Container Gardening

Fall is an especially good time to consider container gardening. Why? Because if it gets cold, you can move the container indoors instead of losing your plants. Here in Texas, we may not get a first freeze until January or we could get it in early November. No matter when we get the first frost, if our plants are in pots, we can move them to the greenhouse, a shed, a garage, or even in our home for the night if needed.

There is no need to panic if suddenly the weatherman says there is a chance of frost tonight, no need to cover all of your plants. Just bring them inside.

Container Gardening

Monday, September 25, 2023

I took this photo from my back deck this morning.

Good Monday morning! It is supposed to hit just 96° today. It was 104° yesterday so we will be experiencing a bit of a cool chill. Also, there should be rain in 15 minutes according to Alexa. I have to go out and water my container gardening area. We have gophers and they took a bunch of my plants this past summer for the first time so container gardening is what I will have to use for potatoes, sweet potatoes, and more.

I was on Facebook looking at other farms in the area and I found another farm that is selling produce in bundles. At least they don't try to hide it. The giveaway for me is that there is a bunch of bananas in each box. So I read further and they admit that it comes from River City Produce, unlock a "farmer" nearby who claims she grows all of her produce organically on a farm an hour away instead of on the farm where she lives. One day in a video she made, she admitted she does not own the farm an hour away and she goes to River City Produce...LOL! We knew it all along. River City Produce is a company in downtown San Antonio that sells produce. They don't grow it. They buy it and sell it to places and people.

Anyway, city people think they grow it all but when everything comes out looking perfect with no differences, you know it is not down home farm produce. Also, when you don't use pesticides, you tend to not have as much because the bugs will eat it.

Many people think we grow all of our own seeds. We don't. No seed company does. We sell 1200 varieties and we have four acres of land. Each year we grow different things to save and sell seed but we don't have enough land or property to grow everything. Neither does anyone else.

It is now 7:30am and we did not get a drop of rain. Time to go water my container gardening area and feed the animals.

I watered all of my backyard plants and Matt showed up to help me with the animals. I really appreciate the days he helps me. I then went in and got changed. It is still hot and humid here and summer even though parts of the country are celebrating fall. So you can imagine that I was hot and sweaty which happens each time we step outside. I hate the heat and humidity.

There was another wolf spider and she dropped her babies off of her back when she got wet as I was watering. I had heard that could happen and it did.

The honeysuckle took over everything in the garden bed in the forefront. We may buy the field next door. The building is my greenhouse.

I opened the Farm Store and fed the fish. Then I opened the filter and drained out the dirty water. Thirty minutes later, I refilled the pond. The grow tower in the store got cleaned up today. Now I have to replant it.

The grow tower in the store got cleaned up today. Now I have to replant it.

I got through a lot of orders today and so did David. David is now doing the Amazon and eBay orders. I am doing the website and Etsy orders.

On a positive note, some of the flowers that I planted last Thursday afternoon are beginning to come up.

There is a dead deer lying in the middle of the road in front of our driveway. We first saw it there yesterday morning when we left for church. It amazes me that it is still there after all this time.

I will be planting some more lemon grass in our backyard for the dogs to munch on. They love it.

The premiere of the new Kitchen Nightmares with Gordon Ramsay came on tonight. Matt got us some Italian food from Constantino's. It was good and we enjoyed Kitchen Nightmares.

Around 11pm tonight, it actually rained a bit, maybe for ten minutes or so.

Container Gardening

We have a long line of plastic pots out front for container gardening. I will be planting potatoes in most of them. Some have been moved to the backyard so I can plant some lemon grass.

Container gardening is handy if you have varmints who love to pull your plants down by the root underground to eat. We have gophers and they work quickly and ruin a garden. This summer, I planted 30 sweet potato vines that I bought online. They are now almost ready to harvest, but I have seven left. At least I think I still have seven as of Friday night.

Tuesday, September 26, 2023

Black butterflies are all over the zinnias in container gardening troughs everyday now out front by the Farm Store.

David took the puppies to be groomed early this morning while I was still outside with Matt taking care of the animals. Michelle and her crew got to the house while I was putting on my makeup to start cleaning. David came back and Matt left to do some errands for David.

Our two main employees did not come in this morning. Only the two teens came in.They worked on weeding. After two hours, one of the employees came in. The other has off all day long.

The housekeepers left. A lady came to get some garlic bulbs at the store while everyone was here. Now they are all gone and Matt is not yet back with the puppies. The sky is cloudy and it is only 88° at 11:37am. I just ate lunch. We had delicious Italian food from Constantino's in Somerset last night so I ate my leftovers.

I have been adding listings to Etsy all afternoon. At 4pm, it started raining, not very heavily but wet stuff is falling from the sky! The Texas flag is blowing in the wind. The rain lasted exactly two minutes. At 4:02, it stopped. It is now 4:30pm and still has not started back up. There is a dark cloud overhead.

One of the employees removed all of the plants from the Farm Store grow tower yesterday. I just removed all of the nasty old, algae filled rock wool and washed my hands really well. There are still some roots down in there. I turned off the water and the grow lights so hopefully they will die and then I can replant.

Container Gardening

I have a lot of cloth and soft pots this fall season that I have been planting in so the gophers can't get my potatoes, sweet potatoes, peanuts, and ginger.

I have some potatoes with chits and some sweet potato vines that are ready for some container gardening and I think I will plant them in the containers by the Farm Store so our customers can see them grow.

Container gardening is best out here for potatoes, peanuts, and sweet potatoes because the horrible gophers we have pull the growing plants that they want to eat down under the ground. One moment they are there in your garden. The next time you look, they are gone and a hole is there, an empty space. This happened to me in the summer of 2023 time and again.

Do you have some sort of thieving varmints where you are? What are they?

Here is a dead gopher in case you have not seen one before. They steal your garden from beneath the dirt.

This is a gopher hole. We have a whole network of gophers that work the entire farm digging holes and stealing plants. I wonder how this place was ever a peanut farm.

Wednesday, September 27, 2023

Good morning. It is still dark. The indoor animals have been fed and I am waiting on natural outdoor light to feed the outdoor animals. There are too many spiders and snakes to go outside in the dark here.

Listing products on Etsy takes such a long time. David wants our top 100 products on there and I feel like they should have already been on there but I am not quite halfway done.

We had another impromptu rainstorm this afternoon. I was out in the backyard around 3pm with the dogs. I could smell rain and then a few drops started. Pamela would not pee and I was trying to coax her when it started coming down pretty heavily. We went inside and I went back to work in Fulfillment. It stopped. I don't think it went for a full three minutes. That was it for the day.

I made chili for dinner and it was very good even though it was hot outside.

Garlic

We package our garlic in brown paper bags, two bulbs to a bag. Break apart the cloves and plant. Yes, container gardening can be done with garlic.

Today, the rest of the garlic was counted and packed. We have no more to put out except what is in the store now. We still have six varieties, but two varieties won't last long. The Georgia Crystal and Persian Star are almost gone now. Remember, garlic goes in the ground in October as soon as these ridiculously hot temperatures disappear. By now, they should be gone, but they are still with us. Don't know how to plant garlic? I wrote a page on that here.

You can order garlic bulbs here.

Container Gardening

This is the lemon grass for our 3 dogs.

This morning, I planted lemon grass seeds in pots in my fenced in backyard. The dogs love to munch on lemon grass and I have just one garden pot of it in the backyard now.

Start out with a pot of soil. This is mostly our native soil--sand.

Lemon grass seeds and a shovel. I planted six more pots this morning. Container gardening is easy. If it gets cold, we can put the containers in the greenhouse.

All of the pots shown above are on or near the deck. The dogs like to eat my honeysuckle and jasmine leaves which appeal to the dogs but make them very ill. Even though they throw up when they eat those leaves, they keep going back. Maybe they will start eating the lemon grass instead.

Thursday, September 28, 2023

Kitty likes to get up at 5am, come to the bedroom door, stick her hand under there and hold a conversation saying she is starving and wants food. When you have animals, there is no sleeping in.

Good Thursday morning. I was awakened by a hungry cat named Kitty. She was having a whole cat conversation with me on the other side of the bedroom door starting around 5:15am. I got up and fed her.

Right now it is 71° and so nice but the weather forecast says it will be 97° later on. While I had the dogs out at dawn, I enjoyed seeing a family of deer in the field next to our property from my back deck. I saw five of them enjoying the tall grass for breakfast.

Our new order of pecan coffees came in. I priced them all and made a display in the store. Then I put them up on the website for sale. Yes, we ship coffee. We still have some left of the previous coffee, even four bags of decaf so you will want to order right away if you enjoy decaf. Here is a link to our whole bean pecan flavored coffees.

Our David's Garden Seeds pecan whole bean coffees are back! We have 5 flavors this time. We ship! Order today!

Each day, David makes a pot of pecan coffee to start our morning. This is how I keep the beans. I found it on Amazon.

The flavors are:

Butter Pecan
Caramel Pecan
Golden Pecan
Pralines And Cream
Southern Texas Pecan

We have four bags of decaffeinated Oliver Pecan whole bean coffee as well as two bags of regular Oliver Pecan coffee. These are on sale in the store today for $12.95 and online for $14.95 plus shipping. Our name brand coffee is $16.95 plus shipping. They weigh one pound.

I fixed the broken links on the website. I should have checked them when I put them up this week but I did not until this morning. I apologize for anyone who could not find them.

The neighbors have some new baby sheep that are adorable. I wish we had some but I have my hands full just trying to take care of my chickens.

Container Gardening

It is wise to plant mint in pots. If you don't, the mint will take over everything. I speak from experience.

Let's talk invasive plants and container gardening. When I was a little girl, we had mint planted in certain areas of our massive yard in upstate New York. The previous owners had all sorts of flowers, plants, and trees all over the place. It was a beautiful yard. So when we lived in San Antonio in the home we built, I planted some mint in one of the flower beds. After a couple of seasons, the mint took over everything in that bed, killing it all except for a small pecan tree. I was really surprised and I have not planted it in the ground since. Always use container gardening for mint plants and other invasive plants that you enjoy having.

Friday, September 29, 2023

Sue Ellen with a rather stern look on her face.

Good morning. Happy Friday! I have to see my doctor this morning to discuss my latest lab results. I do not want to go. It is time for me to get ready to go.

It is now 1:30pm. My doctor's appointment was at 9:30am. He liked my blood pressure and my thyroid numbers. He hated my pre-diabetes number as well as cholesterol numbers. So no sugar or starches for me and I have to do some research and find out what to eat to make bad cholesterol go down. Fun times.

After the doctor, we went to Tractor Supply for animal foods and such. Then we went to Walmart and got some groceries. On the way home, we stopped in at Granzin's Meat Market and bought some freezer boxes of meat.

Once we got back to the farm, Matt helped carry it all in and then he went back to work. We got it put away and then had to break down some of the packages of meat from the butcher. We got a ton of meat so here is hoping the electricity stays on!

I have to go back and see the doctor in December. He did not give me a lab sheet for Quest this time. They are so expensive. I go to our new dentist for a crown in October. Tomorrow, I have a hair appointment at 1pm so David and/or Matt will have to take over the store tomorrow so I can go.

We have eight cartons of eggs in the refrigerator from our chickens. All new coffees and newly packaged garlics are also in the restocked store. Lots of new seeds are waiting for you to browse. Be sure to come by this afternoon until 5pm or tomorrow from 10am to 2pm.

Container Gardening

This past summer, we started using more container gardening because we don't have the time or money to build more raised beds right now and so gophers can't ruin what we plant.

We went to Tractor Supply and bought some galvanized tubs for planting. The drawback on container gardening is that you have to remember to water it. We don't get much rain out here so if we forget, the roots can't go deeper to find water. We have to water the plants on a regular basis or they die. Our employees don't say, hey some of your plants are turning brown. No, they keep watering them the same way they have been and then we find them dead. Usually it is because the plant that is brown was not getting enough water and they figure it is fine. Don't ask me how that is possible but it just happened again twice this month with expensive plants we own.

One of my orange trees in a container was not getting any water and it is now dead. I just bought it this past summer. I have no words.

Case in point. The lines were clogged and the person watering just kept on going, never saying a word or giving it water manually. This was a citronella plant.

This has even happened with our beautiful hanging plants. The line got clogged and David and I are busy inside most days so by the time David noticed, most plants were completely dead. A few have come back. So sad and it never occurs to the water person to say or do anything differently. This has also happened with many of our orchard trees over the past few years. Lines would get clogged and they just kept saying the trees were getting watered. Now we monitor the trees constantly.

Saturday, September 30, 2023

Pecan flavored coffee is the way to start the morning! Come get yours today!

Good Saturday morning. I have been working on the website. I woke up starving so I could not get back to sleep. It is still dark but soon it will be time to go out and feed everyone.I took the dogs out and everything was wet on the deck. Then I saw that one of the pool hoses had sprung a leak and water was spraying out everywhere.

I went out front to unlock everything and feed the fish. There was the full moon shining over the gate.

Come on out to the store today and get some garlic bulbs and pecan coffee, not to mention seeds, eggs, and other things! We open at 10am and close at 2pm. David and Matt will be serving you after lunch because I have a hair appointment! Yay!

We did not have much of a crowd come out and shop today. That is too bad because tomorrow is October 1 and we still have garlic that needs to be planted in your yards.

I went to my hair appointment. The stylist was a new one and she did a phenomenal job with the color and the cut. I love it.

My new hairdo looked better before the wind...

Clouds over Walmart. I ran into a few sprinkles on the way home but that was it. No rain at home.

After the cut, I went across the street to Tractor Supply and bought some new fall shirts. If it ever gets cool, I will have some nice things to wear. I even got a few Yellowstone T-shirts. We love that show.

Then, I went to Walmart and got things that I did not remember to buy yesterday like carrots, mushrooms, and a few other things. I drove home and on the way, there were some sprinkles. I used the windshield wipers for the first time and they are awful so I need to buy new blades for my new (used) car. I also tried to figure out how to set the clock but could not. I pulled the car manual out and found out that the clock/radio had been changed out in the car so the directions had nothing to do with the system that is in there. Other than that, the car drove great and I enjoyed it.

My new used vehicle parked out in front of the house while I unloaded groceries. Fulfillment is on the right. One of the seed shacks is on the left.

I baked potatoes and sweet potatoes (Matt hates potatoes so the sweet potatoes were for him) and made corn on the cob for tonight's movie which was a replay that we did not care to watch. Matt grilled some steaks that were delicious. We watched a couple of Murder She Wrote episodes. That is such a fantastic show. Had I known how good it was, I would have watched it during the original run.

Container Gardening

Container gardening can really be done in almost any kind of container. The most important tip is to be sure there is good drainage. If there is not a hole in the bottom for drainage, you will need to make one. Without proper water drainage, roots will get moldy and your plants will die.

If you are planting herbs in the fall, make sure you put them in lightweight containers so you can move them in and out of the greenhouse or some sort of shelter on the cold nights so your herbs won't die from frost.

Sunday, October 1, 2023

The sunrise from our gazebo with some of our container gardening. Some neighboring sheep happen to be in the photo as well.

Good Sunday morning! It feels so lovely outside right now in the dark. I took the dogs out and it was wonderful. It is 74° and no humidity but it will get up to 95° and be ugly with humidity again. Why?

This week went by very fast with all of the work we have to do. David has been cleaning house in the business (I wish he would clean house, ha ha!), getting rid of older seeds that were unnecessarily purchased because some of our employees (past employees) did not do their job with inventory. They were always telling him we were out of certain seeds and he has been finding two, three, even four bags of the seeds we were out of. Now they are too old to sell so he is donating them.

Today, some people who belong to an organization are coming to take a big bunch. Last Saturday, folks from a different organization came and left with an SUV loaded with seeds. Hopefully, this is the end of it. He has gone through every seed box in the seed shacks and in Fulfillment where we store our seeds.

Now that he is in control of the inventory, this problem of buying seeds that we already have should not happen again. These mistakes cost us thousands of dollars. Seeds are expensive.

I cleaned the pond early this morning and finished filling it. Then I decided to go check my mailbox outside the gate. Amazon lost a package I was supposed to receive on Wednesday. Even now on Sunday morning, it shows lost. Now let me clarify. Our mailman normally does not put our mail in the box. He brings it into us. So after I turned the water off on the pond, I went out of the gate to our mailbox. Lo and behold, my missing package was cut open with the top off of the Amazon envelope but the book I ordered was in there.

It may have gotten delivered to the wrong house and maybe after opening it, the people realized it was not there and drove over here and stuck it in the mailbox thinking I would find it. This has happened before. I am glad that whoever got it did not keep it. So thank you to whoever delivered it to me when the Amazon driver delivered it to you in error.

David Seeds VS David's Garden Seeds

This is not us and it is not our logo. Send your complaints about the snack food to their link below. We have absolutely nothing to do with their company.

We are constantly getting complaint emails from people who buy the edible salted snack seeds saying they are not good or not fresh. We are not David Seeds. We do not sell salted snack sunflower seeds. They do not use an apostrophe s ('s) after the name David.

This is our trademarked logo and name. David's Garden Seeds® Clearly, it is not DAVID with half a sun above it like the snack food company but people confuse us all the time.

We are David's Garden Seeds®. We sell garden seeds for you to plant in your backyard. People see our name and our logo, yet still complain to us about the company that is making snacks. LOL!

Two women showed up more than 90 minutes ago to pick up the seeds. They have something to do with giving out seeds at Texas libraries. I went out and met them and told David that lunch is ready. They finished loading the seeds and then David took them on a tour. About 20 minutes ago, the heavens opened and it poured down rain. I figured David would come running in. The shower lasted about five minutes. They are still outside talking. Lunch has come and gone and it is now 1:15pm. I guess he can heat his up.

It is still cloudy but the humidity is unbelievable. It feels so incredibly hot and muggy. I dread having to go back out there at all today.

Container Gardening

There are container gardening spots all over our farm. We are using them more as we realize the gophers keep destroying plants.

Your containers can be plastic, vinyl, wooden, metal, pottery, or cloth. (There are probably more kinds of pots to be used in container gardening but I cannot think of any.

Return from Container Gardening to Year Five On The Farm

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