A Gardening Thread

[DanteGabriel]

19 hours ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

My fight is against honeysuckle. We hates it.  Also I dug up a lot of burdock today.  I will need a winch to get me out of bed tomorrow (but did plant the peas :)).

I have fond childhood memories of honeysuckle, but I certainly understand the problems it poses.

Did you plant snap peas?

[Zorral]

22 hours ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

My fight is against honeysuckle. We hates it.  Also I dug up a lot of burdock today.  I will need a winch to get me out of bed tomorrow (but did plant the peas :)).

And rhododendron!

There should be lilacs soon, but quite a ways away from wisteria.

 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

We have Lilacs!  I brought some back to the city and they smell DIVINE.  The redbud is out and gorgeous too.

We planted snap peas on Saturday as well as the wildflower patch.

Today we planted peppers (my husband over orders from this pepper specialist in Nj, and orders early because he’s petrified they will be out when he orders) but they were dying inside so we are going to give them a shot outside), and the flower garden in front of the house.  

We planted Gerberas, Angelonia, French marigolds, some petunias, and for seeds, cosmos, zinnias, and sunflowers.  I might be early, but meh.  If the seeds don’t grow, I’ll buy seedlings from a nursery in early June.

Next weekend I will put in carrots and prepare the beds for the great Memorial Weekend plantening.  

I’m planning on Okra, tomatoes, cukes, melons, squash (hope springs eternal), 

[aceluby]

Got to do some gardening over the weekend.  New house had a vegetable garden that had a tarp over it for who knows how long.  Took that off and found about 1/2 dozen garter snakes.  I fucking hate snakes, so that was fun.  Cleared out the snakes, added some nitrogen, some new soil, and then tilled it.  Soil under is pretty crap and full of clay.  Planted some seeds and got some plants from the hardware store, then added humic acid & seaweed.  Didn't fence it in the first night and the bunnies already took out some of my tomatoes, spinach, peppers, and all of my beets - so need to watch over those to be sure they recover and replant when necessary.  Also planted some annuals and got some more ground cover & perennials for my front yard.

[HoodedCrow]

I planted surviving tulips in the middle of a squirrel and rabbit zone..no deer. Here’s my solution. Have a lot of other plants that they don’t like, that come up before and after:)

I’m partial to daffodils ( nodding in the breeze). Some of them don’t look a lot like classic daffodils. We had herbs and hardy geraniums. Roxanne bloomed from June? To December and then vanished. I liked supporting the local bees, and hummingbirds darted in to snack on other plants.

I planted mint in a shadowy place with surrounded by plastic edging and a cloak of kitty litter under ground. It didn’t spread!

Neighbors liked one version of our garden, especially giant garlic, roses, Japanese maples of various colors. One of them wanted to help...oh dear. She liked to approach us when we were walking back home after we had shared a pitcher of beverage. ( Seahaaawwwks!)

I found a shade tolerating tulip for some spots and had others. But for serious tulips, we went to the Skagit Valley festival.

For the birders out there, we witnessed a crow funeral, had a woodpecker tree, heard and then observed Blue Jays fight for a mate.  I couldn’t stand it, personally intervened and thus the pair didn’t stay and the solo surviving dude made scarce.
 

And now, the Butchart Gardens is closed:(   So much for our retirement plans...as the biggest one is to stay alive.

DH is talking

 

[Cas Stark]

The top of my red maple tree cracked off last week in the high winds, so years of creating a green private urban backyard with the tree keeping the yard mostly out of view of the neighbors are down the drain

Hopefully the hostas can survive a lot of sun. The silver lining I guess is that now I can again grow more full sun flowers in the back yard.  

[HoodedCrow]

I’m sorry that the maple broke:( and took out key piece of your design. 

If it had damaged your house, you probably would have said. We had a cedar that came down on our neighbors deck and crushed their camper. They took their homeowner insurance money and left it. We planted clumping bamboo to hide it.  I’ve heard that people can be sued for planting running bamboo. (My DH wanted to plant bamboo that grows quickly to a couple of stories a la Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The person who bought our house did not know that there was a large metal bird house next door...That solution probably won’t work for you.

Yes, more sun loving plants are possible. 

Hostas can be moved and divided, if you like them. I do. There are so many shades of green, sizes and textures.

Above I said Roxanne, but I recall the hardy geranium is Rozanne, which is similar to “ Jolly Bee”. It is used in vegetable gardens as a floral way to attract pollinators. If you are afraid of bees, don’t plant it, though! You can control the size of it or let it scramble.

[Cas Stark]

17 minutes ago, HoodedCrow said:

I’m sorry that the maple broke:( and took out key piece of your design. 

If it had damaged your house, you probably would have said. We had a cedar that came down on our neighbors deck and crushed their camper. They took their homeowner insurance money and left it. We planted clumping bamboo to hide it.  I’ve heard that people can be sued for planting running bamboo. (My DH wanted to plant bamboo that grows quickly to a couple of stories a la Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The person who bought our house did not know that there was a large metal bird house next door...That solution probably won’t work for you.

Yes, more sun loving plants are possible. 

Hostas can be moved and divided, if you like them. I do. There are so many shades of green, sizes and textures.

Above I said Roxanne, but I recall the hardy geranium is Rozanne, which is similar to “ Jolly Bee”. It is used in vegetable gardens as a floral way to attract pollinators. If you are afraid of bees, don’t plant it, though! You can control the size of it or let it scramble.

Almost everything I have is bee friendly...sedum, lilacs, rose of sharon, roses, coneflower, holly, snap dragons.  The tree top fell on the fence and into another clump of trees so no damage to the house, which is brick, so probably mostly safe anyway, or the fence, but we had to also cut into some of the other trees to get the main branch out.  We sawed everything up, but the remaining jagged top is too high for an amateur with a ladder and chain saw so we'll have to get someone to give a clean cut.  I bought it on the clearance rack at Home Depot for $6, LOL, but its still sad to see it mostly destroyed by wind.

I've also considered bamboo, but it won't live through a freezing winter will it?  I'd have to check, it might be banned, but could be an option.

[HoodedCrow]

How freezing? Probably not:(

Glad your tree top did not fall on your house Cas.

It’s not the money, it’s the time in years and labor. I hate opportunities for growth in that way:)

[Iskaral Pust]

On 5/4/2021 at 3:38 PM, Cas Stark said:

I've also considered bamboo, but it won't live through a freezing winter will it?  I'd have to check, it might be banned, but could be an option.

There are hardy varieties of bamboo that can handle winter freezes, although you might want to insulate new plantings for the first couple of winters. 

Bamboo spread can be controlled with smart planting.  Slopes, trenches, raised beds and barriers can contain bamboo spread, even for the running type.  Clumping type is easier.

I planted some great bamboo at our first house in Seattle.  When I went back to visit a decade later, it looked amazing and had stayed exactly where intended.

[Elder Sister]

On 5/1/2021 at 5:57 PM, DanteGabriel said:

Hello, fellow gardeners. Mrs. Gabriel and I spent a few hours today uprooting bittersweet from around our property. Some of it clinging to fences, some of it threatening the black raspberry patch in our front yard. It is endemic to the property. We're going after it before it seeds or flowers. We know we'll never fully eradicate it because it's just so deeply established and the more senior root clusters are so deeply anchored we'd need a backhoe to get them.

Since we moved here we've been trying to name our house/land. The previous house was Dragonfly Dell because of the amazing dragonfly swarming behavior we'd occasionally see in the sky above our heads in late summer afternoons, and the house sat on a small ridge overlooking a beautiful little dell. So we decided today that this house will be named Bittersweet Farm.

We hates the bittersweet, preciousss. Kill it with fire!

Is bittersweet like a vine?  We don’t have it down here. It looks pretty but is obviously invasive.

I will trade you bittersweet for creeping Charlie. We HATES IT SO MUCH. 

[DanteGabriel]

13 hours ago, Elder Sister said:

Is bittersweet like a vine?  We don’t have it down here. It looks pretty but is obviously invasive.

I will trade you bittersweet for creeping Charlie. We HATES IT SO MUCH. 

It's a woody vine, yeah. And not without aesthetic appeal, especially when it has berries. My mother-in-law used to make wreaths out of it.

But it's really aggressive climbing and winding around everything. Our bittersweet is so well established that it's killed a couple of small trees in our yard and new shoots are climbing around the old shoots. We are usually unable to get the whole root out of the ground, so expecting grow-back in the years to come. Sometimes I think there's just a whole network of bittersweet roots under our land.

We have at least cut down the major growths threatening our lilacs and black raspberry (untangling and removing vines from around spiky raspberry canes is... not fun).

I had never heard of creeping Charlie. It actually seems like kind of an interesting plant but I can sympathize with your frustration. Good luck in your endeavors!

[Zorral]

You all may already know about this, but it's brand new information to me -- "Cardening!"

Photos of plants in your car.

https://diy-garden.co.uk/cardening-a-new-craze-in-car-gardens/

 

 

[DireWolfSpirit]

On 5/1/2021 at 12:58 PM, DireWolfSpirit said:

I'm watching keenly for my morrel shrooms to start popping up, should be any day now but nothing yet.

I feel really lucky to have these spring treats on my own property as I've known a lot of people that have driven miles to find a harvest of them.

I like them in omelettes.

Follow up on morrels, have been harvesting several popcorn bowls of them now that some heat has finally hit us in the north.

Getting a few more days of wet weather so hoping to get at least one more yield although it's getting near the end period for when they will come up here. Sunday may be the last picking.

What's interesting is that this year I've detected a second group of yellow shrooms as I had only noticed the big brown style the  previous couple years.

Didn't trust the yellows till I investigated that they are in fact fine,  just like the brown as long as they are hollow. The yellow are smaller in stature to my brown but perfectly edible.

Anyways we've made our first batch of omelettes and I enjoyed 2 of them last night, may have more for work dinner. Time to eat them up!

[Alarich II]

14 hours ago, Zorral said:

You all may already know about this, but it's brand new information to me -- "Cardening!"

Photos of plants in your car.

https://diy-garden.co.uk/cardening-a-new-craze-in-car-gardens/

 

 

I like how they arranged their little "cardens" such that in the event of an accident, the airbag will launch a rocket propelled barrage of rocks and cacti at your face. Have the punishment fit the crime!

[Zorral]

9 hours ago, Alarich II said:

I like how they arranged their little "cardens" such that in the event of an accident, the airbag will launch a rocket propelled barrage of rocks and cacti at your face. Have the punishment fit the crime!

Ha!

Myself, am concerned about the cardens obscuring vision, front and rear.

[aceluby]

On 5/19/2021 at 12:46 PM, DireWolfSpirit said:

Follow up on morrels, have been harvesting several popcorn bowls of them now that some heat has finally hit us in the north.

Getting a few more days of wet weather so hoping to get at least one more yield although it's getting near the end period for when they will come up here. Sunday may be the last picking.

What's interesting is that this year I've detected a second group of yellow shrooms as I had only noticed the big brown style the  previous couple years.

Didn't trust the yellows till I investigated that they are in fact fine,  just like the brown as long as they are hollow. The yellow are smaller in stature to my brown but perfectly edible.

Anyways we've made our first batch of omelettes and I enjoyed 2 of them last night, may have more for work dinner. Time to eat them up!

We usually go morel hunting, but with two little ones we didn't get out this year.  I like them stupidly simple, sliced in half and fried in salted butter & garlic.

[Cas Stark]

Spiders are beneficial to the environment and you should probably do your best not to kill them. 

[Cas Stark]

2 minutes ago, Michael Elway said:

I will try, but the 'silly' thing was all a bustling. I think I got a death stare. All I thought was, "My life is being taken right this minute." 

I was pathologically afraid of spiders as a child and young adult, to the point I could not get close enough to kill them so I would throw a book at the wall.   But, I trained myself to get over it.  Now, when I find a spider too large to be tolerated inside the house I catch and release it outside, small ones, I just ignore.   

[Elder Sister]

So, I just ran in here to gripe.  We got 13 inches of rain in the last seven days, and my lovely dahlias that I have babied, prayed over, sacrificed small animals to...well, they're not doing so great.  I am SICK.  

Between all the rain and the f@#%#$ Japanese beetles, I am ready to get one of those giant hot air balloon guys and call that a garden.

So how's your garden doing?