I use Round-up for poison ivy.
Sure, cool, for invasive / noxious crap like that - yeah - have at’er. Just hopefully nothing nice, that you wanna keep, is nearby. (and mask-wearing and gloves, which you probably already know)
When i had established pain ivy, i used a much nastier herbicide, with appropriate precautions. (And still damaged some other stuff.) Now i patrol for seedlings, and remove all the pain ivy seedlings a few times a year. If you get it before the 4th leaf or so, you can gently remove the entire root with one gloved hand.
My fruit trees are all coming into bloom, and I’ve ordered a few more raspberry canes. This is always a fun time of year in the garden.
Interesting - never heard that term for poison ivy before. It is a pain. 
I mostly post here on my phone, and swype. That’s just a peculiar swypo for “poison”.
In the wildflower garden, the columbine is getting bigger and it looks like a few of the geraniums are up now too. Yay!
Our stretch of very cool spring seems to be over (we lurched from 35F to 90F in just two days) so I am starting my balcony garden. Still have a year’s supply of parsley dried from last year, so not doing parsley again this year. Checked out the herbs at work … eh, the weather had been hard on the garden center plants. Found a lone sage that looked viable and parked it on my porch to await re-potting. It’s perked up considerably with watering last night. I’m think of rosemary and basil, or at least rosemary.
Still have chard and lettuce seed from last year that should still be viable.
Already have a new bag of potting soil to replace that the feral cats, the squirrels, and the rabbits dug out.
Today I’m thinking of seeking out new herbs and getting some hardware cloth to make circular enclosures to keep the wildlife out of my pots, at least until the plants get established.
The thing i like about growing parsley is that i always have a couple fresh sprigs available. And never have a mouldering bag of it in the fridge.
I grow lots of parsley so the swallowtails have a place to lay their eggs!
So the weather has finally turned full April and I think we’re ready to go this weekend, even though it’s going to rain.
Bought my containers, soil, some fertilizer pellets, and a few seedlings to get started. Got a couple of tomato seedlings, a red bell pepper, and taking a flyer on a honeydew, just to see if anything happens with it. Spent a long time online picking out seeds, and have a bunch of heirloom herb seeds coming in the mail tomorrow.
It’s all going to be up on the deck so I don’t have to worry about deer, but squirrels, birds, and other critters will be an issue. Probably just going to get some plastic sheeting and some scrap wood and use a corner of the deck as a framework for a simple greenhouse. There are inexpensive ready-made structures like this but I’m pretty sure that’s very flimsy and I’m certain I could build a better one for the same cost or less.
They are flimsy. I bought one just to use the frame (it gets too hot here most of the year for the plastic cover to be useful), and I made a cover for it out of window screen. Then it snowed - and it doesn’t snow that much here - and the weight of a few inches of it on top collapsed the frame.
The tomatoes are growing nicely. I estimate they’ve tripled in size since planting. I’m guessing I’ll start seeing flowers in a couple of weeks. One zucchini has been growing like gangbusters, much to my sons’ dismay, but not to mine. I’m looking forward to grilled squash. Yum!
My many figs are setting fruit, and I’ve been covering them with small organza bags to keep them safe from the critters. I’m in the process of planting corn, winter squash and vining beans for my native American three sisters garden. The garlic has been harvested, dried, packaged and either put into storage or passed out to friends and family.
My adeniums are blooming like mad, and the new seedlings are progressing nicely. Today I went through last year’s adenium seedlings to choose the ones I will keep (based on unique flowers and form), and the rest will go to a retail nursery and/or friends.
The zucchini are coming in, and they’re yellow. These are definitely zucchini and not yellow squash, as they are a uniform thickness.
The tomatoes are coming in. I counted twenty-four out there yesterday. A couple look like they’ll start turning red next week.
The cucumbers, cantaloupes, and watermelons all have blossoms. For the melons, I have heard that you should limit them to one fruit per vine. Has anyone heard that before?
The basil isn’t looking as good as years past, but it’s growing. My wife suggested just transferring it to the one gallon pot right away, instead of incrementing pots. I think that may have been a mistake, as it’s having a hard time holding on to water.
The parsley is growing, but it doesn’t have many leaves, just shoots and flowers all over the place. I’ve been pinching off the flowers, like I do with the basil. Am I doing it wrong?
Huh, the parsley shouldn’t be going to seed. It’s a biennial. The first year you should just get leaves, and you should replant the next year.
I plan to plant basil on Sunday. I’ve never incremented pots, just taken it from whatever i bought it in and put it in it’s final location. That’s never caused any problems that I’m aware of. What’s the goal of incrementing pots?
The parsley was bought on a whim last year. It didn’t grow very much last year, but also didn’t die over winter, so I kept it to see what happened.
Ah. Yeah, you won’t get much worth eating from it. This year it’s trying to reproduce. Sometimes I let a plant do that for the free seeds.
My parsley is big and lush and beautiful this year. Also, I have some leaf lettuce that’s doing nicely.
Alrighty then. Out it goes. I’ll see if the nursery has any more.
You got me… my wife grew garlic and leeks this spring, and the garlic is at least as large as your usual commercially grown bulbs, while the leeks were on the puny side, but fully formed.
We’re in zone 8a which is a hair colder than you, but this spring has been record-breaking hot, with May having something like 22 days with high temps over 90 degrees. So I sort of doubt it’s too hot for garlic where you are.
I wonder if you’ve got the opposite problem- maybe you’re not giving it enough sun, water, and nutrients?
I have to go spray the green beans today or tomorrow; we’ve got bean leaf beetle problems and I’ve got a bottle of “Pyganic Gardening” botanical pesticide with their name on it.
Well, got sage, thyme, and rosemary for herbs. Also got some hardware cloth to wrap around the pots and that seems to have stopped the local critters from digging in them so yay. Planted my beans a couple days ago, they’re not up yet but I expect to see them soon. Have at least one more pot left, but I need more hardware cloth for it. Doable. Not sure if I should wait until late summer and plant either lettuce or chard, or just do some flowers. Maybe lavender? I dunno. So far so good, though, not that I’ve stopped whatever it was from removing the dirt from the pots.