Anyone want an ongoing gardening thread?

Weeds sprayed seem to be dying.

The pea trellis is up.

The beans I have started are planted. I forgot to plant half of them in the soil filled pots. :mad: I’m planting more today.

The different iris I have temporarily all over the place have started to flower.

The delphinium bed I planted is turning a darker green now that they are out of pots.

Yesterday’s rain didn’t hit the beds on the side of the house where they were desperate for water. I have to run a hose over there and water. Stupid directional rain.:stuck_out_tongue:

The Indian corn is popping up.

That directional rain is something to think about when planning beds close to the house - they’re in a micro-climate there. They’re more sheltered and get more warmth from the house, but they also can get a lot of heat from a brick or stucco house, and are often sheltered from rain from the eaves of the house above them.

Thanks Perciful. I’ve got great soil luckily. It must be crappy seeds is all I can think. Just made a small bed and got another 30 or so arugula out of the way.

I’ve got a bloody great wood pile which is supposed to turn into a greenhouse, so the yard still looks a mess, can’t afford to have anyone build it for me presently.

I’m off to a friends house to give her some arugula and get some okra - it’s the beds that are a challenge now - some sort of frame for the toms.

Are delphinium flowers edible?

Yeah, I learned the hardway sometimes it is easier to just get rid of it and start over. My Clients home was built on sand and clay and I have to replace the dirt for everything I plant. I don’t know if I mentioned our local dump makes some really nice mulch and it’s free for the taking. It is bark, grass clippings and manure allowed to sit for a year. Best part is it’s free.

The tall phlox are awesome and may go to zone 3. I picked up some new plants today but I’m beat and need a nap. It’s hard to get amped up to work in my garden after spending half a day working in someone elses but I will get it done.

No,They are poisonous. I’ll leave you a link of edible and inedible flowers. You don’t want to end up like the poor guy in the movie, ‘Into the Wilderness’. Horrible way to go

http://homecooking.about.com/library/weekly/blflowersnot.htm

Thanks again - I immediately googled it after posting and came up with the same link. I want to do some edible flowers for the winter season. I had some nastursiums but didn’t really look after them

Well, I ended up screening all the crappy dirt from my little bed. Lesson learned - just get rid of crappy dirt. :slight_smile:

And I just put the plants away for what is hopefully the last time - going down to 1ºC tonight. Not quite freezing, but too close for my comfort. This is the weekend when we normally start planting around here, when the risk of frost is supposed to be over. Fingers crossed!

Summer has arrived here it seems, but we’re doing the usual British thing of making the absolute most of it on the grounds it may be the only nice weekend we get. The paddling pool was out, the greenhouse door was flung open and I did my final repotting of the tomatoes which will stay in the greenhouse. We had our first proper barbie of the year yesterday, and we had some freshly picked salad leaves with our burgers. I swear, if I get nothing edible out of my plot for the rest of the year, I’m happy now. Nm nm nm nm, nothing tastes as good as produce less than two minutes after picking.

You must have a different definition of easier than I have. I find it quite a lot easier to spend a few years tilling in all the fall leaves and such and having sub-optimal harvests than to dig up several inches of heavy-ass clay, haul it away, find somewhere to haul it to, and then haul in new dirt that is lighter, but still pretty damn heavy. That’s just way harder than my back and I are willing to work. If things just wouldn’t grow at all, it would be one thing, but ime plants will grow in dang near anything, even if their performance isn’t optimal.

The first year we were in this house, our veggie garden was a patch of fill dirt left in a hill where the previous owner had cut into the hillside to build the patio. I had already made flower beds along the sidewalks and on the too-steep-to-mow part of the back hill, hacking the sod out with a mattock and then spading up the mostly clay soil, and the thought breaking any more ground made me want to shoot myself. So I threw down a few railroad ties around the patch, raked it level, dug in some shredded leaves, chucked in some plants. threw on some Miracle Grow, and called it good.

Everything grew just fine. Some of the tomatoes had to be pruned back when they got up over my head. There were a few things that didn’t set fruit (mostly stuff like the corn and eggplant where we just didn’t have enough plants to cross-pollinate well), but it all grew vigorously and the stuff that did set fruit had a whole lot of it.

We tried to garden in a rental house in a newer area (which translates to, “builder threw three inches of topsoil over the clay and rocks and called it a yard”). It was actually funny; we planted carrots, and they grew as far as the clay layer, and just stopped. That’s one of the reasons I get so excited about living in an older neighbourhood - we actually have a decent layer of topsoil in our yard. This is not to be taken for granted in Calgary.

When we’re ready to make the big flower beds here, I’m not sure what I’m going to do - I seriously considering scraping all the hard, dry, clumped-up-dust that’s there now and just replacing it with a yard of topsoil (the part of the beds under grass might be fine; a big part of it is exposed dirt, though, and it doesn’t look fine to me).

I have some spicy globe basil growing in a pot, and it is starting to grow buds/little flower pods at the tips. Should I cut these off to encourage further growth?

Yes, you want to pinch off the little flowers, if not immediately then at least before they go to seed. Once the plant has successfully made seeds, it thinks it’s done. Pinching off the flower heads (or picking the fruit before maturity) keeps the plants growing and producing over a longer period.

I think it is wise. As you said once the roots hit clay that is all the growing they can do.

I lucked out once too. I had a 1870’s cape with the best dirt! Turns out one of my elderly neighbors told me that my place had been a chicken farm. It had the nicest dark soil even after many years I could plant anything and it did well.

Good Luck. I am replacing the soil in my small garden because it is lousy also. It’s not clay but more like dust then dirt.

I have a question to put out to all of you. What is the best free picture sharing program to share pics? I want to do some before and after shots. Thanks!

I use www.photobucket.com for my pictures for this board. Many people here use it.

Today I got some more irrigation tubing in and reached the back garden so I don’t have to run a hose back there. I wish I had at least another 100 feet, but there is none available in this area. I hate this town.

I laid down all the retaining blocks for the garden bed along the sidewalk, so that is done. In half of the bed I dumped in cow manure compost and forked it in with the soil that was there. The other half has some odd ball perennials I have to still remove. Some of those are iris that will be done flowering in a couple weeks. After that the whole bed will be reconditioned soil and new plants. I think I’m sticking in some Lupines next to the delphinium grouping. I have some new lilies I started in pots that will go in this bed as soon as it’s ready. It will be nice to have some lilies again that are not Tiger Lilies.

Maybe this year I will get some of the backyard leveled and seeded to grass again. First it’s spray and kill the weeds time. My one patch of new grass in the front yard is in good shape. It’s not lush, but it will fill in if we don’t have a drought summer.

Thanks Harmonious! I’m going to check out photo bucket. Your new garden sounds like a nice combination of perennials and Lillie’s and Iris. Iris are blooming in my area now and they are drop dead gorgeous! :slight_smile:

Well, the hedge is IN! Fingers crossed that all the little plants take and flourish. I also planted my Bailey’s Compact Viburnum today in the front bed. I’m a little afraid it will be too big for the bed, but that won’t be for years, anyway.

We were out eyeballing our front walk and the place where we need to create a walkway around the south side of the house - that’s going to be a big project. The front walk needs to be raised up almost half a foot, and the sidewalk around the side of the house needs to be dug out of the grass that’s there now. I’m not sure at this point exactly how this will all go, but the first step is get rid of the grass, as usual. :slight_smile:

I finished getting all the sprinkler system in along the sidewalk in the new bed area. I also ran two small lines to supply drip irrigation for pots to the grape arbor. I had the grass trenched for the 1/2 inch line independent circuit already. I was planing for the future if needed.

I managed to thin and weed two 4x4 foot patches of carrots which are looking really nice. I did water the peas, carrots, and the bed that the rain missed two days ago. thanks to the cold spring the lettuce is just starting to grow after being in a holding pattern for over a month. I see that my 2 Hercules pumpkins that I planted early are starting to grow nicely. I have to pick up a few tomatoes and get some cukes planted.

I love viburnums, Cat Whisperer. That looks like a lovely one.

Your garden sounds lovely, Harmonious.

That was the best crabapple year, lieu, although this year came close. It’s really cool when it looks like it’s snowed. And it smells beautiful. (The scent is what makes crabapples worth it to me.)

It was way hot here today, so I didn’t get as much done as I wanted to. But, still: I got a new hosta in the ground (Summer Music - can’t find a pic that really does it justice - it’s green, yellow and white - very pretty), also cimicifuga Chocoholic. Also divided a native grass that I have that was looking kind of ratty, planted some bachelor’s buttons that a friend gave me (they went in the tree lawn) and some daisies and gaura that were waiting to get into the ground. Probably some more stuff that I’ve forgotten as well. I spent two hours out there, which was quite enough for today.

Right now, I’ve got coreopsis blooming all over the place (everything is a really sunny yellow) and my first daylily is going to bloom tomorrow (it started to open late this afternoon).

I need to get some containers planted (maybe tomorrow night) and finish getting some annuals in the ground (maybe Tuesday night). Also need to get more veggies going (this weekend).

Those are gorgeous, gardentraveler. I’m thinking about trying hostas in my back yard. We were talking to my brother-in-law the arbourist today, and he isn’t keen on our Acer negundo trees (Manitoba maples). I think we’ll try cleaning them up first, getting all the dead wood out, and see what we’re dealing with. They haven’t been looked after properly, so they have all the live growth on the ends of the branches and lots of dead wood throughout. If we end up taking them out it will change the whole plan for the back yard, so we’ll have to think long and hard about that. I don’t like the idea of removing two mature trees, either, but we’d be replacing them with other shrubs and smaller, possibly fruit-bearing trees.

I am just giving the photo bucket a try. This was my first video which is obvous. I was trying to capture all the plants to identify them in my clients rock garden. It’s really taken off since a couple weeks ago. Today she is having a walkway put in and will try and get some pics of that.

Rock Garden