Planting Gourds

Planting gourds needs to be done now so you can have them in time to decorate with in the fall. We have a lot of gourd seeds, a few edible, most for decorative purposes. We sell and grow the luffa gourds. You can cut up the luffa and use it as a sponge to bathe. Many soap makers cut it up and pieces to their bars of soap for extra scrubbiness! Either way, gourds are easy to grow and are fun, like making birdhouses out of our birdhouse gourds.

Planting Gourds - June 20-June 26, 2022

Look at these beautiful crown gourds. Planting gourds to get these for fall. Fun.

Monday, June 20, 2022

Happy Juneteenth! I think this is the first year that Juneteenth has been both a bank holiday and a government holiday which means the banks are not open and there is no mail service. We were supposed to write paychecks today but Amazon did not release the funds they owe us. So we called the bank to see why. They would not answer the phone. I looked it up and found out it is a holiday.

Over the weekend, we had at least 20 orders that are over $100 and one that is over $500. We got them all ready and will take them to the post office tomorrow.

David had a doctor's appointment in San Antonio at 10am. After that, we went to Sam's to pick up some drinks and snacks for the farm store. Then we ate lunch at Salt Grass. I had the Vaquero Tacos and now I wish I had something else. They were tasty but oily and they had a burning sauce. That burning sauce and the oil did not like me much. Around 6pm this evening, I threw up the oil and my throat and nose were burning. This happened again two more times later in the evening. At 11pm, I was still burping up burning reflux with the taste of the sauce and taking Alka Seltzer chews as well as an acid reducer pill earlier in the evening. I will never again order those greasy brisket tacos.

Linda mentioned that there is a fat black snake making his way back and forth across the parking lot. It was last seen going under the Production building.

Now, let's talk about FedEx. On yesterday's blog post, I told you how FedEx decided no one would be here on the weekend. This morning, I got an email from FedEx stating that my package was out for delivery. An hour later, I got an email stating that my package would not arrive for several more days.

At 3pm, I saw the FedEx truck over at our Production Building. I went to talk to the driver who jumped in her truck and drove away as I approached. My Chewy dog food box was delivered. I just don't understand how they do things. I went into my Chewy account and canceled it. This is not the first time that they have not delivered my things on time and I am sick of it.

Nacho and his helper were here all day long working on projects. They did not leave until after 7pm.

Our new truck has had a slow leak in it for several weeks. It got down to 14 pounds when it should be 40. Matt put air in it last week and today while we were driving to San Antonio, it was at 28 and dropped to 26. I was so relieved to make it back to the farm with a heavy load from Sam's on it.

Planting Gourds

Planting gourds is rewarding. As you can see with our luffa gourd plant, there are a lot of blooms that turn into gourds. The bees are busy pollinating. This will keep growing through the fall.

Planting gourds in the spring and summer for fall harvest is good. Gourds are prolific and the bees just love to pollinate them. They take from 80 days to 130 days to harvest, depending on the variety. The birdhouse gourd takes 130 days. The luffa gourd takes 120 days. We grew both last year and we still have an abundance of them. We wrap them up in packages of four for sale here in our farm store.

Tuesday, June 21, 2022

Cave Man's Club Gourds look like planting gourds would be fun.

Good Tuesday morning. Happy First Day of Summer! Can you believe summer is officially here? We have been having temps over 100° for several weeks now with no rain or relief in sight so it feels like we are on the very threshold of hell. The heat with humidity is unreal. And how do you get humidity when there has been no rain? Another great mystery.

My stomach felt okay in the night and I feel fine this morning. Yay! I hate throwing up and I hate horrible acid reflux.

Well, today, Amazon released the pay they owed us so we could write our paychecks to everyone. Yay! It is also a mail day but our mailman has not yet shown up. Matt took our very large seed orders of $100 or more to the post office this morning so they could get on their way. He had several boxes of them. This past weekend was a great one for big orders. I guess running a 25% off sale helps big time.

If you don't know, we are running a sale right now that gives you 25% off of your seed order using code LOCOHEAT at David's Garden Seeds®.

The mailman came around 2:30pm and he brought the business checks I ordered. I am relieved because I had to order them twice and never got them. I have just a handful of checks left now after ordering the first set that did not come a month ago. We got a bunch of bills and one insurance check for a small amount.

David has been redoing the store, moving things around and it is already looking so much better.

Nacho was here again today doing various jobs around the property and he left at 2pm. We are still working on orders from the weekend and from yesterday. Thank you to everyone who has been placing orders during our slow time of year. We appreciate it more than we can say.

Shay was in the kitchen peeling off the green part and cutting up all of the watermelon rinds we have so far. They have been placed in jars ready for pickling.

There is now a Chat option on our Shopify website so if potential customers have questions, they can speak to one of us over a chat message box. David added it. I got my first chat and it was some fake marketer from Nigeria saying that our website really needs some marketing tips. How rude. The guy couldn't even spell in English. So I terminated that chat. I got three more from actual legitimate customers and I was able to help them.

Matt took the truck over to Brown Dodge where we bought it and they put a new tire on it. The slow leak was coming from the tire valve. What a relief to have that taken care of.

Matt has been adding to the David's Garden Seeds® YouTube channel. Please give us a subscribe and some likes. In fact, he is outside with the new drone now doing some drone shots of our garden.

I, too, have a YouTube channel. We thank you in advance for following us both as we try to build our channels. My channel has a 2014 train wreck from Mer Rouge, Louisiana. I videoed that wreck from the back seat on our way to a Dave Ramsey conference. David was driving the truck.

Looks like someone dropped a kitten off here but she went under a building and we can't get her out. I did not see her but some of our staff did. I did hear her. I say her but I have no idea if it is a male or a female. We tried to get her out from under the porch between Fulfillment and Production but then she darted under Fulfillment. We have skirting up but for some reason, they did not cover a small portion under the Fulfillment porch. This is where snakes have gone so we may never see the kitty again. I never saw it in the first place, just heard it. Linda said she saw grab and eat a lizard. There are lizards out here by the boatload.

We went in the pool this evening but it was low and full of sand and bugs. I spent all of the time I was in there cleaning it out. Time to go put the chickens away for the night. It is already 8:30pm.

Around 9:30pm, I was calling the four dogs in from their final good night potty. They normally come running quickly, especially Sue Ellen the puppy. By the way, let me mention that the air was pungent with skunk. I mean it smelled really bad.

This time, everyone but Sue Ellen came. She appeared and then went back behind the green shed, the shed/shack where we once lived for those of you who have been following for almost three years now. She appeared again and went back. David grabbed a flashlight and went out.

A little while later, he and Sue Ellen, along with a dead baby skunk, showed up on the side porch. Fortunately, the screen door was closed or that baby skunk would have been treated right into my den. Yuck. So David found the nest under the green shed with three more dead baby skunks. Not sure where mama was but her babies are all dead. Interestingly, we have wooden skirting around the shed but for some reason, they did not enclose one area and that is where the trouble was.

Now the good news! Not one of the four dogs was sprayed. We are very fortunate.

Planting Gourds

Colorful balsam gourds growing along the fence line.

So many visitors to our farm store ask for gourd seeds. Planting gourds for fall decorating, making crafts, and making luffa soap have become big business. Many planting gourds like luffa say that they make crafts or make soap and sell the finished gourds at weekend markets. That sounds like fun. I wanted to try but I have been so busy being Mrs. David's Garden Seeds® that I just don't have time.

Planting gourds, like birdhouse gourds, can bring you extra income if you drill some holes and paint them to make hanging birdhouses in your yard. Sell them at craft markets or give them as gifts.

Wednesday, June 22, 2022

Along with planting gourds, we have been planting lots of sunflowers in the back forty.

Good Wednesday morning. No signs or smells of skunk this morning. I am still so grossed out by last night's events. I am dressed and ready to go to the store. I have been doing laundry and cleaning up the kitchen. It is almost 9am so I know I have to go over to the store soon.

I ended up getting a lot of computer work done today including social media posts.

Our new Fall and Spring Texas sets are selling like hot cakes! I had no idea they would go so quickly. We will start making plenty more today to have them ready. We are having a sale online. You get 25% off your seed order by using code LOCOHEAT at checkout at David's Garden Seeds®.

The back of the shed where the skunks were has been closed up. I am still so freaked out about it. We did not see any snakes today. The kitten was no where to be found today.

We continued filling orders. Cantaloupes, asparagus, and tomatoes were harvested. The tomatoes have a not so good texture due to the high heat. The zinnias were deadheaded today in front of the farm store.

The fish pond is not very clear. I put some clarifier in there this afternoon so we will see if it helps.

Planting Gourds For A Fall Harvest

This is bitter gourd which you can eat like a melon. Most gourds are not eaten but are used for decorative purposes.

There are so many gourds to choose from. Planting gourds is a lot of fun but you do have to get them in the ground before the awful heat comes if you are in Texas. Last year, it took a while for the awful heat to hit but this year, it hit before June was here. Right now, in South Central Texas, it is too late to plant gourds this summer.

Thursday, June 23, 2022

Look at the beautiful egg yolks that my sweet chickens produce. Come get a dozen farm fresh, organic eggs at the Farm Store in Poteet, TX. I'll save you a dozen.

Good Thursday morning! We started our work day with a delicious breakfast taco meal in the breakroom. Shay cooked everything and it was so good.

Then I had to send out and pull orders because my helper for the day was in the kitchen doing things. We had two ladies come in for flowers. They also want to be planting gourds in their backyards and we have a lot of gourd seeds to choose from.

I put more algae cleaner in the pond. The clarifier I put in the pond yesterday did not seem to help. It is currently 94° but the temperature promises to get up to 102°. It is bright and very hot outside.

The Shopify Chat has me hating it already. Last night on the couch, people kept asking for status of their order but they could not give me the order number, when they placed it, or the name they used to make the order. So some I still have not been able to help. One woman told me she ordered a while back and sent me a photo of a seed packet. She wants to know why they won't come up. She cannot provide the name used to order the seeds. Just because you have one of our seed packets, doesn't mean you just ordered it.

We have been in business for close to 13 years now. How old are the seeds? Where are you located? Did you plant them when the weather was too cold? Did you store them out in the heat? How did you try to grow them? Indoors with no light? These are the things we look for. She couldn't give me the name she used to order them. How do you not know your own name?

This morning, a customer is upset because her order requires signature tracking. The post office tracking shows they attempted to deliver one week ago today and since then she has not gone to the post office to pick up her package. She spent $92 on seeds but won't go get them. It cost us almost $8 to ship them to her. She wants them to come back to us and then she wants us to reship without signature tracking. Not gonna happen. If we get the seeds back, we will refund her minus our shipping costs and a 15% restocking fee.

A long time ago, we learned that we have to send anything $40 and over with signature tracking to protect us. It is on our website here. In the past, we have lost a lot of money because we would ship the seeds with tracking. The post office would show them delivered and the customer would say "I did not receive them." Then we would have to send them again, losing the cost of the seeds and the postage so we would lose money instead of making any. We don't do that anymore.

When our mailman won't bring us a signature required package, we trot our happy selves down to the post office and it is 17 miles away. We show our ID and pick up our packages. That is what you have to do sometimes if you want what you ordered and the mailman refuses to bring it out to you.

It is now 2pm. The pond is looking clear, or at least a lot more clear than it looked this morning. The after effects of the algae is leaving what looks like a layer of dirt on everything but the algae is gone except for on the fall rocks.

It is 4:15pm and I just saw the cat from Tuesday. It is orange and very thin. I grabbed my phone to take a photo and now it is sitting under the dark loading dock and does not show up in the photo. Why do people keep dumping their animals out here? Rude and cruel. This kitten is living off lizards.

This evening, the Atascosa Small Business group met down the road at George Farms. I did not go because when it is 100°, it is too hot for me to sit outside. They do not have a big indoor space. David and Matt went and it was too hot. They started at 5:30pm and finished at 8pm. David left at 6pm but Matt stayed through the whole thing. Not sure where they will have it next month.

Planting Gourds

Turk's Turban is another fun gourd to grow.

Are you planting gourds this summer? A lady bought some dipper gourd seeds this morning. I would like to try them. She will be planting gourds today. Gourds love full sun, but that does not mean they love what is close to the fires of hell, for example, South Central Texas. If you have a hoop house with some shade cloth or a partly shady spot, try planting them there. It has now been 100 plus degrees here for over three weeks and a lot of our plants have stopped producing. Some have shriveled up and died. It is miserably hot and sunny, far too hot for anything other than okra or zinnias to grow.

Some gourds produce a lot of smaller fruit and may require a trellis instead of vining out all over your backyard, like the Daisy or Witches Brew. Other gourds produce larger fruits like birdhouse or luffa. Another example of a large gourd is the speckled swan.

Friday, June 24, 2022

Apple gourds are interesting, aren't they?

Planting gourds that grow into little apples that you can't eat is a good experience.

Good Friday morning. Linda baked some zucchini bread using our garden zucchini. I have not yet tasted it but knowing Linda, I am sure it is good. We are thinking of having baked goods once a week for sale in the store. What do you think? You could come by, pick up some produce, fresh eggs, baked goods, plants, and seeds all at our farm store...

This morning, someone went on our Chat and said "Good morning." I ignored it because at 7am, that is my time, not work time. He went on to ask how I was. I ignored it again. The chat says this is for questions about seeds. He then sent another message and again he is a foreigner who cannot spell and does not know proper English wanting to market the website. I ripped him a new one at that point and have not heard back from him. We already have marketers. Does anyone actually pay these foreign losers to help ruin their businesses?

Now I am in the store, getting things done. It is already 85° at 9:30am and promises to be 105°. I have been putting up some new TikToks, mostly of our pets and things going on around our farm. I am still getting the hang of it. I am hoping to hit something viral so our business can get a big surge. When it gets this hot in the summer, at least here in Texas, gardening is the last thing on anyone's mind. As it starts to cool down in September, everyone will be gardening again but nothing grows in this wicked heat now except okra and zinnias.

Today the Supreme Court overturned Roe Vs. Wade which means now states will control the abortion issue.

They are hanging curtains and blinds in the Farm Store over the pretty high windows. They should be out in the garden planting gourds and pumpkins right now.

Saturday, June 25, 2022 - Planting Gourds

Look at this awesome speckled swan gourd. Isn't it cool?

Look at this awesome speckled swan gourd. Planting gourds is the way to get some good pieces for crafting.

Happy Saturday! We have been busier than the past several Saturdays so far. It is hot. Shay is at lunch and David is giving a farm tour to two couples. He normally does not do tours since he is busy but he made an exception today. I don't have my boots on and I won't walk through the sand if I don't have them on. Some are coming in for fall seeds and others are buying our pickled goods and treats.

We don't have any garden workers planting gourds or pumpkins today. It is so hard to get people to work the weekends.

According to the weatherman, there is a chance we could get rain and cooler weather starting on Monday! We are all excited around these parts. Everything is dry and brown and the heat is unreal. If we can get some of God's good rain on the plants, they will grow so much better than with chemical water or even our iron well water.

When I was a child in upstate New York, we had well water. It tasted delicious. What we have is just horrible to drink. We filter it and use it for the gardens, orchard, and animals and it is fine, but is not the delicious water we love. We paid $20,000 to have the well dug and without it, we would not have an orchard or gardens.

This evening, we grilled steaks and turned on Svengoolie. A summer league football game in San Antonio was on instead. It came on at 7pm and did not go off until 11pm. Whoever even heard of a summer football league. We lived in San Antonio for 20 years and here for three years here and never heard mention of it. So we watched a movie on DVD. We talked about planting gourds and pumpkins since it is time.

Sunday, June 26, 2022 - Planting Gourds

Good morning and Happy Sunday. It promises to be another hot one. I was melting just feeding the animals this morning. We are taking the day off from church mainly because we are looking for another new one to go to. It would be nice to find one that actually feels like you are in the presence of God with worship songs and a good message, one that does not make you fall asleep...

The stray cat that we did not see at all on Friday or Saturday is still here. When I went out this morning to feed the fish, the cat was drinking from the pond and ran under the porch there at the store so I still did not get a photo. She scared me as she darted off and I screamed. It was frightening. I thought maybe it was a snake. Then she started meowing from under the bridge. I don't know why she won't leave here. We have not fed her but we do have an abundance of lizards.

Planting Gourds

Planting gourds is fun when you grow things like Dipper Gourds.

We are supposedly getting some rain in the next three days and it is supposed to be cooler. Planting gourds today might be a good idea so they can germinate. Then keep them watered so they will stay alive if the awful heat comes back. Normally in Texas, it does not get this hot this early in the season.

Return from Planting Gourds to Business Growth

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