Just Checking In...

It's been a crazy few days for me and I haven't had much time to garden let alone blog :P So because of unexpected business I have no Bloom Day post :'( but I will do a belated one sometime this week.

I am still working on the Ortho Elements research, I have more info I will share soon. I just need time to organize it all.

So, happy bloom day to all who had time! I envy you!

Ortho Elementals - More Questions than Answers

Yesterday I wrote about the lies that Ortho put on their Elementals Insecticidal Soap. I also emailed the info to Green UPGRADER and today they've got the info up also.

On my way home last night I stopped at one of the Home Depots I sometimes shop in to see if the final labeling of the product is the same as on Scotts website. Look like yes, if there were any changes they weren't to the info I'm concerned about. Red outlines by me.

Product on the shelf. Includes the "MAY BE USED UP TO DAY OF HARVEST" and OMRI Listed labeling.

 

 

"May be applied to edibles up to day of harvest"

Thanks for telling me which foods you want me to use this on Ortho.

I did a little (or rather a LOT) of thinking on this last night. I went back to ORMI's website to look more into them (after all, I've only known of them for a day or two). I am thinking on their statements on their About page

screenshot from OMRI - Copyright © 2010 OMRI

  So this insecticide could be used for a USDA certified organic farm... You know this leads me to think that a small scale farmer - like a local farmer's market vendor - could see this product on the shelf, spot the OMRI logo on the label and assume it was perfect for their organic produce. Especially since the packaging of the product is screaming at you to use it on your food from every angle. A small scale grower might even look it up on OMRI's website to make sure it's organic. And if that grower looked up this product on OMRI's site they'd see this:

 screenshot from OMRI - Copyright © 2010 OMRI

Farmers are people, and people aren't perfect. It's reasonable to assume that a farmer large or small scale might see the above result for their search for Ortho Elementals Insecticidal Soap and accept that as OMRI's approval - then go ahead and use the product just like its instructions say to... on the organic crops he/she is growing for consumers who want certified organic produce. What that farmer might miss (because we all make mistakes) is the info when you click the drop down for this product and the restriction against food crop usage:

screenshot from OMRI - Copyright © 2010 OMRI

I am more confused than ever about this. Why would OMRI approve something for organic growing - for products farmers can use to grow USDA certified organic produce - but not directly on that produce? Why would they allow their OMRI Listed logo to be used on that product's label if the label is also specifying the consumer to use it in a way not consistent with their approval restrictions?

When did I start sounding like an adult?

Sorry, tangent thought there. Their About info also has me thinking about OMRI. It says (and you can see in one of the screenshots above) they are non-profit and receive funding through donations, and "generates income through fees collected for the review of products intended for use in organic production or processing." For some reason this gives me a chill and reminds me of the USDA's deregulation process for Monanto's GMOs.

I am trying to find answers now. Unfortunately OMRI doesn't list an email address for questions. They have an online inquiry form that I filled out, but couldn't submit because their Captcha engine isn't working (it's not even showing up) and I keep getting error messages that the Captcha I entered being incorrect (can't even see or type one).

I have sent an email off to Scotts through their website reading:

Hi,
I was considering using your Elementals Insecticidal Soap product in my edible container garden. I am working towards a fully organic growing method and by this point I am only buying organic products. Preferable ones I make myself, are certified organic, or approved for USDA certified organic operations. This is just my own personal garden, I'm not selling any produce from it, but I want to make is as pure as I can.

I first heard of the Elementals line through Home Depot. I was happy to see on their (and your) website that it is safe for use on edibles and for organic growing. But then I noticed another info section on Home Depot's site that said it was not organic. I double checked Scotts product page which says it is.

I then checked OMRI since the product labeling states this item is ORMI Listed and found the following use restriction: "nonfood crop uses only; use on any food crop or fallow fields is prohibited." But your product clearly says it is food safe. Why does your ORMI approval depend on it not being used on food crops? If I understand OMRI's usage correctly, it means that this item would only be ok for USDA certified organic growing standards if I don't use it on edibles.

Would you please clarify this for me? I need an insecticidal soap for the summer, but it must be safe for my edibles.

Thank you,
Mary C.

That's non-threatening enough, no?

I think I'm going to continue to update on this...

Toe-may-toe-, Toe-ma-toe

Ah, tomatoes. The most popular garden endeavor. I am not immune, and I am expecting...

 

These are Sungold on a plant still hanging on to life from last fall. Yes, this orange color means they are ripe :) Very sweet and tangy itty bitty fruits.

 

The Mexico Midget should be the first of my 2011 tomatoes to ripen... I am anxiously awaiting these red cherry tomatoes. (and crossing my fingers they really are as prolific as reported)

This why little naked guy is a Clint Eastwood's Rowdy Red, Tomatofest says it will be "robust not for sissies bold, tomatoey flavors, with a firm, juicy flesh"

Amy's Sugar Gem looks like she's gonna be a good producer already! From Tomatofest: "sweet flavor and the tiny light gold sparkles in the red skin"

And finally miss Brandywine. Yet to set any fruit, but this is only the first flower cluster - I have high hopes for this summer. Although it may be too cold at night for them to set yet. It was very frustrating to coddle a rooted sucker off a Brandywine last fall all through winter checking daily for new fruit - only to learn they have a much higher temperature minimum to set fruit than cherry tomatoes :Z

Oh my! I forgot about my Purple Calabash! I am a bad green mother :'( I know she's flowering... I can't say for sure off the top of my head if she is setting fruit....

Next time... worms :)

LOTB Community Container Garden Update 1

I have been wanting to post about my green children participating in the LOTB Community Container Garden project. Fern came up with the idea of selecting a small variety of plants that can be grown in containers in many climates for her readers to give a try. She figured it'd be cool for many people to be able to give input on the same plants to help each other. She also set up a forum for participants to have one central place to post about it.

So out of the five varieties chosen I am growing 3 because I already had seeds for two and I was excited to hear about the other. I already had my tomatoes and cucs picked out for the year.

Here's how my green babies were doing on April 12, about a month after sowing:

 sunflower Sunspot

This was doing so well I had already potted it in a plastic 12" pot I found somewhere

 basil Purple Petra

 garlic chives

On April 22 I planted another of the Sunspots in one of my tompots from last year with some lettuce Marvel of Four Seasons for contrast. I also tucked in a cambridge blue lobelia that had volunteered in another pot.

On April 29 I stopped by home for lunch and to my horror...

 I have no idea what happened

My best guess is it just got so hot that day it cooked :;(

At least it's two sisters have been flourishing. Here's the tompot one on May 2:

Incidentally, somehow during the month of April I managed to grow a very nice set of nails despite all my mucking about without garden gloves... They've since been broken, cracked, snagged, ragged, clipped & etc.

May 8th I was finally able to transplant the garlic chives into the Utility Rack Planter and I put a basil in with my tomato Mexico Midget.

 

Clint Eastwood is bending to greet them hehehe...

 btw, that 13" pot was $6.99 at Ikea..*hinthint*

 the tompotted sunflower and it's lettuce entourage seem happy

the fudog to the bottom right was a Goodwill find :)

  

it spends its days taunting me with the promise of flowers to come...

There is another sunflower I've left in a 1 gal pot because I can't decide another spot to put it right now. I will also probably grow some more the rest of spring through fall.

Oh, and instead of thinning the basil seedlings I managed to carefully separate them so I now have 5 more transplants. I am going to pot a couple of them and if anyone in the LA area would like the others lemme know...

So as of today the sunflowers have still not yet bloomed :( The anticipation is making me antsy :/ I'm hoping by this weekend the chives will be doing well enough I can snip some to put in a meal. I don't think I'll glean anything off the basil for a few more weeks.

And that's it, we're all caught up on my Community Container Garden :) Good luck to everyone else participating too!

Upcoming Plans

Hello,

So I've returned to the country after a holiday trip, and my evening class is over, and many other distractions are taken care of... Now I think I'm officially back from hiatus :)

Been spending time thinking about how best to keep myself on track in different areas of my life. As far gardening here's my overall plan to get on track:

• Bulletin Board - calendar, LA monthly planting guides, monthly garden to-do list, booklist, visit wish list.
• Garden - use the darn bulletin board to keep up to date on projects and garden chores.
• Learning - try to read a new garden book a month, and visit at least one new garden related place or meet with other gardeners.
• Budget - I started a new 2011 budget for myself. I want to keep track especially of my garden expenses vs. returns.
• Blog - use bulletin board info for a monthly overall plan entry and help keep up with entries, also to berate self in sticking to my to-do list.

So here's what I've I'm hoping to accomplish as far as projects for the January:

1. Make a cool bulletin board - using stuff I have and possible from dollar or thrift shop if I need to.
2. Make a second composting container (oh that's right, I've finally got one going - more on that later)
3. Build a pot trellis for John.
4. Make seed bombs with Jean
5. Build two LED Grow Boxes
6. Get my spring Green Babies sowed!

 This weekend's focus will be on numbers 4, 5 & 6. I think 1 through 3 will come next weekend. Hmmm, I think I've started my list off a bit backwards....meh.

Here's a preview of my plot.... uh, plan that is for numba 3:

Still Not Dead

...yet :9

Just a quick entry so I don't forget I have a blog ;) It's just been to crazy to keep up with entriess, I would really like to do a fall or even full year summary later this month after my night class ends and work projects are finished before the new building code takes effect.

Anyway, my container garden is doing good, I've got alot of new seed varieties to try out this spring via trades, and the front yard is about to get prepped for spring...

My one guilty pleasure during this crazy autumn has been keeping up with everyone's gardening blogs. I'm suffering a bit of zone envy. It's kind of exciting seeing so many gardeners scrambling to winterize everything and stash plants away from the frost. In LA instead  of full on winter most of nature just goes into this weird limbo state. It seems like a cheat down here to get the naked deciduous trees and see all the death and dormancy of many plants - but no snow! No snow angels, snowmen, or snow days off work.

But you know what?

I got fresh strawberries in December so HA!!!!

Ok, maybe that was a little uncalled for. But if we're having the coldest winter in my entire life at least nature could throw us a little snow to make it worth it :/ Anyone else feel like that?

This Morning

This morning in my world...

The Sweet Peas are a-bloomin'

The Mums are quite confused as to the season o.O

Alaska Nasturtium #1 is putting on foliage and getting decked out :)

Despite never going into proper container the Quinoa will soon be ready for harvest!

(currently growing in soymilk and ice cream cartons)

Allowing some Broccoli and Radishes to go to bolt and go to seed has proven highly effective at attracting pollinators, it looks as if most (if not all) the tomato blossoms have been pollinated!

This Brandywine's tomatos should contrast nicely with its yellow cage :)

(aluminum cage painted with Rust-o-leum's Painter's Touch hint hint)

And this corral/orange cage should look nice with the Yellow Pear tomatos as well <3

...that's it for today!

Landscaping Finished!

Well it took about a month and half for the major work and another 2 weeks for the lawn and other plantings - but my parent's new yard is all done! Pretty much - there will always be more tweaking to do....mwuahahahaha... I realize I don't have an overall pic yet to compare with the last picture taken before work started, but I'll get one this weekend.

First the new flower beds (that aren't roses that is):

 

You might recognize these two from a previous entry. I am so pleased with how well the sunflowers, statice and calendulas are doing! I even squeezed some zinnias in at a later date. Dad complained they would all die or look terrible because they were too closely planted. Jaja Da :) I do agree that I put the statice too close together but since they're annuals I can fix that later. That's another thing I realized a couple days after planting - this entire bed is annuals. Oops. Well, that actually works out since I started some butterfly guara from seed and that will need to go somewhere eventually :)

The bed with the blue butterfly runt is doing very well also. You can see that it is happily recovering from my almost killing it by pruning...in fact I had to prune some of the new shoots so it doesn't grow too densely. Dad's old shasta's are in there and about ready to bloom, the Sea Shell cosmos are already there (and mom really likes). The cupids darts seem to be doing fine, they should bloom next year.  

 

I had a lot of help from John on this bed, he helped me to till and amend the soil and to sort out a bunch of clay clods. This time I tried letting the tilled soil sit for a week before planting so the fertilizer and stuff could settle. I don't think that really helped though :/ This bed has had a had a lot of trouble so far and mostly my fault I think. The top pic is when I figuring out where things should go and the second is about a month or so later. There were originally larkspurs, delphiniums, Isaac House scabiosas, white candytufts and bluebells. Later I tucked in some zinnias and catnip to replace some cancytufts and a bluebell that didn't make it. The scabiosa and candytufts had a real hard time in here, transplanted too soon or getting too much sun.

And the last one. In the rear right are hollyhocks; a couple of Carnival ones that I started last year and hope to see lots of blooms out of this summer, and a couple of Indian Summer that can mature next year. Most of the rest of dad's shasta's (keeping a backup in a container for that accidental annual bed), a celosia (there were 3 but two of them didn't make is *sigh* I replaced them with Bright Lights cosmos) and lots of ranunculus along the front. You can just see in the corners in front of the bed where I was able to clear out a space for my foliage leaves (that's what I'm calling them - lost the name tags for them and can't figure out what the heezy they are). The above pic is about a week after planting.

The flowers tucked between the planters and the fence are doing okay. The longer stretch has portulaca, ranunculus and calendulas. The ports are pretty insignificant so far but I have high hopes for them. The calendulas are really making up for them for now! My sister's abandoned geraniums are doing nicely in another area.

 

My dad decided after all the planters had been set in place that the front portion of the driveway should be replaced because of a couple of long cracks in it. When he told my mom she said if he was doing the front he should do the back because there were even more cracks and portions had settled to drain towards the house (nevermind I told him that last year and he shrugged me off). So that added another week of loud noise and inconvenience...but was worth it. After that was done my dad asked me to use the 20 cans of leftover paint from the last 10 years or so and do the fence. Then he said "you paint one board one color and the next another and another" - this is something very out of character for my dad (I checked him fo alien implants). It is the kind of wonderful idea they normally tell me I'm crazy for. It was great fun! John helped me out with the painting also. You can also see my container garden has been relocated from the grassy sideyard to the backyard...I have new big plans for it >:) 

 

And just this past weekend it was pretty much wrapped up with a little retaining border around the avocado tree to hold the deep watering in and finding a spot for the big blue butterfly bush which has also recovered. It's doing well with creeping jenny and purple allysum.

I am momentarily bummed, there was an awesome shot of the lawn a couple of days after they rolled it in and now I can't find it to show you! Oh well. Lastly, the Felis silvestris "White Panther" approves:

now if it would just stop "fertilizing" the roses...

This Morning

I've been meaning to do an update post on the general state of my garden and the parent's landscaping - but life is contriving to keep me from getting to it :/

So here' just a micro glance at what I paid attention to during my morning tending:

CATERPILLAR ON VEGGIE OH NOES!!!

Lucky for caterpillars I like butterflies and have a fear of accidentally killing off the last of an endangered species (and a buddhist buddy who would shake his head at me) - so I relocated it to a hefty Sunflower leaf that can survive it's infancy. It had been munching away on a cabbage - lucky for cabbage I wanted to harvest some outter leaves for a coworker to steam. Darn those purty white butterflies I saw last weekend! Great - a quick internet search tells me they may have been Small Cabbage Whites - and there were several all over my crop area! AH!

BTW that was one of the flower beds I planted about a month ago and I'm happy to report all green children are doing well! The calendula is already blooming and the statice isn't far behind! Although the cosmo seeds never came up o.O I did plant some zinnias in their place, and used some of the dill the other night.

I found this lovely lady chilling out on a celery leaf :) Said bug was under my poor aphid infested cauliflower and hopefully defending the celery from invasion! I've been randomly seeing ladybugs in my personal area - some of them stuck around hoorah! Don't know if they're from the ones I collected at the beach or the batch I bought a couple weeks ago at the nursery...

MY FIRST CAULIFLOWER OH NOES!!!

I ended up putting the whole thing into the green bin :( I was afraid of them spreading to my healthy plants. At least there is another cauliflower soon to be harvested :) And darn it I just remember I forgot to trim the quinoa that had leaf miners again grrrr....

That is all for today :) Have a swell week peoples