There is a tradition here of an annual thread on gardening. I see What_Exit has started a thread on fences to keep rabbits out, and I suppose others are starting to think about their plans for this year–or if far enough south have already started a garden.
Anyone?
I took some cuttings of my coleus plants in the fall and have been growing them indoors. It’s been coming along quite well and I’ve been leaving them outside on days when it’s warm enough.
I’ve also started some globe amaranth indoors and should be able to direct sow the rest outside in about a month, along with some wildflower seed.
The crocus I planted last fall is starting to come up and there’s a few that are even flowering. Not sure what’s happening with the ipheion - I see a few stray leaves here and there but not much else. I hope the bulbs didn’t get eaten.
The alliums have come up too, but it will be awhile before we see any blooms on those.
Dreaming about the gardening ahead is all that’s keeping me going, through months of snow, so much snow, and freezing cold, and steady dreadful threatening news. Ugh.
I am remembering throwing wildflower seeds over the yard portion that will go to meadow. My friend gave me several she’d collected on hiking excursions with her grown kids, now spread across the country. She has an amazing garden but it’s already full, so she offered the collection to me. I can’t wait to see what comes up!
SO much this. We don’t have snow to worry about but working in my yard this spring is going to be vital for my mental health.
Our back yard is fairly small and currently has about 300’ of rotting, falling down fence surrounding it. Soon, hopefully before summer, we’re going to get the fence replaced with a 6" western red cedar plank fence with a lattice cap – a big project that I’m going to pay professionals to do.
As part of this fence project we’re going to basically scalp the entire back yard and start afresh. It was well maintained until 2019 when the long-time owner died, and then it pretty much went downhill. We bought it in the end of 2021 and have been waiting to do anything significant as we wanted to get a real feel for the place and get some solid ideas of what we want to change. Now that we’re >3 years in, we have a good idea what we want.
Once the fence is completed… then the real work begins. In a nutshell: first we’ll install a French drain along the back of property as it currently turns into a large pond in heavy rains. This will channel water into a catch basin with a sump pump installed that will pump water out to the street. This is going to be a big project in of itself.
Then we’ll demarcate some flower beds along the fence and add a plethora of new plants, shrubs, and bushes to replace the years of weeds that have taken over. I want to put a couple of Limelight hydrangeas along the fence with some Snow in Summer groundcover. Perhaps a couple of shrub fuchsias. I have a rough sketch of a floating deck I want to build in one corner of the yard and I think a pink crepe myrtle would look good next to it. In the opposite side of the yard my wife wants to have a greenhouse. Those are spendy but we can at least begin planning for it and making sure that all our plantings would fit around a future building.
There’s an area on the edge of the back porch that gets full shade and I need to put something in pots that will handle the lack of sun. I’m thinking creeping Charlie and some ferns and maybe a Hosta or two. Those are all pretty boring but anything that can handle full shade will be boring.
Once we have the new fence in place I want to plant a couple of espalier apple trees on the west facing side. They’ll have tons of sun and we all love apples.
Rebuilding the back yard will be a multi-year project but I’m itching to start as soon as we have the fence replaced.
Ther’s also a spot against the driveway, maybe 5’ x 5’, that had an oleander bush growing in it. We took that out and ow have this big empty spot with a stump in it. We have no idea what to do with it. I’d love to pull out the stump, pave it with cobblestones, and place some sort of large statue on plinth. I have no idea how to even acquire such a thing (assuming my wife and I could even agree on what to put there; my vote would be a replica of this) so it’ll remain an ugly bare spot for now.
Then we’ll have to move on to the front yard… sigh.
40F and blowing hard today with snow showers forecast tonight, low 70s expected early next week.
March.
Still a week or two before the top layer of mulch can be removed from perennial beds. Meanwhile seed sowing and propagation of temperennials is underway in the indoor light garden.
Lots of good stuff planned.
You should have planted Garlic in October, but it is still not too late to do it now. Will still reach maturity in July. But that should be planted soon.
My back is better this year, so back to my Roma tomato crop. I’ll be having fresh sauce this year.
I’ve given up on zucchini. The world’s easiest vegetable just withers and dies in my garden. That plot will go to potatoes this year. I’ve also gotten another raised garden bed. I think I’ll have bell peppers in there.
We had a volunteer cherry tomato plant growing amidst our winter onions, and I got one tomato in January, so maybe that counts. (It’s gone now.)
We dug up the garden, and I’ll put down the compost soon. We’re going to swap the peas and onions in our beds. We still have spaghetti squash and a few onions left. We finally finished the butternut squash. But too early to really do anything.
I’m hoping to grow more than usual this year. Adding carrots, doing potatoes again. Have 30+ tomatoes started inside and some greens and herbs.
Am reading a book about survival gardening which is pretty decent. Hoping it doesn’t come to this, but doesn’t hurt to plan ahead.
I’m really hoping to make some changes in my yard this year. I’m working on a sad looking area under a tree in my front yard. It’s just been a patch of spiderwort for the longest time, but I’m wanting to do something different this year. I’m expanding the area for starters, and will probably do mulch with some neater, more manicured plants. I’m still figuring it out.
Here in South East England…
I do my veg growing on an allotment (/community garden), and I moved plots over the winter, taking over my friend E’s old plot, fruit bushes and all - so this year we should have a stack of berries and currants, fingers crossed.
Anyways: today I planted my super-early potatoes - an experiment. Go with me on this…
Last frost risk around these parts is Mid May, so the bulk of potatoes will go in the ground in late April. But I now can use all of the polytunnel that I shared with E (sited on what was her plot - now mine); and you can grow potatoes surprisingly well in pots. So I planted out seven pots, all on a table, all in the polytunnel.
So yeah, nighttime temperatures below zero C (just) are predicted for March 9 to March 16 inclusive - but the potatoes aren’t going to be up by then. Thereafter it’s occasionally going to be cold enough for ground frosts for maybe 2 months, but (fingers crossed) not inside the polytunnel - which should also keep things nice and warm in the day.
Worst case scenario? A late cold snap kills them off and I’ve wasted my time. Best case? Delicious Charlotte potatoes a month or more early.
j
Thank you for reminding me. My raspberry bushes should be mature enough this year to put out more than a small handful of berries.
Anyone growing gooseberries?
I added a few last year, but they didn’t like the mostly sunny, fairly dry spot where I planted them and partially died back. I have a new location scouted out for 2025 that should stay moister and shielded from midday sun. If they don’t do better this year I may have to conclude that gooseberries aren’t a good bet in central Kentucky.
Hoping for first-time crops of honeyberries and jujubes this season.
Yes, got a gooseberry bush from a friend. First of all, now I know why in German they are “thornberries.” Ow. And I have to harvest before they are ripe or I lose them all to the rodents.
How old are yours? I planted some last year and was surprised to get anything.
Hubby wants strawberries, so I’m thinking some sort of pot arrangements. Otherwise the slugs will get all of them.
And I need to put down chicken wire to keep the neighbor cat from digging.
I wanted to move a tree peony. Actually I wanted somebody else to do it, but they never came back with an offer. So maybe I’ll just take it out (hubby can help) and we’ll do something there for strawberries. We have next Thursday and Friday off, so maybe a visit to the garden store will take place on Friday.
Mine are two years old now. The straws will not produce the first year. We had a buttload of straws come up last year.
We had put ours in a planter box on the porch. The biggest stumbling block was remembering to water them.
No one has made any gardening progress in the last month?
I’d set up my patches and weaved my raspberry straws into their lattice.
And then the rains came. I’m going to try to get the tomatoes in this weekend.
Market farm not home garden (though I do also eat the results): have been working on preparing beds, starting seedlings to transplant later, and at the very tail end of March planted parsnips, peas, and the first rounds of radish and spinach. Hope I wasn’t too early; nothing’s up yet, and the weather turned cold again. But my peas often don’t show up until after I’ve started to worry about them.
Chicago suburbs:
I may have started my tomatoes a little early. There may be too many. These are reoccurring issues. I never learn. But I have friends and family that I start plants for, so it’ll all work out. Lots of kale going strong outside. Also lettuce.
Potatoes have been out for a couple weeks. No activity yet. Hope they are ok.
Will definitely get carrots going this weekend.
Am trying tromboncino squash for the first time this year!