2017 Gardens

I'm trying to start some perennials in containers this year. Like everything else they are very slow, and just now starting to show after 2 months. If the hail yesterday didn't kill them...

I never have luck with veggies.
 
I have various perennials in the bed in front of my house. The dominant one(s) are the Purple Cone Flower. Have white and purple varieties growing and they re-seed and spread year after year. They get fairly tall. I believe the actual plants can go for two years each and then die off or are replaced by others. They spread into one large clay pot and I left them growing. In fact, I replaced the pot last year as the old one was disintegrating from weather exposure. They do well in the pot as long as you keep them watered as they dry out a lot faster than if growing in natural soils (ground). The pot gives sort of a tiered effect.

I plant the Gaillardia just about every year. I like them but they don't do well in my bed. Think the drainage isn't good enough for them or not enough sun? Have already planted another one this year.
 
Just a brief missive here to say that Lumpy is back! Lightning fried my computer modem so I am writing from the public library ... on wifi. Wow ... nice how all the pics come onscreen at once. Happy gardening all ... hope to catch up when my dialup is 'cyberized' at the house again.

Then I will be able to post a pic of Lumpy's beautiful big toad face, warts and all :D
 
OK ... Lumpy is happy to be thawed and taking in some rays. She's hanging out right beside her solar garden lights (aka feeding station) that attract a lot of tasty morsels after dark. Tomorrow we'll see temps that will warm her limbs and have her hopping and climbing like her old self ;). I left my annuals outside last night for the first time this spring. I may place them around the gardens and patio but will keep them mobile in containers in case of frost. Soon to plant. Soon :thumbsup:

 
22-rimfire said:
I believe those purple flowers are henbit or lyre leaved sage. Not too hard to get rid of with a broad leaf weed killer.



I struggled with all the African violets last year. I have a lawn service and they used the latest super duper broad leaf herbicide.... stunted them a bit. Eventually, I hand dug them. There were LOTS of them in my back yard. I filled my large wheel barrow completely full with dug violets. It took days to do and then you go back a few weeks later and do it again only there are less of them that time. Violets have sort of a kernal type root that stores energy which is why they are so hard to kill. They spread too.... and spread... and spread.

This year, I am seeing the fruits of my violet digging from last year. Not too many of them inside the main turf area but I still have them along the edges. I have neighbors on both sides with significant violet populations. I love them as potted plants or out in the woods. In my yard, I hate them.
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It would take me year's to get rid of all the one's growing in my yard , but my neighbors are complaining about them already so I'm going to have to try.
 
Your tomato plants are pretty robust. My green peppers only have tiny ones on now. They seem to do better later on in the year when temperatures start to cool down. Wish I had some nice big garden grown ones now. I believe green peppers are considered one of the super foods.
 
It's always great to see what other gardeners are up to here. Way ahead of me for sure :thumbsup:

Ok .. all but 4 pots of the overwintered geraniums are planted at their usual summer home at my friend's place on the 19th. The temps fell to 37F overnight so we were safe enough. Most of my annuals are now in the ground here.

The hillsides are white with trilliums ... lots of red this year as well. Naturally, the blackflies are feasting




The entry garden is just planted. Going for a lot of reds this year with the salvia and new guinea impatiens and some small geraniums from seed ... and the one begonia, but have the usual old favourites in pastel colours, pansies and snapdragons that will bloom more later on.




In the lower garden there is quite a mix of perennials - japanese spurge, rudbeckia, tickseed, iris, trilliums, lavender, hen and chicks, periwinkle, stonecrop ... now tulips as well making a lovely splash of colour. In the horseshoe where the tulips, daffodils and hyacinths are growing now, I will be seeding nasturtiums directly into the soil to replace the spent plants with lots of colour for the summer.







With a minimum loss of blood - the blackberry canes are staked. For two reasons - one) the pups won't snorf ALL the fruit before I get to it ... and two) the canes won't slash me as I fly by on the mower. Plan or bleed




Seven cherry tomato plants are in. Yes, they are there ( r8shell may want to use screen magnifyer after looking at her plants!) In the wild garden the milkweed, beebalm, wild roses, spiderwort, black eyed susans ... and the usual suspect weeds ... are all jumping out of the ground with the rainfall which rarely stops lately.

There are rows of green and red lettuce planted. The swiss chard is a self-proclaimed perennial after surviving here in zone 4b over winter.




The decrepit and rotting deck is removed ... and I am eyeing it as a garden area (never get time to sit down here anyway!)




The grass needs mowing big time. Lumpy spends her days napping in the divot she made in the grass by the planter. I always need to know where she is before mowing :eek:
 
22-rimfire said:
Your tomato plants are pretty robust. My green peppers only have tiny ones on now. They seem to do better later on in the year when temperatures start to cool down. Wish I had some nice big garden grown ones now. I believe green peppers are considered one of the super foods.
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I'd like to wait until they turn red to pick them, but that's when the possums and raccoons beat me to it. :mad:

taldesta said:
Seven cherry tomato plants are in. Yes, they are there ( r8shell may want to use screen magnifyer after looking at her plants!)
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:D :thumbsup:
 
My tomatoes and broccoli are shading out my green peppers. The broccoli plants are really big; I mean really big.

Taldesta, your garden looks great and I sure happy things have warmed up enough in your neck of the woods. I need to work on my deck too. It's old.

Temps here have been pretty warm for May. It has rained enough that the lawn is growing like crazy. Tomorrow is lawn mowing day assuming I have time.
 
:thumbsup:
22-rimfire said:
My tomatoes and broccoli are shading out my green peppers. The broccoli plants are really big; I mean really big.

Taldesta, your garden looks great and I sure happy things have warmed up enough in your neck of the woods. I need to work on my deck too. It's old.

Temps here have been pretty warm for May. It has rained enough that the lawn is growing like crazy. Tomorrow is lawn mowing day assuming I have time.
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Thanks :thumbsup: encouragement appreciated :D

This year I have Verbena in two mixed pots on the patio and alone in two other pots until I decide what to add. They are such butterfly and bee attractants and just don't give up blooming if they are deadheaded. Now, I know you have Lantana. These flowers should be similar, but perhaps the Lantana is more of a sturdier woody stem than these annuals. When I researched online, I found that Lantana and Verbena were closely related, but one sample of Lantana at the green house looked far more shrub like. Is Lantana a perennial there?




New to me ... an old rain barrel, a gift ... although I don't run the eaves trough into it, I fill it with the hose. With the hose fitting at the bottom, it is so much better than what I was using, which was a tall rubbermade container with exit hose fed out over the top. It is located at an elevation and gravity feeds through a buried hose to the 'Salamander' drip at the birdbath. Salamander sort of dribbles into the first pool making ripples that attract the birds ... and the first pool flows into the second and from there it drips on the Scotch moss in the garden. The birds (and frogs) love the constant fresh water in these pools. There is some wild bird bathing going on here







This is the first morning since the 13th that I cannot see Lumpy in her regular divot. Rain overnight so perhaps she is sheltering close by. Thank goodness I mowed on the 23rd when I knew where she was. I had to place a piece of fence beside her divot so that I would not step on her when tending to the patio plants. So she now sleeps safely between two fences yet she can go where she wants anytime.




Also I dragged the aggregate in the lane to stifle what weeds want to take over there. Get'em before the roots take hold.
You can see an overview of Lumpy's location. Here she has drive-through of bugs attracted by the solar lights at night, is safe napping all day

 
Since you like Lumpy around, it would be such a shame to hit him with the lawn mower.

Yes, Verbena and Lantana are cousins. Yes, Lantana is a woody "almost" shrub-like in its growth. Lantana in FL is a perennial, a nuisance plant, and a shrub type thing. It grows to about bushel basket size here (larger there) and I assume dependent on the growing season length. Here (TN), it's an annual but the abundant seeds result in lots of little pesky plants that are half way between the wild version and the domesticated varieties. I yank them out. There are lots of them. My neighbors yard has a lot of the little guys coming up because she does not take care of her yard. Weeds weeds weeds.....little real turf grass, but at least it's green. (Pretty much looks like shi...) Neighbor hired a lawn service to mow her yard this year every other week. For years she depended on her son-in-law to mow it and sometimes it would be a month between mowings. So, at least now I can depend on it being mowed. I used to mow about 1/3 of her yard that touches my lot and between my house and her's. Now I don't have to do that.

With the warmer temps, my Fuschia (hanging basket) stopped blooming. I kept it in the shade on my front porch. I read that it does not bloom when temps get over 80 degrees which explains the lack of new blooms. Beautiful plant, but... So, I moved it inside the house to a sunny window hoping it starts to bloom again. But the reason I brought the Fuschia up here is I saw a LITTLE Praying Mantis near the Fuschia and probably was on it. It was like a half-inch long or about a cm. Never saw a baby before. It was in the process of killing a bug of some sort for dinner. I swished it onto a dust pan and took it outside to hopefully grow to be an adult.
 
LEGION 12 said:
It would take me year's to get rid of all the one's growing in my yard , but my neighbors are complaining about them already so I'm going to have to try.
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Rich, We've always called it Creeping Charlie. My nextdoor neighbor has a yard made up of 50% dandelion and 50% Creeping Charlie. It invades my yard every year. Use this stuff twice a year and add grass seed. Keep it watered ( :rolleyes: Like that is hard around here. It never stops raining).

IMG_2683.JPG

My neighbors yard:

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22-rimfire said:
I saw a LITTLE Praying Mantis near the Fuschia and probably was on it. It was like a half-inch long or about a cm. Never saw a baby before. It was in the process of killing a bug of some sort for dinner. I swished it onto a dust pan and took it outside to hopefully grow to be an adult.
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Honestly I cannot remember seeing a praying mantis since my childhood - totally amazing! I used to find them commonplace.
 
Rupestris said:
Rich, We've always called it Creeping Charlie. My nextdoor neighbor has a yard made up of 50% dandelion and 50% Creeping Charlie. It invades my yard every year. Use this stuff twice a year and add grass seed. Keep it watered ( :rolleyes: Like that is hard around here. It never stops raining).

View attachment 712768

My neighbors yard:

View attachment 712769
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My young neighbour, following in his dad's stead, has an open acre plus of grass ... and I sympathize (but also appreciate) that, although he works full time, he seems compelled to mow 4 times and more to my one ... all because of his perennial dandelion crop. Sure enough, if he let those thousands of suckers go to seed, I would have a huge problem here. So, kudos to his dedication for sure ... but if it were me, I would sure be lessening the grassed area if possible. Perhaps it is because of the value I put on human time, but mowing big grass twice a week is not on my short list of to-do's. Not applicable to a reasonably sized yard of course. So not so much applicable where your yard is so well defended from the neighbour's inattention to the lawn.

I have some dandelions (but fewer every year) and pull those I can (with a tool or by hand after a good rain) and when not enough time is available to pull, I just pick off the flower heads to stop re-seeding and make a mental note to take the plant 'next time'. I have relatively few dandelions. So thank you good but weary neighbour. Kudos and thanks.

No offence to those who love mowing and enjoy those big lawns - honest - it is just that I would rather be canoeing.

Over my short stay here, I have made all the edges mower-easy so there is very little finesse work needed, perhaps twice a season - I manage all the edging work in under a half hour and the sit-down mowing portion also under a half hour. For the size of this property, that's slick! Once in fall and once in spring - maybe a little shovel edging work. I stop adjacent seed spreads to my gardens and aggregate. In fact, I treat my laneway like a garden. Do the huge initial work, enjoy the time reward. I am a lazy gardener. And getting more so as the years sharpen my lazy skills! Got to admit that, at my age, my lazy skills are getting pretty sharp

Every bit of aggregate, edging, fencing, levelling, sodding, planting .... here - I have thought .... how do I want it to turn out, what is the time cost to maintain ... and what is worth my time.

Well ... OK - there is one exception here ... Lumpy. Good grief, she makes for a lot of worry and search if I want to mow and I don't know where she is!
 
taldesta said:
My young neighbour, following in his dad's stead, has an open acre plus of grass ... and I sympathize (but also appreciate) that, although he works full time, he seems compelled to mow 4 times and more to my one ... all because of his perennial dandelion crop. Sure enough, if he let those thousands of suckers go to seed, I would have a huge problem here. So, kudos to his dedication for sure ... but if it were me, I would sure be lessening the grassed area if possible. Perhaps it is because of the value I put on human time, but mowing big grass twice a week is not on my short list of to-do's. Not applicable to a reasonably sized yard of course. So not so much applicable where your yard is so well defended from the neighbour's inattention to the lawn.

I have some dandelions (but fewer every year) and pull those I can (with a tool or by hand after a good rain) and when not enough time is available to pull, I just pick off the flower heads to stop re-seeding and make a mental note to take the plant 'next time'. I have relatively few dandelions. So thank you good but weary neighbour. Kudos and thanks.

No offence to those who love mowing and enjoy those big lawns - honest - it is just that I would rather be canoeing.

Over my short stay here, I have made all the edges mower-easy so there is very little finesse work needed, perhaps twice a season - I manage all the edging work in under a half hour and the sit-down mowing portion also under a half hour. For the size of this property, that's slick! Once in fall and once in spring - maybe a little shovel edging work. I stop adjacent seed spreads to my gardens and aggregate. In fact, I treat my laneway like a garden. Do the huge initial work, enjoy the time reward. I am a lazy gardener. And getting more so as the years sharpen my lazy skills! Got to admit that, at my age, my lazy skills are getting pretty sharp

Every bit of aggregate, edging, fencing, levelling, sodding, planting .... here - I have thought .... how do I want it to turn out, what is the time cost to maintain ... and what is worth my time.

Well ... OK - there is one exception here ... Lumpy. Good grief, she makes for a lot of worry and search if I want to mow and I don't know where she is!
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I do the same thing (when I see them) with dandelions. Neighbors have "lots". Digging gets rid of them. The other plant that I see are wild onions/wild garlic (have both). When I see it, I make a point of digging after a rain to get the little onions with the tops. Yes, you can eat them. I generally place in a bag inside my trash so the little bulbs don't restart growing somewhere else they might have fallen. You can use a herbicide on dandelions.

I made a point of reducing turf area with plantings and mulched beds so the mowing goes faster and everything is shaped for easy mower access. Got a little battery operated weedeater (40 volt) and it has a lot of gusto. My old 18 volt Black & Decker weedeater got retired. The batteries were pretty much shot and wouldn't hold a charge long enough to even do my minimal trimming. Very slow charger versus the newer lithium type batteries. New B&D batteries cost at least half of the cost of a new more powerful trimmer. (It was cheaper to buy a new B&D drill with two batteries than buy the batteries seperately. But I don't want their drill.)

As a side note, I went to a battery powered weed eater after always having to fiddle with the 2-cycle gas/oil one I had. This was like 10 years ago. The gas model is still hanging in my garage and needs to be gone. The evolution was first a corded electric weedeater (smaller yard then). Second a gas powered one (much bigger yard). Third and fourth... battery powered.
 
My first lawn so I don't mind mowing at least not yet I'm sure it will get old soon . I got this Ryobi all my drills and my inflator use the same batteries so I have plenty.
 
I am intrigued with the Ryobi system ... especially after my trying to match up obsolete chargers and old drills etc. Great stuff. Congrats on the new home and I know you will thrive there. Looking forward to more pics of the gardening. Hope the owl has hung around ... but sometimes they must just do their own thing ... :D
 
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