Gardeners! How are those plantings coming along!?

MoochNNoodles · Jun 18, 2013

I'm so so excited! I've got summer squash and zucchini coming!

They were about 4" long when I went out the day before yesterday. I've got peas forming and a few very green cherry tomatoes! There are plenty of flowers on my bush beans too. They look wonderful; especially considering how awful they looked a few weeks ago! My cukes are doing good growing right up the trellis; but nothing to pick yet. I think they got a slow start with our cool spring. The cantaloupes are putting out good shoots too!

We've had A LOT of rain so I haven't even had to go water it myself in a few weeks now I think! It looks like something might have messed with the stems on the summer squash and zucchini; the ones on the real underside. If it stops pouring later I'll be out checking on them! I'm really hoping for some good melons this year. I'm not sure if all this rain will make them less sweet or not. I guess I'll have to see!

How are your gardens coming!? Share pics please!

ritz · Jun 18, 2013

For the first time in my life (I'm 58), I have a garden!

Seeing as it's my first year, I'm experimenting, but trying not to go crazy. It's a small plot in my front yard. The former owner has/had a knock out rose (love), Azalea (white, not my favorite color), a holly bush, and a Clematis (beautiful purple flowers). She also had a geranium, which did really well (bloomed all summer).

I hate to cook, but I do make potpourri and dried flower wreaths. So I bought and put in containers: Sweet Annie, lavender, rosemary (all are doing well); basil and chives (not doing well).

In my garden (not containers) are: salvia (not doing well....), lambs ear (not growing, but not dying either), cockscomb (very slow to grow), and sweet woodruff (doing very well). I also bought rose scented geraniums (doing well). I couldn’t find lemon/lime scented geraniums, which have a very different look from the rose scented varieties.

A friend gave me cuttings of lily of the valley (don’t expect it to bloom this year) and a very small cutting of lilac bush (don’t expect to bloom for years). The owner left behind a huge, fruit producing fig tree, which is doing well.

I understand lambs ear and cockscomb are perennials and if they survive the central Maryland weather, will grow bigger next year. Next year I want to plant some type of ornamental, edible grass; it’s the only ‘toy’ Ritz is interested in playing with these days. And maybe everlasting/straw flowers.

I also have voles/chipmunks digging holes in my back yard. Ritz' BFF is Charlie the Chipmunk, providing endless entertainment, so I am learning to live with holes. And the deer who munches on the pine tree, a fox and Tommy the Turtle. Ritz' favorite meal is (raw) rabbit; luckily, none have come around where I live.

ondine · Jun 18, 2013

The rule of thumb for perennials is plant and establish the first year, leave them alone the second year and start to thin them out the third year. It does usually take at least three years for them to begin to look like the pictures in the gardening books. I planted a boatload five summers ago, thinking they'd look fuller/better. I am now giving them away, I have so many. So don't plant too many- they wil fill in quickly.

MoochNNoodles · Jun 18, 2013

Ooo thank you for that Ondine. I planted lavender in a pot and its looking kind of sad; certainly not nice and full like the pictures or what I remember my Mom and Grandma having! I've yet to get any flowers actually in the ground here. I have a couple hanging baskets on a double Shepard's hook and 2 lilac bushes my Mom and Stepdad gave me for mother's day last year. I guess the privet hedge does flower as does one of our trees that grows up in the middle of it. lol

I'm keeping my herbs in pots in hopes they won't go too crazy. I'd love to dry my own herbs! My Gram used to keep them hanging in bunches from her kitchen ceiling. It always smelled good! This is my 3rd year with a garden and we expanded from a 4x8 raised bed to 2 4x8 raised beds. I'm trying to just stick with what I know we'll eat for now. I hope we can do a little landscaping out front next year. I'd love to have all those colors in front of the house! I'm going to have to look into those scented geraniums! They sound lovely! I have geraniums in one of my hanging pots; but I don't believe they have any unusual scent.

furmonster mom · Jun 18, 2013

Living in the Mohave Desert presents some challenges when it comes to gardening. I know some folks have been successful at it by setting up shaded plots with misters and whatnot. Unfortunately, I have not had such luck. I've tried pot gardening, but the only thing that did well was the peppers. Go figure.

I missed my window this year for herbs and such, but last week I bought two dwarf trees; kumquat & meyer lemon.

I transplanted both into large terracotta pots. The lemon had some yellow leaves, so a couple days ago I treated it with some liquid iron. I think it may have done the trick. The kumquat has all kinds of new little blossoms and even a few little fruits. I hope they survive our summer temperatures.

Winchester · Jun 19, 2013

We have zucchini flowers and cuke flowers, but that's pretty much it. I go up every night and look at the cuke flowers.

After the cucumbers looked so poorly the other week, I'm thrilled that they came back and are doing well. We took two little peppers the other day, but the rest of the plants haven't even flowered yet.

The corn came up, but it's pretty sporadic and we're thinking of replanting the bare spots with an early corn. We're going to have lots of lima beans, but the wax beans and the green beans didn't come up that well. I don't know if we weren't careful enough when we planted or if the rain rotted the seeds or what happened.

Tomatoes and pepper plants look good. The broccoli plants are amazing! Honestly, they're just gorgeous! Nice and tall with beautiful big leaves.

And strawberries, lots of strawberries. We planted 12 strawberry plants last year. One died, so we were down to 11. And now that strawberry patch is easily 4 x 8 with runners all over the place. Let me see, we picked and made shortcake one night, picked and made ice cream, picked and gave them to our neighbors, picked and made shortcake again, picked and made those strawberry swirl pastries, picked and made the streusel bars with more ice cream, and made ice cream this past Sunday again. Oh, and we picked last night and I made shortcake again. And we've frozen 3 quarts of berries. I'd say we got our money's worth out of those 12 plants! I doubt they'll produce like that every year, but this year was wonderful. And that doesn't include all the berries that we had to throw away because the meeces or the chipmunks or the birds got to them before we did. We had the plants netted, too, but something is in the garden and that something is hungry.

After the strawberries are done, we're going to create a path down the center of the patch so that we can get in there easier to pick next year. Rick was crawling around on his hands and knees last night, trying to get into the center of the patch.

I'd love to have a little lemon tree for in the house, but the cats would never leave it alone.

ondine · Jun 19, 2013

I don't do veggies, although I am thinking of getting some raised beds. Right now, because of almost two months of rain, everything is soggy. But my Shasta daisies and Black Eyed Susans look fabulous. My hibiscus is budding, too and the roses are glorious. My herbs are drowning, so I know I will have to move some of them. Keeping them in pots is a good idea. Where do you put them in the winter?

MoochNNoodles · Jun 19, 2013

Ondine said:
I don't do veggies, although I am thinking of getting some raised beds. Right now, because of almost two months of rain, everything is soggy. But my Shasta daisies and Black Eyed Susans look fabulous. My hibiscus is budding, too and the roses are glorious. My herbs are drowning, so I know I will have to move some of them. Keeping them in pots is a good idea. Where do you put them in the winter?

I've left some pots out all winter and others I've just pulled into the garage. Some of the pots dont fare well being left out of course. I think the trick I need is knowing when to pull them back outside again. We've had a lot of rain too; but my soil is so sandy that drainage hasn't been a problem. The raised beds have soil I brought in from a garden center so it holds moisture fine; but I guess with the sand underneath it isn't holding too much. As far as I can tell anyway.

My Grandparents always had black eyed susans in their backyard. I've thought about putting those in the boarder of the privet hedge that lines the whole back of our property. They are so sunny and cheerful. I need to research it more to see if it suits.

ritz · Jun 19, 2013

I've dried flowers/herbs for well over ten years; I make dried flower wreaths.

Depending on the flower/herb and ultimate use, I hang flowers upside down and tie them with a twist-it tie onto a hanger, and leave it in my closet, away from sunlight so the color doesn't fade.

I dry herbs (lavender, sweet annie, sweet woodruff) in a box lined with newspaper in my car: it is dry/hot inside.

I use to dry flowers in a gas oven that had a pilot light on 24x7, a purfect environment. I moved, and my present gas stove is pilot-less.

Scented geraniums have a very different look from flowering geraniums; the latter doesn't have much of a scent. The scented part in the scented geraninium comes from the leaves, almost no flowers. In the attached picture, the scented geranium is in front of the pink flowering geranium. (And yes, that is cat grass growing next to the pink geranium.)

I am still learning how to prune, I tend to cut indiscriminately; and am not sure what is a weed and what is a flower!

AbbysMom · Jun 21, 2013

I'll take some pictures tomorrow. :salute:

MoochNNoodles · Jun 24, 2013

I finally got a few pictures! I harvested a handful of peas (and ate most without sharing!) and I have some beans and one zucchini I need to get out to get! I've got tomatoes on all the plants now.

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AbbysMom said:
I'll take some pictures tomorrow.

Pics!?

Winchester · Jun 25, 2013

Ritz, your geraniums are pretty, especially those pink ones. Nice! Is that a clematis climbing up your trellis?

Nice pictures, Mooch! I love your raised bed. I like your marigolds, too. You're a good gardener!

I was up weeding around the zucchini last night and a chipmunk came running out from amongst the plants and zoomed into the horseradish. It happened to fast I didn't even have time to be startled.

We replanted corn and Rick weeded around the corn rows. I picked another handful or so of strawberries; they're pretty much done now. We have baby peppers and the tomatoes are flowering. So far the cukes have come back well. And we have zucchini. And I cut two stems of broccoli last night.....I want to make a frittata tonight for dinner and I'm going to add the broccoli to that, I think, as it's not really enough to freeze. But with the heat, I was afraid that if I didn't take it, the plant might bolt. Nice little broccoli heads. Our broccoli plants really look nice this year.

MoochNNoodles · Jun 25, 2013

Is broccoli hard to grow? I remember a coworker talking about having problems getting all the bugs out of it. She did a lot of canning and freezing with it and from the way it sounded; even after that they would cook something and then find a little bug in it. It's made me scared to ever try it!

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Winchester · Jun 29, 2013

Nice picture! Your zucchini looks great!

Broccoli is not hard at all to grow. We buy the little plants (Packman Broccoli, I think it's called) and use them; we don't use seeds. I always make cardboard collars to put around each plant once it's in the ground....I do that for all cabbage-type plants; I think it's supposed to deter cutworms or something. Yes, they are "buggy" plants; that's because the bugs can get inside the broccoli flowers and hide. I wash it well, then cut it into florets, slip it into boiling water for about two minutes or so, cool it in iced water, pat it dry, and put it into bags for the freezer. But I've been surprised a time or two when washing it to find a bug. Ick. But man, it's really good!

The thing about broccoli is that, once the head starts to form? Watch it! The heads grow quickly and you need to get those heads before they get yellow. Once they start to turn yellow, the flowers are turning and the plant is starting to bolt. And then it's done. You can't harvest it at that point. When I cut broccoli the other night, I noticed other heads coming on. Rick went up to the garden last night and he said I need to get up there TODAY and cut it.

And once you cut the main head, the plant will start shooting smaller heads out of the sides of the plant. So this is not a cut-once-and-you're-done kind of thing. You can continue to cut the side shoots, too. They won't be as big as the main head, but they're just as tasty. I think we usually plant about a dozen plants and that gives us enough for the year (to eat fresh as we go and to freeze), plus some to share with Rick's mom and my sister.

We seem to do really well with green beans. This year, though, our rows seem to be rather sparse. Same with the corn rows and we replanted to fill in the holes. But we didn't replant the beans as the plants are usually very prolific. We usually plant a seed packet of green beans and another packet of wax beans.

Here's the way we go about it:

Seeds: green beans, wax beans, lima beans, early corn, regular corn, carrots, red beets

Plants: tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, peppers, broccoli

We could start our tomatoes and such from seeds, but we really have no place to do so. I've been tempted to buy some grow lights and start something in the basement for vegetable seeds, but well, that's a lot of work.

MoochNNoodles · Jun 29, 2013

Winchester said:
Nice picture! Your zucchini looks great!

Broccoli is not hard at all to grow. We buy the little plants (Packman Broccoli, I think it's called) and use them; we don't use seeds. I always make cardboard collars to put around each plant once it's in the ground....I do that for all cabbage-type plants; I think it's supposed to deter cutworms or something. Yes, they are "buggy" plants; that's because the bugs can get inside the broccoli flowers and hide. I wash it well, then cut it into florets, slip it into boiling water for about two minutes or so, cool it in iced water, pat it dry, and put it into bags for the freezer. But I've been surprised a time or two when washing it to find a bug. Ick. But man, it's really good!

The thing about broccoli is that, once the head starts to form? Watch it! The heads grow quickly and you need to get those heads before they get yellow. Once they start to turn yellow, the flowers are turning and the plant is starting to bolt. And then it's done. You can't harvest it at that point. When I cut broccoli the other night, I noticed other heads coming on. Rick went up to the garden last night and he said I need to get up there TODAY and cut it.

And once you cut the main head, the plant will start shooting smaller heads out of the sides of the plant. So this is not a cut-once-and-you're-done kind of thing. You can continue to cut the side shoots, too. They won't be as big as the main head, but they're just as tasty. I think we usually plant about a dozen plants and that gives us enough for the year (to eat fresh as we go and to freeze), plus some to share with Rick's mom and my sister.

We seem to do really well with green beans. This year, though, our rows seem to be rather sparse. Same with the corn rows and we replanted to fill in the holes. But we didn't replant the beans as the plants are usually very prolific. We usually plant a seed packet of green beans and another packet of wax beans.

Here's the way we go about it:

Seeds: green beans, wax beans, lima beans, early corn, regular corn, carrots, red beets

Plants: tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, peppers, broccoli

We could start our tomatoes and such from seeds, but we really have no place to do so. I've been tempted to buy some grow lights and start something in the basement for vegetable seeds, but well, that's a lot of work.

Ooo that's helpful Pam! I've wondered how much I need to plant to get enough to put away. Our little garden can put out some things; but it makes me sad when things are gone in the fall. I'm ready to expand the garden again and I'd love to be able to start putting stuff up! My beans from the other day were delicious. My son ate them up! They were sweeter than frozen beans I think. I need to learn to can things and we will need a chest freezer and space in the garage for it...

But my Grandfather said sometimes you can do just as well buying from a local farm stand and putting their produce up for winter. My MIL cans a lot; unfortunately she lives in another state so it's hard to get her to teach me that stuff.

Winchester · Jul 3, 2013

Wish we lived closer together, Mooch....we could can together. It's really not bad and it's really not that difficult. My MIL gave me her water bath canner and I broke down and bought a pressure canner a few years ago. I also have a dehydrator now....we used it last year for "sun" dried tomato slices and some apple slices. I hope to use it more this year.

There were times when Mom would buy a bushel of peaches and pears and can them. Or buy a bushel of cucumbers and do her pickles that way. We never had much of a garden when I was a kid, although Dad used to help out somebody in a garden and then he was allowed to dig potatoes and such for the family. My grandmother, however, had a huge truck patch and she and I were always doing something in there; that woman had the greenest thumb around. Rick's one uncle had a huge garden, too, and so did one of his grandfathers.

I like to take fresh green beans and blanch them and then shock them. And then I'll use them as dippers with dips at parties and sometimes for movie night with Rick. Instead of having chips and crackers, I'll make a big plate of fresh veggies and green beans are usually on the plate. We both love them. Last year's beans were just delicious.

Something (deer, we think) is eating the corn stalks.

Venison burgers, I tell you. Some of the corn is starting to tassle.

The tomatoes are coming....little green tomatoes. Lots of peppers. We will be picking lima beans in the near future....those bushes are just covered in flowers.

Zucchini plants are covered in flowers and there are tiny little zucchini growing now. But they're growing very slowly...I'm not sure what the problem is there. Maybe we're just too anxious.

We plan on getting up early tomorrow to spend some time in the gardens to do some weeding and such before the heats kicks in......if the rain allows.

NEWSFLASH!!!!!! We have cucumbers!

Yes we do! Five, to be exact. I can't make pickles from five cucumbers, so I'm going to make a little Fire and Ice Tomatoes for dinner tonight. The plants are looking pretty good! *knock on wood* We're getting them trained to fasten onto the cages and the fence and start growing up. The plants aren't very big, but they are producing. Can't wait to make Lizzy's Cinnamon Pickles.

MoochNNoodles · Jul 3, 2013

Oooo! I love harvesting veggies!! I got another good serving of beans and a bunch of peas last night. Plus 3 cherry tomatoes and one cucumber. LOL My one vine of cukes has reached the top of the trellis. I don't know what to do now.

We've probably gotten a total of 6 zucchini now. DH requests zucchini bread; I request a baby sitter.

I've been out spraying the liquid fence a lot because of the bunnies in the yard. I've also gone outside to chase them away a few times... Definitely a few juveniles with a few adults out there.

Oh! One of my vines off the cantaloupe has grown over into the bush beans; climbed the beans and is now climbing next to the cucumbers! I don't know how that's going to work. Can it support a melon that way!? The only thing I can think to do is get something stretchy to put around any melons and hang that from the top of the trellis. Crazy plant.

AbbysMom · Jul 4, 2013

Wow, it's amazing to me how much further along your veggie gardens are! It makes sense though, since you are further south.

I'll try to get pics tomorrow. :cringe:

ritz · Jul 4, 2013

Winchester, yes that's a geranium, in my favorite color, pink.

Right next to it, planted in the ground, is the rose scented geranium.

And you really know your flowers--that is in fact a clematis. Beautiful, huge purple flowers.

In addition to drying flowers, I've tried pressing petals. Pansy press well, as so the clematis. Azaleas do too, surprisingly enough.

Some flowers don't air dry well (change of color of the structure decays); instead you can dry them in silica gel. Which as I understand it is a component of cat litter!

ritz · Jul 4, 2013

My sister in law makes the best pickles.

She use to have a garden in the community garden. But the water supply was a problem, and eventually became unavailable. So, no more garden, though I think she does buy cucumbers to make pickles.

My friend is a gardener, mainly herbs and peppers/tomatoes (and cat lover--it was she I asked for advice when considered whether to adopt Ritz). She loves to cook. She gets bushels of apples/tomatoes and makes apple/tomato sauce. I've asked her this year for some gardening tips.

She is also blind. I admire her.

Gardeners! How are those plantings coming along!?

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At Abby's beck and call

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