Tag: gardening
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Our berry good garden
Our plants continue to arrive. I’ve got to admit that sometimes it is a little weird to think that my plants are coming in the mail…but it works. I actually like that I can do research online, look for what I want, and see them arrive at my door when the right time for planting…
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We are growing fruit too!!
Most times we are outside, we look at our fence and think….there must be something we can do about this fence. We thought about painting it, but that would take A LOT of paint and money (and effort…). We also thought about growing a vine that could cover the fence over time, and we really…
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Planting Peonies
Last week we got our first landscaping shipment! Our peonies were delivered in a little box inside two tiny plastic bags. I was completely weirded out when I saw the plants – they were bare root peonies and looked nothing like what I thought. I envisioned tiny baby plants that would go above ground, but…
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Signs of spring!
It may have snowed over the weekend (and last night apparently in some parts of middle TN) but we’ve been seeing signs of spring all around our house and neighborhood and it makes us so excited. The first to come up are the daffodils lining the boundaries of all the yards in South Inglewood. Unfortunately…
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Planting trees
When we moved into our mansion back in 2011 one of the first things we did was to remove a couple of huge, dying hackberry trees around the house. It was a matter of safety since these trees were rotting inside and leaning towards our home. At the time, we squared the situation with ourselves…
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No more cleanup!
We finished the landscaping cleanup!! I cannot believe how good it looks. We could leave it like this forever with nice clean patches of dark soil and never plant anything and it would be an enormous improvement to what it was. We had a jungle growing off the front and sides of our house, and…
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They are alive!!
It has been about 3 weeks since we sowed the first seeds in our raised beds that we covered with the cold frames. As we mentioned in a previous post, this round of sowing was an experiment since it was way too early to sow anything without the frames. We were hoping for the best…
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SEEDS!!!!!!
All this gardening preparation has been done in order to host our garden “super stars”….the SEEDS!! We are starting almost everything from seed this year which is a big challenge for us, and thus the hard work preparing everything to the best of our abilities. Toda esta preparación que hemos hecho ha sido para acomodar…
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DIY Cold frames
The weather in Tennessee has been a little weird. We have had several very warm days during the winter, and then a drop to freezing temperatures for a couple of days. The plants are confused. Bulbs are popping out happily thinking spring is here, but then a couple of below freezing nights hurt their leaves.…
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Soil is the key to happy plants!
The new beds are up and ready and the old beds are “refreshed” and ready too! Setting up everything required some work but we believe it will pay off in the long run with TONS of veggies. The 2 old beds had left over dirt from last year and the new ones were completely empty…
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Fencing the garden
I don’t know about you but somewhere along the way we failed to teach our dogs to garden. I am sure they would be great at digging holes for planting, but I doubt they would dig exactly where I need them to. So in order to avoid any problems with the raised beds in the…
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Prepping the new garden beds
Our vegetable garden is expanding this year. Last year I built 3 beds but only wound up using 2. This year we are using all 3 from last year and adding 1 ½ more. The big beds are 4 x 8 feet and the half is 4 x 4, and all of them are about…
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Cleaning the garden beds
Once we had the edging installed we knew exactly what the garden’s boundaries were and proceeded to the next step: cleaning out the weeds and bermuda grass. These beds needed a DEEP cleaning – there were loads of unwanted plants growing there and of course with the plants came roots. Also, because we neglected the…
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Installing edging
We have a ton of hard work to accomplish in our landscape plan to prepare for the arrival of the plants. We ordered most of our plants online and they will ship when our zone (TN) is ready for planting. Since we moved into the house, weeds and Bermuda grass have taken over the old…
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Planting Pansies
On the same day that Javier and I planted the new little rose garden on the side of the house we also filled up the newly-empty half whiskey barrels with fresh potting soil and planted some suffering pansies. We came across the abandoned plants at Lowes while we were shopping for edging and other materials…
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Our new rose garden
Before we continue with tales of our Chicago trip, we’re going to continue with our garden saga. After moving three big bushes from the front of the house to the side, we started working on sections of the landscape that were ready for planting. Ever since we got the house (and especially after visiting my…
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The best yard in the street
When we moved into our house, we quickly learned from the neighbors that the previous owner had the most beautiful yard in the street (key word HAD). We had never taken care of a yard before, so the idea of keeping up with it was a little daunting. We had other priorities in mind: fence,…
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Rodriguez Fajitas!
There’s nothing all that special about these that make them “Rodriguez fajitas” except that the peppers come from our lovely (now potted) bell pepper plants! Javi and I needed a new way to fix up our chicken – the whole baked chicken thing was great for the first 3 months after we discovered our favorite…
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See you next year garden!
Fall is almost here and the weather and pests have conspired against my garden. In the last update we told you about our attempt to rescue all our pepper plants and the harvest of the sweet potatoes. We discovered that squash bugs were the reason why our plants died, but luckily we got the peppers…
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Garden Update: Sweet Potato Treasure …. Arrrr!!!
The summer gardening season is almost over at Los Rodriguez farm (we wish we had a farm…but oh well!). We had fun working in the garden, seeing things pop up, eating fresh veggies, chopping herbs, fighting mildew and uninvited “guests”. We refused to use pesticides or anything that could add toxins to our plants, so…
Los Rodriguez Life 