Anyone want an ongoing gardening thread?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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On 6/10/10 I posted pics of my container garden, and now I am back with updates!

Here are my tomato plants with me for height comparison. These are the same plants 18 days ago.

I’ve got my first ripe tomato and first cucumber ready to be picked.

Here’s the whole photoset. I have the photos organized in now/then order. The heat and sunniness of the past 18 days have made these guys explode! I have been having to water everything at least once, sometimes twice a day. There have been over 10 straight days of 90+ heat here in Northern Virginia.

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That’s about all I got, too - your dirt looks fine. Plants usually wilt a little after transplanting, but they come back after a day or two. Are they in too much sun? Maybe they need a little more shade. One other idea I have is to buy some fresh potting soil; maybe the old stuff you’re using got contaminated with something toxic. Could you try one more little herb from the same place, and use fresh dirt?

I didn’t have a compost heap last winter, so I just dug all my green scraps into my garden patch. I just noticed that I have a little patch of volunteer cantelopes coming up. :slight_smile: (I wondered if digging in seeds would result in some sproutage, and the answer is yes). I don’t think they’ll do much here, but we’ll see how far they get.

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Wow! Did you see my sad little tomato picture? Your tomatoes are kicking my little tomato’s ass!

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Thanks for the input, guys, I’ll try a little less water, and see how that goes.

I don’t know about trying more dirt - my husband’s kind of at an end with my gardening experiments, for some reason.

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I cleared the weeds out of eight feet of beds this morning (they were waist high), dumped them on the compost heap, and planted some seeds!

Alright, it’s not much, but it’s a start. I planted some of my multi-colored chard, some kale, and some beans.

Yay! It’s off to a late start, but at least my garden is started!

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Squee! One of my alpine strawberry plants has actual strawberries on it! They’re turning red and everything!

I am ridiculously excited about this. :smiley:

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Outstanding!

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I have a nice-sized tomato that is halfway between green and red. [squee]

Ready for the onslaught!

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That’s awesome, Broomstick! Glad to see that work is what kept you from getting to your garden.

Yay for the alpine strawberries and tomatoes! My tomatoes are still green, but look like they might start turning red in the next week or so.

I just came in from planting the last part of my tree lawn. Between rain, heat and general being busy, the end of my planting was quite delayed. I’ve got a few more items that I’ll plant this week, but everything else will probably wait until September, when I’ll be moving quite a few plants.

Finally got my pictures organized. kambuckta, there are a few in there that show you some of my plants coming back in the spring. If you click on the picture in the upper left-hand corner of the big block of pictures, you’ll be at the first picture in the set. I’m still adding to it and adding descriptions and notes…

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Yep - I sort of regret not getting to the garden earlier, but I don’t regret having some pocket money.

My chard, kale, and beans are all poking above ground now. I cleared some more of the mess in the garden. Although it is VERY late in the season I decided to risk planting some maize - if we luck out with a long growing season that’s great, if not, well, I don’t expect everything to work out. But I did want to try some Three Sisters mounds this year, and as of this morning I have four of them.

Haven’t decided what else to plant. I feel it’s a little too mid-summer for the cool weather crops, which is most of what I plant it seems. Right now I think I’ll concentrate on clearing the beds and getting the backyard under control again.

I’ve been using rose branches with the Thorns of Death to discourage feral critters from digging in the fresh dirt. A friend of mine also gave me a pound of Genuine Coyote Piss Granules (OK, the label is a little more discreet than that). It says something about our relationship that she can get a sincere thank you for giving me a pound of coyote whizz, doesn’t it? The idea is to sprinkle some once a week around your garden to (in theory) fool the local garden-destroying wildlife into thinking a coyote lives among your peas and squash. We’ll see how it works out.

Maybe by this time next week I’ll have all the beds cleared out and be figuring out what I can plant this late in the summer.

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Great plants, gardentraveler. How do you like your ‘Black Lace’ Sambucus? I’ve heard rumours of them being leggier than they are supposed to be. I love the look of the calla lily with the pulmonaria.

It occurred to me this morning why my lettuce hasn’t been eaten - I cat-proofed our back yard, and there is usually one or two cats lounging around in it. The cat-proofing might also be keeping the rabbits out.

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The New England heatwave has one upside… my tomato plants are exploding in size, and cranking out the fruit, in the main garden, the Beefsteaks are staying low and shrubby, foliage almost thick enough to lie down on and it’d support the weight of a small child, a few nicely developing 'maters hidden in the foliage canopy, the Sunsugars are now nearly four feet tall, and absolutely riddled with developing 'Maters, good thing I like Sunsugars as I’m going to have more than I know what to do with, and that’s just in the main garden, the tomatoes have also overgrown the lone Russet potato plant, and are shading out the Borage, and they’re making a move towards the cucumbers, beans, and lone surviving canteloupe plant, they started off at about 25% of the biomass in the garden, they now are well over 55%, and still growing, showing no signs of stopping, it’s clear they want the garden to themselves
the cucumbers have flowered and I can see the first proto-cukes starting, the bush beans have also flowered and I can see the first proto-beans starting as well

in the backup garden, the Pineapple Tomato has about four good sized developing 'maters, and around 24+ flowers, and is at least four feet tall now, the Sunsugar in the opposite corner is about 4.5 feet tall, has two vines of well developed tomatoes (12 tomatoes per vine), and has at least a dozen more flower vines starting, assuming each of those vines produce 12 tomatoes per, I should be getting 144+ tomatoes from ONE Sunsugar plant**… and that’s just from this batch of flowers, the Sunsugar is indeterminate, and will keep producing until killed by frost…

the pumpkins in the backup garden are spreading quite agressively now, they’ve shaded out the Four O’Clocks and Nasturtiums, and the wildflower mix, one of the vines seems to be creeping steadily towards the California Poppies as well, the pumpkin next to the tomato has developed it’s first flower

A couple weeks ago, I had a pile of dirt I dumped next to the backup garden, in it, I planted a couple acorn squash plants, and some Peruvian Purple Potatoes, the squash is growing, slowly (and is being threatened by the pumpkins), and the purple potatoes have sprouted, turns out the tips of the sprouts are purple too :slight_smile:

Interesting piece of trivia, the purple pigmentation in the Perivians is the same pigment as in Blueberries (Anthocyanin?), so these potatoes have similar health benefits as blueberries due to the Anthocyanin compounds
**lets see, I planted eight Sunsugar plants, in theory, assuming a 100% harvest from them (which we know to be false, but for purposes of the excersise we will accept as true), 144*8= 1,152 Sunsugar tomatoes! good thing I like them :wink:

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I thought tomatoes quit bearing when the temperature got above the 70s.
Obviously I was mistaken!
:slight_smile:

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And we’re FINALLY getting some decent rain, the gardens definitely need it, nice, torrential downpours, a good soaking rain, occasional thunderboomers, and a bit of wind, good thing i reinforced the cages/stakes yesterday

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Mine is still pretty small, but it’s clear it’s going to need a bit of judicious pruning. I have a couple of friends who also have them and they’re lovely. The biggest puzzle is how to underplant it so that the foliage shows up. I don’t like how mine is currently sited; I’ll probably move it elsewhere next year, before it gets too big.

The calla, by the way, is in its own foliage. I lucked out; it started with a couple of bulbs I got on sale at Lowe’s.

GT

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{Looks again} - Beautiful! Hmm, looks like those callas (assuming Zantedeschia albomaculata) don’t match my zone; too bad. I’d totally plant some of those in my yard. You’ve got me wondering about hardier callas, though. Have to look into that. :slight_smile:

My sad little tomato is about three times as big and starting to bloom. My potatoes are also blooming, and fat and sassy. The peas, carrots and zucchini are coming along (the carrots took a long time to come up - I think it was the cold weather at just the wrong time for them). My saskatoons are going to be ripe soon, and my transplanted strawberry that we over-wintered inside is finally getting its feet under it and starting to grow - tough little bastard. I also have a bunch of volunteers from the compost I turned into the garden soil overwinter - we’ll see what those turn out to be.

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The callas don’t seem to match mine either (we’re typically Zone 5), but I have it on the south side, pretty close to the house and it’s definitely warmer and better drained there than anywhere else in my garden.

My carrots ought to be about ready to start harvesting, I think… Guess I’ll check on them tomorrow. Tomatoes seem quite happy. I only have one plant this year (I’m moving too many things around to do more), but it’s thriving and has quite a few that are getting quite large. Basil is doing nicely as well. Should have a nice caprese salad in the next month or so.

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Garden Traveller, You have so many beautiful plants! Loved the red Lilies. I am looking at some online.

CatWhisperer, I have one puny tomato so they are going to be late this year. The hot week we had last week helped a bit. The squash are doing slightly better.

I added more plants to the monet garden and am getting a small fence for behind it. It’s on my to do list. The woman I take care of has so many beautiful lilies in bloom right now. It is very pretty. I think a couple of the mystery rose clippings took in the garden.

Mactech, sounds like you are having a good year for tomato’s. I like the square wire housings for them and you can plant beans alongside the cages for them to grow on.

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Middle of winter and lots of rain. My garden is haven for snails.

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Sorry about the snails, Cicero. We seem to have fewer slugs this year (there are lots and lots of fireflies and apparently, they eat them), but the Japanese beetles are doing a bit better than I’d like. I smoosh them when I see them, but I really don’t have the inclination to do much more.

Thanks for the compliments, Perciful. I’m really fortunate to have free sources for most of my daylilies (maybe even most of my plants, now that I think about it). I’m still moving plants around to improve the design, but I definitely have some really nice plants.