I’ve grown tomato and pepper plants from seed and thought I would give them a little sun today but a half an hour later I see birds on them. They killed four of them. I’m putting up a bird feeder with poison in it. Little fuckers.
ETA: I’m not really poisoning birds, although I would love to do so.
So i bought some Alyssum to add ground cover to the flower beds at the front of the house. Lets see how they deal with houston heat and some full sun and if they survive the winter.
The asiatic lilies are doing ok, I think the sprinkler system knocked the flowers off, I lso found out they only bloom once and they were already blooming when I bought them, so next year then.
Bought some phlox for ground cover in the back , in some areas with varible shade and sun.
Bought some bell peppers and extracted the haberneo seedings from the big 10 x 5 planter box which I have to take the earth out, and drop a big pile of very clay like soil in the bottom , then drop the good earth back on top and plant the jalapenos and some bell peppers. I also put clumpsnofbthe hab seedling down in various random places in the garden just because.
Tomorrow is going to hurt.
Tomato and cucumbers doing well, bought some pots for more tomatoes to grow in and maybe bring in in the winter.
Basil going crazy.
Alyssum is not a bad choice, but it will struggle in summer sun, although it might very likely bounce back in fall.
May I suggest sedum? Comes in a bunch of colors (there’s a yellow-blooming variety that’s particularly vigorous, and a truly lovely blue-leafed variety with tiny white flowers … among myriad others) and having gardened in Dallas and Austin for many years I can vouch for their tolerance of heat and sun.
We had snow yesterday here in western Michigan but are scheduled for highs in the 60s within a few days.
So I dunno what’s goin’ on with gardening weather.
I have pea seeds (both for eatin’ and for sweet smellin’) and rainbow chard seeds on standby. As it’s a sunny afternoon and I’m off unexpectedly early from work, I may just take my chances and start them today.
Conventional wisdom is to wait till May Day, but … eh, seeds are cheap. What if we have a short spring, huh? Then what, huh? Might as well get a jump on things and see if gambling on a head start pays off.
Ah, gardeners. Bigger gamblers than any degenerate at the horse or dog tracks!
Thanks Purples, I had a bit of GO fever, I really should have checked in here for some advice first.
I’ll probably drop by some where after work and see if I can grab a of what you suggested, there are a few holes left to fill.
I planted parsley, two small lettuce plants, and pansies today. None of me seeds have germinated, yet.
I added compost to the roses this morning and set the fill chamber to compost on the tumbler. With the weather warming up, all the rabbit litter should hardly take any time at all for another load.
Well that was an epic day.
Mrs Mollusc and I moved 50 cu ft of decent soil out of the big planter box, shifted abou 30 cu ft of clay soil and old house bricks that had been stacked up behind the garage since foreever into the planter box , then put most of the soil back, with some of it going for planting the phlox around the outside of the planter.
Then replanted the jalapenos and cayenne back in and added the bell peppers and some of the habernero seedings in the planter.
The trees nearby the planter box had encroached quite extensivly into the soil in there with many many roots, so digging and splitting all that out was a good thing as the soil was way drier than I was expecting and far fewer worms than I’d have thought.
Found a fir sapling about an inch high, so I put that in a pot and we will see how it does.
Finally the basil was showing black spots, we were planning on pesto tonight anyway so they got a serious trim. Have to be more careful when watering and not splash earth up on the leaves .
Anyway pesto with sun dried tomatoes is made, water is boiling , large glass of chard is next to me and we will probably crack the seal on a new tub of ibuprofen later.
The wildflower seeds I planted are coming along very slowly - a few of the leaves are recognizable now as the columbine, but I also planted wild geranium and Short’s aster, and if any of those are up I can’t tell yet.
I haven’t really done any planting inside or out yet. We are just a bit behind on the season here in central Pennsylvania. I did bring in my yearly crop of cut grape vines and put them in water. I have greens coming but no roots yet. I gave a entire milk crate of sprouted potatoes in the cellar waiting for the weather to warm. I did manage to put a few of last year’s pear seeds in to pots.
Today I gave up on my last squash seed. It hasn’t germinated. The significance of this is that every other seed that I set to germinate indoors did (!) - pumpkin, cucumber, courgette/zucchini, okra, all the other squashes, everything - so this last lousy seed deprived me of a 100% record. Never got that close before.
I passed the okra on to my friend L, who has a greenhouse, so that’s kind of a joint project now. The broad/fava beans and seed potatoes are planted. We’re about 3 weeks away from last frost day, so I need to start speeding things up. Let’s see if I can open up all of the remaining beds this coming week.
j
My peas and lettuce have germinated.
Finally got around to planting the peas and various greens and radishes and turnips and beets and carrots today. I am trying a new technique for the carrots this year: I put out the tomato supports early, and I am going to plant the carrots around the tomato supports to save space. Maybe some of the herbs, too, in the other tomato bed when it gets warmer.
Finally finished rebuilding most of the second brick raised bed; if it hadn’t been raining much of today, I would have finished it. But the first 3 rows of brick are done, which was enough to be able to put the dirt back in and the trellis so I could plant the peas. Also took a tray of overflow tomato seedlings over to a garden buddy’s house for foster care before the seedling swap in a couple of weeks, and left the remaining 8 trays of eggplant and pepper and tomato seedlings on the covered front porch most of the weekend to get some air and sun. They are back in the greenhouse shelf on the back porch for now, though, because the temperature is supposed to drop this week.
Also finally fixed a few bricks in front that the crew who did our new sidewalk last summer had kind of scrambled, and moved an elderberry bush around to the side where it will have some leg room. Then I moved some New England asters away from our front stairs, where they flop onto the front walk, and onto the side where they will have more legroom and more sun. And moved some ferns around the front, where they will have more shade, to make room to plant some sunflowers along the fence.
In the very early pandemic, I caught a 75% off sale at a landscaping supply place that was moving and bought enough slabs of stone to make a shallow flower bed, about 4’ by 6’, in our front parkway. Right now it has some giant alliums, and some other stuff that seems to have grown back from the part-shade wildflower mix that I planted there last year. I bought a packet of blue bachelor’s button seeds that I was thinking of planting there, and now I am thinking maybe I will move some tiger lilies and yellow iris and spare columbine seedlings from other parts of the yard there, too, and maybe add some marigold seeds. They should do OK with just some afternoon sun once they get established, right?
Next project: move some of the pink wild geraniums from along the edge of the house to the edge of what was formerly the front and side lawn, but is now becoming a crazy hippie perennial wildflower meadow. There are some bare spots where Tom Scud dug in some heavy-duty edging last year, and I want to cover them with something low-growing that won’t flop onto the sidewalk, but colorful.
Also, the raspberries and mint are commencing their annual invasion, so I guess I will pot up some of those for the seedling swap, too…
I just went out and bought what appears to be the last eggplant in my city. Plenty of everything else, just no eggplant. Anyone know if there is a disease or something?
I’m picking green onions for my salad already, and my eight ball squash has flowers already, and my volunteer cherry tomatoes and butternut squash are doing fine. Off to plant and weed.
Everything is in now. Tomatoes, zucchinis, and bell pepper are in the back. Basil, oregano, parsley, and mint are on the deck. Potatoes are on the side (and growing like gangbusters). Watermelon and cantaloupe are in the front.
Peas are a-sproutin’. Even better, my bleeding heart and hosta seems to have overwintered (with precisely zero care or protection) and are coming back, if I’m ID’ing correctly:
A skirmish between the crunchy old oak leaves and the tender-but-pointy tulip leaves has broken out: witness two impalements/strangulations:
What city is it where eggplant plants are unavailable?
I just potted up six “Ao Daimaru” eggplant and there are lots more seedlings of other varieties coming along. Gotta do it myself since there’s limited choice around here other than “Black Beauty”.
Fremont California. One store had none, Home Depot had one, and a few pots for others with tomatoes inside. All Japanese. They claim they’re getting a shipment in, and we should call. It’s odd, since I’ve never had problems before and I don’t think it is a supply chain issue since they all have tons of other plants.
OK. My allotment has five growing strips (called “spits”), each about a meter wide and six meters long. Every year I devote a spit and a half to potatoes - 12 plants per spit, so 18 plants in all (crops are rotated between spits, of course). Every October I close the allotment down and cover the spits with fabric to suppress weeds. It’s now April, so I’m opening the spits up again.
Today I opened up spit 3, last year’s main potato spit, peeling back the weed suppressing fabric. What do I find? 12 potato plants - a bit blanched, it has to be said, but vigorous potato plants, none the less. So:
Hmm. In other news, the broad/fava beans are up.
j
This gardener saw the next door gardener using bloody roundup on weeds. I wanted to say, dude - you know what a hoe is? And it was a windy day with lots of nearby plants that would’ve most likely caught at least some friendly fire. Didn’t bother, though - figured it wasn’t worth it - probably would’ve been taken as oneupmanship instead of helpful advice. That crap should be never ever used, except for maybe weeds coming out of sidewalks if they can’t be pulled out by the full tap root, like dock, or horsetail, the latter having rhizomes instead.
Strawberries are coming along nicely here - the commercial farmers have theirs ready now, but mine will take a few more weeks, partially because I replanted my patch into a bigger space.
Chives and sage are going nuts - I have some sage in the dehydrator right now. Tomatoes (all romas) are looking good too. I even have a few chili peppers on a couple of jalapeno plants, which is way early.