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

22-rimfire said:
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My sister visited me last Friday and cleaned me out of ripe tomatoes. That's okay. She picked up two new Dachshunds to replace the two that her son took with him in July when he moved a 1,000 miles away. One is a tiny puppy (just weaned) and the other is 10 months old that the breeder just had and the pup needed a good home. The older pup was returned to them because the owner couldn't take care of the dog. So, they did the best thing and returned to the breeder who has contacts. They should liven up my Sister and Husband's lives again as they were missing the two that departed.
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I'm hoping the two new tomato plants do okay. They just started to blossom. I avoided buying the really big plants that already had fruit on them. I guess the next garden project will be onions in the new containers probably in a month or so.
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Staging tomato plants and sharing the abundance works so well when there can be so much fruit all ripening at once. Daisy sure likes the sharing aspect. Next year I am going to work smarter with the tomatoes I plant.

Here's Daisy with her nose checking out the early girls on the porch. The tomatoes in the veg garden are fruiting beautifully as well, huge plants.

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Path to the veg garden on the hill is crispy crunchy underfoot due to the dry weather - perfect holiday weather to be fair. I am watering almost daily. Large swaths of tall grasses are flattened - by the wild turkeys I suspect. They continue to make their dust bath indentations in any new dig where the soil is exposed.

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Black currants are juicy and delicious and not as appealing to the birds as I thought - but of course I am feeding only sunflower seeds for the finches now as well and the berry lovers like the robins and cedar waxwings must be finding lots of food elsewhere - away from the nut with the camera.

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Scarlet runner pole beans are coming along - but I don't think they can thrive in the constant heat and uv from the full West exposure, not even in shaded pots.

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22-rimfire 22-rimfire Dachshunds running with their long ears in the wind - well it's just a heartwarming sight. I get why your sister would miss, and so replace, that pair. When my dad died, I took on his dog, a Dachshund, a long-haired mini, as I had promised him. She blended in with the two spaniels and the one border collie cross that I had at that time. She just put smiles in every day.
 
Hollyhocks are a hit with the monarchs while the hummingbirds are all over the bee balm - love those reds!

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I love cacti
A few of mine.
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My peppers soon!
 
SW-EDC SW-EDC I like cactus also. What do you do with them when they get about 4 feet tall and want to fall over?
 
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taldesta said:
Staging tomato plants and sharing the abundance works so well when there can be so much fruit all ripening at once. Daisy sure likes the sharing aspect. Next year I am going to work smarter with the tomatoes I plant.
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22-rimfire 22-rimfire Dachshunds running with their long ears in the wind - well it's just a heartwarming sight. I get why your sister would miss, and so replace, that pair. When my dad died, I took on his dog, a Dachshund, a long-haired mini, as I had promised him. She blended in with the two spaniels and the one border collie cross that I had at that time. She just put smiles in every day.
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It is very generous to take someone's older dog and care for them like your own. We did that with my wife's brother's cat (when he died), but his dog went to his best friend who visited all the time. The cat has done well in our house but is a bit grouchy at times with the other cats running around.

I really didn't intentionally stage the ripening/maturity of the tomato plants as much as you think. This is something I need to consider a bit more as to why it worked out this year versus in previous years where the attempts pretty much mostly failed. I have tried planting Early Girls, but I found they really don't do much better (time wise) than the my standards like Big Boy, Whopper, Better Boy, and so forth. I think the trick may be to choose the "early" variety that ripens with smaller fruit; basically they don't need as long to grow before nature tells them it is time to ripen. Never cared for the cherry type tomatoes much; don't even care for them in salads as most commercially grown ones are tasteless.

My sister had mentioned they really missed the two Dachshunds that her Son took with him. I told her immediately that she needed to get her own pups, not one that is a sibling's dog, but their dog. They had tried larger breeds but weren't happy with them in the past and fell in love with the weinie dogs. Personally I prefer hound dogs as pets overall if I had to choose, but I love them all actually. Would love to have a Bloodhound.... that has always been a dream for me. But a dog that size doesn't work very well in our living situation. Frankly a Dachshund would work better for a mostly indoor pet.
 
LEGION 12 said:
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Unusual shape for an egg plant or am I mistaken (squash)? Sometimes it's hard to tell.

Yeah, the tape measure is handy. Must be Chinese, right?

taldesta taldesta would choose a metric tape measure of course.:) Do they sell US/English ruled tape measures in Canada? What do they call 2 x 4's in Canada?
 
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annr said:
22-rimfire 22-rimfire Why Chinese? (or everything is Chinese now, except the Japanese eggplant.:))
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There was another thread where a poster (one of the regulars) commented about Chinese knives and rulers. Apparently it is some sort of requirement? My comment was a bit of a joke. :D
 
I figured you were joking, but I didn't get the reference. (Inside joke.:))
 
I've been on the road a lot, and the yards not getting the attention it needs, but I did some trimming and weeding this weekend. Had to pull out a couple things that didn't make it, but overall things just keep getting bigger and better. Azaleas don't seem to like the back line, but the Camillas do. I may just pull the remaining azaleas out. We'll see. Lost a native currant, but the one on the opposite side has gone full bore and had to get cut back. Likewise the wormwood which seems to be in the ideal spot. The yellow Japanese Maple got pretty beat up last year when the neighbors shed came over the fence in a wind storm. Still I cut it back some with the aim of getting it to grow a bit more upright. The redwood is now over 7 ft tall and very thin, but I hope that in 10-20 years it will start to push aside the spruce it's underneath. The skinny white oak on the other side tripled in height this summer and it's over 7' too. I have to look back over the years to see all the changes, but compared to what the place looked like when I moved in it's an improvement.

Here's the maple, with the redwood, wormwood, and currant behind. And I don't know where the sunflower came from...
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Somebody asked about these flowers, they're Crocosmia and hummingbirds love them. My patch was three plants 4 years ago.
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The white oak, hopefully this will grow to be the main tree on this part of the lot.
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This is when I moved in:
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This is now:
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eisman eisman You've done a lot since you took over the place. I am going to see if I can find some Crocosmia and give it a try. It looks like my kind of plant.

You're right, the Japanese Maple is a bit beat up. They grow so slowly that it will take 10 years to make much difference. But there are few options.

I have an American Hemlock in my back yard that I planted. Always liked these since I was a kid and I wanted one in my yard.... It took two tries but this one survived and is beginning to flourish. It was relatively big (maybe 3 feet tall) when I planted it. Now it's about 12 feet tall after what seemed like years of just surviving. I water it periodically if we don't get rain for a couple weeks. It is the only tree other than the new Japanese Maple that I specifically water.
 
Just for fun: we have the same potato. The USA potato is quite long at 8 1/8", however the Canadian potato is humungous at 206 mm!IMG_5459.JPEG IMG_5460.JPEG
 
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