Ouch. Digging the old soil out would have been a task when I was younger, I don’t think it’s something I can do now. I’ve already given one of the planters over to hummingbird attracting flowers, I can do the picky stuff in new, smaller planters that I can move around on pot carts.
Ah. Makes sense; as long as some things are growing well in them.
I’ve been clearing out sections of the back yard which had ground cover and using them to extend our garden. I’ve planted onions (coming up) radishes (ditto) and snow peas (not yet) so far. Planting in the main garden is on hold since we are having the outside of our house painted and our stucco patched, and anything we plant might get trashed.
This sounds like something I can do. I have a bamboo fence which is quite bare.
I have about 20 rooted fig cuttings growing. What varieties did you start?
I optimistically spread some lettuce seed last week. We got snow over the weekend.
This year I finally got around to dividing my elephant ears that were planted about three and a half years ago. I started with ten large (about grapefruit size) bulbs (yes, I know they are really tubers) that were on clearance sale at Lowes in November 2018. They were beginning to flop over too much last year, so I determined to dig them up and replant them deeper.
I was quite surprised to find that my original ten were now about cantaloupe size and had produced many, MANY, offshoot bulbs. I kept and replanted the original ten along with twenty of the larger (again about grapefruit size) offspring. A friend of mine took an additional fifteen of the large bulbs off my hands. The remainder, which varied from about orange to golf ball size, filled a five gallon bucket. Just last week my next door neighbor took them off my hands.
Ooh, thanks for the reminder. I need to do that. Fresh lettuce is delicious.
My father used to grow some peas that needed support, and some that were more clumpy, and didn’t need anything to grow up.
My planning went the other way, I had this fence and thought, “hmm, I wonder if I could plant peas there.” But my fence is total overkill for peas, it’s designed for rabbits.
If it’s only moderately sturdy, and/or only moderately tall, grow shorter to mid-sized varieties. There are a lot of them.
Even varieties short enough to grow without any trellis are easier to harvest if grown on some support; and if the weather turns wet you’ll have fewer pods rotting from contact with wet soil.
Peas, unlike tomatoes, will do the climbing on their own, given anything at all to climb on.
Don’t give up; the lettuce may show up after all, when the weather warms up. I grow a couple of varieties for seed as well as for lettuce harvest; some of the seed generally escapes, and there’s often volunteer lettuce scattered through the area the next spring.
Yes, the second year I grew lettuce, half of my crop was volunteers from the first crop. (Yes, I let it go to seed.) And it would have been all of my crop, except I decided to expand the amount of lettuce I grew.
Violette de Soilles, Adriatic JH, Black Madera, Quitobaquito, Socorro Black, Partridge Eye, Strawberry Verte, Red Lebanese BV, Emalyns Purple, Black Jack, White Iranian, Ruby, Lebanese Red Baas, JS Kadota, Olympus, Leticia, and Panache.
Interesting looking plant when gone to seed, isn’t it? Doesn’t look much at all like lettuce at usual harvest stage.
Garlic is really easy if I do a couple of things which is true for most gardening 
First, get good planting stock. I buy from Filaree Farms (google it) and also from local farmers. The locals have varieties that have proven to do well here. Filaree has lots of types that are potential winners, so half of my varieties out of 15 come from them. Don’t use garlic from the store.
Second, plant in full sun at the correct time. Around here we use Halloween, you might want to be a week or so earlier. Plant in soil that has good organic material content. Water enough to keep the soil moist but not wet. Continue this until two weeks before harvest.
Be sure to control weeds. Mulch. I use straw.
Keep an eye out for bulb formation as the lower leaves yellow. Harvest when you have about 5 leaves left that haven’t dried out. Dig up and remove only large clumps of dirt.
Hang in shade to cure for 2-3 weeks. Clean off soil, trim roots and stem.
Good Gardening!
Not at all. Super weird-looking. Really, the stuff bolted when I wasn’t paying attention, and I didn’t have anything else I was planning on doing with that pot, so I just watched what it did. When it formed obvious seedpods, I picked a few and intentionally spread the seed in convenient places, so I guess the next year’s plants weren’t all strictly volunteers.
I mostly plant after I’ve dried the bulbs, and taken the amount I want to eat. That might be a little sooner than optimal, but it seems to work okay. I’m in New England, zone 6, though, so maybe there’s less time between my harvest and planting dates than in warmer places.
Would garlic do well in a planter in zone 7a?
Well, that’s my problem right there. I’ve killed so many plants by following the planting directions of “plant in full sun” that I always plant in shaded areas. Thank you, I’ll try again trusting your word that full sun means full ARIZONA sun.
I’ll check Filaree Farms out, thank you. Burpee is usually my go-to when it comes to seeds because they send me big catalogs with lots of pretty pictures. What? I love seed catalogs, I can entertain myself for days with one.
I’m planning to plant a pomegranate tree in a couple of months, I have a good spot (full sun all day, every day, all year long) for it but mentally I keep trying to move it over so it gets middle of the day shade. Do you have one, or know about them? I don’t really care much about getting fruit but I want a lot of the lovely flowers.
Filaree’s probably got a greater variety of strains (I don’t really know what Burpee’s got these days.) Different strains do better in different climates (including microclimates) and on different soils. If you’ve got the space and inclination, I’d recommend trying several, and continuing to grow whatever does best.
Ooh, jealous. I trialed some cold-hardy pomegranates developed by someone who was looking to trial cold-hardy pomegranates (sorry, I forget who I got the twigs from) and maybe, if I’d been able to put them in a protected spot in full sun they might have survived. But I didn’t have that kind of space available, and mine all died.
I’m planning on planting a two gallon (at least) tree in our fully fenced back yard. I’d like to put it in front of our front bedroom window, but the javalina could get to it there. They’ve already been on our front porch digging up my bulbs and they had to climb stairs to get there, the jerks.
The weather has been changing and our winters seem more extreme than they were in years past. Pomegranates generally do well in zones 7-10 and I am concerned that our 8c changing winters might be a bit much for a really young tree.