Any other gardeners out there?

drunkenwitch · March 2015

BF rents a house that has several fantastic raised beds so we are trying our hands at gardening this year.

So far:

Cleaned out all the beds of weeds (several Saturdays)

Got some chicken poo from our friend and spread it over the beds (that was two weeks ago)

Picked up from starters from the Tilth fair (one week ago)

Hardened off the plants and planted them this weekend (which I keep calling "our babies" so we can make inappropriate jokes about eating them)

So far: 3 types of lettuce, 2 types of snap peas, spinach, three types of kale, beets, green beans, onions, 3 types of tomatoes, oregano, catnip and mint (last three are in pots on the porch).

We also have some seedlings sprouting that will be ready to plant in a couple weeks or so.

We have cloth to cover them every night, I'm just hoping we did everything right and they will survive (we're both brand spanking new at this).

Any other gardeners? Whatcha growin? And all advice happily taken.

lyndausvi · March 2015

Except this one orchid. Lord knows why, but I keep that thing alive for a long time. I'm hoping it will bloom again soon.

drunkenwitch · March 2015

I can't keep indoor plants or flowers alive to save my life. My thought on tending plants is "If you can't eat them, what's the fucking point?"

WinstonsGirl · March 2015

Yeah, I'm a plant killer too. I love the idea of gardening and going out to get salad stuff for dinner, but I just can't be bothered. I've killed bamboo. Sounds like you're doing well though

novella1186 · March 2015

We do a garden every year

Although now with our job situation and whatnot, we might be moving out of the state sometime in the near future so we probably won't do as big of a garden.

Last year, the herbs we had in planters: mint, basil, dill, rosemary, cilantro, parsley, and sage
What we had in the actual garden: big pumpkins, little pumpkins (Jack-be-Littles), beef steak tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, yellow tomatoes, spinach (it didn't make it cuz I planted it at the wrong time), broccoli, zucchini, green beans, and Mammoth Russian sunflowers... I think that's it.

None of that stuff was tough to grow. We just left it alone, weeded when the weeds got big, watered when it hadn't rained for a while, picked stuff when it was ripe... no big deal. Good luck with yours!

paperpusher · March 2015

I'm a big flower gardener. I've got multiple beds and will be doing more this year.
This will actually be the first year doing a vegetable garden at this house.
I'm getting ready to start the seeds indoors soon.
We've got tomatoes, pole beans, squash, zucchini, cucumbers, lettuce and a few others.
Sounds like you're doing good so far. Only advice I've got is to weed every now and again, water in the morning if there's been a long period between rains and enjoy what you've spent hard work on.

labro · March 2015

We're doing an actual garden this year. Last summer and our first summer in our house I just did tomatoes and peppers and herbs in containers but this year we finally have a spot selected i the backyard. So far I've started seeds for brussels sprouts and a couple pepper varieties. We'll also do tomatoes, sage, and basil. Depending on the garden's final dimensions I might add more but this seems like enough for now. I also planted two blueberry bushes about a month ago along a sunny spot in our fence.

I love flower gardening too. This year I've planted three new hydrangeas (limelight and an ever blooming variety with blue flowers), two new azaleas (white flowers with pink speckles and stripes), a forsythia bush, and a peony bush (white flowers with pinkish centers). H and I also got two new 7 ft tall Japanese Maple trees this weekend from Costco for $50 a piece! We're taking out a couple trees later this year that didn't handle our winter ice storm very well and I'm glad we have smaller trees to replace them with that won't lean over the house. Basically, I just really love spending tons of time in my yard.

chibiyui · March 2015

I get a couple plants some of which survive and some of which....do not.

Waiting for the frost threat to go away.

pinupbride6189 · March 2015

We actually just went HAM at Home Depot and Costco and started a little garden at the house! We planted two blueberry bushes, two peach trees, three tomato plants, a lime tree, a grapefruit tree, some grape hyacynths, and some tulips...

We've never done this before and we're scared, please help us!!! haha!

But everything seems to be doing well for the time being. We already have a couple little green tomoatos and the flowers are starting to bud and bloom, so YAY! It's stupid how excited we get when we walk outside and see them making progress. lol. I'm sure our neighbors think we're crazy too, since all of this is planted in the front yard. If we put anything in the back, the dogs will tear it apart, so we're those crazy dog and plant people now.

drunkenwitch · March 2015

I am over the moon excited about our veggie plants. I am already planning a party where I fix food from the garden.

levioosa · March 2015

I have one rosemary plant that refuses to die no matter how badly I neglect it. Probably because rosemary is a weed. I've always wanted an herb garden. I probably spend a fortune on buying fresh herbs. I've just never had the time to set one up and maintain it. Once SO and I buy a house we'll probably set up a garden like that. Mostly because he loves to garden, and I love to cook with fresh herbs. Two birds, one stone.

I briefly tried gardening at my Mom's house once. I had some good little plants going on that were actually thriving despite the snails that kept trying to breach the chicken wire walls. And then, right as my lettuce was at the point where I could actually eat it, my dog walked over and ate it whole in one bite. So that was the last time I seriously gardened.

knottie9c5ed33df4bbd226 · March 2015

The orchid I have literally just needs 3 ice cubes a week. I do it every Saturday. It's so easy!! And it was $5 at Home Depot. We just got a house and it already had some nice hedges, flowers, etc. I really would like to keep it up but I need to see what survived this winter. I would love to start planting my own stuff, I just need to learn.

madamerwin · March 2015

Yay, gardeners! Spring came very early to the Pacific Northwest, so we put some plants in the ground a few weeks ago. We also rent, and when we moved in, there was a large portion of the lot covered in blackberry bushes with HUGE root balls. After two months' worth of weekends digging them out, and three more weekends building raised beds, we ended up with a ton of space for gardening. Still going strong four years later! We added chickens to the mix last year. We like to think we're urban farmers.

So far, we've put in kale, broccoli, beets, onions, shell peas and snap peas, and potatoes; rosemary, cilantro, and mint; and we have raspberries and tayberries with new growth. We also plant a lot of tomatoes and hot peppers - habaneros and jalapenos do surprisingly well up here.

My only advice is to rotate your "crops" every year to reduce the risk of disease/pests; peas fix nitrogen to the soil, so next season, plant leafy greens where the peas are this year; if you plant tomatoes this year, use the same space to plant your leafy greens next year. Here (clicky) is a website with some basic info on crop rotation.

levieenrose · March 2015

@drunkenwitch, it wasn't fresh chicken manure, right? It's too hot to use right away and should be left to sit for at least 6 months before you use it.

Can we please turn this into a Lolo-esque pinteresty gardening thread? DH and I don't have our own place yet and I want a yard so everything I own doesn't have to be confined to a pot. I long for some land!

Vegetable gardens are sweet, but flower gardens heal my soul.

[Deleted User] · March 2015

Bought a house in September. It is overrun with flowers, which, while pretty, don't feed me so need to go. Though I like that there were so many flowers because that means the soil is healthy. I'm hoping to plant some perennial food plants this year and one 4'x8' raised bed for annuals. The chives I discovered under a bush last year are already coming back. No idea how many of the flowers will come back. Want to plant rhubarb and asparagus, and I want a patch of mint in the small line of dirt between my walkway and the neighbor's driveway. I know mint will take over the world if I allow it to, so I want to sequester it among the concrete.

I'm hoping to get the raised bed built this weekend so I can start filling it with the leaf mulch and flower clippings from around the yard, put down a layer of cardboard to kill anything underneath, and fill it up with dirt and the compost I started when we moved in. We got 3 inches of snow yesterday, so I won't actually be planting for a while. Le'sigh.

katiekessler123 · March 2015

I have a big garden on our outdoor courtyard, but everything is in pots. We grow flowers and veggies. Tomatoes usually grow really well for us, but we don't even see tomatoes start to sprout until July! We also grow peppers, herbs, and green beans. Peppers always grow well for us, too. Have fun!

My two best pieces of advice are:

1. Water early in the morning, especially on really hot summer days. If you're using terra cotta pots, you may need to water certain herbs twice daily or they will wilt.

2. Make sure you have drainage holes at the bottom of pots if you're using pots and put a small layer of stones on the bottom to help with drainage.

Maggie0829 · March 2015

My Mom always asks my opinion/advice on planting flowers and such. I guess since I was a florist for many years she just assumes I know gardening secrets or something. But I always tell her, "Mom, as a florist I 'kill' flowers, I don't grow them."

But boy do I wish I could grow some amazing flowers in front of my house.

labro · March 2015

adk19 said:
Bought a house in September. It is overrun with flowers, which, while pretty, don't feed me so need to go. Though I like that there were so many flowers because that means the soil is healthy. I'm hoping to plant some perennial food plants this year and one 4'x8' raised bed for annuals. The chives I discovered under a bush last year are already coming back. No idea how many of the flowers will come back. Want to plant rhubarb and asparagus, and I want a patch of mint in the small line of dirt between my walkway and the neighbor's driveway. I know mint will take over the world if I allow it to, so I want to sequester it among the concrete.

First bolded. This makes me so sad.

I love alllll the flowers in my garden. It was one of the primary reasons we bought the house we did. We cut down a ton of trees last year so now we have the space and light for a separate vegetable garden.

Second bolded. So so true. Honestly, mint looks kind of weedy to me. I think you should keep it in pots or something and plant a "prettier" herb or something bushier instead (like rosemary as an example). Just my opinion, I just know if I was your neighbor I'd definitely enjoy looking at small bushes rather than something kind of weedy.

If we're making this one of lolo's dream garden threads I thought I'd share some photos from last spring of the flowers in my yard! The only thing blooming right now are my daffodils so I don't have any current pictures unfortunately.

This is one of our dark pink azaleas.

And this one of several white azaleas.

One of my pink dogwoods. Our yard in the background looks like poop, this is from before we had it re-sodded.

And one of my white dogwoods.

And a new plant I found earlier this winter. It's some type of hellebore but I haven't figured out the specific variety yet. Could be Lenten Rose but I'm not 100% sure. I don't remember it blooming last year but it definitely did this year!

And my camelia bush which started blooming in January and is still going strong through March! I love that my yard has something blooming pretty much from January through late October!

emmaaa · March 2015

I grew up on a farm and DH and I have a small garden every year. We plant tomatoes, lettuce, peppers, and potatoes right now. At my family farm we plant, corn, green beans, purple hull peas, butterbeans, potatoes, tomatoes, squash, zucchini, lettuce, cabbage, and a few other things.

We have an irrigation system hooked up to water everything depending on the weather. If it hasn't rained in a week, we'll water them, etc. We like to depend on natural watering because rain water is better for plants than hose water for some reason.

The best time of day to water is early in the morning right when the sun comes up so it isn't too hot, or late in the evening when it is cooled off. If you water too late in the day or when it's too hot, it will fry you plants. Also, over watering something is basically worse than not watering it at all.

levieenrose · March 2015

labro said:

adk19 said:
Bought a house in September. It is overrun with flowers, which, while pretty, don't feed me so need to go. Though I like that there were so many flowers because that means the soil is healthy. I'm hoping to plant some perennial food plants this year and one 4'x8' raised bed for annuals. The chives I discovered under a bush last year are already coming back. No idea how many of the flowers will come back. Want to plant rhubarb and asparagus, and I want a patch of mint in the small line of dirt between my walkway and the neighbor's driveway. I know mint will take over the world if I allow it to, so I want to sequester it among the concrete.

First bolded. This makes me so sad. I love alllll the flowers in my garden. It was one of the primary reasons we bought the house we did. We cut down a ton of trees last year so now we have the space and light for a separate vegetable garden.

Second bolded. So so true. Honestly, mint looks kind of weedy to me. I think you should keep it in pots or something and plant a "prettier" herb or something bushier instead (like rosemary as an example). Just my opinion, I just know if I was your neighbor I'd definitely enjoy looking at small bushes rather than something kind of weedy.

If we're making this one of lolo's dream garden threads I thought I'd share some photos from last spring of the flowers in my yard! The only thing blooming right now are my daffodils so I don't have any current pictures unfortunately.

This is one of our dark pink azaleas.

And this one of several white azaleas.

One of my pink dogwoods. Our yard in the background looks like poop, this is from before we had it re-sodded.

And one of my white dogwoods.

And a new plant I found earlier this winter. It's some type of hellebore but I haven't figured out the specific variety yet. Could be Lenten Rose but I'm not 100% sure. I don't remember it blooming last year but it definitely did this year!

And my camelia bush which started blooming in January and is still going strong through March! I love that my yard has something blooming pretty much from January through late October!

Love your flowers, Labro! It's hard to tell, but those flowers have 5 petals each, right? I think you're right about them being lenten roses! And dogwoods are a favorite of my dad's.

I fell in love with my neighbors' flowering quince, and it took me ages to identify it because the neighbors had no clue what it was. They're related to roses/apples. When I actually ate some quince for the first time last month, I was so pleased that it tasted similar to apples!

drunkenwitch · March 2015

tfmrserwin I'm in the PNW as well! Did you go to the Seattle Tilth Fair? We got a ton of starters from them. Thank you for the crop rotation website, BF and I trying to learn everything we can.

levieenrose oh no, not fresh. It camefrom a friend who is an avid gardener and keeps chickens so she knows how to treat the chicken poo so it is excellent fertilizer.

Once our veggies start growing our post pictures.

We plan to have a few flowers here and there (need to attract those bees!) but mostly vegetables.

[Deleted User] · March 2015

I'm sorry my distaste for my flowers makes you sad. It's not that I'm actively going to kill them, I'm just not going to learn how to keep them alive. In fact, anything that feeds bees gets to stay if it's able to stay alive without my active work on it. I won't go out of my way to water anything that doesn't feed me. In fact, I'm hoping to kill my lawn. Contemplating laying down gravel around the fire pit, and planting creeping thyme as a ground cover where the grass currently is. This is summer number one at the house, so I'll just be planting perennials and seeing what grows back on its own. I'm sure most of the flowers will do just that.

drunkenwitch · March 2015

adk19 said:
I'm sorry my distaste for my flowers makes you sad. It's not that I'm actively going to kill them, I'm just not going to learn how to keep them alive. In fact, anything that feeds bees gets to stay if it's able to stay alive without my active work on it. I won't go out of my way to water anything that doesn't feed me. In fact, I'm hoping to kill my lawn. Contemplating laying down gravel around the fire pit, and planting creeping thyme as a ground cover where the grass currently is. This is summer number one at the house, so I'll just be planting perennials and seeing what grows back on its own. I'm sure most of the flowers will do just that.

Same here, I will plant a few flowers that my friends swear are impossible to kill because all my love attention will go to my vegetables.

labro · March 2015

@levieenrose Dogwoods are so near and dear to my heart. We first looked at our house in April and the dogwoods happened to be blooming. Right then and there I knew this was the house I wanted to buy. I've loved dogwoods ever since I was a kid. My grandmother had a huge dogwood tree in her yard and it always had so many gorgeous beautiful blooms.

I enjoy vegetable gardens (mostly because I enjoy food, especially when I've grown it myself) but flowers are what really speak to me. They have zero practical use (other than attracting pollinators) but they really just improve my overall attitude with the show they put on.

mrsk616 · March 2015

i have a little garden next to patio that each year for the past 2 maybe 3 years i have tried to grow something in it. but these god awful looking weeds keep growing. and the first year i started planting stuff i found kids toys in the garden along with garbage. they are thick rooted and have a woody stem. no matter what we do they wont go anywhere. i just want to rip it out and start all new but we can not afford to tear it all the way out. and we actually plan on selling the house.

we have been doing the front of the house slowly (budget) and did a little section right at the corner of our driveway but i dont think i will keep that up as the trash that live in the area like to pick our flowers, my FI actually caught the lady and yelled at her. oh and some one keeps trying to steal our massive boulder in that same garden.

madamerwin · March 2015

drunkenwitch said:

adk19 said:
I'm sorry my distaste for my flowers makes you sad. It's not that I'm actively going to kill them, I'm just not going to learn how to keep them alive. In fact, anything that feeds bees gets to stay if it's able to stay alive without my active work on it. I won't go out of my way to water anything that doesn't feed me. In fact, I'm hoping to kill my lawn. Contemplating laying down gravel around the fire pit, and planting creeping thyme as a ground cover where the grass currently is. This is summer number one at the house, so I'll just be planting perennials and seeing what grows back on its own. I'm sure most of the flowers will do just that.
Same here, I will plant a few flowers that my friends swear are impossible to kill because all my love attention will go to my vegetables.

Me too. Flowers are pretty, but with the exception of my one rose bush, unless I can eat them I'm not putting any time and effort into not killing them. Also, I am the grim reaper for house plants, and every time I attempt to grow flowers - indoors or out - they die quickly.

I see a garden as a utilitarian endeavor. I love vegetables, and I love watching them grow before I chop them down and eat them.

[Deleted User] · March 2015

mrsk616 said:
i have a little garden next to patio that each year for the past 2 maybe 3 years i have tried to grow something in it. but these god awful looking weeds keep growing. and the first year i started planting stuff i found kids toys in the garden along with garbage. they are thick rooted and have a woody stem. no matter what we do they wont go anywhere. i just want to rip it out and start all new but we can not afford to tear it all the way out. and we actually plan on selling the house.

we have been doing the front of the house slowly (budget) and did a little section right at the corner of our driveway but i dont think i will keep that up as the trash that live in the area like to pick our flowers, my FI actually caught the lady and yelled at her. oh and some one keeps trying to steal our massive boulder in that same garden.

With the weeds that won't die, have you tried putting on a layer of wet newspaper or cardboard down to stifle all the growth? I've read that you need five sheets of newspaper or any cardboard as long as you overlap it so no dirt shows in between. The paper is bio-degradable so it will eventually feed your plants and the worms living in the dirt, but it should also smother anything trying to get through. Then pile the cardboard high with good dirt and compost and mulch. If you decide to plant in it, I probably wouldn't dig down past the cardboard this first year, and hopefully it will be composted down by planting time next year.

hellosweetie1015 · March 2015

labro said:
Bought a house in September. It is overrun with flowers, which, while pretty, don't feed me so need to go. Though I like that there were so many flowers because that means the soil is healthy. I'm hoping to plant some perennial food plants this year and one 4'x8' raised bed for annuals. The chives I discovered under a bush last year are already coming back. No idea how many of the flowers will come back. Want to plant rhubarb and asparagus, and I want a patch of mint in the small line of dirt between my walkway and the neighbor's driveway. I know mint will take over the world if I allow it to, so I want to sequester it among the concrete.

First bolded. This makes me so sad.

I love alllll the flowers in my garden. It was one of the primary reasons we bought the house we did. We cut down a ton of trees last year so now we have the space and light for a separate vegetable garden.

Second bolded. So so true. Honestly, mint looks kind of weedy to me. I think you should keep it in pots or something and plant a "prettier" herb or something bushier instead (like rosemary as an example). Just my opinion, I just know if I was your neighbor I'd definitely enjoy looking at small bushes rather than something kind of weedy.

If we're making this one of lolo's dream garden threads I thought I'd share some photos from last spring of the flowers in my yard! The only thing blooming right now are my daffodils so I don't have any current pictures unfortunately.

This is one of our dark pink azaleas.

And this one of several white azaleas.

One of my pink dogwoods. Our yard in the background looks like poop, this is from before we had it re-sodded.

And one of my white dogwoods.

And a new plant I found earlier this winter. It's some type of hellebore but I haven't figured out the specific variety yet. Could be Lenten Rose but I'm not 100% sure. I don't remember it blooming last year but it definitely did this year!

And my camelia bush which started blooming in January and is still going strong through March! I love that my yard has something blooming pretty much from January through late October!

The new plant is a lenten rose! ....which I always thought were called lentil roses. I was not sure why they were named after beans. >.>

Anyway, we had a bunch at the old house and my dad is trying to transplant them to the new house. They're FANTASTIC. I love them.

mrsk616 · March 2015

adk19 said:

mrsk616 said:
i have a little garden next to patio that each year for the past 2 maybe 3 years i have tried to grow something in it. but these god awful looking weeds keep growing. and the first year i started planting stuff i found kids toys in the garden along with garbage. they are thick rooted and have a woody stem. no matter what we do they wont go anywhere. i just want to rip it out and start all new but we can not afford to tear it all the way out. and we actually plan on selling the house.

we have been doing the front of the house slowly (budget) and did a little section right at the corner of our driveway but i dont think i will keep that up as the trash that live in the area like to pick our flowers, my FI actually caught the lady and yelled at her. oh and some one keeps trying to steal our massive boulder in that same garden.
With the weeds that won't die, have you tried putting on a layer of wet newspaper or cardboard down to stifle all the growth? I've read that you need five sheets of newspaper or any cardboard as long as you overlap it so no dirt shows in between. The paper is bio-degradable so it will eventually feed your plants and the worms living in the dirt, but it should also smother anything trying to get through. Then pile the cardboard high with good dirt and compost and mulch. If you decide to plant in it, I probably wouldn't dig down past the cardboard this first year, and hopefully it will be composted down by planting time next year.

we have not, i want to try something but we have came to conclusion that this house is not worth anymore of our time. i have wanted to dig it out for years to get everything out but we just dont get to it in time.

we have annuals in there too that we dont want to kill but do get killed by these god awful scary (yes i have a really strange fear of these weeds and the huge dandelions did i mention strange fear it is quite entertaining to watch me try to pull these things)

MairePoppy · March 2015

pinupbride6189 said:
We actually just went HAM at Home Depot and Costco and started a little garden at the house! We planted two blueberry bushes, two peach trees, three tomato plants, a lime tree, a grapefruit tree, some grape hyacynths, and some tulips...

We've never done this before and we're scared, please help us!!! haha!

But everything seems to be doing well for the time being. We already have a couple little green tomoatos and the flowers are starting to bud and bloom, so YAY! It's stupid how excited we get when we walk outside and see them making progress. lol. I'm sure our neighbors think we're crazy too, since all of this is planted in the front yard. If we put anything in the back, the dogs will tear it apart, so we're those crazy dog and plant people now.

This is all I know about blueberries: you should have more than one variety for cross pollination. Check the tags on your blueberry plants, if they are the same, add another variety that flowers at approximately the same time. And then watch the fuzzy bees do their work. Treat your blueberries to some peat moss, work it in around the base of the plant, helps keep the roots moist and the soil acid. The first year, you may get enough blueberries for your cereal if the birds don't find them before you. You will realize that birds are little assholes. You will wish that you planted those blueberries in the back yard so your dogs can chase the birds away. Netting is a good idea after the flower petals have fallen.

My dogs love blueberries. One dog is careful and picks only the ripe berries with her little front teeth. The other is a monster who recklessly chomps on the branches.

labro · March 2015

MairePoppy said:
We actually just went HAM at Home Depot and Costco and started a little garden at the house! We planted two blueberry bushes, two peach trees, three tomato plants, a lime tree, a grapefruit tree, some grape hyacynths, and some tulips...

We've never done this before and we're scared, please help us!!! haha!

But everything seems to be doing well for the time being. We already have a couple little green tomoatos and the flowers are starting to bud and bloom, so YAY! It's stupid how excited we get when we walk outside and see them making progress. lol. I'm sure our neighbors think we're crazy too, since all of this is planted in the front yard. If we put anything in the back, the dogs will tear it apart, so we're those crazy dog and plant people now.

This is all I know about blueberries: you should have more than one variety for cross pollination. Check the tags on your blueberry plants, if they are the same, add another variety that flowers at approximately the same time. And then watch the fuzzy bees do their work. Treat your blueberries to some peat moss, work it in around the base of the plant, helps keep the roots moist and the soil acid. The first year, you may get enough blueberries for your cereal if the birds don't find them before you. You will realize that birds are little assholes. You will wish that you planted those blueberries in the back yard so your dogs can chase the birds away. Netting is a good idea after the flower petals have fallen.

My dogs love blueberries. One dog is careful and picks only the ripe berries with her little front teeth. The other is a monster who recklessly chomps on the branches.

I'm pretty sure my dog is going to be just like your second one when our blueberries start to ripen. She already eats weeds and any other plant that happens to be in her path (she's such a little monster).

@pinupbride6819 You may also want to check and see if the plants you got are self-fertilizers. My nursery is selling a variety where you don't HAVE to have a second bush. They still recommend it because you'll get more berries but it isn't required to have a second variety.

Any other gardeners out there?

Re: Any other gardeners out there?

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