I couldn’t find a topic on this for this year, so apologies if there’s already one around and I missed it.
I decided to do a (small) pollinator garden this year, so I bought some plants from a local guy that specializes in those plants. I have a container garden on my porch with cardinal flower, aromatic aster, tithonia and sweet everlasting in it and am watching that to see how they do.
Strawberries and blueberries have been doing very well this year.
I retired last fall and joined our local garden club and learned how to do winter container sowing. I tried out a crop of snap peas and sweet peas with this method. The snap peas didn’t work out (though now I think I know why, which didn’t have anything to do with the method), but the sweet peas are blooming now and are really pretty (they are this variety) and they smell fantastic. This is my second attempt at growing these and they are doing much better this time.
Tomatoes have been interesting. I have six plants, 3 of which are in a container with older soil and 3 are in a container with fresh soil. Those have been growing better, but in previous years tomatoes in the richer soil have had lots of greenery but haven’t produced all that well. We will see who does better at producing fruit this year.
I also have some ‘wild’ tomato plants that have cropped up in the yard. I used compost to fill in some divots made by the tree company’s machinery when they came early in the year to remove some teetering Leyland cypresses and I guess it wasn’t composted enough - there’s about 5 tomatoes and a squash growing there now.
I sowed some shade-loving wildflowers last year - Eastern columbine, Short’s Aster, and wild geranium - and the only thing that came up was the columbine. It didn’t flower last year, but this year it’s 3 feet tall and blooming like crazy so I hope it will eventually take over the small plot it is in.
What’s happening in your little patch of the world?
I’ve been in the process of reclaiming my yard from noxious weeds for the past three years, pulling out the ones that have thorns or foxtails or that crowd everything else out. Our back yard faces south, so we put in a gazebo for shade in one back corner, and this week we plan to put up posts and trellises for an arbor wall for some shade on the west side. I realize it’s later than ideal, but as soon as we get the structure up, I’m going to plant some grapevines, a climbing rose, and maybe a trumpet vine.
Ate our first summer squash for dinner tonight.
We’ve been eating greens. Cukes will be ready this week.
All my flower beds are bulbs except one wild flower patch that reseeded itself. I was very happy to see that. Altho it’s very over crowded.
It’s probably my most favorite.
I have potatoes, runner beans and tomatoes coming along nicely.
A couple of leeks are appearing …
Nothing else has come up - seeds probably too old. I’ll get some plants
from the garden center !!
I spent part of the past couple of days putting up a chicken-wire fence to keep out rabbits attacking my vegetable plants.
Roses and Crinum bulbispermum (Orange River lily) are among the border plants flowering. All my agapanthus, crinums and most hardy bananas survived the winter here in Kentucky. The Japanese fiber banana has trunks already over 7 feet tall.
My Spring crop tomatoes have been doing very well this year. The first ripe ones came in at the end of March, and I have been giving away surplus tomatoes since the end of April. Night time temperatures have been hovering around the 70-degree mark, but I should still be getting fruit through early July.
This year I tried a Cherokee-carbon hybrid tomato instead of my usual favorite Cherokee purple. I’m not sure it’s an improvement. They look about the same, and the hybrid might be a little beefier, but I have more misshapen fruit than normal. I also have big beef and early girl, and the beef are doing outstandingly well. The early girl not so much.
I spent too much time waging a losing battle against squash borers the last couple of years and didn’t plant any this year.
I have two bell pepper plants that are giving me larger peppers than I normally get. I’ll have to try the same varieties next year too. My ancho/poblano is producing disappointingly small fruit, but they are tasty and have a little more bite than most. (That’s a GOOD thing)
I have a Japanese eggplant that is coming along slowly - only about a half-dozen fruit so far. But it should start picking up soon and will thrive in the heat of summer when I’m ripping up the tomato plants.
I didn’t plant any chilis this year because I got waaaay too many last year and still have some in the freezer.
I’m growing basil, marjoram, dill and parsley indoors in the Aerogarden - those generally do better inside, though once the parsley gets big enough I’ll probably plant that outside so the butterflies have a place to lay their eggs. I transferred a lemon basil and an oregano plant from the Aerogarden to pots outside about a month ago and those are doing fine. The oregano will probably overwinter, the basil may not make it through the summer, depending on how hot and dry it gets.
I have old chive, thyme and sage plants that are more like small bushes now and those have proved to be very hardy.
I started some black-eyed Susan vines inside and they are in hanging baskets on the porch. It hasn’t been very warm yet this year so while they are vining just fine no signs of blooms yet. Maybe next month.
I picked a bowlful of blueberries this morning and a few strawberries - the strawberries are almost done. Raspberries are just starting to ripen, but birds get a lot of those since I haven’t really figured out a good way to keep them out of the patch. I have to think about that some more.
We have a small garden area where we planted tomatillos 8 years ago. Every year since, they come up on their own. We thin them out a bit but that’s all.
Around the edge of the tomatillos we plant kale. We like kale, and there’s a huge return on investment. We always pick the last of the kale when there is snow on the ground.
