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If I hadn’t already spent so much money setting up a system this would be awfully tempting!

I think with all of google advancements it’s going to make it easier for me to keep track of what I am doing in my garden and what I need to do. I was trying to use this blog to do this but it’s only good for some things and not others. I added a tab at the top that is an embedded google calendar. What is great about google of course is that it’s searchable. The other cool thing is that when I put an event in I can have it send me an email to remind me I need to do something. So my idea is that I will put in the frost dates and when I need to plant what and then forget about it until it’s time and the calender will tell me. That is the hope anyway.

The other tab is a spreadsheet in google docs of what is planted where in the garden and maybe a note about that containers so I can keep track of what is where. One of these days I will have it perfect! 🙂

ALERT: If you are Safari user on a Mac or an iPhone and have a google account you can not see this calendar embedded within a page. Even if you are the owner of the account you can’t see it until you log out out of all google app accounts. It’s a known bug with Safari that I really wish Apple would fix. I would like to be able to update these from my iPhone. Since there are so many iPhone users I am sure they will get to it someday!

Ok – maybe this picture signifies my relationship to my special place the moment. Or maybe this is just the kind of thing that happens as winter approaches. Even so there is a certain magic to it all. There is a life force energy in the decay of nature that in my special place is kinda fun to watch and learn from. I took this picture last night and pulled the lens ring back as I flashed the camera to give it this effect.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

At least that’s what it seems like. One would think with it being dark and dreary there isn’t much to do in the garden but it seems to be just the opposite. I haven’t posted in a while. Mainly because my garden hasn’t been doing too well. It’s a little sick and no one wants to blog about their failures. That’s just depressing! I seem to have a drainage problem and that has just drowned my plants and it’s not an easy fix. The sand at the bottom was not a good idea so I am going to use gravel instead. A lot of heavy lifting! It’s all so overwhelming. Now that I have had my grieving period of why me I think I can get back into it stronger and start to take one step at a time at getting this garden back into shape. Not only do I have a drainage problem but several days of hard frost have killed most things so it’s time to redo my containers and to start getting my seeds in order. I will post later about all the seeds I have and I have quite a few! I have more seeds than I have places to put them but if I plan this right I will know what to plant when and have greater success. I have been surfing the web to find the right planting calendar and I’ve found some really nice ones but unfortunately they are never for my zone. I am in zone 9 with it being a little colder and hotter than usual for zone 9 in this pocket of Byron CA but I still seem to fall into that area according to the charts.

So below are some links I thought I would share that help you figure out what to plant and when. I need to make my own based of these great ideas below:

• First of a good guide on companion planting and what works and what doesn’t
• This a zone 9-10 schedule with a little extra information about the planting
• This is a frost chart of the first and last for your area. I am choosing Sacramento because that is the closest to me. That is Feb 14 so if I just remember Valentines day in my head that will work. I had a garden lady tell me to always remember Thanksgiving as the last day for planting tulips. Although according to this chart Dec 1 is the first frost.
• This is not my zone but I like the simplicity of the creation and the possibility of maintaining. It’s just showing the windows of time you have to start planting.
• This is really need because you just plug in the dates and then it generates a time chart for you however you can’t add any task to it so it’s use it limited.
• Perhaps even an easier list to maintain since it’s just text