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Got some photos last night
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Spring-2016 Gardening anyone? What do you plant? or not?
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All the gardens look so nice! 
I'll have to take pics at some point.
I'll have to take pics at some point.
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Is it a weigela?This is a mystery plant. The neighbor has one too.
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I don't know. I looked at google images and it looks similar but not the same. Its just about passing by now. Theres a very faint smell but not strong like lilacs. I will have to look it up.
It looks like a weigela to me, too. The wine series are very popular now; they have dark brown leaves, but there are others that have green leaves.
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I will take some closeups of the leaves..I thought I had one on here but I deleted it. Its doing really well considering we have had a moderate drought and I don't water it. the other night I watered my maple tree as I want it to grow really tall. Its the only shade on my lawn.
Your mystery plant is very pretty @foxxycat
My hydrangea has got flowers!
The whole front garden is looking greener.
I'm going to keep the spiky plastic sheets down for a while to try and keep the wildlife (and the post man) off the grass. This is some of the wild stuff that has come up.
The deck is looking nice too.
I'm so happy with my butterfly pictures.
They've grown over the wall and a trailing on the earth the other side now.
My hydrangea has got flowers!
The whole front garden is looking greener.
I'm going to keep the spiky plastic sheets down for a while to try and keep the wildlife (and the post man) off the grass. This is some of the wild stuff that has come up.
The deck is looking nice too.
I'm so happy with my butterfly pictures.
They've grown over the wall and a trailing on the earth the other side now.
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pansies are a cool weather flower. They like it 50 degrees. You can move them in a shady spot if its hot. they will come back. they self seed and will come back year after year. I love your petunia picture with the butterfly!my bee balm is getting much taller and soon I will have hundreds of bumble bees
I love listening to them bumble along
Very beautiful, Norachan! The hydrangeas are the deepest blue I've ever seen. And the wildflowers are gorgeous.
Thanks for the advice @foxxycat I guess they are happy where they are. It never gets very hot up here. maybe I'll plant something else in between the pansies to stop the flower bed looking so bare. It looks like all the flowers have climbed out and are marching away at the moment.
Thank you @DreamerRose They are really blue, aren't they? I wonder if they'll change colour after a while. Most of the hydrangea I see around here are a much paler blue.
Thank you @DreamerRose They are really blue, aren't they? I wonder if they'll change colour after a while. Most of the hydrangea I see around here are a much paler blue.
I picked all of the kale yesterday and will be making Portuguese Kale soup in the next few days. I've got so much lettuce out there too!
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my woodchuck would have eaten all the lettuce so I don't plant it. I noticed half the tomato plant was mowed down by that bugger. I have to get more photos of the gardens. the iris are now gone by.
I did not plant these and have several in the wild parts of my yard. Maybe my fav summer wildflower. Sabatia Angularis---rose pink or common marsh pink
My lettuce is already dying off. I've been picking what I can to enjoy in the mean time!
Cucumbers and string beans are growing, though the cucumber plants has overtaken the bean plants. Whoops. My big-boy tomatoes are growing in lumpy, but its growing!!
here's an updated photo of my flower garden!
Cucumbers and string beans are growing, though the cucumber plants has overtaken the bean plants. Whoops. My big-boy tomatoes are growing in lumpy, but its growing!!
here's an updated photo of my flower garden!
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Pretty!! I haven't seen these before! I have to upload some more photos. Maybe I will do that later,
Very pretty, Draco! It's growing beautifully.
Beautiful!
I learned something new yesterday. I had no idea potato plants could produce fruit! I found what looks sort of like green cherry tomatoes on a couple of my potato plants yesterday. Apparently they are or can be toxic; so the recommendation was to pick and toss them if you have children.
I finally had my first little harvest yesterday. 3 beans (
), a few banana and mariachi peppers, and a handful of cherry tomatoes. My DD helped me pick the tomatoes. We used her bike helmet like a basket because there were more than I expected to pick.
3 of my tomato plants are taller than me!! My peppers are a bit small right now but I think I figured out the problem. I had a late start getting them in the ground so they sat in pots in my kitchen. When I planted them I guess I didn't loosen the roots. So I dug my fingers in the soil around the base of the ones that weren't growing right and they seem to be doing better. I'm feeding them too.
I learned something new yesterday. I had no idea potato plants could produce fruit! I found what looks sort of like green cherry tomatoes on a couple of my potato plants yesterday. Apparently they are or can be toxic; so the recommendation was to pick and toss them if you have children.
I finally had my first little harvest yesterday. 3 beans (
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Just found this thread. Potatoes and tomatoes are both nightshades, did you notice how much the plants look the same when they are small? There are tomato plants that are said to be "potato leafed", it's an heirloom.
Beautiful!
I learned something new yesterday. I had no idea potato plants could produce fruit! I found what looks sort of like green cherry tomatoes on a couple of my potato plants yesterday. Apparently they are or can be toxic; so the recommendation was to pick and toss them if you have children.
I finally had my first little harvest yesterday. 3 beans (), a few banana and mariachi peppers, and a handful of cherry tomatoes. My DD helped me pick the tomatoes. We used her bike helmet like a basket because there were more than I expected to pick.3 of my tomato plants are taller than me!! My peppers are a bit small right now but I think I figured out the problem. I had a late start getting them in the ground so they sat in pots in my kitchen. When I planted them I guess I didn't loosen the roots. So I dug my fingers in the soil around the base of the ones that weren't growing right and they seem to be doing better. I'm feeding them too.
All nightshade plants are poisonous to a certain degree, so no, you should not eat the tomato-looking fruit but discard them. Once the potato starts having flowers it's time to stop watering them and once the foliage starts to turn yellow it's time to pull them and dig them up and enjoy what's under the ground.
I have a plot in a community garden, about 20 by 20 feet which I have been working for about 4 years. Before that I had lived in Washington State and had a tiny garden for 1 1/2 years before moving back to sunny SoCal where I had gardened for about 20 years, also in a community garden.
I also have a patio with potted plants and there are more pots in front of my door on the walkway.
Most of the people on this thread seem to be living in colder climates so their gardening is a bit different and some things need cold to thrive and we don't have cold. On the other hand we can grow things that require heat and will die in the cold so things get evened out. No lilacs here but we have orchids, no apple trees but we have oranges, no gooseberries or many of the other berries but we have dragon fruit (also called pitaya) and papaya.
I have two concord grape vines which this year are bearing tremendously, three blackberry vines that somebody gave me in January, 3 pots with papaya plants in them with one getting big and the other two still act like babies (I am not allowed to put trees in the ground in the community plots), and one dragon fruit which is a fearsome looking plant of the cactus family which has 4 flowers and about 8 baby blossom buds on it, hopefully each one will make a fruit, since it is a night bloomer it has to be pollinated by moths and bats and the flower lasts only 3 days.
I also grow tomatoes, bell peppers, Japanese cucumbers, corn, a few carrots, beets and onions, assorted culinary herbs and 14 rhubarb plants which are adapted to the warmer climate of Southern California. I have a few flowers but mainly milkweed for the monarch butterflies.
In front of my door I have geraniums, angel trumpets, plumerias, a spider plant, some green leafed plants whose names I do not know, a sago palm; while on my patio I grow orchids, schlumbergia (Christmas cactus which has decided to put on Christmas in July with quite a few blossoms, white and orange), assorted other cacti, a night blooming cereus which is gigantic and some more geraniums for color.
I used to have "purple thumbs", meaning I could even kill ivy until I was about 40. Then I watched an old man gardening across the street from me and bothered him with a thousand questions and all of a sudden things would grow for me too. When I got my first community garden plot EVERYTHING would grow for me, nothing was a failure.By now I have become quite the expert, reading everything about gardening including on the internet.
I'll send pic next time if I'm still welcome after this wordy introduction. No, my cats do not come with me to the garden although they hang out on the patio but never bother the plants.
