You will definitely want a light on the plants, usually within inches of the tops of the plants( depending on how much heat the fixture puts out) or else they will get spindly and fall over.
I’m excited for this year. I put in 2 more “strips” in the vegetable garden (like raised beds but not really raised) and two more flower beds. The lilies I transplanted and the daffodils I planted in the new beds are both starting to pop out. As has the rhubarb and I am anxiously waiting for the asparagus.
I started 72 tomato plants mainly heirloom and heavy on black varieties. I got a little carried away and will probably give some away. I also started bell peppers, cucs, okra, and some Hungarian paprika peppers that I am looking forward to trying to make into paprika powder. I also have some coneflower, lupines, salvia, and marigolds started. Coneflower once again hasn’t germinated very well.
I tried starting some native plants a second time (same seed) and once again I’ve had mixed results. I did get some gayfeathers, milkweed, and big blue grass to germinate. They will go in the section of the yard that I keep as a prairie garden. It used to be hay field and is dominated by brome. I want to get more native plants in there.
I am hoping the berries and fruit trees starting really producing this year with some age. I need to do a better job with the bug control with the fruit trees.
I am curious to see if the two butterfly bushes I started from cuttings survived the winter. I have only tried cuttings once before and tried to overwinter in pots which failed. These I took the cuttings in spring and planted in the ground early last fall.
All in all it looks like a good gardening year. Hopefully we will get more rain this year. We have had 3 below average rainfall years in a row. (NE Kansas)
I suppose this is as good a thread as any to get some feedback from my fellow gardeners.
I have a large south-facing hillside on my property that is just steep enough to be a danger when mowing the grass. We never use that area of the yard, except as a sledding hill in the winter.
So here’s my crazy idea. I just found that I can order 1000 sunflower seeds for ~$15. I’m seriously considering direct seeding 1000 sunflowers onto that hill. The space is about 80 yards long by 30 yards deep.
My question is: am I insane?
No, not entirely…
Those sunflowers will attract multitudes of birds (both songbirds and the birds that eat them, plus little corpses of the former produced by the latter), squirrels and other rodents, their predators (see bit about corpses above), and lots of bees. This may or may not be a problem for you, just thought I’d mention it.
Hmmm, yes. Mice and rats. That was the part I was missing.
Bees: good
Birds: good
Vermin: eh, not so much.
Time for more research. I did talk to a guy yesterday that said he would cut them down at the end of the season, that might help abate the problem. I’m also pursuing other means of making money off of this solution, I have a niece who is a wedding planner and she seems excited by the idea.
If you do make a hill of sunflowers, I would dearly love to see the pictures.
Question: I’ve heard that planting either lavender or rosemary plants will help keep away mosquitoes. Any truth to that?
INstead of sunflowers how about a wildflower mix. Still pretty but without the seeds. They would attract bees and flutterbys which is a good thing in my book.
Here: ~3000 for $11.20
Or 50lbs! For $22.79! That’s 150,000 sunflowers! (These aren’t intended for propagation, but I bet some would germinate.
Planted in plastic pots to start inside today: 3 kinds of heirloom tomatoes; 3 different envelopes of peppers, including one mixed peppers; mixed basil varieties; heirloom Charentais melons; Armenian cucumbers. Wish us luck!
Still to come: Chioggia beets (probably when we get back from vacation), snow peas, and 4 different kinds of morning glories on the back porch. Is this insanity or what? Any tips on trellis-building?
My friends who live about a mile from us have a huge double lot, and just brought home some baby chicks. I think I can talk them into taking any plants that we don’t have room for if everything actually germinates (or even a decent proportion of it). A co-worker has also offered some strawberries once it warms up.
So far, the ferns from last year haven’t come up yet, but a bunch of bulbs are coming up - the tulips seem not to have suffered too terribly from the squirrels and rabbits, but I’m not sure the hyacinths were so lucky. I can’t remember which flowers I planted where other than the tulips, so it’s bee a surprise as things start blooming.
P.S. I forgot the red cipollini onions!
The squirrels in my area keep moving my bulb flowers around. It’s always a surprise where they come up in the spring because they sure as heck never seem to stay where I put them.
I’ve got pretty much double the space I had last year, so I really need to step up the growing- I have an allotment, which is somewhere around 200-300m[sup]2[/sup], I’ve never measured properly. It was half that, but I got the chance to take on a neighbouring plot where I’d be allowed to keep bees, and grabbed it.
I’m not sure what’s good to grow in the rough ground for the first year, as I’m taking trees and horrendous weeds out. The previous holder had just neglected it for years.
It’s still a little early for starting pumpkins here, as we can get frosts into May, and I don’t have much space to grow them on inside, but I’m planning on growing a lot of them!
I can’t grow tomatoes there, due to blight (potatoes seem to get away with it though), but I’m growing two kinds at the house, which is less prone to blight issues.
I should probably go do some gardening actually, seeing as it’s glorious weather…
I have a small plot at the local community garden. Currently it’s full of salad veg and snow peas, although I think the peas are coming to an end, and the greens are bolting and bitter. So what to plant next?
Unfortunately the list of “easy and prolific” doesn’t have a lot of intersection with “veg my husband will eat” - tomatoes, squash, eggplants are all out, although I’m growing enough of these at home for just me. I’ve never had much luck with peppers, but I suppose I can give them a try; cucumbers, too - last year I had nasty mildewy plants with lots of flowers but no fruit. It would be fun to pickle cukes. The community garden has pretty poor pest management, too, so anything delicious to slugs or snails or birds is unlikely to do well. Oh, and rats
The greens were actually an unexpected success - I had a very old expired packet of a “spicy salad greens” mix including arugula, mizuna, various mustards, etc. I threw great handfuls of the seed about, since I didn’t think they’d sprout. I’ve been thinning/eating as much as I can, and trying to foist the excess on my plot neighbours, but they seem to be green weenies who only like lettuce.
So, any ideas for me?
Spring started in March this year, with the warmest month on record. The peonies are already a foot tall, with tons of buds. Tulips are blooming, along with other flowers. Right now the dogwood out back is exploding in pink. The Asian pear tree had a lot of blossoms this time around, so that bodes well for canning pear sauce (the much better alternative to applesauce) for the winter. The strawberry patch is also blossoming.
As for planting, we’ll likely do the Sweet Millions cherry tomatoes again this year; as the name implies, they’re sweet and prolific. I think my wife is going to try spinach again in the back, and we’ll probably plant some sort of squash. Not sure what else she has in mind. Most of the herbs survive the winter just fine, so we’ve got chives, thyme, sage and oregano in one bed, and there’s the rosemary bush out front.
Well, consider this as stream of consciousness ideas, and you pick and choose what would work for your husband and yourself.
Kohlrabi: I don’t grow broccoli because of the problem of cabbage butterflies (they seem to love broccoli - their caterpillars are the “green worms” often seen in organic brocolli) but kohlrabi stems (the round parts) taste quite similar to broccoli. You can also cook the leaves as greens, but they’re nothing to write home about.
Turnips: I grow them successfully without pest management, both tops and bottoms are edible.
Chard: usually considered a cold weather green, they do continue to grow all summer. Most of the garden pests seem to ignore it.
Green beans: also available in other colors, like hot weather, available in either bush bean varieties that stand up on their own or the sort that require a trellis or fence or something. That something can be corn, but you’ll want the corn to be about knee to thigh high before you plant the beans otherwise the beans might overwhelm the corn.
Corn: comes in many varieties. For a couple years I grew my own popcorn, which was fun.
Potatoes: Pretty easy, except you need to cover the ground between plants with something like straw or hay to protect them from the sunlight, otherwise you get green bits on the potatoes.
Onions: pretty easy, come in many varieties.
Wouldn’t surprise me if other people throw out a few more suggestions.
I always think rhubarb and asparagus are great since they produce early and come up yearly for decades. Doesn’t get much easier than that.
Well, started planting - put in radish (easter egg mix) , lettuce (several variety mix), spinach, and chard (“bright lights” multiple color). Yay me! On my way!
Ran out of time to do more, but the next ones in will be the bok choy and the onions, probably middle of the coming week.
Yup, got a lot done yesterday, with the nice weather in Chicagoland. Direct sowed my radish, carrot, beet, lettuce, kale, peas, kohlrabi, parsnip seeds. Potatoes I did a few days ago, but they are in pots in the garage so the damn varmints don’t eat them. Once they are fully sprouted they’ll go outside.
Today I’ll do spinach, more lettuces, chard, and … look at my giant stash of seeds some more. Maybe I missed something cool.
Yesterday and today we’ve hit 50 degrees! Only last week we still had an overnight frost. I’m out with a broom and a rake today to clean up the mess the melting snows left.
It was only recently that I realized I’m speaking a language only those of us on the northeast coast of North America can understand. Everywhere else on the planet had record warmth and near record dryness. The very opposite here. We are still about 10 degrees below normal for this time of year.
There is hope. The crocuses finally arrived – with a vengeance! I’ve got purple and white (and an occasional orange) crocuses. And now a variegated purple and white. So cool. The daffodils are behind schedule. Only one type is blooming at the moment. But they are up. Not so the tulips. They are only now coming out of the ground.
The irises are a menace. Not even this bad winter could hold them down. I didn’t separate them last year and they definitely need it yearly. Last fall was the tenth anniversary of my planting the first rhizome. These guys were up long before the snow melted.
The hyacinths are sad. They were also planted ten years ago. The first year they grew four feet tall. This year we’ll be lucky if it makes a foot. The Boy, however, won’t let me dig them up. He, personally, put them in the ground and they are his tiny, little babies.
Also, hopefully, fingers crossed-- this bad winter eradicated my biggest mistake, planting morning glories. DO NOT DO THIS! They have somehow jumped the barrier of the front steps and are taking over the small bed under the bay window.
I will be checking on the hostas and the bleeding hearts when I clean up. Bleeding hearts! I can’t wait!
Also, I think I should have capitalized all the flower names but now I’m too lazy to go back and fix it.
Starting a vegetable garden this year for the first time. (We had an approx. 2 acre garden on our farm whilst growing up. Some many potatoes, so many beans, so much okra.) I spaded up a 11’ x 10’ area, worked the soil - removing roots (not many), rocks, etc.
Here is an overview - north is to the right. Have Cherokee Purple tomatoes and Mortgage Lifters (never tried them before - supposed to be very productive.) In the empty space along the north side, I’ve sowed (sown?) brussel sprouts seeds. It gets hot here in NE OK, don’t know how well they’ll do.
Here is a closer view. I took a 3 1/2’ x 7’ panel of concrete reinforcing wire and buried the two sides in the soil so that it’s bent over in an arch - kinda hard to see. Have eggplants on one side and cukes on the other - going to train them up onto the arch. Have 4 bell peppers, 2 red & 2 yellow. We have pine trees in the front yard - using dead pine needles as a mulch/soil-covering. Going to put lettuce and radishes in the remaining area.
Here is where I put the sod I dug out - it’s covering a 4 inch PVC drain line. I put in Stargazer lilies and Dahlias about 5 - 6 years ago, they’ve come up every year since. You can see some here.
It’s just a little garden but I’m really excited.