Sunflower Themed Party Ideas

This past week our we hosted our daughter's wedding rehearsal dinner. We, Dean and I, went with a sunflower themed party idea with black and white check table linens. Perfect idea for a June wedding with the rehearsal dinner in our back garden.

When my husband and I were gathering our sunflower wedding decorating ideas,  we wanted to save money as always and chose to use our collection of black and white enamelware. You can see we even used our wall hanging enamel flower market container. Jars were inserted to hold the mix of sunflowers and zinnias from our garden.

I used white table linens I already had and ordered the black and white check table runners from Amazon and a pack of black and white check napkins. It was very inexpensive to use these to bring in the checks we wanted.

I knew I wanted sunflower cupcakes for the dessert table and found a friend who is a talented baker and hired her to make them. They really were cute and set off the sunflower themed dessert table.

We rented white chairs and filled all of our mason jars with sunflowers for table centerpieces with sunflowers. Along with yellow napkins from the dollar store, we had very frugal sunflower centerpieces for parties or wedding receptions.

 I hope you enjoyed a peek into our daughter's rehearsal dinner.

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Last Spring Garden Tour - Keeping Garden Alive In Hot Weather

We have had a beautiful spring but high heat and summer weather has arrived. Keeping the garden alive in hot temperatures is always a struggle.

Enjoy the last spring garden tour below and while you are there, follow us on Youtube.

Tips to Keep the Garden Going in Hot Weather

Plant plants that are for summer growing season. Things like pansies are going to fade quick in hot weather so I go around and pull spring plants as the hot weather arrives.

If you don't get rain, water daily if needed. Set sprinklers to run in morning hours before evaporation takes place.

For containers, I water in the morning and in very hot weather, I may give them an afternoon or evening drink as well. Move containers to more shade for heat waves if they are easily moved.

Mulch deeply. A two in layer of mulch can lower the surface temperature over 20 degrees and keeps moisture in the ground.

Mini Fairy Garden, DIY Worm Composter, Small Front Yard Orchard - Garden Update June 9th

A little video tour of our front yard garden for June. See our Mini Fairy Garden, DIY Worm Composter, Small Front Yard Orchard and what is growing right now.




Here is the slow cooker peach cobbler recipe.
A miniature fairy house to start your own mini fairy garden.

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Five On Monday - New Favorite Cookbook & Garden News

Our garden, oh it is bringing us so much joy right now. A cool May has made the flowers really last. 

Find this Cookbook

Our garden, oh it is bringing us so much joy right now. A cool May has made the flowers really last. I find surprises at hubby decorates even outside. He hung this old bee skep out among all the vines on our garage wall.

The patio fountain was cleaned and readied for spring and summer on the brick patio. We love all these vines for the way they soften the side of our garage wall. You can see more of this in Softening a Hard scape.

I am working on a little white garden. In our small backyard we have to do areas in mini garden room form. I already removed those two red begonias as they were bugging me and transplanted them elsewhere in the garden.

I received this new cookbook as a gift and I love it. I have already made two dishes from it. I cook for so many people that this is perfect. I want to keep collecting hard backed cookbooks and not only collect recipes online as I love the time perusing a cookbook looking for ideas.

Found some darling plates on clearance at Home goods. I was down to only a few salad/dessert plates and these were perfect. $3 a piece on clearance and I had a gift card.
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Five On Friday - Farm Fresh

Awe, April in Southern California is such a pretty time. Not yet too hot and days are spent gardening and cooking up farm fresh goodies from the garden and hubby is busy putting up farm fresh decor.

Chickens and farmhouse inspired decor have long been what I always seem to gravitate to when I am decorating. Remember the old rooster wall paper borders? Yep, I had some, did you? I think rooster decor will never go out of fashion.

I love my gingham rooster kitchen canisters and probably get asked about those the most. They are from Certified International and Amazon carries a ton of really cute ones so check it out.

My garden is just so pretty right now and loved all our rain Southern California received this year. Cilantro is something I always let go to seed as it makes such a pretty garden flower and then they reseed and sprout for me again in the fall.

I love hanging baskets and picked up this new one to add to our patio. Once summer comes, they won't survive but for now they are beautiful.

The patriotic decor comes out next week and we will keep it up until after Labor day. This vintage Butter-Nut coffee can came from hubby's grandpa's garage complete with old nails in it but I rescued it for the house.
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SoCal Rain 1/12/17

We have been having some much needed heavy rains. According to my own rain gauges we have had almost three inches where I live in the last two days. Here is a quick video of my very soggy flooded backyard.



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How To Grow Broccolini

Broccolini is a tender green that is great for growing in fall and spring and even through winter if you live in a warm winter area like us. Perfect steamed or for sauteing.

This is a short video on how to grow broccolini like I do in our front garden.

Fall Garden Video

I posted a little video of what we have growing in the garden right now.  If I sound funny, I have had a little cold so I apologize. So come along for a Garden tour video.

The most delicious tender green beans I mention in the video are dragon tongue beans. I don't think I will plant anything else again, they are so good. This is the first time I planted them so I will for sure be saving seeds from them.

Easy Printable Seed Packets, Keep Critters From Your Vegetables

I am in the garden every day. Always in search of the best garden tools to have or at least inexpensive garden tools. Here are a few favorite garden finds and gardening tips from my own yard, Easy Printable Seed Packets, Keep Critters From Your Vegetables.

 I am loving these Printable seed packets. I just printed them up and am saving lots of seeds from our garden. They make nice little gift tags too.

Gardening Tips And Getting The Porch Ready For Memorial Day

We have been working in the garden daily. Popping in to share a couple gardening tips on the blog and our Memorial day porch.

I was going to throw out this old rusty garden cart but decided to plop it in the garden to grow tomatoes in. I am trying a couple new varietes of tomatoes in the wheelbarrow. Smaller bush type tomato plants are great for containers. Remember to feed as tomatoes are heavy feeders.

We get a lot of opposums and fruit rats in the garden if we are not careful at outsmarting them. Our backyard vegetable garden is a problem area so I use hardware cloth round cages to grow all my veggies in. You can see this squash is doing great in the critter proof cage. I just reach in and harvest. 

Cutting the vegetable protector at least 18 - 24 inches high is important.

I love to add patriotic decor to our porch for the summer holidays from Memorial day through Labor day.
Decorating ideas for the American flag are many but we love to show our pride and display some red white and blue.

I have had this five finger flag bracket for years. I just buy new small American flags ever couple of years.

You can check out how we decorate and celebrate Memorial day here: Memorial day parties and decor

My Top Four Spring Flowers

Every year I love to discover new flowers and tour the local nurseries. Here are my top four spring flowers blooming now in our garden.

Late spring is almost our summer here in Southern California. The flowers are all blooming like crazy. Come summer the heat makes our garden stall so we savor the color and being in the garden now.

Gardening in Southern California is awesome. You can grow year round and always have something blooming. Here are my favorite spring flowers in our garden for 2016.

Spring Flowers for 2016

I discovered this petunia a week ago at Home Depot. It is petunia, night sky. I am heading back to buy another before they are gone. The petals of the petunia really do look like a starry night sky.

Last year we bought one milkweed plant and this year we have some nice volunteers. I love how it attracts the butterflies and the monarch caterpillars are the cutest. We also plant butterfly bush to attract the butterflies.

 Hollyhocks are the quintessential cottage garden flower. Mine were huge this year and and I can see lots of small ones coming up in the garden. They are a biennial so the ones sprouting this year will not bloom until next year.

And though not a flower, no less colorful is our Emperor Japanese Maple we bought last year. This is our first spring with the tree leafing out and it is absolutely vivid and gorgeous. And yes you can grow Japanese maple in Southern California. This even gets hot afternoon sun. Just make sure they do not dry out.
Remember to feed your flowers with my homemade two ingredient flower food.

So those are my favorites for this year. Do you have a favorite flower for the year so far?

Cottage Garden Ideas

My favorite type of flowering garden is the cottage garden. These cottage garden ideas will inspire you to add color and the fun more relaxed style of the cottage garden to your home.

Cottage gardens are more relaxed than a formal garden. I prefer this method as I can just tuck plants in together and enjoy the mass of color a beautiful cottage garden provides.

What Vegetables To Plant In The Fall

What vegetables can you plant in the fall garden? If you have mild winters like Southern California or a cold frame to grow winter vegetables, now is the time to start planning and in many places you should already be planting your fall vegetable garden.

I am slowly clearing out sections of old plants from the summer and prepping the garden for fall planting. Our daytime temperatures are still very high which makes seed germination difficult but having the soil ready for a week when temperatures are cooler is my goal. 

For those chicken owners, don't forget to save your edible garden plants for chickens. They will enjoy munching on them and then you can toss them into the compost. I do not however give them my tomato plants, potato vines or any diseased plants I do not want to end up in my compost bin. Better yet, if you can safely let your chickens clean out your garden for you, let them. I cannot do this in my front yard garden but I do let them do it in my backyard vegetable garden.

 I have a complete list of what I plant in my urban garden listing vegetables to plant in fall for Southern California.

 I have a complete list of what I plant in my urban garden listing vegetables to plant in fall for Southern California. Think of greens and root vegetables. Many types of kale are frost hardy and can survive pretty low night time temperatures.

Of course for my area, we have a 12 month growing season. We really have two summer planting times, spring and early fall and then we can grow cool season crops from late fall to spring.

Burpee has a great tool. You put in your zip code and then click on your growing calendar and it lists exactly what you can plant and when for your growing zone including vegetables to plant in fall and winter.

Vegetables to plant in fall for spring harvest include your cool season root vegetables. I put loads of beets in every year and do several successive plantings so I always have them. This year I would like to try planting some parsnips. We love roasted root vegetables and parsnips would be a great addition.

Growing your own root vegetables in good organic soil, provides you with nutrients that we are lacking nowadays from crops grown in over worked, chemically laden soil.

I cannot stress enough, how satisfying it is, to head to your kitchen garden and harvest fresh vegetables that you serve within hours of picking. Maximum vitamins and nutrients, organic and money saving right there in your garden. Plus the exercise you get working that garden only adds to the benefits.

Get Growing - The Application Of Gardening

Whether you use your green thumb to take care of a garden or you till the land professionally, using a smart phone makes horticulture and farming easier than ever. As the attached infographic proves, the application of gardening has improved every aspect of such industries.

There are hundreds of gardening apps available for download, and they all train users in the best ways to raise seeds into long-lasting vegetation. The best of them include Garden Compass, Leafsnap, and Life. You can use these three programs in combination to check the livelihood of your plants against a picture database of healthy ones, then plan your maintenance routine for their upkeep.

If you’re a professional crop grower, there are many helpful apps for you as well. You can deploy GPS to figure out where your tractors are during their daily journeys, you can identify the best locations to seed your crops, and you can select the best methods to protect your investment.

Farming has always operated as a higher tech industry than the average consumer realizes, and the digital era empowers agriculturists like never before. If you’ve ever faced a difficult issue in raising your crops, some other farmer has built an app to address the problem. For gardeners and ranchers, the best is yet to come, too. Interactive tools such as sprinklers and soil monitors will maximize your output in future years.

Smart phone apps are a game changer for planters and farmers. The above infographic will help you learn more about the changing agricultural climate.

                                                                

How To Make An Inground Composter For Your Garden

I am going to show you how to make a super easy DIY inground composter and for free too!

Not everyone has the space or desire to keep a large compost pile that you have to turn and maintain. Maybe you don't want to worry about attracting critters to a compost bin in your backyard. I am going to show you how I made an inground composter that also acts as a worm composter you place right in your garden.

To begin, find a spot in your garden where maybe you want to revive the soil. Cause this is going to do it for you. 

1. Take a five gallon nursery pot. They have large drainage holes and you want that.

2. Now dig a hole where you want the compost bin about four inches deep and set the pot drainage holes down in the hole. Fill in the dirt around the pot.

Now find an old bucket. I use a galvanized one. They fit perfectly down in the pot. This will act as a lid keeping flies and rodents out. I have even used a terra cotta pot that fit too.

Begin adding your kitchen scraps. Only fruit and vegetable scraps. But don't forget the eggs shells and the coffee grounds. Throw them in there too cause the worms will love them.

About twice a week, squirt some water in there. It helps flush the nutrients down into the soil.

Keep the lid on at all times. Every once in a while, lift the pot and you will see all the worms that are coming into the pot through the drainage holes. They are breaking down the scraps and making great fertilizer.

I usually plant around the base and the plants will love it. In the photo above I have an inverted tomato cage and have planted cucumber vines to grow up the wire supports.

When your plants are done and you are ready to pull them out, go ahead and move the pot to a new hole and area of the garden you want to revitalize the soil a bit.

Patio Umbrella Provides Shade And Protection For Chicken Coop

If you have backyard chickens, then you need to provide them with shade. Here is a simple shade idea for the chicken coop. We use old patio umbrellas to give our chickens shade from the sun and shelter from the rain.

We have a system where when one of our patio umbrellas needs to be replaced, we put the old one out in the chicken coop run.

This is our second upcycled patio umbrella we now use in the chicken coop. My husband dug down about a foot and sunk the pole. It gives me plenty of clearance to walk under. This chickens love it. You could even pour a cement base in the ground using a piece of pvc pipe for the umbrella pole to slide into.

The umbrella offers another benefit and that is protection from large birds that were landing down on the fence. Now they cannot get down underneath the umbrella to sit on the fence.

So next time don't toss that older umbrella, just repurpose it in the chicken coop. If you really wanted to be fancy you could go out and get the chickens fancy new ones that color coordinate with the chicken coop.

Use The Chicken Run And Other Fencing To Grow A Verticle Garden

Some say chickens and gardens cannot coexist but that isn't true. If you are smarter than the chickens, and take a few extra steps, you can raise chickens and have a prolific garden in the same space.

When you garden on a small urban lot, every inch of soil counts. When I added a chicken coop and run to our yard, I lost some of that valuable planting real estate. After the first year of getting used to raising chickens, I decided to try to use that wonderful vertical fencing that was sitting right in my back yard. Problem was, I had chickens on the other side of that fence and they will try and devour anything green they can reach.

Through trial and error, I came up with a way to grow vegetables along the fence of my chicken run. Grass runs along the outside of the run so I had to plant on the inside. Protection of the new seedlings from the chickens was my first task. The soil was already wonderfully loose and amended with lots of chicken droppings so I was good to go there. I did dig a nice big loose hole and drop some compost on the bottom so the roots could grow down and not out and not be harmed by the chickens scratching the nearby soil.

Hardware cloth, chickens wire and small roll out fencing from the hardware store is your friend. I strategically place it in areas that I need to protect the plants from my chickens.

First, I created a semi circle form about 18 inches high out of hardware cloth. I have bantams so you may need to make your form higher to prevent standard breeds from getting at your plants. I planted the seedlings, climbing vines are the best for this, and then placed the wire form around and right up to the fence and used some wire to secure the form to the metal chicken run fencing. Chickens will dig up anything they can get to as well so I place protection all around the base of the plants. I used wood logs at first but have since switched to bricks to make a more attractive growing area.

Pumpkins and cucumbers grow along chicken coop fence.

Now you sit back and watch your veggies grow. For the most part the chickens just ignore the plants. Once the plants get higher than the plant munchers can reach, they take off and provide beauty, food and additional shade in the summer for the chickens. So far I have grown cucumbers, squash and pumpkins along the fence and even tomatoes one year that grew from the seeds of tomatoes I had thrown in the run for the chickens to eat. If you are worried the fruit will be too heavy for the vine, create little slings out of old fabric scraps or nylons you can tie up around the fruit. Makes a great conversation piece when people try and figure out what is hanging in little hammocks along the run. If the chickens happen to get some leaves, then all the better. It is all just a part of learning to garden with chickens successfully in a small space but it can be done and be beautiful at the same time.

A Week In The Garden - Chicken Update

The garden is a tumbly mess of plants right now. I love it though. June in Southern California is bountiful. We are picking vegetables daily and everything has filled in. Summer heat has not taken its toll just yet, so we soak up all the time we can outdoors.

Though I grew most of my tomatoes from seed this year, I did plant a few of the heirloom varieties I have wanted to try. I have noticed they are slower to set but I am starting to see the first of many yummy tomato dishes that are ahead.

Strawberry plants I potted up last year are bearing fruit and they never seem to make it in the house. We pick and eat them warm from the sun. So sweet and juicy.

My bantam chickens are laying almost daily. Their little eggs make up about half an egg but are perfect for my kiddo who loves to eat a fried egg sandwich daily. These two know how to pose for the camera and let me tell you chickens are notoriously hard to get a good shot of.

Now Biff and Buff are a couple of happy gals and I do not believe we have seen the first egg yet. I thought maybe they had laid one because it wasn't in the nest box, but that was weeks ago. I was probably one of my crazy bantams playing a joke on more or just dropping it like it was hot.

They should be laying soon. Combs are getting red and growing larger. I will look forward to nice sized eggs daily for sure.

Little Garden In The Big City

I garden in our little garden in the big city because I love every aspect of it. The planning, the soil, the work. It is one of life's greatest joys. Though I live not far from Los Angeles and there isn't a farm anywhere around me, we manage to eat a lot of fresh picked organic produce almost daily because of our little garden.

Below is a snapshot of what I picked in one day this week from our urban garden. That does not even show the vegetables I harvested throughout the week. With a little planning and changes in your existing garden beds, you can start growing food crops that will feed your family the freshest organic produce you can find. The nutrients that you are getting when you eat something just minutes from picking, is optimum nutrition,

Our whole yard has not been turned over to rows of fruit and veggies, though I would love that, but by enriching the soil with lots of organic compost from our chickens, our soil allows for densely planted garden beds that produce abundantly. Planting this way saves on water as the soil is shaded by all growth and cuts down on weeds.

I never till our soil. If an area needs a little loosening I will do that as I mix in compost but now after years of good organic soil amending, I just plant. The roots of my plants are longer than ever. They grow deep reaching for water and nutrients deep down in the soil. This reduces the need for water.

I want to inspire you to start tucking some food crops into your existing garden. Get some compost, plant some FOOD, and see how good it feels to tend your little bit of land, or even a collection of pots on a balcony. I grow lots of what you see in containers. With proper care, this is a great alternative if you don't have a yard or have less than perfect soil conditions.

 When you till the soil, you tend to your soul. There really is something about that. Go organic and you will see your yard abundant will life. We see so many butterflies and bees in our yard every day and this is when they keep saying there is a shortage of both. Not in our garden.

Our chickens can nibble freely, as I do not use any pesticides. My daughter often picks fruit and veggies and eats them right there cause that is what her momma does. There might be a little dirt but we wipe it off and eat as we harvest. Our food is safe and fresh and I know where it came from.
So from my little garden in the bit city, here is hoping you get your hands dirty real soon. You won't be sorry.

If you have any questions or a topic about gardening you would like to know more about, please feel free to leave it in the comments section and I will address it for you.

Updated: We no longer keep backyard chickens and you can read our story here.