Green Garden Diary

 

Welcome Spring!

Green Garden Diary

 Daffodils.

Here Comes Spring

The first of our daffodils are beginning to bloom. Spring is just around the corner now!

September

The summer garden is slowly coming to an end. We're still getting plenty of peppers and eggplants and dried shelling beans. The fall garden is planted and growing with the help of sprinklers. It's been dry here lately. You'd never know it by looking at the flowering vines that grow up the trellises that surround the main garden. They make a beautiful wall that is loved by bees, butterflies and hummingbirds. And me. Now that's a wall that I can stand behind!

Garden Roundup

Pansies 

 Garlic

Snowdrops



 Fuschia

 Daylily and violets

  New lavender plant

What beautiful weather we've had this week. My attention turned towards the gardens, beginning with tuning up Troy, my Troybilt tiller, and replacing two oil seals and one gasket. The ground dried out enough yesterday and Troy and I took a spin around some of the beds.

I planted peas, onions, spinach, kale, chard, pak choi and beets. I transplanted tomato seedlings into the next size flat and started some shallots.

A trip to the garden center was also on my to do list. I came home with a fuschia plant, a new lavender plant (my old one didn't make it this past winter), a new thyme plant (also didn't make it) and another oregano plant.

I woke up this morning tired and sore, but happy that spring is here!
Until next time.....

The Greening Of Spring

It's amazing how green really shines this time of year. Slowly but surely, the landscape is turning. Yesterday, I discovered the first daffodils in bloom. And our garlic. For a while there, I thought we lost all of it. The temps were below zero and I wasn't sure that the garlic would make it. But 2 out of 3 varieties are growing strong. They don't look as good as they usually do this time of year, but I'll take it.

Pretty soon everything will be green and growing. But for now I'll sit back and enjoy the greening of Spring.
Until next time.....

Wordless Wednesday

November Garden

I love fall gardening. The weather is perfect and the greens grow like crazy. While putting most of the garden to bed for the winter, some parts are still alive and kicking.
From top to bottom:
Two of the beds ready to be turned and seeded with a cover crop
Parsley
Garlic bed, with Pak Choi to the left
Pak Choi
Cilantro
Turnips
Spinach
Nandinas. Very important part of holiday decorating!

This week is going to be a busy one.
Until next time.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

The Rhythm of August

There's been a lot of doing and not a lot of picture taking this week. I've been putting up green beans, tomatoes and squash at least every other day. I've gotten into the rhythm of August. Wake up early. Drink a cuppa. Head outside and get the gardening done before the day gets too hot. Head indoors and put up the day's bounty.
I continue to have one eye on the Dixie Speckled Butter Pea bed after seeing a groundhog in the garden last week. The have a heart trap is set with fresh cantaloupe daily. We spring it at night because the last thing I want to wake up to in the morning is seeing Peppy (we name all the skunks that come around here that) sitting in the trap! I'll keep this up until the corn and peas are harvested or until the groundhog is caught.
Pictured above:
Cleome or Spider Flower. I've carried seeds from these flowers from house to house for quite a few years now. They were given to me by an old, old friend.
Celebrity tomatoes. Seven of the twenty three survived the July floods. We've been eating a lot of grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches.
Roma tomato plant. I don't know how they grow for everyone else, but we average 100+ tomatoes per plant. We go through a lot of pasta sauce, tomato paste and plain Roma puree in a year.
Here's to a productive week for all and maybe a bit more picture taking for me.
Until next time.....

Late Summer

The morning landscape is thick with spiderwebs. I have always loved looking at them. I found this one this morning while feeding the birds. I think they're one of my favorites. I love the way they hover in the trees. They remind me of flying saucers.
  

 Look at the detail! If you look closely, it looks like a screen. Amazingly beautiful!

 And the scalloped edge! All of this woven in one night.

 Yesterday afternoon, I looked out the window and saw a critter in the back garden. I went to get a closer look and saw that it was a groundhog, sitting in the Dixie Speckled Butter Peas (above), getting ready to eat. A groundhog can do some serious damage. And fast. Trying to decide how to deal with my unwanted guest, I opted for the Have a Heart trap. I searched the Internet to see what was the best thing to put in the trap to attract them. There is a healthy helping of fresh vegetables waiting for the bandit, if it decides to return. (it will). But I'm worried that it will walk right by the trap and just enjoy the fresh vegetables IN the garden.

So today when I go to town, I'm going to pick up a ripe cantaloupe. I read that groundhogs can't resist them. We'll see how this goes. Hopefully I won't be sorry that I chose the catch and release method.
Until next time.....

Shifting Winds

 

We woke up this morning to the sound of the wind. Rain was in the forecast for today which pleased us. We haven't had rain in a week and the garden needed a drink. I stepped outside. The wind wasn't a hot, muggy July wind. It was more like end of summer, Autumn's calling kinda wind. I grabbed the camera right before the rain came and snapped a few photos to remember this end of July day.

1. Watching the rain fall from the back deck.
2. Crepe Myrtle in full bloom towering over the tomato plants in the garage garden.
3. The corn blowing in the wind.
4. Black Eyed Susans in full bloom behind the tomatillo bed.
5. New squash bed, freshly mulched with grass clippings.
6. Thai Basil in bloom. I'm letting one of the plants flower for the bees. I've never grown this variety of basil before.
7. And finally..........tomato harvest! We have to pick them a little sooner than we'd like because the mockingbirds like to 'taste' them.

It's going to be a busy week ahead.
Until next time.....

Strange Days Indeed

The weather continues to be all over the map. We're still getting rain, although it's more of a pop up shower in the afternoon and it's not enough to flood the gardens. I've done a plant body count and things aren't as bad as it looked at first (or so I keep telling myself).
We lost 21 out of the 29 pepper plants that we started. We were growing six varieties of hot and sweet peppers. Although this is a MAJOR loss for us, peppers are something that we can buy locally and won't cost a lot of money.
We lost 10 out of the 43 regular tomato plants and 4 of the 43 Roma tomato plants. At first more plants were shriveling up, but it looks like they're coming back. Fingers crossed.
This year, I decided to divide our tomato crop and plant it in different sections of the main garden. I also planted some in the bed behind the garage and in the bed next to the compost. I've never done this before and am so glad that I did.
The peppers are planted in a fairly new bed that obviously needs to be raised, since it's the one that flooded the worst. I'm in the process of building it up with compost and grass clippings. Lesson learned.

This week's round up:
1. Corn with Dixie Speckled Butter Peas in the foreground. Okra in between.
2. Vitex in bloom with happy bees and butterflies.
3. Tomatillo. Can you say Salsa Verde?
4. Cypress Vine and Morning Glory. Hummingbirds will be happy!
5. Cucumbers continue to shine.
6. Wave Petunias. I usually don't plant anything in pots in the summertime because it usually is too hot here. No matter how much I water, the plants rarely flourish. Not this year.
7. Corn tassels! Can't wait to eat my first ear of corn; fresh picked and raw.

Here's to a wonderful week all around.
Until next time.....

Cukes

Our cucumbers were spared any harm from the July flood. They continue to grow like crazy. I've put up enough pickles to last a couple of years. That makes me happy.
I begin my day by munching on a few fresh picked ones. We've been eating a lot of fresh sliced cukes in a vinegar/water mix with salt and fresh dill added. The vinegar can be any kind that your heart desires. Sometimes I add sliced onions. I make this in the morning and put it in the frig until it's time to eat. Cool and crunchy!
Until next time.....

Wordless Wednesday

The Wa-a-ting Is The Hardest Part

After all was said and done, we had a total of 5 7/10" of rain fall in 5 days. The sun finally came out on Sunday and the temps returned to normal. The gardens don't look so good. I knew in the back of my mind that all this rain wasn't good for them and they were in danger of rotting. Right now our pepper bed is supersaturated and the plants are wilting. Half of the tomatoes are wilting too. So far everything else looks OK. This isn't the first time this has happened and it won't be the last, but it sure as hell doesn't get any easier. I'm going to pass on posting any garden pictures today. You really don't want to see what I see. Until next time.....