Orange Oil and Ants!!!!

The ants are in full effect!!!!  They are in the front yard....they are in the back yard making mounds over plants we thought they didn't like.  They made a mound over catnip and mint!?!?!?

We recently bought some Orange Oil to use in our compost tea.  We also heard that it is good for insecticide.  Since we are all about organic gardening, we decided to use Orange Oil to attack the ants!!!

The Ingredients:

Orange Oil (6 ounces)
Molasses (1Tablespoon)
Dish washing Liquid (a squeeze)
Water (to fill a gallon jug)

The Procedure:
 
Place the orange oil, molasses and dish washing liquid in a gallon jug.  Fill the rest of the jug with water.  Shake well and drench the ant bed!!!!

We used the solution yesterday and came back to empty ant beds!!!!!  Hope it works for you too!!!!

We got the solution idea from the following website: 
http://www.ehow.com/facts_7252971_orange-oil-rid-ants.html

Spring/Summer Garden 2012 - Feb. 19th Update - Part 2

Beneficial Insects

As we are coming up on our second Spring/Summer gardening season, we are noticing some promising signs.  Beneficial Insects!!!!  Before I mention and show you pictures of our beneficial insects, let me take you back to the beginning of our gardening experience.

Being new gardeners, we weren't keen to companion planting and attracting beneficial insects.  We just put some plants in the ground, amended the soil and went for it.  After a few weeks we started noticing our plants being attacked!!!!  Our worst pest was the pesky cucumber beetle (shown below).  I absolutely hated these things!!!!  They ate almost any and everything in the garden...not just the cucumber plants.  Several times our garden was over run by cucumber beetles.  We did end up using some organic pesticides (which we wanted to avoid).

Over the course of researching, we learned about companion planting and planting flowers and herbs that attract certain beneficial insects or deter unwanted pests.  We used this book "How to Grow More Vegetables" to aid us in our companion planting.  (Thanks to my sister and brother-in-law who gave this book to my husband for his solar return.)

From our last season garden we have many herbs that are starting to flower and many vegetables (broccoli and cauliflower) that are starting to seed and flower due to the warm and mild winter we have had here in Rosenburg.  These flowers are already attracting some beneficial insects and it's only February 19th!!!!  This means that when we start planting our Spring/Summer garden, we will already have beneficials around to help us combat the bad pests!!!!  Our plan is to be pesticide free from here on out....even if it's the organic pesticide.  We don't want any chemicals!!!!

The Bee
The pollinator!!!!  There are so many bees in our garden right now.  They are loving the flowering broccoli!!!  Take a close look at the first picture....I spy four bees!!!  There were over 30 bees playing in the broccoli!!
 

The Hover fly
 
 Hover flies are great to control aphid populations.  We have a major issue with aphids in the past growing season also.  Check out the hover flies on the dill!!!!

The moral of this blog...we are excited to have promising signs of a pesticide free growing season!!!

Spring/Summer Garden 2012 - Feb. 19th Update

Cabbage Woes

We are coming out of our first Fall/Winter season of gardening.  The Fall/Winter season overall was a success.  We grew several herbs (Oregano, Parsley, Rosemary, and Dill).  We grew carrots, onion, chard, beets, radish, collard greens, mustard greens, kale, lettuce, peas, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, and brussels sprouts.

Today we had to pull up our cabbage.  The weather here in Rosenburg has been really crazy and unusual for summer.  It has been a quite mild winter.  The weather has been very rainy, warm and humid.  Cabbage does not like to sit in consistently wet soil.  Our soil has been consistently wet with this unusual amount of rain we have been receiving.  The bottoms of the cabbage started to look very diseased, pest infested and root rotted.

This is one of the two cabbage beds that were pulled up today.

To prevent the spread and re-occurance of disease we use crop rotation.  We are now preparing this bed for the spring/summer season.  We will add a layer of compost to the top of the bed and be prepared to plant something from the squash family (squash, pumpkins, cucumbers, or melons) mid-March.

Overall, we were able to salvage some of the cabbage. 

The cabbage was used to make a lovely Dill Cabbage Soup.  Nom Nom Nom!!!  Look for the recipe coming soon on our Vegan Recipe Blog.

Spring/Summer Garden 2012 - Feb. 18th Update

This will be our 2nd Spring/Summer Gardening experience and we wanted to document it somehow.  My husband (Sankofa) and I (Uni) decided to start a blog to help document our gardening.  Last year was an overall success for first time gardeners.  We are extremely excited to engage in our 2nd Spring/Summer gardening session with all of the things we have learned this past year.

February 2nd, we started our first flat of seeds.  This flat included tomatoes, tomatillos, okra, hummingbird sage, and nasturtiums.  We bought a lot of these seed starting flats from Wal-Mart last year, used them, and are reusing them again.  (Gotta love the upcycling).

The pics below show the seed flats about 9 days after seeding.  All of the tomatoes, tomatillos, and nasturtiums sprouted!!!!  Only 1 hummingbird sage and okra so far.

Today, February 18th, we are transplanting the seedlings into their second flat.  We used good ol' potting soil from one of our favorite nurseries (Enchanted Garden).  To amend the soil we used products from our favorite gardening supply shops called GardenVille. The two products we used to amend the soil are: Rocket Fuel and Sea Tea.

Rocket Fuel is great for transplants and seedlings.  It includes: Colloidal Rock Phosphate, Bat Guano, Greensand, Red Phosphate, Volcanite, Brewers Yeast, Premium Fertilizer 7-2-2, Earth Worm Castings, Zeolite, Diatomaceous Earth, Alfalfa Meal,  Kelp Meal and Molasses.

 The Sea Tea is a liquid fertilizer that consists of: Compost tea, Fish emulsion, Molasses, Humicid, Phosphoricid, Nutri-Leaf Soluble Fertilizer and Acadian Seaweed Extract.









This is the time of year that is tricky.  We have to set up shop inside the house to keep the seedlings protected from some of the cold weather we are still receiving here in Houston.  We set-up a table under our bar with some grow lights until the seedlings are reading to make their way outside in the greenhouse.

And here is the finished product....for today.  We will keep you updated on our progress!!!!