Heh, that’s what I’m doing tomorrow, MacTech. It’s been really hot here the last few days, so I’ve only worked in the garden really early or really late. Tonight I started at 7:00, thinking I’d mow around 8:30 or so. Before I knew it, it was 9:20 and starting to get a bit dusky.
I spent most of the time putting in more plants along the side of my neighbor’s house. I’ll be doing an initial layer of grass-clipping mulch just to keep weeds down.
I’ve uploaded a bunch of pictures and should be able to get the good ones into an album to share tomorrow…
Sitting outside tonight with the temp about to get down to 0c, and needing to put some covers on many of my plants to protect them from the frost that’s coming, I was wondering how on earth you folk who live in snow-covered areas manage to keep your plants alive. What happens to your shrubs/bushes and more fragile plants during your winters? Sure, mature trees will survive all that cold stuff, but the soft-leaved plants might have a harder time…how do you manage??
Also, I checked again w/ my nursery and coincidentally they’d just received some of my unknown hibiscus. She called it “Mallow”, which allowed me to find this, the Moy Grande, or Texas Giant Hibiscus.
We’re running into a wall here wrt the heat too. It’s simply getting too blasted hot to do anything beyong the most basic of maintenance and even that just on the weekend and as early as possible. Feels like temps of 104 to 107 tend to make me focus on some of the inside jobs instead.
We’ve got a system here. Deciduous trees and shrubs go into hibernation for the duration of winter; evergreens do too, sort of, but they start respirating again when the temperature gets up to 5ºC, so we have to keep an eye on those and water them or pile snow around them so they don’t dry out in winter. Most of the plants we plant are hardy for the zone we’re in, and most gardeners are very aware of what zone they’re planting in. Some plants need a bed of mulch over winter, or to be wrapped in burlap, but most plants just die off above ground and go to sleep for the winter and come alive again in spring. Some plants (especially if they’re close to the house) don’t even die over winter; they just stop growing and hold on. Snow actually makes a fair insulator, and as it melts it gives the plants slow moisture, so we make a habit of putting the snow that we shovel around the trees and shrubs in our yard.
I’m so jealous of your peony! I love them, but I’ve been told by a local peony person that they don’t do well in containers. Bah.
And I’ve never seen a pink honeysuckle! My folks had a white honeysuckle in our yard growing up. My brother and I loved to suck the nectar out of the flowers. Then our parents re-landscaped and the honeysuckle went away.
I’ll have one someday (assuming they grow in Seattle…)!
Ok, I have a simple question. On my tomato plants, I will have a cluster of flowers that turn into tomatoes. Let’s say there’s 6 to 8 flowers on the cluster, but only some of the flowers turn into tomatoes, and the other flowers just wither and don’t develop into fruit.
So what happened to the withered flowers that did not develop into fruit? Did they not get pollinated, while the other ones did?
Should I pinch off the withered flowers off a cluster with other developing fruit?
Also I have 5 different types of tomatoes growing next to each other. Can the pollen from one variety pollenate the other varieties? If so, will the resulting fruit be different? A cross between the two varieties?
Peonies are fussy about their roots and getting moved and stuff; I can see why they wouldn’t make good container plants. I do love a nice, healthy peony - there’s a house nearby that has two lush pink peonies on either side of the front walk, and I just love that look.
I think honeysuckle would grow just fine in Seattle. Our neighbours across the road have a huge honeysuckle shrub - that sucker is about 15 feet tall!
Sorry, nyctea, I don’t know much about pollinating tomatoes. I think they can cross-pollinate. You can pollinate your own fruit if you want - just use a little paintbrush or something.
Hey, gardening people, I hope this is the right place to post this!
I’ve got a pot of herbs on my front porch - cilantro, sage, basil, and rosemary. I got the plants at the farmer’s market about three weeks ago, and they looked gorgeous - full, lush, and tasty. I was hoping to grow them up a little more and use them in the kitchen.
But, since I’ve replanted them, they’ve taken a nose-dive. The pot started with “seedling starter” dirt in it, I added a part of a bag of bloodmeal that a previous tenant left here, and part of a bag of generic potting soil that, again, the previous tenant left here.
I’ve been trying to water generously about once a day, and I’ve mostly been good about that. The pot is well-drained, and in fact, is leaving dark drainage tails across my front porch (which I assume are some sort of nutrients going away). It has been very hot here over the past few weeks.
So… what’s going on? Am I over watering? Under watering? Did I screw things up with the bloodmeal? Just bad luck?
P.S. - I can add before and after pics later tonight if my description is lacking.
I started plans in March for a marvelous garden… then I acquired 2 jobs. Wow, there went all my time and energy!
Garden? Hell, the lawn is waist high now in spots!
Let’s see… this is end of June. Location is Northwest Indiana. What can I still plant?
I’m thinking the beans would still work, they grow so damn fast. A lot of the rest of the stuff I have is things like chard, kale, spinach, beets, turnips… kind of “cool” crops. Should I plant now, or wait until mid-August, or next year? What about the lettuce?
I’m thinking the corn and sunflowers probably wouldn’t have long enough to mature… but maybe they would?
What about the carrots?
On the upside, I did have some carrots this spring that escaped harvest last year, and some of the lettuce self-seeded so I’ve gotten a bit of that.
I’d still like to have something this year, greens at least. I suppose I could take a chance and plant some now, then some later.
Sekmket - what exactly is wrong with the herbs? Pictures would really help for a diagnosis.
Broomstick - I think it might be too late for corn - I’d still try peas, beans, lettuce, potatoes and carrots (maybe a potted tomato). I’m basing this on what grows around here on our short growing season. I haven’t tried spinach, beets, kale or turnip - can’t say how long those take. Congrats on the jobs, by the way.
ETA: I forgot to mention, I got some free daylilies and irises from a sister. Yay for free plants!
Those are all somewhat frost-tolerant (I’ve had beets, turnip, and chard even keep going after a light snowfall) and are about 60 days to harvest. The only concern is that the greens like chard and kale don’t do particularly well in heat.
I suppose I could plant some now and some ater.
Thanks.
The yard has been so neglected it took me three hours to mow just half of it yesterday. Still haven’t touched the garden, but hope to do so this weekend.
The grass clippings on the main garden appear to be helping, about half of the Sunsugar tomato plants have flowered and started fruiting, the beefsteak tomatoes are starting to flower (and actually staying bushy for some strange reason), the broccoli is really responding well to the clippings, as are the beans, heck, the entire garden seems to like them
the backup garden is, well, interesting, for the most part, I wanted to turn it into a wildflower plot, the nasturtiums are doing well, the four o’clocks are trying, the wildflower mix is okay, the California poppies seem to be getting choked out by grass though, tomorrow will be a major weeding day
I’m performing an experiment in the backup garden as well, there are pumpkin plants on all four corners, I put some lawn clippings around the pumpkin plants that are next to the backup tomatoes (one Sunsugar, one Pineapple tomato, opposing corners), and the pumpkin plants that have the lawn clippings around them are easily twice as big as their un-mulched companions
Deciduous trees and shrubs go into hibernation for the duration of winter; evergreens do too, sort of, but they start respirating again when the temperature gets up to 5ºC, so we have to keep an eye on those and water them or pile snow around them so they don’t dry out in winter. Most of the plants we plant are hardy for the zone we’re in, and most gardeners are very aware of what zone they’re planting in. Some plants need a bed of mulch over winter, or to be wrapped in burlap, but most plants just die off above ground and go to sleep for the winter and come alive again in spring. Some plants (especially if they’re close to the house) don’t even die over winter; they just stop growing and hold on. Snow actually makes a fair insulator, and as it melts it gives the plants slow moisture, so we make a habit of putting the snow that we shovel around the trees and shrubs in our yard.
Bah.
