How Does Your Garden Grow?

Ahhhhhhh Patti, you Wicked woman, you caught me out. I love to garden!

Well. Front Yard. When my son was born this oak tree sprouted so I 'dedicated' it to him. Over the yers it has collected bits of his hair, which I've wovenintothe new branches..and since then they've growntogeter and barked over. So my son ( who knows all about his tree...this boy/man is amazing...he can grow anything) is creating a shady contemplation garden around his tree.
Backyard: I have an awesome amount of space. The raspberries and blackberries are coming in. My ex put them in then didn't tend them for years. I thought they weren't going to fruit this year but we got lots of flowers..so my son is going to clean out the beds and weeds and cut the saplings that have grown in there. The apple tree blossomed. The blueberries have so many flowers on them that there may be enough for all three of us to eat our fill this year.

The veggie bed is 20'x15'. Dug by hand so as not to mangle the worms; composted all winter. I've planted both the white 'lumina' pumpkins and the super huge lantern ones. Zucchinis ( my sons girlfriend claims she'll eat all the zukes that we grow...poor child raised in an apartment...has no idea what zukes will do)
Yellow beans, pole beans,spinach ( it's up!) beets, 2 kinds of lettuce ( They're here too!). Cayanne peppers, Habenero peppers, Sweet bell peppers. Carrots. Tomatoes...( 2 rows of those...12 plants) Watermelon. Cantalope ( I grew the best cantalope last year..they were so sewwt...I have never had a more perfect...) yellow squash, cucumbers and pototoes. Evening Primrose. I'm putting basil and peppermint inthe garden to help the cat keep the vermin away. Deer don't like basil and my cat won't chase deer (pervert).

Window garden: basil, oregano, cliantro, thyme, peppermint, rosemary and sage.

I am also planting sage and rosemary in the beds around the house..I've had some bad juju poking at me. I banished it... but I want a circle of protection around my house as long as my ex can breathe.
And,of course, I've had my wonderful son help and touch the earth and work with me because plants love him. (Maybe my girl will have an affinity toward animals, hmmm?)

Patti, where did you find mugwort? I've never seen it in the wild. I've never seen it growing anywhere. I'd love to find some.

Y'all must be a little further South or West of me. I'm in Central PA and it's not quite warm enough to stick anything in the ground yet. The weather has been great this week, though, so I might start up next weekend. It's my first time with a yard, the old house didn't have one. I'm SO excited to be able to finally have a garden.

The 10 X 10 veggie area is all ready and my rows are all set. I'll be growing beets, lettuce, fennil, endive, radishes, tomatoes, peppers, dill, chives, basil, and watermelon. Just small batches of each to see who likes my soil so I can do better next year. I'm also planting lavender around the house and in a huge bourbon bucket out on the patio.

Has anyone been able to successfully control dandelions to grow them for eating/herbing? We actually don't have any in the yard and I want some because they're SO tasty, but Dan is afraid they'll take over if I start planting them...

Try growing them in pots. That way you cam control the blossom...thus the seeds and they can't spread their roots. Also since they tend to get bitter in subsequent years, that will allow you to pull up and dry the mature root in the fall for medicinal purposes.

( Bad jaycinth would tell you to gather the 'puff balls' and scatter them on a neighbor's lawn..then go over in a few weeks and offer to pick them... such a bad bad girl...)

I have a lot of beet seeds left. I think I'll plant another row in a couple weeks.

Excellent idea. I'll give it a shot. I'm hoping my beets go crazy because my mom said they love sandy soil and mine is quite sandy. The rest probably wont like it too well...

I'd be bad and toss them on the neighbors yard, but one is an empty lot waiting for a house (no yard yet) and the other is a newly completed house without a yard. Boo! Stupid neighbors, thwarting my dandelion growing efforts! I've been drinking the roots in tea for the last month and a half or so and they're working wonders on my pregnancy leg cramps. Wonders, I tell you! I only get one or so a week now, as oppposed to 5 a night previously. I love my local herbal shop.

I live in an apartment that has a fenced 20' x 20' yard and deck on the north side of the building. My woman gave up on it because everything died but it has become a wonderful little place. There are jade trees that are actually green, dozens of spyder plants, ferns, cacti and even some grass. It makes a great break from squinting at the screen.

After the debacle with the deer this summer/fall, I planted some beets and spinach in flower pots at my front door. I know the best I can hope for is beet greens, but I do like a beet green and spinach salad ( with a few other things besides.)

Next year I put up a deer fence. I HATE paying $3.00 for a (BLANK) tomato.

I guess I move the 'untransplanted' oregano and rosemary inside next week.

We're going to put up one of those little decorator white wire fences alongside of our house to protect our tiger lillies from the mad mower nextdoor.

First time we thought it was the teenage boy running over them by accident. But then I saw the dad out there and when I went out, the tiger lillies, that had just started to come back from the first "harvest" were all mowed over again.

Without a word from them. I don't get it. It's right next to our house. He doesn't have to mow that close.

I lived in a house once where the neighbor lady's dad mowed down everything I planted. We had connecting yards. Every weekend he would come over and mow her yard and if our's hadn't been mowed yet he'd do it too. I lost two climbing rose bushes and lots of flowers to the blades of his over-anxious mower.

My friend's neighbor butchered her trees. She's suing him for the replacement value of both the trees and the wood, but I think he's going to settle out of court for a couple of thousand. (It was a BIG HONKING OLD HEALTHY maple) His arguement was that the tree was going to fall on his house, so he came into her yard when she was out of town and cut it down...which took out a couple of other trees besides.
There was no way, aside from a tornado picking up the tree and flinging it at the house that the tree would have ever hit his house.

He's a rude bugger and called her names when she complained, if he hadn't she would have been mad but she wouldn't have sued.

I found a cayenne plant that the deer didn't eat. So I oulled off the peppers and we made chili.

It's getting to be fall planting time-- but so far, all I've done is transplanted some aloe. The squirrels eat everything, and the neighbor never picks up his fallen citrus so there are...um...bald-tailed squirrels is how I like to think of them, but yeah, they're just citrus rats. I don't want to encourage them to come too close to our house. Thus far, the cats have kept all but the suicidal away.
Have I mentioned how much I wish that neighbor would move to, say, Guam? He yells at his dog a lot, too.

2 weekends ago, I planted 70 bulbs in my front yard. Purple and white/purpule tulips. I hope they all take. I've never done bulbs before...

I just moved here, and now it's getting cold of course, so I'm still trying to figure out what I want to have and where. There's a yard near my house that has just about everything you can think of-- I keep trying to catch the resident's eye to ask for some cuttings or shoots, but so far I haven't seen anyone.

What I've been doing lately is just wander around and try to identify trees. This is an interesting area, sort of a coomb/river bottom in the midst of a windswept prairie, so there are lots of animals and plants here that you don't find anywhere else in the state.

I miss my rowans that were growing in my yard in Denver, so probably this spring I'm going to buy a couple; the landlord is supposedly getting the dying elm trees that are planted around the house cut down. There's a lot of room for planting beds here so I'll probably try a few things I haven't before, like corn and peas.

Okay, it's growing time again. What are you working on?

I've already planted all my herbs: Basil, parsely, oregano, thyme, rosemary. I'm all set to get the veggies in the ground in the next two weeks: Beets (can you say jitterbug perfume?) TONS of lettuces, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, carrots.

I was digging in the dirt on Saturday and was reminded about how calming it can be. Thank you Earth.

My dog ate most of my garden

What he didn't eat is covered in rampant honeysuckle and roses though, so I expect I shall just let them take over. I like my garden wild.

So far I have 8 rows of corn, 6 rows of potatoes, three rows of onions, three rows of tomatoes, two rows of yellow squash, two rows of lettuce, two mounds of cantaloupe, basil, thyme, chamomile, peppermint and rosemary. The rest of my garden will go in the ground this weekend. I LOVE spring!!

Carole! You've been busy planting. Wow. How is the soil at the new place? Do you think everything will love it or are you doing some experimentation this first year to scope it out?

We wait until the last possible frost date (May 15) before we put rototiller to soil. We have a lot of work to do this year. There's a patch by the new garage for sorral, mint and chives – isolated so they don't escape. We may put collards on the side where we had green beans last year. Of course the main garden will have five or six kinds of greens, tomatoes, peppers, basil, maybe eggplant (although the rabbits usually get that) and a lot more.

As far as the herbs in the boulivard strip – well, we'll just have to see which of the supposed 'annuals' survived the winter.

I'm experimenting, but it's a big experiment! My tiller wouldn't start this year. It's been in storage for two years and now it's a little cranky. So one day Mr. Vagabond came home early on a Friday and spotted a neighbor out with his tractor plowing up his garden. He asked Mr. Tractor Dude how much he would charge him to make a few passes in our back yard. He asked for $5 or $10 and hubby gave him $20. Now I have a patch about 25' X 15'. It was a total surprise of the best kind to come home and find my garden plowed up already. I was worrying about how I was going to get it done with the tiller not running. I'm the third generation in my family to own it - NOT a good thing to kill the family tiller!!!

So anyway, I dug my hands into the dirt right away - like many of you, it's therapeutic for me. But the ground is full of rocks. I don't mean some rocks. I mean, this must have been a gravel driveway at some point. But I got out there with the hoe and started my rows anyway. Gotta work with what ya got, right?

That was two weekends ago. This evening I came home to find that almost everything is up!! I've been talking to my babies every day so I guess that helped. I think I will have to sift the soil before planting my carrots, though.

I started composting over the winter and now it's beautiful to work with. Does anyone else know that Starbucks gives away huge bags of used coffee grounds for composting? I nabbed some and mixed it all in a few weeks ago. I'm mixing compost into the soil as I go and apparently at least some things love it. Time will tell. This weekend I'll plant my carrots, a strawberry patch, more peppers ( I forgot to mention that I already have some in the ground) and who knows what else...

It was funny last weekend. Mr. Vagabond was sitting on the garage steps watching me make my rows and he asked if I learned that from my dad. Daddy is a fabulous gardener. But I told him that I just play it all by ear. Do you think it's possible that gardening instincts are inherited? He always tells me that I have three green thumbs. This year, we'll definitely know for sure. If I can grow something in this rocky Tennessee dirt, I can grow anything anywhere!

Last weekend we cleared out all the foliage left over from last year. My thyme, chives, oregano and lavender have green on them and the tansy is sprouting. Poppies, holly hocks, tulips and lupin are all showing leaves.

I'm a bit farther north so I'll wait until almost the end of May to put in the tomatos, arugula, peas, corn, cucumbers and sunflowers. We're going to plant lettuce on the side of the front porch where the rabbit lives in the hopes that free food close to home will keep him away from the garden in the back.

The herb garden is going to be heavy on the basil this year, and I'm going to replace the weird mint-like plant with some better mint and add sage, rosemary and cilantro.

I do miss the wild chamomile of my last place.

Carole said:

But I told him that I just play it all by ear.

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With 8 rows of corn, I should hope so... Okay, sorry.

I think green thumbs can be cultivated as well as intuition. Deep down, I think we all have some inclination toward growing for survival. Tapping into it is the key.

Saritams8 said:

With 8 rows of corn, I should hope so... Okay, sorry.

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Ba-dum-bum!

I think green thumbs can be cultivated as well as intuition. Deep down, I think we all have some inclination toward growing for survival. Tapping into it is the key.

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I agree. Hubby's mom swears she can't grow anything, but I've told her that she just needs to find something she wants to grow.

Then again, this is the lady who planted potatoes and thought "they didn't work" because every time she checked the plants, they didn't have any potatoes on them. *sigh*