I’ve had a lucky bamboo plant for about two years. When I first purchased the plant a couple years ago, it was just a couple short stubby stems. Its grown about a foot per year, and it’s now about two feet tall. I’ve never transplanted it from its original container.

Lucky Bamboo is actually in the lily family and is not bamboo at all. The plant is very easy to grow and maintain. It grows in a container with decorative rocks and water. I use distilled, or bottled water. It’s not fussy, I keep it on my cookbook stand in the kitchen since it enjoys indirect but bright sunlight, it gets sunlight from two windows in this spot.

The roots were coming out of the top of the container, and the plant was drinking all its water within a couple days. My husband tipped it over a couple weeks ago. He swept up some of the stones and threw them away.

It badly needed a transplant, so today I gave it a new home. I re potted it in a pot about twice the size of the original, and I gave it some new stones. I read somewhere the pot is supposed to be about two inches bigger around than the lucky bamboo plant. I hope it’s happy in the new pot.
Tags: lucky bamboo, housplant care, lucky bamboo care, transplant lucky bamboo

I showed you my before photo on Sunday, now here’s the after. I finally sorted through my seed “collection” and threw out anything not labeled, or more than a couple years old.

After the seeds were sorted I put them in a plastic container to keep the moisture out. I was going to label them alphabetically, but decided to label them by type instead. I made a label for flowers, herbs, vegetables, fruits, tomatoes, and ornamentals. I do better at keeping things organized if my system is simple.

My largest section was the ornamentals. I love novelty plants, and plants I can use to decorate with. I always have broom corn, decorative grasses, gourds, and other novelties in my garden. Since some of them are hard to find I save seeds whenever possible.

The key to keeping most seeds is to keep them cool and dry. I don’t think my cardboard box was doing the trick.

There are a couple good books on the subject of seed saving and storing, Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners by Suzanne Ashworth, and Saving Seeds: The Gardener’s Guide to Growing and Storing Vegetable and Flower Seeds by Marc Brown. Both books go into great detail on harvesting and storing different types of seeds. They’re a great reference if you harvest and save your own seeds.

Tags: saving seeds, sorting seeds, keeping seeds, gardening

As promised here is the second part of the best of Mother Earth’s garden. I tried to pick the posts I would most want to read if I was just visiting the blog. I also looked at posts that are still receiving search traffic, and posts popular with comments.

I hope you enjoy the results for July through December.

July

Aloe Plant Basics

Wind Power

August

Natalie Portman Helps Save The Planet

Keeping Snails and Slugs Out of Your Garden

September

50 Vegetable Recipes to Keep Warm This Season

Mother Earth’s Garden’s 50 Best Trees

October

Getting Rid Of Lady Bugs

Preparing For Winter Tip # 1

November

Live Christmas Tree Care

Bird Seed Ornaments

December

Christmas At The Lifestyles Network

Make A Seed Card

I enjoyed my look back at 2007, I hope you enjoyed it too. I’m looking forward to sharing some great gardening information with you in the new year.

Attracting birds to your garden is not too difficult. If you have a variety of plants in your garden you are probably well on your way to creating a habitat suitable for the many birds who live in your area.

There are three things you need to nurture the birds living in your garden. You will need a regular source of food, shelter from the weather, and a water source the birds can depend on. There is one thing you do not need if you want birds to thrive in your garden, and that’s chemical sprays, or pesticides.

When you’re deciding what to plant in your garden this year consider plants that will help nourish the birds you would like to attract year round. Grow plants that produce berries in the summer, but also plants that produce berries or seed-heads in the fall or winter. Cockscomb, sunflowers, and holly berry are all great examples of natural birdfeeders to help your birds survive the winter. Hazelnut, walnut, and chestnut trees also provide food for some types of birds throughout the winter.

Birds require some shelter from bad weather, and they also need safe place to put their nests in the spring. Low lying evergreen shrubs and bushes make great shelters. Pine and other evergreen trees are also great for the birds. They provide shelter, but they also provide pinecones, a great food source for birds during the fall and winter.

Make sure you have a local supply of fresh water year round for the birds. If there is not a small stream, or pond nearby for the birds to drink out of you may want to invest in a bird bath and place a small heater in it for the winter.

If you attract birds to your garden, you should not use pesticides. Birds and their offspring can be damaged or killed by the use of pesticides. Since they have tiny bodies, it doesn’t take much to poison their system.

As a bonus for you, all of the plants mentioned here will also look very attractive in your garden. Many of these will also add interest year round. You will be able to enjoy many of these plants in the winter, while you’re enjoying the birds visiting your winter garden.

Tags: creating a bird habitat, plants for birds, natural bird shelters, gardening for birds

I haven’t been at Mother Earth’s Garden for all of 2007, but I have taken a look at most of the posts made this year. I just wanted to post a summary of some of the more popular posts from the last twelve months.

I picked one or 2 posts from each month, based on reader comments, and posts I enjoyed. Today I’ll do January through June, and tomorrow I’ll finish out the best of Mother Earth’s Garden 2007.

January

Uses for Pantyhose

What to do With Zucchini

February

Cheap Way To Do Trellis

Shredding Paper for Compost

March

Hungry Birds

Where’s the Beef… I Mean Fruit?

April

Uses For Vinegar In The Garden

Tree Basics

May

Preparing For Frost

Pine

June

In The Path Of Hummingbirds

Earwigs

Merry Christmas from Mother Earth’s Garden. I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas, and a wonderful holiday!

We just passed the winter solstice. The one day of the year with the longest night, and shortest day. I think this is a cause for celebration.

The winter solstice means the days will now begin getting longer. As the days get longer, I get closer to being in my garden again.

As soon as the new year is here I start preparing for the new gardening season.

It all begins when the seed catalogs start arriving in the mail. I start going through them and picking out what I may want in my garden. Of course I pick way too many things, and I have to make cuts later.

Then I make an outline of my gardens, and plan what I need to order. It’s always a tough decision. I always want to try way more new seeds than my gardening space will allow.

This is my seed box. It would probably make Julie over at DeclutterIt shake her head. I think I have seeds in there from the last 10 years.

I have seeds I was given, seeds I saved from my garden, seeds I swapped with others, and seeds I’ve purchased all thrown in that cardboard box.

My mission this week is to go through all these seeds, throw out the older seeds, and organize them alphabetically in an air tight plastic container.

If I don’t do this I will not allow myself to purchase any new seeds this year. I’ll post an after picture when the mission is accomplished.

I found out today I’m a total garden geek (OK, so I already knew that, or at least I knew I was a geek). May Dreams Garden has posted a little test to see if your a garden geek (the Christmas edition).

I took the test, and had to answer yes to several questions proving my gardening geekiness yet again.

Yes, over half my ornaments are garden related. Yes, I love to shop for my Christmas gifts at the local garden center (but I’m glad that most people don’t think of it). I answered yes to several other questions too. Yes, I love to use greenery from my own garden, and it goes on.

Go see if you’re a garden geek.

I love to wrap my packages in garden or nature themed or inspired wrapping paper when I can find it. I’ve also been known to use a brown paper bag and decorate it with rubber stamps, or leaf rubbings.

I’m always on the lookout for nature related gift tags to put on my packages. Sometimes I make my own, but here are a few links to some gift tags I thought were really cute.

Hope you enjoy these if you have any last minute gifts to wrap.

Land O’Lakes has gift tags with From the Kitchen Of, perfect for those gifts that originally came from your garden.

Canadian Living has some very pretty downloadable gift tags, take a look they’re beautiful.

Jan’s Designs also has some very elegant tags you can print.

Card stock would work very nicely to print these tags, then tape them to your packages, or punch a hole in the corner of the tag, and tie them on with a little ribbon. Add a sprig of holiday greens or a candy cane to complete the package.

I’m off to wrap my own last minute gifts.