Condo Blues: gardening
Showing posts with label gardening. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gardening. Show all posts

Friday, July 5, 2019

Friday Favorites Linky Party 483

Time to add your fantastic and creative craft and DIY projects, recipes, and ideas!

Let's Party!




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Jerri at Simply Sweet Home - Twitter | FB | G+ | Pin | Inst
Lisa at Condo Blues - Twitter | FB | G+ | Pin | Inst
Kelly at Under a Texas Sky - Twitter | FB | G+ | Pin | Inst | BL
Jennifer at Busy Being Jennifer - Twitter | FB | Pin | Inst

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You can show your love for this week's favorites by going over and commenting on the posts and by pinning or sharing!

Thursday, June 27, 2019

Friday Favorites Linky Party 482

Time to add your fantastic and creative craft and DIY projects, recipes, and ideas!

Let's Party!




Please support and follow our lovely blog party hostesses:



Jerri at Simply Sweet Home - Twitter | FB | G+ | Pin | Inst
Lisa at Condo Blues - Twitter | FB | G+ | Pin | Inst
Kelly at Under a Texas Sky - Twitter | FB | G+ | Pin | Inst | BL
Jennifer at Busy Being Jennifer - Twitter | FB | Pin | Inst

If you are featured this week, be sure and grab a featured button for your blog!



You can show your love for this week's favorites by going over and commenting on the posts and by pinning or sharing!

Thursday, June 20, 2019

Friday Favorites Linky Party 481

Rain, rain GO AWAY! This year is mirroring last year when Ohio broke the record for average rainfall in 2018. Throughout the state have had flash floods, road closures,and full on floods of areas in the state that rarely if ever flood. Farmer's fields are as wet as over saturated sponges and there are many that haven't planted and doubt they will this year.

Personally we're OK, and the helpful folks at the Ohio Department of Transportation have come up with a creative solution to clean up all of this wet mess, check it out!

  
A great creative reuse for state snowplows!

Time to add your fantastic and creative craft and DIY projects, recipes, and ideas!

Let's Party!




Please support and follow our lovely blog party hostesses:



Jerri at Simply Sweet Home - Twitter | FB | G+ | Pin | Inst
Lisa at Condo Blues - Twitter | FB | G+ | Pin | Inst
Kelly at Under a Texas Sky - Twitter | FB | G+ | Pin | Inst | BL
Jennifer at Busy Being Jennifer - Twitter | FB | Pin | Inst

If you are featured this week, be sure and grab a featured button for your blog!



You can show your love for this week's favorites by going over and commenting on the posts and by pinning or sharing!

Thursday, June 13, 2019

Friday Favorites Linky Party 480

Time to add your fantastic and creative craft and DIY projects, recipes, and ideas!

Let's Party!




Please support and follow our lovely blog party hostesses:



Jerri at Simply Sweet Home - Twitter | FB | G+ | Pin | Inst
Lisa at Condo Blues - Twitter | FB | G+ | Pin | Inst
Kelly at Under a Texas Sky - Twitter | FB | G+ | Pin | Inst | BL
Jennifer at Busy Being Jennifer - Twitter | FB | Pin | Inst

If you are featured this week, be sure and grab a featured button for your blog!



You can show your love for this week's favorites by going over and commenting on the posts and by pinning or sharing!

Thursday, June 6, 2019

Friday Favorites Linky Party 479

Time to add your fantastic and creative craft and DIY projects, recipes, and ideas!

Let's Party!




Please support and follow our lovely blog party hostesses:



Jerri at Simply Sweet Home - Twitter | FB | G+ | Pin | Inst
Lisa at Condo Blues - Twitter | FB | G+ | Pin | Inst
Kelly at Under a Texas Sky - Twitter | FB | G+ | Pin | Inst | BL
Jennifer at Busy Being Jennifer - Twitter | FB | Pin | Inst

If you are featured this week, be sure and grab a featured button for your blog!



You can show your love for this week's favorites by going over and commenting on the posts and by pinning or sharing!

Thursday, May 30, 2019

Friday Favorites Linky Party 478

Time to add your fantastic and creative craft and DIY projects, recipes, and ideas!

Let's Party!




Please support and follow our lovely blog party hostesses:



Jerri at Simply Sweet Home - Twitter | FB | G+ | Pin | Inst
Lisa at Condo Blues - Twitter | FB | G+ | Pin | Inst
Kelly at Under a Texas Sky - Twitter | FB | G+ | Pin | Inst | BL
Jennifer at Busy Being Jennifer - Twitter | FB | Pin | Inst

If you are featured this week, be sure and grab a featured button for your blog!



You can show your love for this week's favorites by going over and commenting on the posts and by pinning or sharing!

Sunday, May 26, 2019

How to Make Garden Plant Markers

The theme of this year’s container herb garden is Hey, That’s Different, Let’s See If It Will Grow (and We Need Cilantro.)

Which means I need plant markers to identify what this stuff is once it comes time to harvest it for cooking.  Sure, some of the plants came with a plastic plant label stuck in the pot but I had to split some of those plants up into different plant pots that make up my small patio container garden.

I want a set of plant markers that is cute and somewhat unique.  I turned to my little stash of on deck items to repurpose (or formally recycle in our bin after a given time limit) and made plant markers from recycled aluminum cans. I got four plant tags from one aluminum pop can and put the scrap into my city recycling bin.

DIY Garden Markers from Recycled Aluminum Cans


How to make cute unique  DIY garden plant marker tags
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Thursday, May 23, 2019

Friday Favorites Linky Party 477

Time to add your fantastic and creative craft and DIY projects, recipes, and ideas!

Let's Party!




Please support and follow our lovely blog party hostesses:



Jerri at Simply Sweet Home - Twitter | FB | G+ | Pin | Inst
Lisa at Condo Blues - Twitter | FB | G+ | Pin | Inst
Kelly at Under a Texas Sky - Twitter | FB | G+ | Pin | Inst | BL
Jennifer at Busy Being Jennifer - Twitter | FB | Pin | Inst

If you are featured this week, be sure and grab a featured button for your blog!



You can show your love for this week's favorites by going over and commenting on the posts and by pinning or sharing!

Thursday, May 16, 2019

Friday Favorites Linky Party 476

Time to add your fantastic and creative craft and DIY projects, recipes, and ideas!

Let's Party!




Please support and follow our lovely blog party hostesses:



Jerri at Simply Sweet Home - Twitter | FB | G+ | Pin | Inst
Lisa at Condo Blues - Twitter | FB | G+ | Pin | Inst
Kelly at Under a Texas Sky - Twitter | FB | G+ | Pin | Inst | BL
Jennifer at Busy Being Jennifer - Twitter | FB | Pin | Inst

If you are featured this week, be sure and grab a featured button for your blog!



You can show your love for this week's favorites by going over and commenting on the posts and by pinning or sharing!

Thursday, May 9, 2019

Friday Favorites Linky Party 475

Time to add your fantastic and creative craft and DIY projects, recipes, and ideas!

But before we get this party started, I want to let you know about a super cool grilling giveway on my food blog Lazy Budget Chef! After you have read all of the amazing posts here on Condo Blues pop on over to Lazy Budget Chef and enter to WIN a HUGE Summer Grilling Prize Package!

One grand prize winner will receive a prize package including:
  • iGrill Mini Grilling Thermometer from BBQGuys
  • Case of Cornbread Crisps from Farmer's Pantry
  • Indoor Searing Grill from Hamilton Beach
  • Stella High Ball Glassware from Joy Jolt
  • Best Seller Collection from The Spice House
  • 1 Year Supply of Syrups from Torani
  • $100 via PayPal

You can find all of the details on Lazy Budget Chef here!


Let's Party!

Thursday, May 2, 2019

Friday Favorites Linky Party 474

Time to add your fantastic and creative craft and DIY projects, recipes, and ideas!

Let's Party!




Please support and follow our lovely blog party hostesses:

Monday, April 29, 2019

Gardening Hack: How to Know When to Water Your Vegetable Garden the Lazy Way!

The only reason my first attempt at growing a vegetable garden survived is because my husband and I worked on the project together.

Basically, I forget that plants need water to grow.

Gardening experts say vegetable gardens should be watered 2 to 3 times a week to promote healthy growth and nice deep roots. I start out doing that after I plant my garden but once you throw rain into the mix,  I either accidentally over water or under water depending upon if I wait for a rainstorm.

Either it doesn’t rain enough to water the plants enough or I don’t want to take a chance on the weather forecast for rain failing me again and water the garden only to be followed by a heavy thunderstorm.

So yeah, up until now my garden fails are a result of watering too much or not enough.


how much water does a vegetable garden need
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Photo used with permission by MSI Sakib on Unsplash

Tuesday, June 5, 2018

How to Grow Basil Plants From Cuttings

Basil is one of my favorite herbs to grow in my self watering container garden.  It is affordable (especially if you grow basil from seeds,) fairly hardy (since I often forget plants need water to live,) and is the easiest (and cheapest) way to cook with the fancy varieties (opal basil, anyone?) I never see for sale in the grocery store. (Disclosure: I am including some affiliate links for your convenience.)

But the thing I really love about growing basil  is if you have one basil plant, you can use it to propagate the clippings to grow more basil plants!

Yes, really!

How to Propagate Basil Plants


quick and easy way to regrow basil plants from stems

Wednesday, May 2, 2018

How to Naturally Kill Grubs and Japanese Beetles with Milky Spore

When we bought our condo, the builder planted spirea bushes in front of all of the houses in the neighborhood. Those pretty pink flowers were quite attractive – to Japanese beetles and grubs.

Commercial grub killers from the big box store do not work for me which I only tried as a last resort. I was leery of what the 90% OTHER INGREDNETS listed on the ingredients label actually were since they had a warning about not using the stuff around kids, dogs, and fish ponds.

The only thing that worked was using the all natural, people and pet safe organic grub killing combo of Milky Spore powder and Beneficial nematodes in my flowerbeds. (Disclosure: I am including a few big bold affiliate links in this post for your convenience because I couldn’t find any of these items for sale locally and figure you might be in the same boat too.)

Now if I was smart and applied Milky Spore to my grass and lawn when I did the flower bed years ago, the good Milky Spore bacteria would have been fruitful and multiplied in the soil throughout my property by now.

While the flower beds are naturally pest free but I found a grub in the yard recently and where there is one grub there are a dozen or more. Live and learn  should have applied my organic pest killer to the yard too. But my shortsightedness is your gain because I can write you a quick and easy tutorial.

How to Easily Apply Milky Spore to Your Lawn and Garden


Tuesday, January 2, 2018

The 15 Best DIY and Green Living Ideas You Need to Try Right Now!

We’re celebrating the New Year by taking a look back at some of our favorite Condo Blues DIY projects for 2017.

From the looks of it, there are a bunch of you who like to garden but hating watering plant and  like to decorate and make things with recycled materials and add green home improvements to our homes, myself included!


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Tuesday, June 27, 2017

How to a Make Tomato Cage Plant Stand

This year’s Tabasco and Habanero pepper plants aren’t doing as well as they could planted discretely in our front flower bed as they could on the sunny backyard patio. They only way to do that is to eek out space for two more plants on my small patio container garden with  four plant stands.

Which was a fantastic excuse to check out our new IKEA store! I saw a self watering planter and stand on the IKEA website that would do the job nicely.


Until I got to the store and an associate told me they were discontinued. *sad face*

No worries! I swung by Home Depot on my way home to buy tomatoes cages to make into a quick and easy modern plant stand.

Quick and Easy DIY Modern Plant Stands


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You will need:

Tuesday, June 6, 2017

How to Make a Hanging Self Watering Herb Garden

Husband and I like to cook with fresh herbs and the easiest and cheapest way to do that is to grow them on the patio off our kitchen. Unfortunately for my herb garden to be, most of the patio space has already been claimed by tomato and pepper plants.

No problem -  if you can’t go out, go up!

I made last fall’s hanging flower pots into a self watering hanging herb garden. I hung them on hanging plant pulleys I bought from Amazon here so I can water then more easily using the pulley to lower the pots to Lisa height and then raise the planters so no one else bonks their head on a low hanging plant. (Disclosure: I am including affiliate links in this post for your convenience)

Easy DIY Self Watering Hanging Planter



Pin this post for later! Share this clever planter idea with your friends! 

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

How to Naturally Kill Grubs, Fleas, and Fungus Gnats

Japanese beetle grubs decimated our “easy to care for landscaping” shortly after we bought our condo because our builder planted the entire neighborhood with plants that attract Japanese Beetles.  Our final solution was to rip out every bush and plant in the yard and let it lay fallow for a year. It wasn’t pretty but it worked.

They’re back.

Dang it!

Commercial grub killers from the big box store do not work for me (hich I only tired as a last resort.) I was leery of what the "90% OTHER INGREDIENTS" listed on the label actually were next to the warning about not using the stuff around kids, dogs, and fish ponds.  So, yeah. I'm glad it didn't work.


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Sunday, April 30, 2017

How to Make a Self Watering Planter Box

Husband and I were cruising the nursery when an apache pepper plant caught his eye and we decided then and there to  grow peppers in our patio garden. Yummy!

Unfortunately the self watering planter I made from a plastic storage tub had different ideas and cracked when visiting the Land of Ice and Snow (although most people call it Winter.) I wasn’t surprised because I used a light duty storage container to make the first planter.

There wasn't any love lost because while the self watering planter worked great, having a plastic storage tub taking up space on my patio wasn't' very pretty. I promised Husband a new and more rugged planter box we won’t be embarrassed to have in our back yard.


Pin this How To and share it with your friends!

 

Self Watering Planter Box Tutorial

Sunday, April 23, 2017

How to Make a Brick and Pallet Rain Barrel Stand

There is an issue with the French drain in my side yard which leaves my side yard is wet and spongy days after it rains. I installed a rain barrel as a temporary fix until I can get my Homeowner’s Association to repair the poor drainage problem. Not to mention being able to capture and use rainwater to water our flowerbeds. A quick drainage fix, free plant water, and being green – high fives all around.

Originally I planned to hook a soaker hose up to the rain barrel as a lower waste way to water the front yard and garden but it didn’t work as well as I hoped because the rain barrel water pressure was practically nil. Turns out the height of your rain barrel determines how much water pressure flows from it and not what I thought – the amount of water in the rain catch system.

How to Increase Rain Barrel Water Pressure the Quick and Easy Way