it. DO NOT put the diseased plant material in your compost heap or bin; it needs to be either buried far away from your garden, or burned. Wash your hands with soap between inspecting each plant so you won't infect healthy ones.
As far as getting rid of tomato blight goes, you'll either have to wait it out or turn to container gardening, because the organisms responsible can survive in the soil for 3-5 years. That's why you should never replant new tomato seedlings in an area recently struck by blight. To be safe, you'll need to move your tomato patch somewhere else for several years.
If you're growing tomatoes in containers, dispose of the infected potting media (again, NOT in your compost) and scrub the containers vigorously, inside and out, with warm, soapy water followed by a bleach solution. Be sure to rinse the bleach residue off the pots before replanting in them.

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Container Gardening - tips and plans

Making the bed

The next thing to do is complete the soil infill for the "bed". We have a 5'x6' treated 2x6 frame with "a mattress" of 8-40lb bags of moisture control potting soil. the next "sheet" layer will be 1 bag of composted cow manure, topped with 4 bags of standard variety topsoil as a "comforter" and to seal the moisture in. In other words we want to make the roots cozy. Now we have an acre of yard and woods so this will be a destination in and of itself when we garden or when someone comes to the house to visit. We entertain on the screened in back porch and the 3 decks in the back yard.
     The next photos are of unique container ideas. The broken pot we found for $2 in central Florida and you can see by the corn cob on the top (it's a partially eaten by the pesky squirrels feeder cob) that the pot was about three feet tall. We will grow Plants out of it to make it look like they are spilling out. It's a work in progress! The next container is.... you guessed it, an old wheelbarrow we inherited from the road. Now we know that this may not be your thing, however it just bears mentioning that you can be creative with your containers that you garden in.

Flower "bed" (a raised container garden)

We have been looking for the perfect headboard for several months and wouldn't you know it... we went to a garage sale just the other day and there it was! A$5 brass headboard, ready to take home to our "bed" room and build a raised bed for flowers! To the right is a "throw rug" of ajuga groundcover, and to the left is a chair of coleus. The footboard is abelia.