Gardening anyone?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

This topic has to do with mundane news about your gardens. You can brag, agonize over your failures, or just banter about what you grow.

For me, I ordered a banana plant from Stokes Tropicals. I hear that of the fruiting bananas it’s one of the cold hardiest (They can live thorough winters here in California unprotected, but rarely fruit). I should be getting it soon, and its one of the most delicious varieties: ‘Rajapuri’, from India.Its going in the backyard right in front of the kitchen window where we can enjoy its foliage. It grows to 6’ to 8’ tall.

My front garden is shaping up nicely, i have seen lots of bees visiting my nasturtiums (great in salads), and a lot of white butterflies. I have gotten a lot of due compliments about the work I did on the garden. It’s about time!

One of my failures has been my Moringa oleifera seedling (Drumsticks or Malunggay). I repotted it but I think i potted it too low and it rotted off at the base of the stem (the warnings were the wilting leaves despite watering it).

I am also finally getting tomatoes from my plants. The summer was unusually cool here so the plants set flowers later than usual. I have several green fruits waiting to mature.

Anyway thats my garden. Hows yours?

“Oa tu beral haonar kelo, tu faikal gehayun”

2

Concrete balcony with plastic garden chairs here. Sorry to be a disappointment, once more :wink:

Coldfire

(Hey, YOU try buying a house with a real garden in Amsterdam !)

“You know how complex women are”

  • Neil Peart, Rush (1993)
3

Oooh, I love to garden. We’ve barely started yet since we moved into our (dream) house last winter. It’s a double lot and it’s all grass with a few good trees. I personally hate grass except for specific uses and it is against my personal philosophy to edge. So, we have big plans for having just two small lawns (big enough for the kids to play but not so big that I will dread mowing), surrounded by beds of groundcover, trees, shrubs, etc. We’ve planted 7 trees already, and carved out two small beds. We should just about finish by the time we die of old age.

I live in a dry climate, but I had to have some ferns. I’m happy to report they’re doing well. The lavender I planted is gorgeous. And I’ve ordered $100 worth of bulbs, which should arrive soon. MUST have daffodils. :slight_smile:

4

I have tried to find pistachio trees to plant. I don’t have any idea whether or not they would make it where I’m located (SC), but I’ve always wanted to try. If they died, I’d be no worse off than I am now; if they made it, I’d have a novelty.

I have been able to find sources for just about every kind of nut tree available, but nothing on pistachios.

Any ideas??

5

I have morning glories the way some people have cockroaches.

Seriously. The folks next door planted morning glories about four years ago, the seed blew over the fence, and now my gardening life consists primarily of pulling up the seedlings as if they were weeds (which they are, to me). If I take a break for a few days, the vines are all over everything, like kudzu in the South.

On the plus side, it means I’ll always have morning glories where I WANT morning glories…I let them trail up an iron staircase and swirl around drainpipes, and they’re awfully pretty before noon.

Uke

6

Pistachio trees, try this link to Adams Nursery in Georgia. It is a pretty long alphabetical listing. Keep scrolling, you’ll get there.

www.mindspring.com/~plants/adams.catalogue

One complete set of morals for sale to highest bidder, new in box.

7

Ok, try this link.
http://www.mindspring.com/~plants/adams.catalogue.html

8

They must have been the annual variety of MG’s cause the perennial does not have seeds, or I haven’t found any.

I have a pair of rabbits, no bottom on their cage. I put them in one area of the yard for a few months & they fertilize the soil so perfectly I can hardly believe it.

9

Hey, Coldfire, you and I have the exact same garden! How many plastic garden chairs in yours? I have two, but plan for more next summer.

10

If you cant’ mow it, don’t grow it :slight_smile:

Of course my wife spent $2,000 to $3,000 on her garden this year :frowning:

11

I hate lawns. If it has to be mowed it’s not worth my time! :). I hated having to mow, pull the damn stolons of kikuyu (Pennisetum clandestinum) our of our flowerbeds every weekend. So, i dug the whole damn thing up and replaced it with a dry stream garden. I’m still waiting to get money for the rocks to line the edges. I also built a bridge of scrap lumber and always get compliments from it.

The plants I have in the front garden are:

-Stipa gigantea (Giant Feather Grass)
-Pennisetum setaceum ‘Rubrum’ (Purple Fountain Grass
-Miscanthus sinensis ‘Zebrinus’ (Maiden Grass)
-Miscanthus sinensis ‘Yaku Jima’ (A dwarf variety of Maiden Grass)
-Dietes vegeta (Fortnight Lily)
-Mentha spicata (spearmint)
-Agapanthus africanus (Lily of the nile)
-Prunus cerasifera ‘Thundercloud’ (Flowering Plum
-Feijoa sellowiana (pineapple Guava)
-Achillea millefolium (Milfoil, Yarrow)
-Viburnum opulus ‘Roseum’ (Common Snowball)
-Tropaeolum majus (Nasturtium)

In my garden, if a plant dies i never buy it again. If it survives it’s welcome. Fortunately everything in the ground is hardy here, and can go a couple of weeks without watering (only the viburnum needs water once a week since it is a transplant and is growing its roots back). I also want to put in native plants (Manzanita and possibly Ceanothus. I already have seedlings of the native Bush Lupine growing (Lupinus arboreus).

“Oa tu beral haonar kelo, tu faikal gehayun”

12

Ukele, I also have morning glories galore. I never planted them, but they showed up in my terrace garden and started climbing up the trellis to my deck. I had planted clematis to do the same thing, but the morning glories choked out all but one clematis. I must admit, though, that they do look pretty and I don’t have to baby them!

This year, I planted the perennial variety of verbena. At least it says it’s a perennial. The card didn’t say what zones it was hardy in, and I am in zone 5. I hope it survives though, because I just love it!
It bears tons of little flowers and has spread almost like a ground cover. Very pretty.

13

If you have pot seeds & throw them in the neighbors lawn or yard, is that legal? I mean it would be cute to see that stuff sprout. Most of them probably wouldn’t know what it is.

14

I’ve just started using different varieties of thyme as groundcover. Pretty lil flowers, smells nice, attracts bees and butterflies. And ya can eat it.

A herb question (AN herb question?): I’ve never grown basil in the ground (in my lush Brooklyn soil), only in containers. And I’ve seen other peoples’ ground-basil grow to vast, umbrella-like trees, while my potted stuff whimpers and languishes. Should I hold my breath, rip out some flowers, and plant it right next year? Or just dump more manure in my pots?

(Same situation with my rosemary. Last year’s potted stuff got stuck in the ground, where it survived the winter and is flourishing, and this year’s potted stuff looks sick in comparison.)

Uke

15

Don’t know about basil, but I grew dillweed one year in my terraced garden one year because I liked the feathery look of it. It really took off. It grew to be about 4 feet tall, way taller than I thought it would be! Then it started sprouting up all over the place in my garden. After a year of Round-up, it has finally retreated, but it was really a pain in the ass.

16

I have a big oak tree on the west coast of the US & I wonder what I can plant under it?

Just bare dirt for years. any ideas?

17

Handy,

for shady areas under trees, we grow hostas, impatiens, and primroses. there are also ground covers like Scotch moss and Irish moss (not very hardy, but maybe they’ll do okay where you are), and woolly thyme.

18

Handy: I assume that you have a Coast Live Oak since you are in California.
Anyway NEVER EVER EVER plant anything under native Californian oaks (Such as Quercus agrifolia) that needs supplemental water. The supplemental water will kill the tree, since it causes a fungus to grow and rot the roots. According to my Sunset Western Gardening Book, you should never plant, irrigate or disturb the soil within ten feet of a native oak. Outside of that you’re OK if you don’t plant heavily. You can plant some of these under your tree:

  • Achillea tomentosa - Wooly Yarrow
  • Hemerocallis - Day Lily
  • Heuchera - Coral Bells
  • Salvia - Sages
  • Eschscholzia californica - California Poppy
  • Iris, Pacific coast hybrids (a native Iris)
  • Sisyrynchium bellum - Blue-Eyed Grass (not a grass but an Iris relative with blue-purple flowers. Also a native)

At least the plants should be drought tolerant, or at least undemanding of water. Last thing you want is a dead oak that you have to pay for to have removed. However, if you actually do water your oak, then i’m sure more water demanding plants can go in.

19

I never paid any attention to our garden.

Then about 5 years ago, my wife brought home a rose bush and planted it.

I never gave it a thought until the following year, when it bloomed.

I got hooked. There are now 28 rose plants of various types in front and back. And I’m always on the lookout for more.

I don’t care about other kinds of flowers. Just roses.

If you can’t laugh at yourself,
make fun of other people.

20

We moved to this house in March. In the middle of the San Fernando Valley, on a perfectly ordinary surburban street. It already had:

Trees:

2 apricot
2 peach
1 apple
3 fig
1 pomegranate
2 lemon
2 tangerine
1 nectarine
2 plum
1 almond
and 3 I dunno.

Plus… the entire backyard patio is covered from end to end with grapevines. I’d say 20 plants, 5 kinds of grapes.

And to top it all off? A chicken coop complete with half a dozen chickens.

All this planted around a cement patio, pool and jacuzzi.

For about 8 weeks this summer, we could not escape the fruit. It was everywhere, like the blob. It was kind of a bummer, because most of what’s here I didn’t like. The peaches were too sweet, I’m not crazy about apricots, and figs are really horrible. But our friends and neighbors benefitted. I was bummed because I didn’t even KNOW we had a nectarine tree until they were almost all done.

So I was inspired to do some planting this year. Didn’t turn out all that great, except for a few tomato plants that went bananas, and of course…THE SQUASH THAT ATE CHICAGO. But the rest of it, leeks, peppers, herbs…fell apart. I refuse to spray icky chemicals all over the place, so the bugs kinda went nuts. ( We have grasshoppers the size of your arm. And oo…baby, those horn worms are just FABulous. It’s fun watching the chickens go insane over bugs you give them, though. Apparantly beetle grubs are chicken lobster) Not to mention the grapes, which leafed out beautifully, and set bushels of fruit - then started to go brown and drop leaves, and we didn’t thin the fruit so we got raisins without ever getting grapes.

I’m going to keep at it, though, get an education about what some of this stuff needs and work on it.

At the very least, we won’t starve if Y2K gets ugly.

Stoid

I am #1. Everyone else is #2 or lower.