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From commentor Scout211:
Here are 3 pics of parts of my garden. Pink Rock Rose bush in the front yard.
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Yellow cactus flowers in the back yard.
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And then my vegetable garden with all the new beginnings of Spring.
All plants are in, all seeds are coming up and the blueberry bushes (in the wooden, high box on the left) are full of green berries.
I live in Calaveras County California, where we have recently had lots of hot (90’s) sun. So we have a good jump on the summer already.
***********
Here in New England, the lilacs are blooming more-or-less on schedule (Lilac Sunday at the Arboretum is traditionally held on Mother’s Day) and my dwarf irises are opening to coordinate. With any luck, I’ll have a window to dig up one badly overgrown bed once the daffodils & irises are past it, and before my mail-order tomato plants arrive to suck up all my garden time & energy.
How are things going & growing in your gardens?
The prophet Nostradumbass
Here are a couple of pictures from my garden…
Iceberg Rose.
Orchids.
PeakVT
Things are budding and sprouting. I’m only planting a few things this year, but I’ll have to be careful to water them every day since it’s been unusually dry lately. (Not dry like the West, however.)
BethanyAnne
Things go weird in Houston. It was 45º Friday morning. I love the cold, but I’m not sure it’s prime tomato growing weather. I have 3 big pots outside of the apartment with a few tomato plants in each one. I have flowers, and there were even some tomatoes appearing a few weeks back. Now things seem to have stalled.
It’s very likely that in a few weeks, we’ll be back to the usual 75-95º pattern, and things will settle down. I hate the hot, but I hope so, cause I want homegrown tomatoes, dammit.
raven
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Nice, love the pupster too!
cosima
We’ve started seedlings for our vegetable beds. Will our chives, basil & coriander grow here in Scotland? We shall see! The lettuce & other veg will have to wait until next weekend, I think, maybe the weekend after.
Yesterday was sorting out the compost bin — the last tenants left it a disaster. Today we’ll weed the strawberry pots & weed & prep other vegetable beds (seven of them in total, 2 down, 5 to go).
Little Cosima has planted some flower seeds in one of the beds, she’ll enjoy picking them if they ever grow. I’m going to get some mint plants, leave them in pots and stick those in one of the beds to see if they will A) grow, and B) stay contained. Thyme, tarragon, chervil & rosemary have all stayed alive through the never-ending winter.
The climbing plants’ flowers are beginning to bud, some of the shrubs are flowering already, the tayberry bush has been pruned, and I think this will be the weekend that all of the trees and shrubs will decide “Okay, spring is here, leaf!”
One of these days I will take some photos and show BJ readers what it looks like — more leaves necessary first. I will always remember being in the U.S. in the spring, and our showing Little Cosima the grass peeking out from the snow, saying “Look grass!” and her saying “that’s not grass! it’s brown!” in her proper little Scottish accent (that my husband & I don’t have, which merits some strange looks from people). Scotland is so gloriously green.
raven
It’s supposed to rain all damn day and I still have a great deal of work to do tearing down the deck. ON the bright side I don’t think the grader is going to get in with the ground so soft so I may be ok. The worst thing is the garden. The princess is in no shape to be weeding and it’s going to get out of control fast.
WereBear
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Purty!
I’m waiting for the local greenhouse which carries the more delicate colors of the miniature roses, to open up. Got my pansies in. And that’s it for me lately… I established some lilies and irises and some rugosa roses when we first moved here, and realized gardening from the third floor is a real pain.
becca
It snowed in Arkansas. It’s a first in recorded history thing.
Memphis missed the snow, but got buckets of rain and down to the 30’s at night. We’ve got tomatoes,already in, that seem fine, but I dunno about the corn, beans and squash we seed-planted about a week and a half ago. They could be washed out in the deluge.
Adapting to climate change is hard.
raven
@becca: This front is so weird, it’s streaming up from Florida over us in Georgia and onto you!
Debbie(aussie)
Can someone please tell me why Arkansas is pronounced arkansaw? It bothers me for some reason :)
becca
@raven: yep.
Checked the radar and it looks like the gulf moisture is streaming up and hitting the cold front just above us and that really makes the gods angry.
raven
@Debbie(aussie):
eta “The name Arkansas is taken from the Arkansas River, which is named for the Native Americans of the Arkansa tribe. The s was added as a plural, though it remains silent in the pronunciation formally adopted by the state’s legislature. “
raven
@becca: Dude in the locker room at the Y yesterday had to tell me all about how the LORD sent this rain behind his prayers.
becca
@Debbie(aussie): I think cuz it sounds French or something.
Mary G
Getting ready to tear out grass and go low-water gardening. I do want to put in some raised beds/giant containers in the back yard for vegetables. They need to be around three feet high to work well from a wheelchair. Anybody know of something I can buy like a kit or where I can find directions to build them?
OzarkHillbilly
@raven:
Gave us rain, rain, and more rain. Rivers are all flooding again. Lots of creeks flashed Friday night/Sat morn. Was going to go to the MVOR Saturday and it got cancelled because of flooding. I think in 50 years, that is the first time one has ever been cancelled. So I didn’t get to see 3-400 hundred of my closest friends this wkend :-(
becca
@raven: oh, goody.
You can tell your weird friend that next time the LORD can just send cash.
Debbie(aussie)
@raven:
& Becca
Many thanks. Sounds similar to what we have done with many indiginous names/pronunciations here in Aus.
Debbie(aussie)
@Mary G:
John, our esteemed blog master, built raised beds last year(?). Sure there were many posts on this subject. I wish you great success. I would like to garden, but having fibromyalgia and serious back problems it just isn’t possible:(
Linda Featheringill
@Mary G:
I found this online.
http://www.christopherreeve.org/site/c.mtKZKgMWKwG/b.5300837/#
I especially liked the vertical garden they showed. Neat.
OzarkHillbilly
As to the garden…
My weeds are off to a great start on everything else. Or so it feels like as every time I get a chance to plant something I have to spend a couple hours weeding that area first. Sigh….
I did get my hot peppers in this week (12 cayenne, 12 jalapeno, 8 anaheim, 8 serrano, 8 poblano, & 4 hungarian for something new) and my eggplant. Went with all Ichiban this year as the wife and I both love them above and beyond the others. Put in 24 as I am going to freeze a bunch for the winter. I think my carrots and spinach all drowned as none of them sprouted but the lettuce looks good.
Supposed to rain a bunch more today but not again till Thursday when the next monsoons roll thru. Maybe I’ll get lucky and things will dry out enuf that I will be able to weed and plant some stuff on Weds???
Linda Featheringill
In theory, I should make some progress on my garden today. We’ll see.
I tried the start-the-seedlings-outside-in-winter method this year. The tomatoes were about 50% successful but the peppers just didn’t grow at all. Onions did well, though.
This turns out to cost about 3.00 per tomato plant. That’s not much cheaper than having plants shipped out in the spring.
The tomato seeds were a mixture of heirlooms, including some stuff I haven’t seen before. If I really like one or more of these, I guess I’ll have to grow my own seedlings next year.
OzarkHillbilly
I got 2 comments in moderation…. Apparently because I misspelled my email address. Who’da thunk it?
Debbie(aussie)
I off to sleep. Have a great Sunday Juicers.
the Conster
I’ve lived most of my life in the Boston area, and I’m finally going to Lilac Sunday next week! My daughters and their husbands are taking me, and we’ll have a little picnic if the sun god deigns. Yay me!
Ultraviolet Thunder
My prickly pear cactus is perking up for its annual attempt at taking over the front of the house. last year we had over a hundred saucer sized yellow blossoms. It never fruits because Detroit has too short a growing season.
I really don’t like grass yards and I replace it wherever I can with something more interesting. But after 10 years of neglect it’s looking pretty tatty. We have a landscaper planning to thatch, aerate, top dress, roll and seed it to freshen up the turf. No herbicides, though.
Last week I put liquid fertilizer on the peonies, ferns, lilies and crocuses to get them started. Decent rain, sun and warmth followed so they’re responding well.
OzarkHillbilly
and now they are gone, so I am just going to go full Godwin and scream NAZIS!!!!!
Sigh…. OK I feel better now.
So to recap, rain, rain, rain, and more rain. And to top it all off? Today we get… wait for it…. Rain. Lots of flooding here abouts. Was gonna go to the MVOR this wkend but for the 1st time in 50+ years it got cancelled due to flooding of the roads going to the site. So instead of spending the wkend with 3-400 of my closest friends, I watched it… wait for it…. rain. Not really. managed to hook up with some Springfield friends and took them to Hughes Mountain where we dodged the rain drops and took in the geologic wonder that is the Devil’s Honeycomb.
As to the garden… The weeds got a good running start on my veggies. Seriously, I have to spend 2 hours weeding an area before I can plant anything in it. Despite that, I did get my hot peppers in (cayenne, jalapeno, anaheim, serrano, poblano, and some hungarian wax for something new)(12, 12, 8, 8, 8, & 4). I love the cayennes, dry ’em and grind ’em (be sure to wear a dust mask). The flavor is unlike anything you can buy at a store, just worlds apart. I can the jalapenos and serranos, as again the flavor is just above and beyond. The amaheims and poblanos I have tried to grow without much success but I try one more time.
Also put in a bunch of japanese eggplants as the wife and I prefer them to all others. I have trouble with flea beetles every year. I read that planting arugula around them gives them a preferred target where it is easier to get them with a shop vac…. What the hell, I’ll try anything once.
Anybody got a better idea? How about a different idea? Please, I hate having see-through leaves on my eggplants.
Ultraviolet Thunder
We’ll have few lilacs this year. Our colossal old lilac bush collapsed last summer from age and rot so we cut it down. I’m hoping it will come back from the stump, so I haven’t planned to dig it out and re-plant yet. There are a few sprouts coming up but I don’t know if enough of the root is viable to sustain them.
WereBear
@OzarkHillbilly: Queen Anne’s lace, dill, and parsley are hardy garden favorites which encourage the kind of bugs who eat flea beetles. When I grew roses I would get bags of ladybugs to turn lose during aphid time; they also like flea beetles.
Row covers will keep the larvae, which do the most damage, away during a vulnerable time.
I also had good luck with a dusting of flour or diatomaceous earth; this dehydrates such soft-bodied insects without poisoning the environment.
Kay
I put in half the tomatoes and all.of the parsley. I eat parsley like other people eat lettuce, so I grow a lot of it.
I started 3 watermelons this year. I don’t usually grow them-they take up too much room-but watermelon is the first plant I ever grew from seed, in 3rd grade, it’s what got me hooked so I got nostalgiac.
OzarkHillbilly
Oh yeah… The birds. All of our migrators are back. The humming birds are doubling everyday as they find the feeders. Soon we will be up to a hundred or more. Gonna need to hire an air traffic controller. We had orioles (4 males) for 3 days and then they were gone. I don’t know why other than they don’t really like the deep woods, but then why did we see them at all? Mysteries of the universe. After 3 years we finally have a pair of bluebirds taking up residence in one of the bluebird houses I made. Also 3 pairs of indigo buntings and I have spotted a summer tanager hanging about the edges. Saw my first blue grosbeak ever about 2 weeks ago. Was here for several days but then moved on. Best of all, we have 3 pairs of rose breasted grosbeaks apparently nesting in the area which is also a first for me, as they usually come for a few days then move on to more northern climes. I guess the cooler weather is good for something after all.
Lastly, I finally saw my first cuckoo. I have been told they are common around here but could never see one. Then on Thursday I was out in the garden and heard a frog like sound I have been hearing all my life. Always thought it was a type of tree frog. This time I went looking. Was back in the trees when I saw some movement in the area of the calling and then as clear as ever, saw the cuckoo on a branch for about 5-10 seconds, and then he took off.
As my wife likes to say, the commute sucks but living here beats the hell out of any place else I’ve ever been.
beltane
We are having the most amazingly beautiful stretch of weather in Vermont with cloudless skies and temps in the upper 70s. The lilacs here usually bloom around Memorial Day, but maybe they’ll be a little early this year as they were last year. All the various fruit trees came through the winter unscathed, and blossom time looks imminent.
OzarkHillbilly
@WereBear:
I had heard about dill (did a bunch last year) and QAlace and was going to put out a bunch of dill but haven’t found a source for QAL. Had not heard that about parsley I’ll try that too.
I have done insect dust and it works, at first but then the effect gets less. I’ll try the flour too. Thanx a bunch!
Row covers… does that hinder the pollination?
OzarkHillbilly
@beltane:
You suck duck eggs. ;-)
MikeJ
Anyone watching Liverpool/Everton?
A great pic from back at Christmas for today’s match. (For the non fans: Everton is also in Liverpool, and the biggest rivalries are usually crosstown rivalries. Those are Liverpool players visiting children in hospital.)
Amir Khalid
Off topic: It’s been a quiet election day in Kuala Lumpur. I went to my polling station, got the purple finger, voted, and was out in five minutes. No reports of any unrest anywhere in the country.
I’ve opened the Election Commission’s election results tracker but it takes forever to load. I’m afraid it might crash tonight.
Geoduck
Been unusually cold in the Pacific NW, though we aren’t getting hit with climate change nearly as bad as a lot of folks. Been nice this week, and some seedlings have sprouted. Planted a local variety of beans called Rockwell, that originated from my dad’s home on Whidbey Island, WA. (Made the national news a few weeks back with a landslide..)
WereBear
Yes, it does. That is why they are more popular with vulnerable leaf plants, like spinach or lettuces, where you don’t want them fruiting in the first place.
Kirbster
It’s still kind of cool here and way too early for tomatoes, squash, and peppers. I’ve done more cleanup and prep work than planting. I keep forgetting to put sunscreen on my hands when I work outside. Consequently, my hands are starting to look like brown claws at the ends of my pasty white arms.
OzarkHillbilly
@WereBear:
That’s what I thought. Do you pollinate with a brush? Shake them when it is windy? (a little sarcasm on the 2nd). I am putting all my squash in raised beds this year and putting covers over all of them as the squash bugs have decimated me the last 3 years running and I just can’t spend hours every day squishing eggs on the leaves. I will be doing the work of bees there and don’t want to any more than I have to.
Truth is, I am really a lazy gardener. Once all the work of tilling and composting and spring weeding and planting is done, all I really want to do is pick and can and freeze and eat. And eat some more. Weeding is something I hate and do everything I can when planting to make it as unnecessary as possible. Pollinating would be one more thing to remember.
Funny thing, at 54 I find it harder than ever to stick to one task with out getting distracted
Poopyman
I got nothing in the beds yet, although I might get the tomato, pepper, and summer squash seedlings in today. The beds were left to go to seed 2 years ago, so it’s been slow going getting them in shape. Direct seeding should commence this week.
Question #1: What’s the best mulch for raised beds?
Question #2: If I want to plant vining plants like pumpkin and winter squash, a raised bed seems like a waste of space. Can I cultivate say, a 2X2 area for the hill and just cover and mulch the existing (weedy) lawn? I R lazy and pressed for time.
Poopyman
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’m 5 years ahead of you and I thought it was just me. Wondering if I’d have been diagnosed with ADD when I was a kid, but then I don’t recall having such scattered thoughts.
Oh dear ….
Linda Featheringill
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yes. Me, too. Bummer, as we used to say.
Ultraviolet Thunder
I’m working on another writing project today; a DIY headphone amplifier for online and print publication. I’m not a headphones user myself but I gather this is a thing with the kids and their iPods so that’s what I’m creating. Apparently they also like lots of bass so I’m designing a tone control feature in the circuit. This is gonna be complicated and kinda expensive.
I have purchased a selection of cheap consumer grade headphones for testing. It’s amazing how close the mass market gear comes to the sound quality of audiophile headphones of just a decade ago. Economies of scale & all that I guess.
keestadoll
@OzarkHillbilly: diatomaceous earth and row covers.
OzarkHillbilly
@Poopyman:
For my winter squash I am building a mound in a 3×3 raised bed and then mulching around them. Don’t know how well it is going to work.
@Poopyman: @Linda Featheringill:
Takes me 3 hours to do a half hour task, cause on the way to get the hoe I see something needs watering and when I grab the water can, I see a plant leaning over heavy with fruit, so on the way to get a stake, I notice those weeds in the eggplants, but when I bend down to pull them there are those blasted flea beetles, so I head back to the shed for the garden dust and surprise a mouse whereupon I go to my shop for a trap…..
It’s a wonder I ever get anything done
OzarkHillbilly
@keestadoll: thanx.
OzarkHillbilly
And after reading this, I am ordering the recommended diatomaceous earth! Thanx again guys.
jnfr
My tomato and eggplant seedlings are doing fine, but it’s still too cold at night to set them out. Also it keeps snowing, so the ground is soggy too.
My rabbit appears to have vanished. However, I have a marauding squirrel that is digging into everything on my patio. At least I don’t have deer problems.
jnfr
@Mary G:
Gardener’s Supply Company sells a variety of kits for elevated beds.
Southern Beale
I had a gardening disaster on Friday. I ordered 9,000 ladybugs which arrived via UPS about 30 minutes before I was supposed to head out for class. I thought I’d put just a few on my roses and put the rest in the fridge, as the day was cool and gray and some rain was supposed to come in. Didn’t want to put them all out as I didn’t think I had enough aphids for them all at that time, but I thought a few could get acclimated before the rain. And I knew post-rain there would be a bloom of insects for them to eat.
So, as I bent over to put about a spoonful of ladybugs on my roses, I got a nosebleed!! Blood came gushing and I mean GUSHING out … everywhere!! Blood! Ladybugs! More blood! It freaked me out. I dropped the bag of ladybugs and they just all went everywhere and I’m running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to figure out what do to first, grab a towel for my nosebleed or deal with the ladybugs. I decided the nose needed to be dealt with first. By the time my nose stopped bleeding the ladybugs were everywhere.
Fast forward two days, we had a HUGE thunderstorm — worse than I thought it would be — and temperatures plummeted 20 degrees. I think any ladybugs that didn’t get washed away probably froze to death.
9,000 ladbugs, dead. This has got to be the worst karma, ever.
Kathy
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Love Iceberg. So fragrant and bountiful. Tried hybrid teas for years but they refused to survive the winter. Maybe global warming will change that. :-(
Kathy
Late, late, late spring here in South Dakota. Lilacs not even in leaf. Traditionally bloom is fading by Mothers Day.
Pincher
Overheard at the garden center at Home Depot yesterday:
Customer: Do you have crape myrtles?
Garden center clerk #1: Do we have what?
Customer: Crape myrtles. They come in different colors.
Garden center clerk #2: Never heard of it.
Garden center clerk #1: Me neither.
This was in Florida, where the crape myrtle is probably the single most popular flowering tree. Echoes of Monty Python cheese shop.
Anne Laurie
@Mary G: Gardeners Supply has seating-high raised beds in various configurations — 2×2, 2×8, 4×4 — as well as trolley planters if you want to start small & see how it works for you in practice. They’re not cheap, but I’ve always been pleased with their products & their customer service.
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