How does your garden grow?

Cafe Society
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Gardening is upon me in full swing. Mother Nature has finally shown up here in Michigan after a winter of Global Warming SNOW up to our pits and a very rainy, cold and soggy spring.

Presently, it is raining down sunshine like nobody’s bidness. Frost is possibly a thing of the past. ( I am not fully planting until Tuesday, but bought everything today and keeping it next to the house.)

I have decided to dedicate an entire row to ALL THINGS SALSA. ( Cayenne peppers, jalepeno peppers, sweet peppers.) And another row entirely of tomatoes. (Beefsteak, Big Boy, Old German, Big/Old Rainbow and a few others that sound less Gay Porn Movie Like.)

By mid July I fully anticipate to have tomatoes up my hoo hoo, if you know what I mean.

A seperate row will be miscelleous veggies that my friends tell me I have to grow or they won’t be my friends any more.

I have a seperate and highly neglected herb garden that refuses to die despite being completely torn out for a repair on our well two years ago. Mint is impossible to kill and spreads like syphillis. Rosemary is very hardy, despite it’s mediterean bloodlines, if you cover it properly in the fall ( like I never do.) or just cut it down and cover it with a toe of dirt.

I have a cast iron bath tub with two experimental tomato plants in there. Plantings in bath tubs are always classy!

They aren’t ‘experimental’ in any sense other than I decided to break out my Wall of Water and test drive it against the Red Neck Wall of Water. The Red Neck Wall of Water is simply surrounding said plant with liter bottles of warm water (to start out with. I haven’t refilled them at all since the initial planting in 40 degree weather.) and then wrapping the outside with tshirt bags left over from shopping. What it lacks in purtyness, it makes up for in cheapness.

The** Wall of Water** plant is doing AWESOME. The only hassle with it at all is filling it up. I didn’t have my hose hooked up yet ( still don’t) so I had to make several trips from the kitchen tap with a couple of liter bottles of warm water to fill it up. Other than that, it is simply incredible. You get 3 in a package for about $10 ( when I bought them a few years ago.) and they are very durable. I have a slight leak in one that I slowed down with duct tape.

The **Redneck Wall O Water **plant was not as fully protected from the frost the other night and took a hit to a couple leaves. I had taken the tshirt bags off of the sides and top and it was the top part that took the brunt. I don’t know if the plant is mortally hit, but I am treating it just like the other.

The rest of my garden will be sweet corn.

Size: 1800 sq. feet.

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Your missing Cilantro.

And a simple pepper. Cubanelles. This year I could only find them as seed. They have a very smokey flavor. Throw some in with rice and its to die for!

I’ve grown all kinds of peppers and they are either various levels of hot, which I like, or rather nondesript otherwise. But the cubanelles ? Mmmmmmm

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It’s been a little shaky start here in Chicago, but now that the weather is warming up, my sun-loving plants seem to be happier. I planted some stuff the last week of April, some the first week of May, and some this past weekend. We’ve got Thai basil (2), Cinnamon basil (2), lemon basil (2), Italian basil (6), Greek basil (2), habanero (4), thai chiles (4), cayenne chiles (4), hot Hungarian wax peppers (4), chervil (2), oregano, marjoram, purple sage, regular sage, thyme, tarragon (2–my old plant survived the winter, much to my surprise), spearmint (slowly taking over its plot), lovage, gooseberry, cilantro (2), winter savory, rosemary (2), chives and dill (they’re sprouting up all over the place from the last few years), curry plant, lavender, and a bunch of tomatoes – 10 heirloom plants and 12 more common ones like best boys, beefsteaks, and the like. The basils, chiles, and tomatoes are the most important crops. I want to plant brussel sprouts, too, but those seem to be a later planting, from what I’ve read.

My favorites are the Thai and cinnamon basils, which I use extensively mid-summer with the chile peppers for Thai basil dishes (the dishes I make are correctly made with Thai holy basil, but taste plenty good with these varieties, too) and pho. Once August rolls around, it’ll be tomatoes & Italian basil on menu.

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Cilantro and cubanelles. writing it down Got it.
Thanks!

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I’ve either never seen **cinnamon basil **before or it is relatively new to the Average Joe. How does it taste?

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I’ve got my first garden going in about 35 years. It’s all containers on a drip irrigation system. I’ve got basil and two types of tomatoes. My dill and cilantro died while I was out of town so I have to replant, but the tomatoes are going off! We have a real problem with various molds and fungi on the tomatoes here on the coast, so I’m crossing my fingers.

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I don’t know how new it is, but I’ve been buying it at the local greenhouses for the last couple of years. I would describe it as definitely having a cinnamon flavor and scent (it contains cinnamate, the chemical responsible for cinnamon’s flavor.) It’s got the smaller flat leaves similar to Thai basil, and, like Thai basil, has that purplish color to its stem. It seems to be stronger in flavor to me than regular sweet basil, but it still has the distinctive basil flavor, with a sharp accent of cinnamon on the palate and nose. I love it in Asian dishes and use it interchangeably with Thai basil. I love most kinds of basil except for that purple ruffles crap which I grew once, last year, to much disappointment (looks pretty, but it tastes like nothing.)

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My garden grows very…slowly. We have another friggin’ frost warning for tonight. I’m not a huge fan of hot weather, but damn. I feel like summer is never going to get here. I planted only hardy plants, and boy, is it ever paying off this year, as they valiantly struggle to thrive in this never-ending crappy weather. My bleeding heart is blooming, though. I love them. So tough.

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I wouldn’t say we’re missing it, Bob. Cilantro is pukey. We grow it anyway because DoctorJ loves it, but I’m never sad when the stuff bolts.

They’ve sold it at our Walmart in BFE, Appalachia the last couple of years that I know of, so it can’t be that new. It tastes pretty well like you’d expect from the name, like basil and cinnamon. It and the Thai basil never seem to grow as vigorously as our sweet basils. They grow okay, but they’re nothing like the shrubs we get from the other types.

We’ve finally got it dried up enough that we can plant–once it finally got warm enough not to worry about frost, it rained for 2 weeks straight, and I just finally got something besides cold-weather crops put out yesterday and today.

So far we’ve got red cabbage, leeks, red onions, chard, mixed lettuce, green beans, bell peppers, hot peppers, eggplants, cukes, and various heirloom tomatoes. Not very much of any one thing, because we only have a small plot along the dog run fence and there are only two of us. But between that, the herb pots on the patio, the apple trees, and the blackberry bramble (finally getting big enough to give more than a handful of berries!) it’s plenty to keep us occupied.

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I’m trying to keep the veggies/herbs mostly to containers this year. Eggplant / Cukes / Zucchini / Heirloom Tomatoes / Basil / Red Bell Pepper / Jalapeno. Oh, and Long Island Mammoth Dill - from last year. That hardy stuff was growing in the thin lines of my patio. I’ve thinned out patches elsewhere (and johhny-appleseeded some plants doing nicely in “the wild”).

On Long Island, we’re just now getting the hot (+20C) days that plants thrive in.

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It must be nice to grow something edible. The deer roam through regularly, eating all and sundry, and that’s actually okay. They were here first, and they’re quite lovely animals.

So the deer made me despair (there’s no spot flat, sunny and appropriate to fence), but it was when I saw the adorable grey and brown bunny this spring that I knew there was absolutely no point in trying to grow a vegetable garden.

So… my garden is some potted plants, rhodos, a rock wall, and a flower bed in the back yard, with bark mulch, arbutus, and rhodos in the front. All else, including roses, is promptly eaten.

Oh–I have a patch of chives. That’s still alive, no thanks to my skills. :slight_smile:

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My lovely spouse is doing the garden lately. I’ve been the garden spouse other years, it goes back and forth.

MrsSqueegee has gotten pretty ambitious the last two seasons, and we now have 11 raised beds. There’s a hopeless local infestation of pocket gophers that I’ve given up on driving away, (except I set my jaw and keep trying and mostly succeeding in poisoning the ones burrowing through the back lawn). We make raised beds from 4x12’s with chicken wire underneath so the gophers can’t tunnel under, and hopefully won’t just jump into the beds. Which mostly works, except when it doesn’t, sigh.

Spouse is growing about 12 tomato plants, various varieties from heirloom to plums, and I hope this year was like last year – we gave away shopping bags full of really good tomatoes, where some years we had leaf rot or gophers or god-knows and got diddly tomatoes. Last year was an awesome tomato crop – MrsSqueegee rocks! and I’m hoping this year is similar.

Also growing: different colored bell pepper plants (we’ve never had good luck with these, and usually get just a few misshapen peppers; tips anyone?), a couple jalapenos, a bed full of sweet corn (we’re also bad at corn, I think we don’t pay attention at the end of the season and pick too late), giant pumpkins (which grow to around 3’ for us, which is fine, its just for fun), cucumbers. The spinach, peas, and broccoli are done for this year, and the strawberries are close to done, it’s getting too warm for them. Last year blueberries and raspberries were planted, so its still too early for them to fruit I think; I’m wary of these bushes taking over the garden, they’re pretty feisty. In the spice rack we have cilantro, dill, basil growing but I think the current plants are flowering so they’re close to done this season.

I’m sure I’m leaving a great deal out. MrsSqueegee has been doing an amazing amount of gardening these past two seasons, and I’m very grateful and probably miss quite a bit of what she’s doing out there. She so rocks.

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We live in an apartment but have the first floor of our house with our own side entrance, with a nice section of garden next to the driveway. Our landlord was cool with us sectioning off a 5X3 foot portion of the side for our own use, which is awesome.

We currently have a few rows of veggies growing:
Cucumbers
Green beans
Melon (honeydew I think)
Carrots
Beets
Spinach
Green onions

our tomato starters failed utterly due to the dumb cat stepping in the pots and eating them. He’s not a good gardener. We’re probably going to buy some starters and plant them outside. Much less hassle. The beans are coming up nicely! I am so excited for fresh veggies.

Thankfully our house gets a lot of sun.

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I have a couple large containers that I will attempt fresh herbs and tomatoes in this year. Other than that, I have flowers that are performing well, for the most part. My gerbera daisies and my dahlias are kind of suckin’, but it’s early yet. The African daisies rock, as do the Zinnias. I have two varieties of Columbine that are juuuuust blooming.

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Savannah, have you ever tried moth balls around the edges of your garden? It seems pretty effective at keeping off the bunnies for us, and I’ve heard other people say those and strongly scented bath soap in a net bag is good for keeping away deer. Or if you had a weekend and were at all handy, I’ve seen people make what look almost like roofed dog runs out of 2x4’s and chicken wire. Most of them were on the order of 10’x10’, and some folks even terraced the ground inside because they didn’t have a flat spot to work with.

Alternatively, I’ve seen little greenhouse kits that are essentially lean-to’s. They just go right on the side of the house and are really tiny. You couldn’t get much in one, but you could grow enough veggies for one or two people.

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From advice I got here I purchased ‘The All New Square Root Gardening’ by Mel Bartholomeu and have been putting his advice into practice on two 4’X4’ raised beds on the back porch of my town house. So far so good, I transplanted my thriving 4 tomatoes and 2 watermelons yesterday and it appears my 5 varieties of Lettuce, potatoes, carrots, basil, peas and chives survived the near frost last week. My Oregano, sage, garden beans and a different variety of carrots have yet to come up and I’m growing concerned. I think I wait two more weeks and if nothing happens I’ll go to the nursery and get a few started versions

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Gah, all you health freaks and your freakin’ veggies.

What’s wrong with beauty?

(Kalhoun – the purple-flowered plant in the foreground of the first picture and the white-flowered plant in the background of the second are both geraniums.)

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Really! I never would have guessed. I like both of those a lot. I planted those pinwheel geraniums a few days ago and they seem to be taking well already. I’ve got to ask…what do you call that turd-looking thing that I planted? It’s not a bulb. I was expecting little potted dudes like I usually plant, and these were definitely turd-like. I also had one for this: http://www.whiteflowerfarm.com/35680-product.html but it doesn’t appear to be doing well. The small bit of green growth on the turd now appears to be dead. Can I expect anything to happen here?

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I’m not familiar with the flower you linked to, and I’m not really sure what you’re talking about with the turd thing. If they send you a turd thing (which, if it’s not a bulb, is probably a corm or rhizome), they should have sent you planting instructions, which I trust you followed. If the instructions were to plant it at the surface, it’s a rhizome (not that knowing that makes a difference to your question) and if the instructions were to plant it at X depth, you shouldn’t be digging it up and looking at it. Either way, plant according to directions then just let it do its thing and see what happens.

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For the flower lovers in this thread, here are my new Columbines: 001 | Karlen Sanberg | Flickr and 002 | Karlen Sanberg | Flickr

And my one currently GROOVY dahlia: 003 | Karlen Sanberg | Flickr

I love them!!