Garden update

As mentioned in the last post, my tomato plants have become monsters. They are setting fruit like crazy, especially the Juliette, which is pretty typical. There are a couple starting to turn red, I am very excited. My zucchini seems to be luring me into a sense of complacency. There are baby fruits that aren't growing and I think the plant needs more water but really, I haven't had a single fruit off that plant. I doubt I will be planting Patio Star again next year. All my other squash are making fruits. It looks like I am going to have a bunch of butternut squash this year, a great victory over last year, I didn't get a single one last season.  I've harvested my garlic, moving it all to the edges of the beds has made it so I could find it when it was time to collect. It is being stored in the basement so I won't be needing to buy any for a while.
The purple bed is cruising along, there isn't a lot to look at yet, I didn't want to overfill the bed this year. There is a curious thing though, the bag of mixed purple gladiolus seem to be all a dark magenta. It's a really pretty color and I like it but, it was not what I was expecting.  It was a ten dollar bag of gladiolus bulbs I got from Home Depot so, go figure.

Stella!!

Something or some one has taken all the cherries off my Stella cherry tree. I did get to eat 2 of them and they were almost all perfectly ripe. I went to go grab more off the tree yesterday and they were gone. I did get to feed the S.O. 2 as well and he now knows why I was so very particular about which kind of cherry I wanted. On the upside for the tree, since it did produce fruit this year (last year there was nothing), I will let it live.

I guess they left a couple fruits behind

in veggie garden updates, my tomatoes are now monsters. I am pruning the plants so when the tomatoes are ready, I can actually find them.

The upgraded cages were also a good idea

I found itty bitty fruit on this one, huzzah!

 The extra start from the wall o waters was well worth it. Everything else is doing pretty well, I think I finally conquered the over planting urge. The only plant that is not thriving is the zucchini, I'm sure in a month it will be giant and I will be ding dong ditching zucchini on doorsteps.

2017 Veggie round up

My veggie planting is complete, so I thought it was time to write about this year's planned crops. I have also doubled the number of raised garden beds again, so now I have 4 beds. I may actually not overcrowd my planters this year. There is laughter in my own head over that. Of course, I am going to overcrowd my planters, it's what I do. I did have some slug problems last year, they seem to be more under control at the moment. I did buy some Sluggo and added that to my anti-slug arsenal to help keep them from being a problem. There was also a problem with the soil I bought for the new planter last year. It was hot, or rather, it seems the organic material in it was still breaking down which made the soil really warm. This cooked a couple of my peppers at the roots although, the eggplant loved it and grew really big. I remedied that this year by making the new planters a month before I planted anything so the soil could finish breaking down before I put anything in it. It seems to have worked.

Things from last year I am not replanting

Bush beans- I really like green beans, I do. They grew great, no big problems other than some slug attacks. The thing is, in the height of grilling season, I don't really want to eat them. Green beans are a veggie I associate more with fall and cooler weather. They just didn't get eaten enough to grow them again.
Seattle's Best Tomato- took forever to get fruit, not very tasty when I did. My search for a slicer tomato I like continues
Viva Italia Tomato- Once again, not super impressed with the flavor and the plant collapsed under it's own weight making the fruit hard to get.
Some of the peppers I tried last year- They cooked in the soil so I never got to try them.
Rosa Bianca Eggplant- Loved it last year, no one was selling it this year, going to try a different variety.
Danver Carrots- They never grew. I have the worst luck with carrots.

Sugar Pie pumpkin- Good pumpkin but I found another more exciting variety for this year

Things I am planting again this year

Collard greens- They love the north side of the house and they are in full bloom right now. I bought some to replace the ones that are flowering right now.
Squashes- Acorn and zucchini had fewer powdery mildew issues last year so they produced more and more steadily.the butternut squash failed miserably but I am going to try them again. We eat a lot of butternut squash and being able to grow our own would be awesome.
Juliet tomato- Still my favorite variety to grow. Once again, it was a total champ
Lettuce- Gotta love being able to pick lettuce as needed in the spring.
Garlic- With 4 planters it will be much easier to keep track of the garlic so I can find it all come harvest time. I am determined to master a system for garlic, we eat a lot of it.
Hot Peppers- most cooked in the soil last year but I am going to plant them again including Satan's kiss, habenero, and jalapeno.

New plants to try this year

Red orach- already a failure, I planted the seeds when I planted the radishes and carrots this year and they never appeared. I can't find much on their germination preferences either so I don't know how to get it to work.
Onions- I wasn't planning on doing onions this year but some one at work had extra sets. I have purple, white, and a yellow.
Fennel- We tried cooking with fennel bulb this winter and ended up liking it quite a bit so I thought it was worth a try to grow it.
Basil- Saw some at the annual plant sale I go to and it isn't the Genovese that is found everywhere. This one has a smaller leaf and I am hoping it attracts less slug attention.
Black beans- Why not? We eat a lot of them and these are a bush type so they should be pretty easy to care for. As long as I figure out what to do with them post harvest they should get eaten.
Snap Peas- Already a win. I've been eating them for the past two weeks and they have been pretty easy to grow.
Radish "Sparkler"- Also already a winner, I bought this as a seed tape and it has worked great.
Kaleidoscope Carrot Collection- Carrots in a seed tape may be my ticket to carrot success. thee have actually germinated pretty well.
Ground Cherry- Looks like a small tomatillo, tastes sweet. It's hard to explain but I got to eat a couple last year and was determined to try growing it this year.
Potatoes- I am taking the plunge and trying to grow potatoes. The extra risky part is that I am growing 2 of the varieties in cardboard boxes. I am hoping the boxes manage to keep their shape long enough for this to work. I am growing Purple Majesty, Yukon Gold, and a fingerling called Makah Ozette.
Naked Bear Pumpkin- A small sugar pie type pumpkin with hull less seeds! I love roasted pumpkin seeds and with this variety I won't even have to deal with the hulls. It's a total win.
Prosperosa Eggplant- Italian variety that I have not tried before and since I couldn't find Rosa Bianca, this one will have to do.

i am also testing out another set of paste and slicing tomatoes, if they do well I will repeat them.

Purple Bed

The S.O really likes the color purple. His enthusiasm for plants begins at things he can eat and ends at things that are purple. His only other sweet spot is purple foliage plants with red flowers. Any other flower color or plant attribute do nothing for him. Last year when I bought my coveted Shagbark Maple, we started a new garden bed. When we started the bed my SO suggested we fill it with purple stuff. I agreed to it, I mean, why not have a garden bed devoted to a single color. It's an interesting design challenge.
Have I stuck to a single color? Almost. I planted a dwarf forsythia so there is a pop of yellow in early spring and a few annuals in other colors as fillers.

Dwarf Forsythia in the background Globularia cordifolia in the foreground awaiting planting

For purple, I have put in some bulbs and perennials that I will be adding to once I see what works and what doesn't. There are crocuses from when that Garden bed was lawn, most of them made the transition, a few couldn't handle the mulch layer. I want some more and they are really inexpensive. I dropped in some irises a while ago that I got from a coworker, one of them is red, and the rest purple and I didn't keep good track of which was which. They also haven't appeared yet this spring.  We'll see what happens with those. there are purple gladiolus I just planted and have already forgotten where. My ability to remember where I plant bulbs is terrible. For some more purple I planted two "Raven" Penstemon, a "Caradonna" Salvia, and a purple delphinium. There will be more pictures as the season progresses.

Just planted. I will be adding to this I'm sure

I think I'm going to go get a perennial verbena, that would be a nice low plant for that bed. Maybe some phlox too.

My maple, just starting to leaf out

 Also since there is a tree, I will need to plant more shade plants over time. Oh tragedy I sigh, as I already have a short list of epimediums and purple foliage shade plants. I am a plant addict, what can I say.

Wall o Water

If you've never heard of Wall o Waters you either live someplace with really steady and predictable spring seasons or you didn't know they exist. In short, they are used as tiny greenhouses to extend the growing season of plants. I've usually used them to give a head start to my hot season vegetables like tomatoes and peppers. Especially when I lived in eastern Colorado where the weather has always been erratic in the spring, my family used these bad boys to protect our tiny plants from frost, snow, hail and wind.They can last for a long period of time, I got a bunch from my father and I'm not even sure how long he had them.

Basic construction is that they are a tube of heavy duty plastic folded in half and sectioned off. Words to describe the construction are failing me, here is a picture instead.

When unfilled, the wall o water is easy to store

They are usually either green or red, though I think my mom had ones that were clear.

So this is how they work. Each of the sections is filled part of the way up and the wall o water forms a little teepee that can be put over a small plant. When the plant outgrows the teepee the whole thing can be removed. By then, it should be warm enough outside and the plant should be big enough to handle a little wind

Little teepee over my baby tomatoes

or the tubes can be filled all the way up which will make the wall o waters stand up like a little fortress wall. I've never done that, I think it is useful in areas where it doesn't get really warm in the summer.

Even though it hasn't been very warm out (around 50) during the day, these little guys are warm enough to keep growing

When done with them for the season, dump out the water, let them dry out and they can be folded to a pretty small size to be stored away for the next year.

Seriously though, they are great little plant protectors and I can't recommend them enough

Bonus photo of carrot seedlings! I finally have had success in germinating carrot seeds!

Plants people love to hate

My husband hates irises. the only reason I can find as to why is that he once owned a house where the irises in his yard never bloomed. I'm pretty sure they were planted in too much shade and never watered so yes, they never bloomed. I'm trying to change his mind as I adore irises, they come in so many colors, they are hard to kill, and they self propagate.
Over the years I have discovered that people have very strong feelings about plants. Deep loves and deep hates. I myself, detest Bacopa. It's a commonly used trailing annual with white, pink or pale blue flowers. More information can be found here Bacopa Trailing Annual.  I am generally not a big fan of pale colored flowers to begin with but I hate how Bacopa smells. Especially when it needs water, it has this sour mothball odor that I hate. If it isn't obvious by now reading any of my blog entries, scent is really important to me. Bacopa happens to be a plant with a terrible odor and the color is not enough to make me like it. One of the reasons I hate Bacopa is from having thousands of them that were under my care in my horticulture classes. The greenhouse would reek of them on warmer days or when they started to dry out. One of my teachers kept telling me that one day I would appreciate their reliable blooming and easy to match colors. That day has yet to arrive.
There are plants that cause deep divides in the gardening community. Roses are one plant that I've seen people on both ends of the spectrum. Some people looovvvee roses and the amount of time and care needed for roses are not an obstacle. i have met other people who hhaaate roses and the extra demands that roses often require. Both sides have valid points and really a lot of plant hate is based off past bad gardening experiences.
I realize that a bad experience can color anything. Gardening is really no different in that respect. I acknowledge that I may never change my husband's mind on irises and I doubt I'll cange my mind over Bacopa either. It's one thing that I have to keep in mind when coming across other people's plant biases. Everyone has them and listening to the background stories on plant hatreds can reveal a lot about what some one wants in a plant.

Seeds!-2

It's been a couple weeks since starting some seeds and my impatience has bitten me in the butt a little. I assumed that none of the Datura were going to germinate after about 8 days so I tossed a bunch of them outside. Now I have 4 of the little buggers coming up. One that I just noticed this morning. Maybe the ones I half buried in the mulch will appear? At least I have a couple to work with and if I get a full seedpod this summer I will get plenty to work with next year.

Datura babies

The hibiscus outgrew the seed starter pots basically immediately so they've been moved to larger pots. I also started another round of seeds but they didn't germinate as well. Still I just wanted a couple, so having over 10 to work with and hopefully survive makes me very happy.

Hibiscus on the right

The ground cherries were slow to germinate so I started another set of them. Now the first ones are putting on their first set of true leave and the second set are really spindly and will more than likely flame out. Not sure what the difference was, at any rate, I am still looking super forward to growing them this summer.

Shiny happy Ground Cherries

I also started some flowers called Irish Poet Tassel flowers. Fast germination gives me hope and I have a feeling they will reseed themselves in my yard. Low maintenance for the win!

I of course want to start a bunch more stuff but my space is limited and really everything else only needs a 2-3 week lead up time to going outside. Spring has sprung and I am itching to plant like crazy

Seeds!

Two heating pads and one grow light should be all I need this year

This year I managed to carve a small seed starting space down in my basement so I can try growing things from seed. I may have gone a little nutty buying seeds from catalogs this year.

A small sampling of my seed obsession

I may have also been buying seed packets at nurseries too. I am interested in getting more specific vegetable varieties and seeds are really the best option. I want to try some new to me plants that I've never seen as transplants. I also want to better fill my garden beds with flowers and seeds are much cheaper for getting a lot of plants at once.
So far I have three different plants started, the three that need the longest lead up time before the last frost. Edible Hibiscus, Devil's Trumpet, and Ground Cherries. I am surprised the Hibiscus has been the fastest to germinate, there is little information on starting these from seed.

Hibiscus babies!

 The ground Cherry has been taking it's sweet sweet time, I've been worried that these seeds wouldn't germinate. The Devil's Trumpet has yet to have a single seedling and any info I have found about starting these from seed has varied wildly. I'm going to give those a few more days and if nothing pops up, I'm tossing them and starting over. I don't want to waste resources on blank soil.

The blank spot where the Devil's Trumpet should be