The Gardening 2014 Thread - I just spent 2 hours in a garden center.

[MoochNNoodles]

I hauled the kids up to Lowes (again) today. 

  I got my things I grow from seeds planted in the garden yesterday and I was anxious to get my tomato and pepper plants! 

I'm going to try the tomatoes in pots on the patio this year.  I got one cherry tomato and 2 "bush" varieties since those are supposed to do better for container gardening.  I'm still unsure I got the right size pot; but I must have shown up at lunch time or something because I couldn't find a free staff person for a while.  I got some kind of nursery pot.  It's tall.  There was a bit shorter and wider one I almost got.  It's got drainage holes at the bottom around the edge.  I hope that's right.  My grandfather uses big 5 gallon buckets; but I was concerned about the plastics not being good for food growing.  I need to go back for cages.  I think the bush ones don't grow as high so I want to read the info on them again first.  The ones I have now are a mess and breaking.  I'm considering those pretty powder coated ones since it'll be on the patio.  But then the containers I got are just an ugly black.

I got a tray of sweet banana pepper plants and 2 bell peppers.  One is supposed to be smaller and sweet for "snacking" it said.  I've never tired to grow peppers before so I hope they do well!  I'm anxious to get them in the ground but I'm not sure if I need to harden them off or if it's quite warm enough.  They are in the garage at the moment.  We've got lows in the 50s and highs in the 70s mostly. 

I also spent a while looking at flowers.  They had some gorgeous Calibrachoa in hanging baskets.  They were yellow with orange at the center.  Gorgeous!  But they didn't have any for transplanting in that color.  One of my 2 hanging pots broke the other day anyway; but I'm still going to look around before I consider shelling out the money for a pre-made one.  

I saw a planter on Facebook that I'm hoping to get DH to build for me in the next week or so.  It's made from stair risers like you would use for deck stairs and window boxes!  I've been wanting something to fill in this space on our front walkway in front of the mini porch we have.  It's not high enough to have a railing and it's just begging for something to make it pretty.  This is the blog someone shared where you can see a picture: http://rufflesandtruffles.com/2013/10/diy-vertical-planter-garden/

All in all; I'm exhausted but inspired and satisfied all at once.  My kids are worn out too so that's a bonus.

  Let the gardening season begin!!

 

 

[peaches08]

How neat is that vertical planter!  I hope to do a little with my yard soon.  I'm so tired of it looking ratty.

 

[margecat]

I've been in the Home Depot garden center for so long, they offered to get me a cot to sleep on...just kidding! But, I can spend many hours there, and have. And many dollars.

I wouldn't worry about growing food in the buckets, as long as they never held anything toxic. New ones would be best. Make sure they have drainage holes on the bottom. You can drill them, if needed. What you should worry about is using pressure-treated lumber in a food-growing bed, such as railroad ties surrounding the edges. There is no proof they are harmful, as far as I know, but most gardeners would say not to use them, just in case. I wouldn't, unless they're painted with outdoor paint, which I have done for years, with no problem. I used to have a foot-high stacked raised bed. We just dismantled it, as the paint was peeling, and I hate to paint. It was kind of ugly, anyway.  Also, avoid anything like trash bags (many are treated with insecticide). Now, for storing food in those buckets: no, I would not--unless they are marked food-safe.

I spent last weekend making a huge bed that wraps around the back yard. I had 3 beds: the ugly one, and 2 side, ground-level ones. Now, they are all one bed, nicely curved around the fence and yard.

I also planted the hummingbird flower bed in the front yard.

I realty need to buy a new pad for the swing's seat. The other one split into strips, and the birds were pulling out the stuffing for nesting material!

I still have to get the vegetables planted in the newly-renovated beds.

 

[MoochNNoodles]

Oh a hummingbird bed sounds nice!  I'm still planning some things out to landscape in the front yard; but the back is priority since it's got my veggie garden and my triple hook Shepard hook.  Plus that's where we spend our outdoor time.  Anything from the front yard is more for the benefit of people driving by or stopping over!

  I'm so ready to have COLOR out back!

I think this is basically the pot I got: http://www.1000bulbs.com/product/91057/GROW-HG10PHD.html?tid=car.  I'm not sure if that's the exact size without measuring.  I did pick up a bag of drainage gravel to put in the bottom too.  My yard is sandy; no free rocks for grabs!  I'm thinking I'll get some kind of saucer to put under them to protect the patio too.

 

[Winchester]

That is a great vertical garden! I may have to talk to dear Richard about that and show him the picture. I like it very much. You know, if you planted flowers that like to droop and drape and get real bushy, wouldn't that be gorgeous?! 

I live at Lowes (so does my sister). Our brother works in a Lowes distribution center and he gives us sweatshirts and caps sometimes, which are perfect for wearing to work outside. We just love Lowes. (Yes, really.) We can spend hours at that store. We like Home Depot,too, but there is not a HD close by us. My sister will call and say she's going to Lowes and she'll stop by and pick me up. The guys shake their heads and say, "Well, we won't see them until tonight sometime!" Especially now with all the flowers and plants. She shops a lot from the "hospital cart" which is what we call the carts that holds the plants that are on sale because they're half dead....she has a restorative thumb and she can take pretty much any half dead plant and bring it back to life. Their yard is amazing and she did a lot of it from the Lowes hospital carts. 

We are anxious to get out and get our garden tilled and get some things planted. I don't know that we'll plant all that much as we still have some veggies in the freezer that we need to get used. I'm not planning on much in the way of cucumbers this year because last year's cuke problems were very depressing. I may buy some and make pickles that way.....I don't know what else to do. Rick says we are growing corn, by golly, deer and raccoons be darned! We'll see. Lots of tomatoes and lots and lots of peppers. I dearly love the mild banana peppers, but also some chili peppers and our standard green bell peppers. We go through peppers like crazy. The strawberry patch made it through the winter (we were more than a little worried about them). I'd like to try butternut squash this year, although our acorn squash didn't do well last year. We'll plant some zucchini and some yellow squash. Oh, and broccoli. I love fresh broccoli. I'm thinking of tilling a little more area this year and starting an asparagus patch....that's a perennial, so as long as we take care of it, the asparagus should come back. (Rick says that by the time we retire, most of our back yard will be this huge vegetable garden.)

A hummingbird bed sounds wonderful! We've been debating about a butterfly garden with only flowers for the butterflies. I still have my moon garden, for what it's worth. It really got out of hand last year and is basically nothing but lambs ears at this point. 

We have a cement cap on our sewer tank to make it easier to get into for cleaning. I usually plant blue and yellow flowers around the cap, then I plop a huge cement planter on top of the cap (the planter used to be my grandmother's, so it's pretty old now). The planter has a variety of flowers and plants and it does well (as long as I remember to water it). 

Anybody like mint? I have mint in our flowerbed in the back yard and I love it when it's ready to pick. There's nothing as delicious as a cold glass of mint tea made with fresh mint!

Rick said he wants to put another coat of varnish on our picnic table before we put it down for the summer; right now it's up against a tree. We need to get our Adirondack chairs out (my dad made them and we give them a fresh coat of white paint in the spring). And we need to get the fountain working again, too. 

When my mom passed away, nobody wanted the wooden swing my dad had made. Rick and I took it and put it on a frame. We keep it on the deck and I go outside at night with Mollipop so we can watch the fireflies. That needs a good coat of stain (it's stained redwood).

Maybe we should start a Gardening 2014 thread! 

 

 

[MoochNNoodles]

 
Maybe we should start a Gardening 2014 thread! 

 

I think we should!

My husband and I go to Lowes almost every time we have a date night.

  I don't think there is a section of the store I haven't browsed.  I love home projects!  It's really one of my favorite things to do with DH.  We're a good team with these things. 

I'm trying to work out a way to modify that vertical planter in my head.  I can't decide if I want the top over the edge of my little porch or in front of it.  If I have it on top it'll save a little space on the walkway.  I need to account for the electric meeter an things that are there.  (I should just go out front and take a picture so all you experts here can give an opinion!)

I think I'm going to try Walmart's garden center today for flowers for it.  I'm afraid to wait too long and have the selections run out.  The front side of my house gets afternoon sun and it can be so hot here; I can't do anything too delicate and expect it to thrive.  My Grandparents were experts on this subject.  I'll have to give my Grandpa a call at some point.  He'd have built the planter for me in no time flat.  And 5 others for the rest of the family. 

For the veggie garden this year I planted yellow and green bush beans, summer squash and zucchini (in spite of last years difficulties), cucumbers (also in spite of last years difficulties), carrots and garlic.  Hopefully the garlic does well; I didn't start it as early as I should have.  But I do have extra I can put in once fall comes again.  I'm still going to cross my fingers our growing season is long enough for it.  I plan to put some peas in in September.  I didn't bother now.  If I don't do it by mid April it just gets too hot. 

I found some dead insect in the garden that I'm wondering if was what killed off the summer squash and zucchini last year.  It was white and about an 1 1/4" long with pincher type things at the head and tail.  Tiny ones.  Not round but somewhat flat.  I found the dead ones while I was hand tilling the garden up.  I know I saw them before.  I found a baby one the other day and stuck it in a cup so I can look it up online.  I'm hoping I can stay on top of that kind of thing.  Its hard not knowing the good bugs from the bad. 

 

[happybird]

Last summer, my MiL got one of those upside down tomato planters (as seen on tv ) and it turned out to be fantastic! She had so many tomatoes, I was glad I didn't plant any. Once a week, she would bring us over a huge bag full and she was giving tons to her neighbors, too. All from one plant- it was incredibly big and productive. We are going to try to make one out of those planters out of a five gallon bucket. We are in the middle of the woods and I am trying to come up with ideas to protect the veggies from the critters (and the pups). I am just so glad to have full sun again! Our last place was all shade, so boring.

My project for tomorrow is to start work on my 'meadow' area. I bought a variety of perennial seeds (echinacea, black-eyed susan, stock, scabosia, shasta daisies, statis and some other tall things) and am going to plant them all along the treeline in the back yard. I can't decide if I want it to be random and wild looking, like a meadow, or if I should group the flowers in clusters, like a cottage garden. I am going to mix in some cosmos, snapdragons, and other annuals from 6 packs so we have flowers to enjoy this summer. The perennials won't be ready to bloom till next summer, or maybe even the following summer. It is going to be a big project and we have to get the rototiller back from the person who borrowed it 2 summers ago.

Then, my next big project is to clean out and prep this area in front of the house:

image.jpg

• happybird
• May 7, 2014

I am excited about this area. It is just outside my kitchen windows and it gets full sun in the morning. I am going to do a variety of herbs and some flowers, and a rose bush or two. And definitely rosemary and catmint. The area is protected enough for the rosemary to become a shrub. I have always loved the English cottage gardens, so I want to try to make something similar. It will take a few years, but this is similar to what I am going for, all the way down to the shed:

image.jpg

• happybird
• May 7, 2014

 

[MoochNNoodles]

That would be really pretty!  I would like to plant a bit of a wild garden and get some things like that in there.  My Grandfather had a nice one; but it's getting to be too much work for him.

This was taken in early fall 2009; but it's the best shot of it I can find now:

fallgpa.jpg

• MoochNNoodles
• May 7, 2014

 

[kathyfromcanada]

Wow, all I've got up here in ground so far is pansies. It's cold to plant anything else yet. Sounds wonderful though!

 

[stewball]

My mum had a green thumb. We had a lovely garden behind and in front of the house in England. Lots of climbing roses geraniums hyacinths and other stuff. I have a black thumb. I even managed to kill a cactus! I did have a French geranium that rally flowered beautifully but when I read geraniums are dangerous for cats I gave it to my DiL for her garden. It's possible french geraniums aren't poisonous but I didn't want to take a chance. I'm thinking of trying to grow some veggiesooutside my window. Would that succeed?

 

[Winchester]

Those pictures are beautiful! That first picture looks shady, happybird. Maybe some different kinds of hosta? Or perhaps some lily of the valley? I love catmint. We have some planted by the pool; ours is blue. I like that after it's done blooming the first time, I can get out there and hack away at it. And it will grow again and bloom like crazy again. It's planted at the foot of our bonica, which blooms with pink rose-type flowers. So you have the pink of the bonica with the blue of the catmint. It's really pretty, especially when the daylilies bloom through the fence with their orange lilies. Kind of a color-clash, but we like it. I even dug up some catmint and gave a bunch of it to my sister. It just came back and bloomed again.

Love that second picture.....it's what I always want our beds to look like, but we can never accomplish that look. It's beautiful.

Mooch, I really like the picture of your grandpa's bed. Everything looks so nice.

My grandmother had a green thumb, too, and she was known for the beautiful flowerbeds she had around her house. When she was younger, I remember her being outside all day long either working in her flowers or in her vegetable garden. And since I spent my summers with her, she had me outside weeding, too. She also grew grapes, although between my cousin and I, poor Grandma never got much because we always ate them. We'd sit on the ground at the bottom of the arbor and reach up for grape clusters. And eat our fill.

We don't have anything planted yet either, Kathy. It's just been too cold. But now, with things warming up a bit, we should be able to plant soon. We're hoping to spend Memorial Day weekend in the veggie patch. My sister gave us several buckets full of cannas that we need to get planted, too. We plant them in the spring and then dig them all back up again in the fall. I like to get some dahlias at our nursery this spring.....those I have to plant in the spring and then dig them back up before it gets really cold.

 

[pushylady]

Just starting to think about gardening here. It's been so cold for so long, it's just amazing to see things coming back to life. I bought two lovely hanging baskets on sale at Home Depot yesterday, and that got me excited for starting my garden. This is the first year in many that I didn't grow any seedlings. I'll just buy a flat of annuals.

MoochNNoodles I love that vertical garden idea! So useful to have a handy husband who can make you these things too!

happybird that picture is gorgeous! How wonderful to have that outside your kitchen window. And with the catnip your cats would enjoy it too.

 

[Willowy]

I love Calibrachoa and kind of got carried away last year with hanging pots . I heard they sometimes survive the winter (pots were put in the garage) so I'll wait a little while before replanting the pots, see if there's any sign of life. I saw one in somebody's yard last year that was clear yellow with white stripes, and I wanted one like that so bad! But even after looking everywhere, I couldn't find one :/. So this year that's my first search, LOL.

 

[happybird]

We just ran over to Walmart for a few things (we were out of ice cream ) and I checked out the garden center. It was pretty bad, our old Walmart had a huge garden center. I did find one super great deal! A wide, fairly shallow, plastic container with 5 big Gerbera Daisies in it for $12! The individual plants were 5 bucks a piece, so they were better than 1/2 price. I also got three 6" terra cotta pots and saucers so I can divide the plants up for Mother's Day. One for my mom, one for MiL, and one for my husband's grandmother. That leaves two for me. The plastic pot is kind of cool, too. It is an interesting lime green, and I am going to plant it with mixed annuals. I just need to figure out who get what colors- 2 yellow, 2 dark pink, 1 red.

I'm so happy, I took a photo. They are kind of squashed all in the same pot, so I am going to repot them all tomorrow.

image.jpg

• happybird
• May 9, 2014

 

[MoochNNoodles]

That's a great find!  Our walmart's garden center left a lot to be desired.  They clearly have no employees out there who know how to care for plants.  They had some gorgeous bright orange geraniums that looked sunburnt or something.  The one girl I found out there stocking knew nothing about anything.  I finally figured out she'd been stuck out there to stock.  I felt kind of bad for her; she was clearly out of her comfort zone!  That being said; I did manage to find some decent flowers to mix for the planter.  Some need a little TLC.  I will post pics when I get them planted; I just don't know when DH will have time to build the rest of it.  I'm not sure how good a job I did at picking them either; but we will see!

 

[truckerkitty]

I've grown tomatoes eggplants zucchini squash and even corn in containers and you don't need a vertical cage just buy some long cheap wooden poles and a roll of butchers string which you can get cheap at lowes and the string at the grocery store. Make sure to have plenty of supporting tie off points. 5 gallon buckets are GREAT for growing tomatoes providing whatever was in the bucket has been washed out thouroughly

 

[MoochNNoodles]

I decided on the pretty blue ones since it is up on the patio.  There are maybe up to 2" of rocks in the bottom.  I'm wondering if I should get saucers to protect the patio?  I spent quite a few hours out back potting all the flowers and veggies I've been buying lately.  The kid's wagon was great to haul stuff around!  Easier than the wheelbarrow!

P5121760.JPG

• MoochNNoodles
• May 13, 2014

My Calibrachoa I ended up with:

P5121768.JPG

• MoochNNoodles
• May 13, 2014

The big one is from walmart.  I went ahead and bought 2 new hanging baskets and 2 to replant myself this weekend. ( The flowers were from Lowes; there is a real noticeable difference in the health/care of the plants from Lowes!)  On top is the orange/red ones I was so in love with.  It was too dark at this point to get a really good picture.  It's more of a salmon or coral orange.  On the bottom is a pink to purple one.  The big pot is gold, red and purple.  it really is such a pretty plant!

 

[di and bob]

It's still too cold here in Nebraska too, for the tender plants. I grew my own tomatoes and they are getting way too big! We can usually plant the first of May, but not this year. Every time I want to plant there is another 32 degree night in the forecast, we've got them through Thursday this week. I AM going to plant Saturday, no frost in sight, and my tomatoes are about 18 inches tall! So far I've got beets, carrots, radishes, spinach, and onions all up and doing well, I can't wait to get everything else in!

 

[Willowy]

I found my yellow and white striped calibrachoa! Thay're called Lemon Slice and I think there's only one greenhouse in the area that has that color. I also got some pansies and petunias and other colors of calibrachoa. And I got 2 already-grown pots from Costco; one with calibrachoa, one with that electric blue flower (darn, I forget the name) and some pink petunias. Now I have to wait for a nice day for potting .

 

[Willowy]

Looked it up---the electric blue flower is lobelia .