Sunflower Seeds

I'm really excited because many of my sunflower and marigold seeds have sprouted. I'm so glad I bought new sunflower seeds. Looks like I got a good batch this time. Now if I can just fend the snails and birds off until the seedlings get strong enough to survive.

I have a bunch of almost ripe tomatoes to pick too. I dug up the deader plant after harvesting it's last 2 fruits. I'm going to let the ground rest a bit before putting another plant in that spot. We also swept up a lot of debris today so it's more fun to be out there. The hummingbird is busy and eating out of my feeder again. She got a bit agitated when my cat was sitting in the window.

Planting flowers

I've been working on my garden every day. I had moved the hummingbird feeder and was happy to see a hummingbird drinking from it this morning.

I got marigold, cilantro and nasturtium seeds planted all around my tomatoes. The marigolds I planted last week have already come up as well. It's going to be nice to have more flowers in the garden as well as their benefits at repelling insects.


In my green planter the radishes have been getting chewed on by something.  I planted some nasturtiums and beets in the blank areas where the radishes either didn't sprout or got eaten by bugs.

Nettles, Nasturtiums and Snails.

Last night I took my neighbors a tomato, and they were so pleased they invited me out back to see their urban garden. They had made excellent use of every available spot. Their tomatoes are just starting to fruit so they were happy to get a ripe one from me. Their garden was so tidy and lovely, not at all like my jungle, even though our yard layouts are identical. When I mentioned my problems with snails, they told me in a rather confusing discussion in broken English and Romanian that they use nettle spray to repel the snails.  They get the nettles from a park, boil it in water to make a soup, then spray it on the plants.
While researching that on the Internet, I came across this site on companion planting. While it didn't say much on the nettle thing, the bit about nasturtiums has me inspired to plant nasturtiums all around my tomatoes. I had nasturtiums all around them before from volunteer seedlings, but they got dug up with the weeds and grass we had to discard to plant the new tomato sets. I have a few left in the other flower bed, and the hummingbirds have been feeding from them. I want to make some nasturtium salad too. I keep reading that you can eat them but I never remember to try it.

Moving the Plants

This morning before it got hot I dug up some more jasmine roots and smoothed out the surface. Then I moved my white shelving unit over to the wall to put all my cacti and succulents on. It also has the terrarium and the spider plants on it. I just hope they don't fry. Before they were under the upstairs patio so they never got direct sun, but my boyfriend didn't want the shelf in the old spot anymore so I picked the best spot I could. It took me a long time to get all the leaves out of the succulents. I was being careful with the cactus and still managed to poke my thumb with some spines. The vines killed some of the succulents and the snails killed others so it's a pretty sad lot that I have left. I just hope they start doing better now that I've moved them to another spot.

New Tomato Plants

I planted tomatoes this morning. I got them at Lowe's. I planted 2 yellow pear tomatoes, a black variety called Black Krim, and a yellow small tomato called Sungold. I also planted Mammoth Sunflowers along the back wall.

Cilantro blooming.

Feeding Hummingbirds and Cleaning Hummingbird Feeders

http://www.birds-n-garden.com/how_to_attract_hummingbirds.html

A handy reference guide since I always forget the ratio.