Planning and planting a garden

[pocomom]

So who is planning and who is planting their garden?

I've started my tomatoes and peppers indoors, and am putting some hardy spinach, carrots and peas in today. Normally can't plant much before mothers day due to frost here, but we are going for it this year.
What are you growing this year?

 

[lynxstch]

I've given the garden it's first tilling, spread some lime and fertilizer, waiting for the storms we are supposed to get this week. Then I will till it again next week and plant it the week after. I have 40 tomato plants started indoors, along with some rosemary (first time trying it from seed). The only other things we plant will be cukes and squash and those will go in the garden as seeds.

 

[The Mystery Machine]

No veggies this yr., except I will probably plant a cherry tomato plant somewhere.

I am landscaping my sister's front yard and have bought so far and planted...

Annuals which include nicotiana, annual cosmos, & large lemon yellow marigolds.

Tropicals, mandavilla (the deep blood red color), elephant ear, & calla lily.

Perennials & bulbs, a variety of sedums, coreopsis, joe pye eye weed, day lilies, shasta daisies, daffodils, tulips, candytuft, creeping phlox (a larger leaf variety which is prettier that the reg. creeping phlox), & a native Missouri Echinacea.

I am starting on my yard this week, we are trying to sell our house so I have been gone for 2ish months.

Scored some VERY large red geraniums for my pots on the deck @ 15.00 each at the flea market.

Also got a "hanging basket" gardenia @ $15.00. It was a good buy and that is going on the patio in another pot.

I am probably going to blitz both my yard and my sister's yard with a lot of lantana since it is going to be a very HOT summer here.

I will be buying more perennials for both yards as well.

 

[ronandannette]

We've had an astonishingly mild winter and I'm itching to get bedding plants in but we're in Hardiness Zone 3 and to plant before the May long weekend is a death-wish.

 

[cabanafrau]

No veggies this yr.

I am landscaping my sister's front yard and have bought so far and planted...

Annuals which include nicotiana, annual cosmos, & large lemon yellow marigolds.

Tropicals, mandavilla (the deep blood red color), elephant ear, & calla lily.

Perennials & bulbs, a variety of sedums, coreopsis, joe pye eye weed, day lilies, shasta daisies, daffodils, tulips, candytuft, creeping phlox (a larger leaf variety which is prettier that the reg. creeping phlox), & a native Missouri Echinacea.

I am starting on my yard this week, we are trying to sell our house so I have been gone for 2ish months.

Scored some VERY large red geraniums for my pots on the deck @ 15.00 each at the flea market.

Also got a "hanging basket" gardenia @ $15.00. It was a good buy and that is going on the patio in another pot.

I am probably going to blitz both my yard and my sister's yard with a lot of lantana since it is going to be a very HOT summer here.

I will be buying more perennials for both yards as well.

I would so love to see photos as the season progresses and your work starts blooming. I make some very basic efforts to have a continuous show of blooms going once the season starts, but my talents are limited at best.

 

[The Mystery Machine]

I would so love to see photos as the season progresses and your work starts blooming. I make some very basic efforts to have a continuous show of blooms going once the season starts, but my talents are limited at best.

Sure. I should have taken a pic of her yard, now that you mention it. She is 40 mins. away and I told her that she has to water the annuals I put in yesterday, lol.

I will get her to take a pic and send it to me. That way I can check up on her if she watered...ha.

 

[cabanafrau]

Sure. I should have taken a pic of her yard, now that you mention it. She is 40 mins. away and I told her that she has to water the annuals I put in yesterday, lol.

I will get her to take a pic and send it to me. That way I can check up on her if she watered...ha.

I would be eating my insides out with anxiety if I had to take on that responsibility for someone who actually knew what they were doing. My efforts are generally best with hearty perennials who can survive my best efforts of "tending" them and my questionable choices on where to plant things.

DH has been providing a lot of assistance the past couple years when I need plants moved because they're overcrowded or in the wrong spot since I'm having some back problems. I asked him this weekend if he knew what was coming up on one side of our porch where I had him remove a conquering horde of black eyed Susans. He looked at me as if I had lost it and told me he has no idea, just whatever I told him to move over there. We'll wait and see what develops. Right now I think it may be some phlox that were getting crowded out elsewhere, but if not I have no clue at this point.

 

[minnie mum]

Sigh. The best laid plans, yada, yada. We can't plant annuals for at least another month, but I can split and move some of my perennials now. I had DH strip the sod and turn over soil for a new bed along the north side of the house. The plan was to fill it with all the splits from my hostas. Today? ITS SNOWING!!!! GAH!

 

[VandVsmama]

Here in Arizona, we are soon going to go into our dormant season. When it gets really hot, most of the local plants tend to hibernate. Even the cacti stop growing & they're just in survival mode. A couple of months ago, I planted 3 small new pincushion-type cacti in my front yard...those should live just fine in their new home since they're under the shade of a palo verde tree. And I have a bunch of pentsemons which have reseeded themselves all over the front yard, so I'm focusing on keeping them alive over the summer (which amounts to watering by hand 1x/week).

 

[MIGrandma]

We stopped having a vegetable garden a few years ago, with just the two of us here we don't need it like we did when the kids were at home. And the last couple years we did have one the tomatoes and cucumbers and zucchini all had blight. So we decided to switch it over to a perennial flower garden, this will be the 4th or 5th year for it. I've been enjoying seeing everything coming back to life. I've got several different kinds of perennials including brown eyed Susan, bee balm, butterfly bushes, hostas, milkweed, shasta and banana daisies, cat mint, salvia, lavender, sage, coreopsis, hibiscus, and several others I can't even think of. We have a winding path going down the middle of the garden, with a wooden arbor at the beginning (with clematis on either side of it) and a decorative wire fence-like thing at the other end for the morning glories (plant those annually). Most of the garden is covered in black mulch, with red mulch in the pathway. The pathway is lined in brick, and the whole garden has brick all the way around as edging. I have several decorative things out there too like a gazing ball, garden gnome, shepherd's hooks with windchimes and bird feeders, etc.

The only things I'm doing to the garden this year is to pull up one of the two chive plants as I'm tired of all the volunteer chives popping up. We do have landscape fabric covering as much of the garden as possible but those little seeds still find their way into the smallest spaces that don't have fabric. I also want to refresh both the black mulch and red mulch. And maybe add 2-3 new plants sometime, if I find something on sale at Menard's or Home Depot that I'd like to add to the garden. I love finding inexpensive plants at the end of the season that come back and really thrive the next year.

Oh, I do plant a whole row of Zenias on the north side of the garden too, and randomly put in some begonias as well. And right now I have daffodils, muscari and some other spring flowers blooming.

I would really love a "she shed" at the end of the pathway, about 10'x10' with a porch on the front. Have a couple rockers on the porch, and then inside have a couple nice comfy chairs on one side and then a trundle bed set on the other. It would be a fun way to have a granddaughter sleepover. Or just a place to hang out, relax, read, nap. I think they are getting kind of popular, sort of like a man cave. I've been hearing more about them, and seeing them in magazines.

As for vegetables, we just buy what we want at the local farmer's market.

 

[Kogo Shuko]

I'm unable to grow much in my backyard aside from bleeding hearts and petunias. Our "yard" is a tiny fenced in square with overhanging pine trees that constantly drop needles. As such, the "yard" is patio stone. I tried growing vegetable last year after pulling out three stones, but all that happened was a giant throng of weeds grew up. This year I plan on revitalizing the soil and planting some wildflower seeds that I received from Honey Nut Cheerios for a #BringBackTheBees campaign.

In the front, I finally managed to get some perennials to take root in the equally acidic soil (I really hate the pine trees our condo corp. loves). I've got tulips, hyacinth (it's so happy it spread), day lilies, another bleeding heart. Sometime in May I'm going to find some more flowering tulips at the store and plant some more, since they seem to be happy.

 

[lynxstch]

We stopped having a vegetable garden a few years ago, with just the two of us here we don't need it like we did when the kids were at home. And the last couple years we did have one the tomatoes and cucumbers and zucchini all had blight. So we decided to switch it over to a perennial flower garden, this will be the 4th or 5th year for it. I've been enjoying seeing everything coming back to life. I've got several different kinds of perennials including brown eyed Susan, bee balm, butterfly bushes, hostas, milkweed, shasta and banana daisies, cat mint, salvia, lavender, sage, coreopsis, hibiscus, and several others I can't even think of. We have a winding path going down the middle of the garden, with a wooden arbor at the beginning (with clematis on either side of it) and a decorative wire fence-like thing at the other end for the morning glories (plant those annually). Most of the garden is covered in black mulch, with red mulch in the pathway. The pathway is lined in brick, and the whole garden has brick all the way around as edging. I have several decorative things out there too like a gazing ball, garden gnome, shepherd's hooks with windchimes and bird feeders, etc.


.

This begs to have some pics added, pretty please?

 

[GaSleepingBeautyFan]

I've been working on mine. Each year I add more perennials to the flower garden in back along with annuals for good color.

Then I've got a basic tomato and pepper vegetable garden - I seem to kill most other vegetables, I can't even get zucchini to stay alive. I'm putting together a trellis for the tomato plants this year to attempt to grow them up. Plus I'm hoping to cover the trellis this fall and see if I can't figure out a way to grow tomatoes most of the winter in that. The trellis is almost done.
I'm putting some herbs into pots on the deck this year to see how they grow and hoping to move them into the "trellis greenhouse" over the winter.
My husband just shakes his head over that idea. But I figure it's worth a try.

After that I need to head to the front yard for basic maintenance - vines to pull in the bushes, trim the bushes, weeds to pull out of the daylily flower bed and I may add some annuals to it since the daylilies don't bloom all summer - I'm not sure about that yet.
I normally put up a couple of hanging baskets on the front porch but since we are going to be traveling a few times this summer, I may skip it so I don't have to hire someone to water those every other day - I just need to hire someone to water the back gardens and the pots of herbs one time during the week we are gone.

 

[MIGrandma]

This begs to have some pics added, pretty please?

I'll try to find one that I can post. I know I have one on my phone, from last summer, but I don't know how I can copy it over to here.

 

[MIGrandma]

I've been working on mine. Each year I add more perennials to the flower garden in back along with annuals for good color.

Then I've got a basic tomato and pepper vegetable garden - I seem to kill most other vegetables, I can't even get zucchini to stay alive. I'm putting together a trellis for the tomato plants this year to attempt to grow them up. Plus I'm hoping to cover the trellis this fall and see if I can't figure out a way to grow tomatoes most of the winter in that. The trellis is almost done.
I'm putting some herbs into pots on the deck this year to see how they grow and hoping to move them into the "trellis greenhouse" over the winter.
My husband just shakes his head over that idea. But I figure it's worth a try.

After that I need to head to the front yard for basic maintenance - vines to pull in the bushes, trim the bushes, weeds to pull out of the daylily flower bed and I may add some annuals to it since the daylilies don't bloom all summer - I'm not sure about that yet.
I normally put up a couple of hanging baskets on the front porch but since we are going to be traveling a few times this summer, I may skip it so I don't have to hire someone to water those every other day - I just need to hire someone to water the back gardens and the pots of herbs one time during the week we are gone.

I bolded that one sentence, as that's the word I was looking for to describe my "decorative wire fence-like thingie"...a trellis!! Geez, I'm getting forgetful in my old age.

You mentioned hanging baskets and traveling....I used to have a few of those too, loved them here at the house, but then when we bought our summer place up north I would transport them in the back of my Blazer back and forth, as I didn't want to ask someone to water them here at the house for me. So taking them back and forth was the best way. But then I tended to sometimes bring spiders home with me, as up north they seemed to like hanging out in my hanging baskets. Then I worried I might transport a snake back home with me in the car...probably a bit irrational about that one...but I decided to give up my hanging baskets.

 

[The Mystery Machine]

I would be eating my insides out with anxiety if I had to take on that responsibility for someone who actually knew what they were doing. My efforts are generally best with hearty perennials who can survive my best efforts of "tending" them and my questionable choices on where to plant things.

DH has been providing a lot of assistance the past couple years when I need plants moved because they're overcrowded or in the wrong spot since I'm having some back problems. I asked him this weekend if he knew what was coming up on one side of our porch where I had him remove a conquering horde of black eyed Susans. He looked at me as if I had lost it and told me he has no idea, just whatever I told him to move over there. We'll wait and see what develops. Right now I think it may be some phlox that were getting crowded out elsewhere, but if not I have no clue at this point.

I just put a couple of things in yesterday, so it will be OK. I had been staying there for awhile so some of the other stuff has been established for a month. We are going to have rain (hopefully) starting tomorrow so I think the stuff will be fine.

I showed her how to water them as we found out last year she thought she was doing good by giving the leaves "a bath", lol.

So my PSA today is...For those out there reading never water leaves UNLESS they are ferns.

 

[Monykalyn]

Have 5 raised beds and have 3.5 of them planted. Don't have the tomatoes or peppers in yet. Or Corn. But have carrots, squash, beans, herbs, peas. lettuce, radishes in. Still have spinach growing from fall/winter-I cut it occasionally and give it to chickens. Looks like the fruit trees survived the frost after blooming out (all but peach tree-have plum, pear and apple).

And I should say I have my herbs in planters (except thyme, parsley, sage and cilantro)-and I caught a chicken up on my deck, on the cushion bin all stretched out pecking in one of my herb containers that I thought I had put up out of reach-so who knows if I will actually get any basil AGAIN this year LOL. Had to trade eggs last year for a gallon bag of basil

I much prefer "shopping" in my back yard vs grocery store. Now that beds are established and I can save seeds, and have rain barrels and compost pile it is inexpensive too-at least in money. Takes some time but worth it to us.

 

[AquamarineSteph]

We've tried massive gardening efforts in raised beds for years. We've decided that we just don't have the knack for growing things well; however, that hasn't completely stopped us. This year we have basil, parsley, dill, rosemary, thyme & chives (which came back from last year!), and then some tomato plants and pepper plants for a salsa garden. We'll have some extra space around that, and we're going to throw in some flower seeds and see what grows.

 

[The Mystery Machine]

We've tried massive gardening efforts in raised beds for years. We've decided that we just don't have the knack for growing things well; however, that hasn't completely stopped us. This year we have basil, parsley, dill, rosemary, thyme & chives (which came back from last year!), and then some tomato plants and pepper plants for a salsa garden. We'll have some extra space around that, and we're going to throw in some flower seeds and see what grows.

It is probably the soil. You do need a lot of compost for veggie gardening. It needs to be replenished yearly and also compost needs to be added when you plant.

The soil they sell in bags is just not that great. If you do bags to fill a raised bed, you have to do a "witches brew" as I call it, mixing in different things for organic matter, PH, and drainage.

If you get it by a truck load from a materials or nursery place, actually check out the soil and ask where it comes from. My local materials store which is 1 minute away uses the silty river soil which imo is just going too compact to much. Always get the "50/50", which is 50 soil, 50 compost.

Also, larger veggies need a lot of root space. Basically as a rule of thumb, you need to have the soil prepared in depth as the plant is tall at peak. I will see if I can find a link to root depth needed for each veggie.
http://eartheasy.com/raised-beds-soil-depth-requirements.html

 

[Monykalyn]

Good advice on getting a mix soil-we do 1/3 each of soil,compost,peat moss when we fill the beds. this year the soil is still loose so we mixed compost in.