Holy Guacamole!

My mom loved avocados!! I remember her eating them all the time when I was a kid. I also remember her poking the seed (stones) with toothpicks and soaking them in hopes that some day she would have her very own tree! Unfortunately, I also remember seeing avocados in the grocery basket every time we went shopping. My mom's wish for an avocado tree never came true but perhaps my luck will be different! I have been planting stuff consistently for the past 3 months without putting the first bean on the dinner table but I figured what the heck, I will give it a shot. Afterall, everything happens for a reason and the last time we went to the market they were giving out free samples of guess what, avocados! That has to be a sign right? We love guacamole but the lady was actually serving salsa, diced tomatoes, and diced avocado on a ritz cracker and it was delicious. We bought everything we needed to recreate this delicious little snack and ate it a few times during that weekend.

So that left me with 3 avocado stones so I figured I would triple my chances. Here are the instructions I followed (compliments of eHow):

1. Clean the avocado stone to a smooth shiny surface. Do not remove the outer skin of the stone.

2. Locate the top of the avocado stone (the pointed end) and insert four or five toothpicks into the sides of the stone about 1/2-inch from the top of the stone and 1/4 inch deep. The toothpick pattern, when inserted into the avocado stone, resembles the spokes on a bicycle tire.

3. Fill a glass jar with water and suspend the avocado stone in the mouth of the jar by the toothpicks. The stone must be submerged at least half way in the water. Never allow the avocado stone to become dry.

4. Set the jar in a warm location. Change the water every two to three days to keep it from growing bacteria, which will kill the avocado stone.

5. Wait three to five weeks for the avocado stone to crack open at the bottom and send out a tap root. Within a week, the top will send out a single shoot. Keep changing the water as needed in the jar.

Read more: How to Plant Avocado Stones | eHow.co.uk http://www.ehow.co.uk/how_5872817_plant-avocado-stones.html#ixzz1Y4dqaHh8

So here are the results of the first 5 steps:

The last step was to set a reminder to change out the water every two to three days. Stay tuned and wish me luck!

Ants in My Pants! Among Many Other Insects....

In my very short and limited experience as a gardener I have made one astute observation, humans are not the only species that LOVE corn!! I was the happiest man on the planet the day my 8 corn plants sprouted and since then they have been eaten alive by bugs. Speaking of being eaten alive, I need to buy a classification book on insect bites just so I can put a name to the multitude of marks currently on my body. And since when did mosquitos evolve to use local anesthesia? I can't feel them until there half full and hanging off of me.

Anyhow, a rough day in the garden is better than a great day at work right? So how do we address the issue of bugs eating the crops? How do we also address severe weather such as heavy rain or frost at the same time? Our solution was to build a couple of enclosures that could be coated with either a plastic tarp or insect cloth or both. Using PVC pipe, cement glue, and chicken wire, along with a ton of tie wraps, here is what we came up with:

Prototype 1 - The Wagon Cover

Strengths:

• Sloping arch for rain water to run off when covered with tarp.
• Lightweight and can be removed with one hand.
• Bottom four posts are notched so that they fit into holes we drilled into the garden frame. We were thinking that this along with the edges of the chicken wire would be enough to deter ground vermin. (hehe, or varmint depending on where you are from)

Weaknesses:

• The biggest would be that we totally forgot about the trellis!! Now our most prized harvest is hanging out in the air waiting to be eaten, soaked, frozen etc.
• The enclosure is not tall enough to hold fully grown and hopefully insect free corn.

Prototype 2 - THE CAGE

I haven't watched wrestling in a very long time but doesn't this remind you of something you would see on Monday Night Raw? So much that it gave me the perfect name, THE CAGE! Only time will tell if it is big and tough enough to keep out bugs and the elements.

Strengths:

• Encloses the ENTIRE square foot garden with room to spare on the trellis side. That way if we actually get vertical hanging plants to fruit they will have plenty of room.
• Sloped for rain water to easily run off.
• Tall enough to house an entire row of fully grown corn along with pole beans, watermelons, and cucumbers on the trellis side.

Weaknesses:

•  It is big!! Too big for one person to lift so a lot of the watering has to be done from 4 feet in the air. This can disturb new sprouts and make it tough to get water to the roots of plants with big leaves.
• It's not finished yet! As of right now the top is wide open so we need to decide whether to wrap it with chicken wire or just coat it with insect cloth when it comes in. TBD

So the jury is still out on our two prototype enclosures. I am going to order insect cloth this week so hopefully this weekend we will have pictures of the finished products. Here is one last pic of the two enclosures together:

If you want more details on how we built either one just let me know!