It’s time to get the Fall garden planting finished. There’s still half the garlic left to plant but since I have to position each seed with the right end up, I have to do a lot of squatting and my foot is still too sore to do all that. I was able to finish up the seeds that I can just drop in the holes!
Garden Corner
In this spot, there’s carrots, spinach, lettuce, radicchio, cabbage and radishes.
I had about given up on trying to mark what’s planted where. When I used those white plastic markers, the sun was so hard on them that they would get so brittle and even a water hose bumping them would cause them to shatter. I tried writing on wooden craft sticks and the sun didn’t run them but they still got tromped on broken or the weeds grew over them and I couldn’t even find them.
Then I thought . . rocks! We have a lot of leftover rocks from when they built our house and the rocks from the other house the former owns built got dumped on our land so we have those. I took a Sharpie and wrote on the rocks and we’ll see how that works.
Marking the Garden
We’ll see how that works out. It’s kinda hard to lose a rock that size and hopefully the weeds won’t completely cover it up. If the Sharpie begins to fade, before it gets completely impossible to read, I can go over it again with the marker, if needed.
Once I get the rest of the garlic planted, I should have room to plant beets and onions. Some time during the winter, we’ll clean out the rest of what’s left in there and do another planting in late January or early February. Some days I feel really lucky that we can garden all year here and some days, I wish I had a break from it all!
Sherrill says
Judy, you are BRILLIANT!! I don’t know that I ever would’ve thought of using a rock! LOL Great idea.
Carole says
Sorry, I have to ask … how many snakes in the rock pile? (Were you wearing your flip-flops?)
What I really wanted to tell you was to try using a pair of kitchen tongs to plant your garlic. I have a bad back and bad hip so reaching the floor isn’t always successful (or reaching thread spools high in my thread box). I have tongs all over the house. Hubby is very happy.
JudyL says
Vince got a load of rocks for me and brought them in the wheel barrow. I needed them to separate the rows of garlic too but to answer your question . . I had on flip flops!
Since my foot injury is temporary and I still have time to plant the garlic, I’ll just plan on doing it next week. I scoop out a little hole with the trowel, then position the garlic and cover it up. It’s quick and easy but just isn’t working so well with the foot injury.
The tong trick is a good one to know. Thanks!
Joyce says
I use rocks to mark rows in my garden too! My garden is so small I don’t have to label them, but it is nice to mark where I planted the seeds, especially when I don’t do it all at once. Hope your foot feels better soon.
sherryl says
So the big question I have is… do you have a water issue in Texas? I’m in southern California and I keep wanting to plant and then I think… oh dear. Water! Is it irresponsible to plant when I know I’m going to need to use valuable water to keep things alive? So I’m wondering… are you finding that any of your veggies need a little less water than others?
When oh when will our drought end??!!
JudyL says
Water is a huge issue here. Those on community water/rural/city water are limited to watering outside one day per week and then they have limits as to how much water they can use per month.
We have wells on our property. The community water comes from a lake and our wells are shallow/ground water wells. If the drought doesn’t end, it could well affect our water supply and we’re not hooked in to the community water supply so we’d be up a creek if that happened.
Like you, I so hope the drought ends soon. This is the greenest summer we’ve had here but still way, way too dry.
Dottie N. says
What a great idea to use rocks for writing/marking!
sherryl says
Sounds like it’s time to start taking rain dance classes!
Marilyn says
Judy, at our thrift shop we used to get a lot of used venetian blinds that came in. I found that some of them didn’t sell, so bought one set and cut the slats apart. Then cut the individual slats the length I needed, trimmed one end to a point and used them for row markers. They worked great. I found metal ones worked fine as did plastic ones.
Joyce Wilson says
Judy
when we ran our nursery, I bought special sharpen type pens that resisted the effects of sun rays so that our tags would last the growing season. That was before we bought a system to make our own labels.
but those pens were available and didn’t fade.
good luck joyce