The 2019 Garden, Landscape, and Other Stuff Thread...

[LEGION 12]

How do you know when they are ready to use?

The husks start to split.

 

[annr]

22-rimfire , agreed on the shade. Although we are on the (very) sunny side of the street, the impatiens grows well as ground cover under the front yard bushes—must be enough shade there. The flowers have grown vertically and horizontally filling in everywhere and seem to tolerate the AM sun. Very easy upkeep.

 

[22-rimfire]

22-rimfire , agreed on the shade. Although we are on the (very) sunny side of the street, the impatiens grows well as ground cover under the front yard bushes—must be enough shade there. The flowers have grown vertically and horizontally filling in everywhere and seem to tolerate the AM sun. Very easy upkeep.

Yeah, as long as they have water. They are water bags and one of the first flowers to freeze in the fall.

 

[LEGION 12]

The end results garden fresh salsa verda .

 

[annr]

Performed an intervention on the tomatoes. (I was left on tomato duty this week.)

Went outside and they were laying on my watering can, pooped out under their own weight. Not having any stakes, I sutured their plastic support to the trellis, and I'm hoping they will be stable until I can come up with something else.

 

[LEGION 12]

Performed an intervention on the tomatoes. (I was left on tomato duty this week.)

Went outside and they were laying on my watering can, pooped out under their own weight. Not having any steaks, I sutured their plastic support to the trellis, and I'm hoping they will be stable until I can come up with something else.

View attachment 1165772 View attachment 1165773

Tomato surgeon .

 

[annr]

Tomato surgeon .

I knew I’d find my calling, eventually. Hope the patient survives!

 

[LEGION 12]

I keep mine in cages then stake them down gets real windy around here .

 

[annr]

LEGION 12 , Thanks.
If I'm seeing correctly, you stake the cage, not the plant? And what do you use to attach the stake to the plant/cage?

 

[LEGION 12]

LEGION 12 , Thanks.
If I'm seeing correctly, you stake the cage, not the plant? And what do you use to attach the stake to the plant/cage?

Yes I wire tie the stake to the cages , my first year here I lost some to high winds .

 

[22-rimfire]

You only need to stake the pot (and the cage) if the pot is smallish and the plant becomes top heavy. This assumes no high winds one way or the other. Pretty hard to stake up large plants with traditional tomato cages. You end up breaking branches. Better to rig something else up and then go with large cages with the next planting. Depending on variety (determinant vs indeterminant), the store bought cages may not be tall enough. I use concrete wire (5 ft tall, I believe) in my regular garden and inderminant varieties like Big Boy, Early Girl, Whopper, and so forth get taller than my cages. I use pretty large pots so there is some weight to the pot and room to stick a tomato cage into the soil within the pot. Generally speaking, you should buy determinant varieties for pots or planters. Goliath seems to be a good variety that produces traditional sized fruit in pots and is determinant.

On staking, I have to stake up my tomato cages (concrete wire) to keep them from blowing over once the plants get about about 3 feet tall as they catch a lot of wind in a thunderstorm.

 

[annr]

Thanks, good advice. I sutured it to both latticed sides for more support and hope the semi-enclosure will protect it.

Re: watering. As I mentioned, I think everything was overwatered. Any pointers on watering the tomatoes: how many times/day, let them dry out or not, time of day, etc.

 

[22-rimfire]

You'll have to follow your instincts and "water when they need it". I generally water in the heat of the summer every other day unless I see wilting or some other indication that they need a drink. But I use pretty large pots, so there is a bit of a water reservoir in the soil. If the water just runs out the bottom of the container quickly, I would water in smaller amounts or multiple times on the same day.... hard to say really.

Added: Sometimes when a plant gets some what root bound, the soil separates from the container and when you water, the water simply runs down the outside of the soil zone quickly and out the bottom. The idea is to get the soil wet as best you can.

The tomato in the picture looks very healthy.

 

[Win Heger]

Do you water the trumpet vine? Looks very robust. Hummingbirds love those flowers. Today we have had higher than normal hummingbird activity here at the house. Don't know why unless the young are big enough to fend for themselves now.


The blooms on the yucca are quite pretty. I believe it's one of the yucca varieties??

There are drips on the plants. We have another trumpet vine on the side of the house, Hummingbirds do love them. The Hummingbirds are acting different here this year. We would have swarms at the feeder in the past, this year only a couple at a time. Still going through a feeder plus a day, not counting the Oriole feeder in another area. For the fourth year in a row a Hummingbird has nested on our patio, baby hatched week ago, seems to be the only one.

I had to look that one up, it's a Texas Red Yucca, even my wife didn't know what it was! Glad you asked, I learned something new!!

 

[annr]

Looks like TX red yucca to me.

 

[taldesta]

Glad we turned the page - I couldn't see much on last one! But today I'm sizzling in here at a robust 30 kbs which means I can squeak my compressed images through but may not be able to view yours. Wonderful conversations all, though!

Hollyhocks and bee balm and petunias - my camera wants a vacation.



Returning from the veg garden ... taken from the wild hill. On right are the liatris (spikes just turning purple now), shasta daisies, gaillardia - perennials planted from seed last year along with several lilies. Annual zinnias from seed in front should be flowering soon. New dig perpendicular to house separates wild hill from mowed lawn and has about 50 glads and lots of cosmos - all should be putting up blooms shortly.



To left is the boulder garden with bee balm (hummingbird favourite) and hollyhocks plus. In planters the nasturtiums are flowering, attracting the hummingbirds too.



Lots of black currents are ripening and the birds and I take turns - depending on who's not looking

 

[taldesta]

Yesterday when I went up to water the tomatoes and peppers in the veg garden, a wild turkey mom (is that a hen?) jumped out from under the shade of the tomatoes along with one or two young birds - didn't count - I was too startled. Mother tried to fake me out and just loped around while the little ones made their flight away. And so I got the heck out of there fast - not wanting to disturb a family dust bath in the tomato patch



There are actually a lot of tomatoes coming along here.

Scarlet runner green beans are starting to flower and climb (August shade for the porch begonias) - very late start to all my veggies this spring but all doing well. Note that pots are shaded from the sun in the West.



Porch has a mixed bag of favourite things - begonias, coleus, thunbergia, portulaca (rock rose), Crocket's red petunias - plus three tomato plants in pots. Lots of flowering should mean lots of cherry and early girl tomatoes - hoping. At the base of the steps are planted amaranth seedlings- love lies bleeding. I should thin them ... should, should, should ...

 

[taldesta]

My external modem died after posting yesterday and I haven't been able to replace it at Staples or at a second shop ... so browsing here (but no email) - on wifi in town. Off to try to track down a new modem (I can't quite force my hand to click on the 'poop' icon, but truly would like to)

 

[annr]

taldesta (I will click it for you).

Didn't you get the memo that this is appliance failure week/month? A few years back (almost to the day) we lost: washer, dryer, microware. This July it was the AC. Good luck and the plantings look super, nice layout and design.

 

[22-rimfire]

taldesta (I will click it for you).

Didn't you get the memo that this is appliance failure week/month? A few years back (almost to the day) we lost: washer, dryer, microware. This July it was the AC. Good luck and the plantings look super, nice layout and design.

I hope not on the appliance thing! I bought a new refrigerator a couple years ago. It was time; it stopped cooling properly. The Washer & Dryer continues to plug along and has for better than 20 years. It is just two of us, so we aren't using them every day. My house AC (two units/systems) failed after a power surge (lightning strike) in late February. We had to go a couple weeks with no heat until the insurance thing could be worked out. The AC folks have been here twice since to service one of the units..... Basically it was determined that there was a coolant leak but they couldn't find it the first visit. They did on the second visit and repaired it. That was covered by their 1 year parts & labor warranty on their installation. Seems to be fixed now, but it took about a month before it was seriously noticeable in terms of summer cooling. So, I'll give it a month and see how it goes.

I have a couple old modems lying around. I sort of hate to toss them as you never know. But the current one is digital and provides the signal for in-house wifi and TV's.