Thank you, Paul M:
My son’s maternal grandmother does not have a green thumb, she has a green arm.
She grows dozens of different plants at her home on Saint Augustine Beach.
As with my post in April from Micanopy, FL, I don’t know exactly what is what (until we get to the last 2 photos), so I won’t attempt to identify what you are looking at.
The first below picture is her front yard from the street, and the second is the yard from west to east.
(I think the first close up is a desert rose, correct me if I’m wrong.)
These are the grape and teardrop tomatoes that she grows. I can tell you they taste better than any similar tomatoes that you will find in most supermarkets.
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And here I’m feeling pleased that I’ve got the first two pea-sized cherry tomatoes (Wee Tang Shebang) swelling green in my tomato patch…
What’s going on in your gardens, this week?
OzarkHillbilly
Can’t say about the rest, but #3 is Blanket Flower (Gallardia).
Thanx for the nice pics, Paul,
WereBear
I do love the names!
raven
Nice stuff! Â I was asked to take down a small tree that was casting too much shade so I used my new lithium battery sawzall with a diablo pruning blade. The tree was about four inches in diameter so it took a bit to knock it out but I got it!
eclare
The yard looks really nice, and the tomatoes look yummy!
satby
Lovely photos, most of the flowers aren’t familiar to this cold country gardener.
@eclare: Good morning! I hope you got my email(s).
satby
Supposed to be cooler with scattered rain today, the air quality index right now is “poor” with the smoke map showing light orange, but the rain to the west by Chicago seems to be clearing the air. Hope so, I have so much still to do out in the yard. The gazillions (ok, about 35) of gladiola are starting to come up, the iris and peonies are done and deadheaded, and the roses are blooming with day and oriental lillies about to open too. And some small green tomatoes have also started forming, but I have 2 more plants to get into grow bags today, late purchases. The seedlings I was able to save are doing great, so not a total loss at least.
eclare
@satby:
I just responded! Sometimes I get lazy about checking them. Thanks for the heads up!
p.a.
Nice!
It didn’t get cold enough this winter- my 6 year old dwarf butterfly bushes are sprouting from the roots, but the old growth, which usually produces on some of the branches, is completely dead.  There’s a big, 6 foot-plus butterfly bush I pass on my neighborhood walking route, same thing.
My collard plant successfully overwintered 2 years. Â Not this past winter. Â That plant seemed bulletproof.đ
Lapassionara
I got a truck load of mulch and spent yesterday morning toting wheelbarrows of mulch around the yard. More of the same today.
satby
Minutecast on accuweather is predicting rain in an hour. Trying to work up the gumption to get outside and move the pots that don’t drain well under shelter so they don’t waterlog. But, having another cup of coffee instead.
MagdaInBlack
Last weekend I finally moved my plants out to the balcony. Ruby the Giant Geranium is already sporting 4 flower buds. I put that to the french roast coffee grounds she gets on the weekends.
Princess
@satby: Fwiw the rain in Chicago is very light, not enough to do much good tbh. But maybe youâll get more.
Mousebumples
We finally got rain last night, and the high ish temps have dropped.
My daughter’s rose bush is blooming (we planted it the Spring after she was born) and we’re thinking through what to plant for not-so-baby-boy…
Raspberry and strawberry plants are growing some fruit. Same for the cherry tree, though those usually end up as bird food, lol.
Thanks for sharing the great photos today!
Jeffg166
It is not raining in Philadelphia or the area. Things are bone dry. Parts of the garden are going dormant or dying. Itâs on its own as far as I am concerned. I do water the tomatoes and cucumbers but very little else. The bird bath gets changes daily. The birds, bugs and other critters who wander in during the night need it.
MomSense
Not a fan of Florida Man, but Florida Gardening Mom is awesome!! Well done.
Quinerly
Gorgeous!
Gvg
Desert rose adeninium
angelonium
gallardia aka beach gallardia
aloe
rainlilies! Growing among muhly grass, that is not rainlily foliage you see. I love rain lilies. They bloom about 3 days after hard rains most of the summer, and set seed about a week later. I have been carefully catching the seed since my last move from my transported blooms, and scattering the seeds in prepared trays of potting soil in my misting propagating area each summer. The first year I had 2 trays of seedlings to plant out that fall. The next 2 years I had 4 trays. This year some of them are big enough they are flowering and producing seed too! Rain lilies like sun or shade but since most things wonât grow in shade I am trying to have a front shady lawn of all rain lilies and am well on my way. The pale flowers show up well. I also grow some other colors/species but those pictured are the easiest and most numerous. Other people have yards full of them.
The muhly grass will bloom in late summer and fall and look like pink mist covering the yard about 2 feet high. Native grass. Very popular ornamental. Highway departments plant it too. Bloom lasts about 2 months. Best looks if you can have sunrise or sunset shine through it but nice anyway. Also nice if breezes make it sway.
Periwinkle or vinca. From Madagascar but has been here so long I thought it was native as a child. Supposed to be a source for some cancer fighting drug too. Very reliable Florida garden plant. About 20 years ago breeders started to improve the plain white and purple species and now they come in all kinds of colors, some of them quite strange but most very attractive, I like pale ones for shade and hot bright ones for sun.
Quinerly
I put in a bed of Blanket Flowers here outside of Santa Fe. Have first buds and some blooms yesterday. Love the colors!
My exciting garden news is I have blooms on my Joseph’s Coat Climbing Roses that I planted last Fall. My first attempt in my life at roses. I put these 3 in to hopefully climb and grow on an adobe wall that divides my 2 back yards. They were tiny, bare roots on sale from Jackson Perkins. Had no idea they would quadruple in size and have blooms the first year. I am now all in on growing roses in the high desert and doing my research for Fall rose plantings on other walls. Love any and all suggestions.
Phase 2 of the Great Flagstone Project continues in about an hr. We got most laid around the koi pond yesterday. Now two paths to be dug out.
Have a great day!
Quinerly
@Gvg:
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Kay
@Gvg:
Love them. They’re so easy and the deep green, shiny foliage is almost better than the flower. They were very popular in the midwest (as annuals) for decades but seem to have fallen out of favor- you know how gardeners have “fashions” like everything else. I picked some up this year when I saw a white with a red eye at a local greenhouse. I put them in pots on a front stoop that I tend to ignore.
WaterGirl
I have never seen a desert rose, but whatever that flower is, it’s gorgeous!
Tangentially related, when you cut into a watermelon you bought from the farmer’s market, and the color is somewhere between pinkish and  watermelon, and you cut some up and put it in a bowl, and some of the watermelon pieces are kind of chewy (?) and the rest is the equivalent of the lamest winter tomato you have ever eaten …
Is it a sin to just throw the whole fucking watermelon in the garbage?
Signed,
Very Disappointed and Mildly Wondering if Doing That was Wrong
WaterGirl
I saw my first baby tomato on any of my plants when I was watering last night! Â The variety is called Dragon’s Eye. Â I have never tasted one, but this is what Laurel’s website had to say about them.
Has anyone grown these, or tried these?
Kristine
Lovely flowers–thanks for the photos!
Very light rain fell early this morning here in NE Illinois and đ€will continue through the morning. Not enough to dent the drought, but something. The shade garden really needs it.
Common and Little Devil ninebark are blooming. I have a magenta gerbera daisy that I bought 4 years ago and have since split into three pots (I bring them indoors in the fall). All the splits survived and are currently forming multiple blooms–the biggest has already popped one flower.
Native columbine are almost spent. Astilbes and sem ash spirea are in the bud-forming stage.
WaterGirl
@satby: Â Good choice! Â You can always tip those pots after the rain stops.
eclare
@WaterGirl:
No, that was not wrong.
WaterGirl
We were supposed to get a big rain starting at 1am or so and continue for about 12 hours. Â But no rain to speak of last night. Â So the mountain of rain that predicted on the weather site is now a skinny peak. Â 30 minutes ago that peak was predicted at 100% for an hour of rain, now it’s already down to 75-80%, and it’s only spitting, and the humidity is at 80%.
I would like to speak to the manager :-) as this is not the weather I requested!
Dear rain, lead, follow or get out of the way! Â If it’s not going to rain, I need to water my new plantings, dammit.
WaterGirl
@eclare: Thank you! Â I don’t think even the “starving children in China” would have wanted this one.
satby
@Princess: @Kristine: so far VERY light rain here too. It’s my Sunday to go make coffee for the UUs, so I’m about to leave in a few, but I hope if it continues off and on it amounts to something. At least it’s helping clear soot particulates and pollen from the air.
@WaterGirl: I went out and moved them after my coffee. They got really waterlogged about 10 days ago when a sudden storm dropped an inch of rain on us. Some of them still are moist an inch down and I don’t want all those glads and canna to drown đ
kalakal
About 200 miles to the South and West of St. Augustine. Desperate for rain here, had a fair bit about 10 days ago but that was the first for weeks.
Love the Gallardia
eclare
@kalakal:
We got a good rain in Memphis yesterday, along with really scary and close thunder and lightning. One flash was one-third of a mile away. I know two people whose houses have burned down after being struck, so I get nervous.
kalakal
@eclare: I get really nervous around lightning these days. The stuff you get here is in a different league to England.
StringOnAStick
@Gvg: I love Muhly grass and the mist of flowers it produces. There is a variety called Red Muhly that will survive here in zone 5; I had one do well at our old home in zone 5 and planted a new one here this year in a location where we can enjoy the view through it and on to the Japanese Maple.
I am convinced that half of having a green thumb is accepting the palette of plants that does best in your area, instead of trying to pound the “English garden” square peg into the round hole of “I live in a cold desert”. For our front yard we went with strictly native plants and grasses and I have resisted any desire to add non-natives. It was planted by a native plant pro a little over a month ago and is going gangbusters; so far the only people talking to me about it are neighbors who like the native plant/no lawn idea, but I do know there are a few who are seriously not pleased by the lack of uniform lawn here in the high desert; oh well! We found a Stone fly larva and that is an indication of a very clean environment; our neighbors on 2 sides are very anti-pesticide so we have tons of butterflies and native bees enjoying the blooms,
StringOnAStick
@Quinerly: That Joseph’s Coat is an very robust rose and will certainly cover those walls. Gorgeous and very hardy rose, great choice!
StringOnAStick
@WaterGirl: Eh, sounds yucky. I got rid of my guilt over tossing stuff like that by having a compostable materials yard cart that the trash company picks up every other week; the landfill has a giant compost pile and you can buy bags or truckloads of the finished product. Most often our cart is 1/4 to nearly 100% pine cones, but now I don’t feel guilty about tossing stuff like that or plants that I have decided just aren’t making the grade. Seems so much better than going into a landfill. Lots of landfills have added composting because it diverts useful stuff from the waste stream so it keeps the true “landfill” space for true trash, and gets organic matter recycled into something useful.