Garden2Blog 2012 with P. Allen Smith & Friends

April was a blur for me as I spent most of it sick, then May was spent catching up on the garden chores that I neglected in April, with some excitement sprinkled in here and there.

After spending three weeks sick as a dog, I was whisked to Little Rock, Arkansas…husband-less and kid-less, thanks to P. Allen Smith, his wonderful staff, Garden Home Retreat partners and his 2nd Annual Garden2Blog event.  I spent a few days in Arkansas with 24 garden bloggers from all over the United States, visiting the sites, having friendly garden competitions, eating yummy cheese grits (which I had never had before!), while meeting the faces behind some of my favorite garden products (and learning about some new products as well). 

After watching Allen’s show for years, it was really nice to get to know him outside of the show, especially the Allen that jumped in his pond- fully clothed- with our floating containers that we made with Laguna Ponds.  He was also gracious enough to talk to my daughter on the phone within the first 30 minutes of meeting me! “Hi Mr.Smith!” she said, and he asked when she was going to come and visit. Of course she has been begging me ever since to go to Arkansas. 

Over the next few weeks I will be posting several blog posts about my trip, and all of the wonderful products I get to try out thanks to G2B12’s sponsors.  In the meantime, I wanted to give a shout out to all of my new garden friends- thank you, thank you, thank you! I hope to see everyone soon! You were all so nice, and I am thankful to call all of you friends!

And a special thank you to P. Allen Smith and staff.  I am still not sure why you chose me, but I am so grateful for the opportunity!  I’m a huge fan of Arkansas now- can’t wait to visit it again and see more!

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Click on the links below to check out what everyone else had to say about G2B12 and see their awesome photos! 

The Sponsors: Berry Nurseries, BioSafe Systems, Sun Gro Horticulture/Black Gold, Bonnie Plants, Conard-Pyle Company, Easy Gardener/Jobes Organics, The Garden Patch GrowBox, Laguna Ponds, Purina Mills, Proven Winners, Le Creuset, and Mountain Valley Spring Water.

The Garden Bloggers:

Bruce Bailey from Heavy Petal Nursery

Kylee Baumle from Our Little Acre

Steve Bender from The Grumpy Gardener/Southern Living

Carolyn Binder from Cowlick Cottage Farm

Shirley Bovshow from Garden World Report

Amy Bowers from About You magazine and LocalEyes

Susan Cohan from Leaf Magazine and Miss Rumphius Rules

Shawna Coronado from The Casual Gardener and Gardening Nude

Bren Haas from BG Garden

Annie Haven from Authentic Haven Brand

Robin Horton from Urban Gardens

LaManda Joy from The Yarden

Monica Milla from The Garden Faerie

Dee Nash from Red Dirt Ramblings

Michael Nolan from My Earth Garden and The Garden Rockstar

Kat Robinson from Tie Dye Travels

Gen Schmidt from North Coast Gardening

Christopher Tidrick at From the Soil

Amanda Thompson from Kiss My Aster

Linda Tyson from SS Garden Girl

Jean Ann Van Krevelen from Gardener to Farmer

Barbara Wise from B Wise Gardening

Helen Yoest from Gardening With Confidence

Oh, and there’s me!

***Attendees of Garden2Blog 2012 (including myself) received transportation, accommodations and meals during this event. Some Garden2Blog sponsors provided samples to the attendee's with no obligation.  Any thoughts/views about the products are my own.  ***

Lift Off!

Looks like we'll only have one Echium 'Tower of Jewels' blooming this year, but even one is worth it! The garden is a bit chaotic right now since I've spent the past few weeks sick and haven't spent a minute outside. But, I kind of like chaotic :)

Praying Mantis Babies!

Last summer I purchased the "Praying Mantis Pagoda" from Insect Lore.  I had to wait until the winter to order my praying mantis egg for it (they only ship the eggs from January-April). The eggs themselves take about 3 to 7 weeks to hatch.  This particular egg arrived here from Insect Lore on March 15th.  In the past I had purchased my praying mantis eggs from my local Green Acres Nursery. Those eggs I would put directly outside. I bought this pagoda because after buying numerous eggs for my garden, I never got to see a single one hatch.  They always hatched- but I wanted to be able to watch them hatch!

Thanks to me catching pink eye (yeah, no fun!), and my daughter waking me up at 7am, I was home when the egg started hatching.  "Mommy! Mommy! THEY'RE HATCHING!"  At first I thought she was talking about the bird's nest on our front door (which, by the way- we've got four eggs there now, and we haven't opened our front door in over a week!).  But then she said "There's like a HUNDRED of them, and they are like a bunch of ants crawling all over the place!  They are ADORABLE!" 

Sure enough, she was right.  They are more like mosquitoes than ants, but there's well over a hundred of them, and at 11am, there are still more nymphs crawling out of the egg.  The fear that they would start eating each other hit and I didn't really feel up to explaining THAT part of nature to my daughter so I went outside in search of some aphids.  Thankfully I had just been outside in the garden the day prior to check out the leaf curl problem I was having with one of my peach trees and saw that it had some aphids on it too, so this morning I just clipped a small section of that tree and tossed it into the pagoda. 

Most of the praying mantises will be released into the garden within a couple of days.  Since we are in the middle of a rain storm outside, they kinda picked the WORST possible day to hatch, but we'll try to keep them alive and civil with one another until Saturday.  First sign of a mantis massacre and they'll be sent packing, released outside to brave the rain on their own. 

This is the egg, or the ootheca, and you can sort of see one of these little guys (or gals) climbing its way out of it on the right.  A female can lay up to 400 eggs in one of these things.  It's no wonder that she splits after she has them- who wants to take care of 400 kids?! I attached a video of the egg hatching- but bare with me, it was my first time adding video to a blog post! 

WPA Rock Garden



The Sacramento area has many beautiful public gardens- and the WPA Rock Garden in William Land Park has got to be one of my favorites.  Not even an acre large, this little garden would be my dream backyard- jam packed with awesome plants and many pathways to get lost in.  Since it's right next to the Sacramento Zoo and Fairytale Town, I'm able to stop by here many times a year on regular dates with my daughter. 



I can bore you with the details of the garden, but it's one of those places where words are not needed.  Simply go, relax, and check out every inch of the garden.  But if you'd like to learn more, there is an excellent article about it and Daisy Mah, who is responsible for creating this beautiful space here. 















The One When I Explain the Dead Wreath on Our Front Door



At first glance this just looks like a fabulous red front door....with a dead Christmas wreath hanging from it. 



Well, you are partially correct. 



But when you get closer....  you might notice something else.....  Do you see it?



You MUST be able to see it now.....



There it is!



And there THEY are!



So for now, the dead wreath stays..... (and so do they)

Wordless Wednesday

Repurposing Containers for Seed Starting

Starting seeds can become expensive if you're the type of person to grow and share seedlings with others.  There are several ways to cut corners on those costs by reusing items that would have otherwise been thrown in the trash or recycle bin to get your seeds off to a healthy start.  Today we used a container from Friday night's dinner: a plastic container used for a rotisserie chicken.  In the past we've also used cardboard egg cartons, yogurt containers, and the plastic containers we buy apples in from Costco.  The rotisserie chicken container pictured above is great for plants that prefer to get started in a mini-greenhouse.  A plastic container like this that is specifically made for seeds will set you back a few dollars. 

This particular container is not to share with friends, but specifically for my daughter.  She chose to sow Ipomoea lobata seeds today- aka "Exotic Love Vine", which you can usually find at Annie's Annuals in a 4" pot. I wish I could say she specifically picked out these seeds because she remembered their beautiful blooms growing on our fence last year- but no, she picked them because they matched the shirt she was wearing today (such a girl thing to do).

This project is simple: fill the container with seed starting mix, add water(much easier to do now than after you plant the seeds), poke a bunch of holes in the soil, push the seeds in, then cover it up.  That's it.  With these seeds we should see germination take place in about a week, but since I soaked the seeds for most of the day in water we might see them sprout a little earlier. 

She happily place her mini greenhouse in our guest bathroom where it gets a lot of light- and a lot of traffic, so we will remember to keep an eye on them.  These plants will be able to be transplanted outside in about a month (weather permitting, of course).