We had snow last week. Rhubarb is up. Looks like the lawn will have a lovely crop of dandelions in about a month. Violets have survived the winter in the wooded areas. I have already hit the fireweed with Roundup.
I always grow way too many peppers. I’m cutting back this year. I have canned jalapenos and pepper sauce enough for years. I like bell peppers and maybe one really hot variety.
This year nothing but herbs and flowers. It will be the first time I haven’t planted peppers since we moved to this house, but hell, we still have some in the freezer from last year and it isn’t like they are scarce around here, even in the midst of plague.
I always over start Marygolds (most everything gets started in pots) and then take the surplus to work where they go home with good families. I over started them again this year and because I can’t stand to kill perfectly good plants for the sin of being homeless, I put the pots out by the sidewalk with a sign saying “Free! Marygolds! 1 per person, please.”
We sat on our front porch and waved at people as they carried the bright yellow flowers away. Grow, be well, little flowers!!!
Oddly enough, that’s never worked for the zucchini mid-season.
gotpasswords has inspired me to not dig out the catnip, because bees really seem to like it. Eating is good. Bees help facilitate the process of getting food out of seeds. I like them 
For those of you into sprouting things, lentils are great sprouted and added to sandwiches or salads. And cheap!
Bumping this thread because in lots of states it was too early in April to plant lots of stuff.
We just had our last (fingers crossed) frost, so I’ll be planting this weekend. I’ve got some glass gem corn that I sprouted inside, gonna do tomatoes, basil, and marigolds to attract bees/keep out skeeters.
The rhubarb came back. I don’t remember having to weed rhubarb as a kid, but this patch is having trouble fighting off the grass, even with mulch. Even at 6 or 7 years in.
We’ve had several days with pounding rain that probably knocked the blossoms off everyone’s fruits and vegetables.
Tons of things to do in the garden now that we finally seem to be past the risk of frost. I may have done the Fig Shuffle (moving potted figs in and out of cover) for the last time.
Hoping for an abundant fig crop this year from the likes of Chicago Hardy, Petite Negra, Atreano, Italian Honey Fig, Celeste, Black Mission, Orphan, Staten Island Bomb and many more.
Peas and lettuce are up! Also hops. Had tulips, violets, daffodils, bleeding hearts in bloom already. Will report back on the rest.
My garden would look very strange to most of you. Lots of desert type plants. Cacti = Several species of barrel cacti, a dozen or so Trichocereus hybrids (aka Torch Cactus), lots of Mammillaria (aka Pincishion cactus), and lots of Adenium cultivars. And I just finished potting up 379 new seedlings of Adeniums for this years new crop.
Not growing any food as water is too precious here, and most veggies and fruit don’t do well in our summer heat. Before retiring here, I lived where I grew a large vegetable garden and had lots of fruit trees. But had to change that so that I wasn’t fighting nature here in the desert.
I’ve been gardening for 50 plus years and have only missed 4 years while I was in the service. Thank goodness for my plants; they have really helped me during these times of isolation. Working with plants is my passion and therapy combined. Brings a great sense of peace and connectivity into my life.
Do you have any agave? I love agave, and even schlepped one (with wine corks stuck on the leaf points) all the way up to Michigan from Texas because I couldn’t bear to leave them all behind.
I now have a few big pots with nice, soft, fresh storebought soil, and several pieces of hardware cloth (wire mesh) over it to keep the squirrels from digging. There’s a sage plant in one pot as incentive to keep watering while the seeds come up …
I have spinach and lettuce just starting, and I hope to hell the peas didn’t fail and will join them soon. I have both swee’peas and the eatin’ kind, and was really looking forward to both. I also had an elderly garlic bulb in the kitchen starting to sprout, so those cloves are out there, too. Oh, and rainbow chard and chive seeds, too.
Next few weeks, I’ll add the alyssum and four o’clock seeds, and nasturtiums to pop up for quick gratification.
Grass, nettles and brambles. Our small outside space is overgrown and messy. I like to think of it as a haven for wildlife and bees.
I’m so excited. The spinach seems established, there’s baby lettuce EVERYwhere, and I saw one brave first thread of a chive seedling. I hope there are more, they’re way bigger favorites of mine and I somehow never get a good colony established.
Oh, and some wrinkled little pea tippy tops! Way too early to tell if they’re the eatin’ kind or the purty smellin’ kind, and I can’t recall which comes up first. (**ANYONE? Bueller?)
I see what look like chard, and I swear I bought “Bright Lights” which has leaf veins and ribs in a mix of neon yellow, orange, white, magenta, red, pink, and the seedlings always come up with even their little coti … cody … uh, the little baby leaves already shot through with color. It’s the biggest fun of growing them. But I only see red? Hmph.
Anyway, I pushed down some more seeds today, for purely decorative flowers: my beloved favorites the nasturtium, and four o’clocks. Yes, I know nast’s are edible. They taste “peppery.” I like them for the lilypad leaves that are so cute even without blossoms, and the quick ease I’ve had with them in the past. The four o’clock flowers are the “broken” kaleidoscope variety, with funny splashes and dots of different colors.
Finally, I had one single seed hidden away from a plant that’s now legal to grow where I currently now live. The damn seed had to be at least a couple years old. I found it during the unpacking and while sowing the chard and stuff I shrugged and poked it into the dirt, too.
Popped right up, like snap that.
I’m not letting myself get too worked up yet, it’s barely shown it’s first pair of leaves, but … uh … yeah, that too.
I’m regrowing scallions on the window sill; I’ll plant them back out as soon as we get a warm, drizzly day.
Critters eat everything. Usually I try a few tomatoes, but mostly stick to flowers. But this year seems like a year for home-grown, so I’m trying more food:
Lettuce has sprouted. I have a couple of pea plants inside a cage. I planted parsley, chives, and not enough scallions. (I only got one pot the first time, and now none are left.) Some chard that doesn’t look happy. Today it’s finally warm enough for summer plants, so I put in some basil and tomatoes.
I’ve also been growing perennial fruit (which makes my wildlife happy) for several years. The big apple tree (Jonathan) is covered with flowers. It didn’t really fruit last year, so I expect a decent crop this year. My currant bush looks happy. I have some blueberry bushes I planted out in the back where I can’t see them from the house. Rather to my surprise, they have survived the predation of deer and are covered with blooms this year. I bought some netting, maybe I’ll be able to harvest some blueberries and currants. I have some raspberries, but they are delicate canes without many thorns, and the squirrels not only take the fruit, they break the canes, so I’m not optimistic. I have ordered some new raspberry plants that are supposed to be thornier, but they won’t fruit this year. (It doesn’t really work to net raspberries, because they grow fruits and flowers simultaneously, and there’s not point if the bees can’t get at the flowers.)
I also have an apricot tree that’s looking very unhappy, and a dwarf cherry tree that I’m giving up on. The apricot is pretty when it blooms, but the squirrels mistake the growing fruits for nuts, and take them all when they are small and green. And it’s not even looking healthy this year. I think I will replace it with an apple. The dwarf cherry (Carmine Jewel, from the U Saskatchewan program) has been disappointing. The rare fruit that I keep from the birds has had very little cherry flavor. And it’s not looking happy this year, either. It seems to have developed scale! I’m giving it one more year and if I don’t like the fruit that I can get in it’s new-improved cage (to keep out birds and chipmunks) I’m going to replace it with a blueberry bush or two. But it’s in bloom right now, and quite attractive.
Oh, flowers…
I have a lot of peonies. The tree peonies aren’t looking great this year, I hope they haven’t caught something… I have tons of epimedia, which are one of my favorite. Yellow, white, pink, and purple. The rabbits like to eat them, but they provide nice foliage after the flowers are past. The lilacs look nice today. The forsythia is past, of course. I still have a lot of late daffodils. The apple trees (planted fruiting apples and self-seeded crabs) are in bloom and fabulous. And I put in some violets a couple week ago (still nice) and got some impatiens and petunias today. I don’t want to take out the violets, yet, but that’s where the impatiens go, and if I wait until the violets are past there are never impatiens left. 
In the past few weeks, I finally rebuilt the brick raised bed by the garage, this time with concrete instead of construction adhesive. Much sturdier, if somewhat rustic-looking. Hopefully it will last a few years, by which time we can pay people who know what they are doing to do the bricklaying. Last weekend, I planted 3 kinds of lettuce, some bok choy, 3 kinds of kale, and other odds and ends of greens there that don’t need a ton of sun. And I planted rainbow chard in a shallow bed along one edge of the patio (the other side will be marigolds and nasturtiums).
A week or so ago, we finally got around to having 5 cubic yards of a compost/topsoil blend delivered to cover the side yard, where last fall we lasagna composted over the crappy, weedy clay soil so we can actually plant things. The overflow peppers and eggplants are going there, along with a gooseberry bush I got via swap, and a bunch of flower seeds if it ever stops raining (zinnias., more nasturtiums, snapdragons, columbine, violas, hollyhocks)
Over the past week, I planted several different squashes and probably a dozen different herbs along the back fence (regular, lemon, and Georgian basil; cilantro; parsley, regular and Georgian dill, cutting celery, which I’ve never tried before; and I’m probably forgetting a couple of things).
Today we planted the tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers - through swapping with people from a nearby neighborhood garden group, we will have one each of fifteen (!) varieties of tomatoes, plus a similar number of peppers and maybe a dozen eggplants. I also seeded several different kinds of squashes and melons, and 3 kinds of cucumbers. This year, instead of growing morning glories along the ugly-ass chain link fence in the backyard, it will be cucumbers and funky purple beans on giant trellises made of 10’ galvanized electrical conduit and nylon netting, attached to the fence with zip ties. Very sturdy, and don’t take long to assemble.
Still to come at the main swap tomorrow via porch pickups: another three kinds of peppers, a cucumber, chocolate mint, some opal basil, anise hyssop (which I also haven’t tried), and possibly tarragon if that swapper doesn’t flake on me. And if it ever stops raining, I still need to plant the ground cherry seedlings, some cinnamon basil, the garden huckleberries, and various native flowers in the front yard.
Here are a few articles on regrowing vegetables from kitchen scraps. I’m doing well with scallions, radish tops, carrot tops, and rooting peppermint. My windowsill isn’t wide enough for lettuce or cabbage.
I live in an apartment with a patio, so, like the past 8 years, I am growing a few cherry tomato plants (slicing or Roma tomatoes don’t do all that well in pots), radishes, carrots, potatoes, and a resprouted Napa cabbage head and some resprouted green onions.