Naturally ridding your garden of pests with Tobacco Tea.

  So this morning I am in the middle of pulling my cosmo plants out since they are covered in aphids and I do not want them spreading to my bell peppers and eggplant. I do a little reading on the webs as usual and decide to attempt to make some garlic oil and spray it on the plants as a natural alternative. No sooner then I get out there and start spraying my neighbor comes over to ask what I am doing so I tell him. He knows WAY more about plants than I ever will so he offers some advice. Stop what I am doing and make some tobacco tea to spray on the plants. And I do so, and it works so well I am now here to tell you to do the same thing.

 I am a smoker, I have smokes around, if you do not go buy yourself a cheap bag of drum or better yet top rolling tobacco, I think those are the cheapest. I used a 32 oz cup to brew, I twisted out all my cigarette butts into it, if you are using loose rolling tobacco a pouch should be enough for you to do this three or four times, I would start with a quarter of the pouch  and add boiling water and let it steep for five minutes. Now I have a secondary coffee maker that is broken I pulled the basket for to strain the tobacco back out.

Now before you go and go gross I am not a smoker tobacco when it is not on fire has a nice sweet smell to it you may be surprised by as it steeps, this will not smell like a lit cigarette.

I simply waited for it to cool, stuck it in an extra spray bottle and went out and liberally applied it to the effected plants early in the morning. Here I am a few hours later to say I have no idea where most of the bugs have gone but thankfully they are no longer on my plants. It worked like a charm for me.

So tobacco tea, I learned something useful today!

Wenchkin's Coloring Pages - The Empress

Every now and then I ask my fans what they would like to see me feature next. Karen Ringen, long time coloring fan was the first to ask for a tarot card so here is my first attempt and something like that.

Click the pic to enlarge, right click save as to print and color.

Food is Always Good

Making some Sliders with mushrooms and a white cheddar.

Fresh lettuce, red onion, guacamole, dinner roll, and a plate.

I would have show you more, but I was done eating when I realized I forgot to take pics.  

Wenchkin's Coloring Pages - Dia de los Warhol

for fun
click the pic to enlarge, right click save as to print and color

Wenchkin's Coloring Pages - Dia de los Olympics

I thought, why not.
So Skullympics it is

click the pic to enlarge, right click save as to print and color

Food Porn Thursday's

Taco Salad, 6 Layer Bean dip, Chips, Edible Shell
When we eat, we eat like champions!

Go Local? Try Grow Local!

Now I myself am a city girl, I love the outdoors but I love indoor plumbing more. I love electronics and the conveniences of this modern age however I also like the concept of living off the grid. Had our neighbors not come over and given us a bunch of seedlings we would probably not be container gardening but here we are. Now that I have been container gardening I want to full on run with it and LOVE the idea of growing my own food.

A few months back we were given a bunch of eggplant and bell pepper seedlings. Living in new mexico and the fact our soil is more sand I knew I could not just stick these in the ground. We picked the shadiest place at the back of the house and cut the tops off a few tanks and grabbed a plastic bucket. Not the greatest looking garden but no one but me sees it and it makes me hella happy I am managing to grow these things out here despite the heat.

Now I am no expert so I will not be the person to tell you how to do this all but try googling container gardening and people who do it better than I have already been doing this for years.

I did get a late start on this year and since I live in the desert next year I am going to shoot for starting seeds indoors in february to get a good jump on and we do plan to make more of an actual full garden next year. We are going to be building a large metal version of a bottle garden for outside and I will most likely start everything inside using the recycled bottle garden method shown here



I will be adding pictures to my weekly update as things grow, at the moment I have a few baby peppers growing and the eggplant are just now starting to bloom.