Cool I’ll look for those, we have some dead bush plant as well that need replacing.
I didn’t get to do anything to my yard last year. I didn’t move here until the last half of May, meaning I had already lost valuable time before my first night here. And by the time I had gotten over the exertion of the move and was ready to think about planting, I endured a long stretch where I thought I might lose my job, and who wants to improve a yard you might be leaving soon? But this year I can really just have at it. It looks like we’ll be past freezing nights by Saturday, so a trip to the gardening store is imminent! I feel like I have so many options in front of me I can scarcely decide what I want. Of course, I will need to choose plants that deer don’t like, because this area is just crawling with the four-legged nibbling machines.
I have two little apple trees in a box. I’ll plant them this weekend.
The yard here is the typical sad, compacted, nearly-barren patch of neglect typical of rentals. In an attempt to help reinvigorate it, I bought a bag of no-till cover crop seeds (50% clover!) and since it’s supposed to rain the next few days, I just scattered the whole bag around.
Contents:
- clover: crimson, white, medium red, yellow
- flax
- vetch
- fenugreek
- forage peas
- buckwheat
- cowpeas
- millet
- lentil
Lotsa nitrogen fixing legumes. Maybe they’ll help. I’ll just be glad if at least some of them sprout & bloom.
(My neighbor, who is a typical retired old man with an immaculate, sterile, boring, lifeless green carpet is gonna hate me!)
Clover is lovely as a ground cover! I’ve sown that in my yard a few times. It gets overtaken by the ground ivy and spider grass, though.
I planted my sweet peas in pots and put them on the front porch and was thrilled to see that most of them have sprouted.
Some of the viburnum blossoms got singed by the low temps the last couple days, but that should have been our last freeze/frost for this year, and I saw swallowtails and hawkmoths visiting today, so they’re obviously still viable for their purposes. I covered the blueberry plants and they came through just fine.
I’ll probably put a mini rosebush someone gave me as a gift out on the porch tomorrow - it’s itching to grow and I’ve already repotted it. It can start being outside now.
I am DYING to buy some herbs and tomatoes and peppers, but it’s still a bit early yet. Just gotta wait a few more weeks.
Uncovered and mixed up the dirt in the raised veggie bed yesterday. Today I planted early spring seeds: Bibb lettuce, green onions, peas in the bed. I bought a couple of the planter bags on clearance last fall, one now has multi colored carrots, the other broccoli.
Also started seeds for zucchini (which will transplant into another bag), red peppers, fish peppers, basil and parsley. Realized I forgot jalapeño and cilantro seeds. Oops.
If nothing grows, I won’t be too put out. As our lovely weather forecasters have been reminding us, we could easily still have snow in April.
Over and over.
My emergency fruit tree wraps got the young ones through the 24F blast of the night of April 1-2. Today it was in the mid-70s.
Spring weather is nuts.
This was also kind of a lockdown prank. At a time when we were only allowed to meet with friends outdoors - in our case, sitting on the patio - on a couple of occasions I handed a pot over, and made the friend pull the plant out of the pot and pick off the potatoes. One time we put them straight in the pot for dinner, the other time they went in a bag for our friends to take away with them.
It now turns out that both of these friends are, this year, growing potatoes in pots! How’s that for salesmanship?
j
I am not much of a gardener - but last year finally pulled out some dead bushes in front and this year need to plant that area - black eyed susans, daisies and purple coneflower are going in. I’ll throw some annuals in pots - I get those at the correctional facility garden sale (the county jail is up the street and provides Ramsey County with most of its plants - and sells the rest as a fundraiser for the jail) - and a potted herb garden traditionally sits on my front patio. Last year I avoided the nursery - crowds and covid.
I had done container gardening on my deck in the past, but with everything that has been going on with my health the past few years I stopped doing it. This year I decided to give it another go. So I took some time this weekend to check what I still had on hand, made a list of what I needed, and went to Lowes this morning.
I now have three window-box planters attached to my deck railing, two with assorted herbs and one with salad greens. I have two pots with tomato plants and one with banana peppers. I have a few more planters on hand, but I need to get hooks to attach them to the deck railing if I decide to use them; I’m not sure what I want to put in them.
Unfortunately, my back yard is heavily shaded so I can’t lay out beds for anything like squash or potatoes. I have a large built-in planter at the end of my driveway, but per HOA rules I can’t plant veggies there. I am thinking about filling it with flowers, but can’t yet decide what.
Four of the six sweet pea seeds I planted have germinated. I was kind of surprised about that - I thought it would be another week or so before anything happened. That means I am going to have to think pretty quick about what I want them to climb on, because they’ll be wanting that shortly.
My tulips are coming up!! 
Yay!
Aaand - the farm that’s just west of my house now has plant starts for sale - I ordered a Shishito pepper, a cayenne, a Sungold tomato, several dill and parsley, a couple sage and a hothouse basil. No determinate tomatoes yet, but the Sungold can still live in a pot and I’ll get a Roma later when those are available. Hopefully they’ll be ready for pickup this weekend - it’s been quite warm and dry this past week so I think that is speeding things up.
My asparagus is coming up! One single shoot spotted for the first time today - which is a bit odd, as the last couple of nights have been pretty severe frosts.
j
I put in a lot of fence posts today. (Metal, to hang chicken wire on to keep rabbits out of the garden.) I have a lot of rocks and roots, so that was hard work.
I also turned on the near part of the irrigation system, and did some minor repairs on it. It’s just drip irrigation of my garden beds.
It’s been really dry. I hope we get some rain.
Went to the farmers market this morning and picked up another tomato plant, an Amish variety which I was told was very meaty and would make good sauce, another basil (which I’m planning to put in the same container as one of my tomatoes), an orange mint (because it sounded interesting) and a tri-color sage.
Got my plants today, and put them in their containers. I also moved the plants that had overwintered from the back deck to the front, since my husband has started pulling up the decking in the back in order to replace it. Since the front is covered, I’ll need to water them regularly but for now that will be fine.
I also ordered some cherry tomato and pepper seeds to put in the Aerogarden inside, along with some lesser-used herbs (savory, purple basil and chervil).
Irrigation is ready for the season.
The weather here (south east England) has been really odd. On March 30 I cycled across the Ashdown Forest, where roads were flooded - water seeping out of the banking and running down the road - in literally dozens of places, the ground was that wet. Scroll forwards less than two weeks and the ground is now bone dry to the point of dust. I put in a load of seeds and seed potatoes over the last few days because rain was forecast this weekend - but almost none materialised. I’ll have to water to get them started but we now have several nights of minus 3 or 4 (Celsius!) forecast - so maybe I had better hang fire on that for a few days.
The current BBC long range local forecast (out to April 24) has no rain at all.
In south east England. April showers? Huh.
j
We’re not having the April showers here in NC either - after a really wet winter, we had a few evening thunderstorms a couple days ago, and now the 10-day forecast is showing nada in terms of rain. Feast or famine, it seems.