2009 Gardening Thread

The latest in a long line of threads about gardening.
2005 Gardening Thread
2006 Gardening Thread
2007 Gardening Thread
2008 Gardening Thread

Our garden is shaping up very nicely after some major work by Mrs.T last year.

My rolling photos from this year's garden collection. Should have a new batch up later today.

Wanna get stuck into our patio with a pickaxe this year, rip out some of the nasty old paving slabs and smash down into the concrete a bit. Planning on building a couple of raised beds with reclaimed timber. Already have long raised beds down two sides, but want to add more in front of these at different heights to give the planting a bit of depth. At the moment all the plants just look a bit like they're all lined up waiting to be shot or something. Have got about a bazillion different pots with things in too, really need to set them free into good proper soil. Great time of year this though, almost every day something new has started to flower.

Our back yard was torn up pretty thoroughly by the tree that came down and the equipment of the tree removal service. I'm seriously thinking of defoliating the whole thing this year and starting from scratch.

http://www.rainyside.com/images/herbs/AnthriscusRavensWing051105_3.jpg

^^^ this stuff is really looking good at the minute. It's basically a black cow parsley, so it's a posh version of a superabundant weed. We've got it with forget-me-nots, cowslips & aquilegia, love the contrasts you get from the black foliage and the insects seem to like it too.

WmC - ouch, that's bad luck, but also a blank slate is pretty exciting.

This is my favourite plant in the garden at the moment.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3600/3491358444_2fd48ae96d.jpg
I think it's a type of Euphorbia.

Wow! Yes, Euphorbia. Where do you live, Ned? That looks...not in my USDA Hardiness Zone.

Leicestershire in the middle of middle England. It does look a bit out of place in the rain and the snow but it looks fabulous in the sunshine.

In a Hardiness Zone 8 I discover..

It looks nice next to our big old pointy plant (that's a translation from the Latin).
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3308/3491389644_8b92c3c333.jpg

What you can;t see from these pics is that the reason they;re doing so well is that last year Mrs T (with some help from me and our lovely neighbours) embarked on a slash and burn campaign and felled a lot of overgrown shrubs and a couple of neglected trees on this border - letting the sun shine through. It's made a huge difference.

Nothing like cutting down a few trees. I have a very hard time doing it.

One of the worst offenders in our yard—a sickly sycamore that dropped leaves and twigs all season long—was finally 3/4 destroyed in a windstorm, so the final felling was a mercy-killing. Now the side yard is my favorite new planting area.

I am hoping for more storms like that. There's a white spruce that could go. We have four beautiful mature Norway spruce in the yard, we don't need a white spruce as well. We're all walled-in with evergreens on the south side of the house. Cutting down that one tree would...
never mind. Can't do it.

STORM, PLEASE.

Spent Mother's Day in the yard. IN A TEE-SHIRT!!!!!!
Planted various treasures in the shade garden, fidgeted, transplanted and fine-tuned in the sunny bed and then worked on my path-through-the(tiny bit of)woods.
A good day.

Me, I was digging out couch grass on the allotment BARE-CHESTED. You've gotta get pugilistic with that stuff, it'll kick your arse otherwise. How big's your garden Beth? It sounds like it's OMG HUEG!

There are beds around three sides of the (small) house, then a sunny bed behind and a shady bed to the side. Just manageable. I had more beds that I returned to lawn in one case and let the compost dump swallow in the other case. I was overextended. It's a three-acre lot, and along one side is a patch of woods. Their scraggly woods, not too many big trees, but lots of high-bush blueberry. I love it in there. Last year I made a path through it. I worked on it in the evenings, crawling along pulling up encroaching prickers & ripping out poison ivy w/ my bare hands (I'm not very reactive), moving my glass of wine along with me as I went.

Yesterday was the first time I ventured onto the path this spring—I've been preoccupied by the flowerbeds. I was afraid it would be totally overgrown, but it was in good shape!

Couch grass! I call it witch grass. UGH! Those white rhizomes with their needle-sharp leading tip! I HATE IT!!!!! It gets all into the Siberian Iris in my mother's garden. There's nothing you can do. I just pull it up where I can, forget the clumps. One year I dug up all the iris clumps, hosed the soil out of the root masses and picked all the witchgrass rhizomes out of them. IT RETURNED. It's in the surrounding lawn, and shoots through the cultivated garden loam in no time. I'd have to weed her garden every week.

they're scraggly woods. Sheesh.

Woods with blueberries sounds great. Have been reading a few books on forest gardening/edible landscapes, would love to have somewhere to experiment with that sort of concept.

Couch grass in invading my veg plot from three sides, I need to think of some sort of strategy to defeat it. Was just going to keep on top of it and every four years or so it would get dug out properly when potatoes come round in the rotation, but it's just far too rampant for that. Will probably have to dig a trench round the whole area, then put some sort of DIY membrane in - old plastic compost sacks or something. Actually, along the short side I was going to experiment with using ground cover planting to thwart it. Do you think that geraniums would do the trick?

xp
Wow, 3 acres - in England that's virtually an estate.

Pretty damn good here, too. It's the minimum lot-size in Chilmark. Snob Zoning.

The woodlot was zoned as a wetland (it's not, really) and no structures can be built on it, so the owner let us have it for super cheap. If it had been buildable land we could never have afforded it. At the time my sister-in-law and her family had been living in a small guest house on the property. The woodlot purchase gave us 6 acres so we were able to subdivide—we each got clear title to our own 3-acre piece and they were able to build a bigger house.

The original lot cost my in-laws $1000 in 1957, cheap because it abuts a Girl Scout camp. The house itself was given to them and moved from another property where there was no water.

This is how the dregs of society are able to dwell amongst the swells.

More photos up. Newer ones always appearing towards the end of the set.

Ah, California! I envy you your society garlic. What a beautiful rose companion. Pink and silver!

It's definitely the perfect accompaniment.

Yes. It's such a white-silver. Artemisias and silver santolina are lovely, too, and we can grow them (and a host of silvery things), but you always want what you can't have. Or can have...in a greenhouse.

Cor, I envy Ned's light and warmth. Cool and dank here at the moment, with a gusty wind flattening anything that dares throw up a flowering stalk. That's a pretty little plot BTW Ned.

Thanks!

All I think about is plants. Plants, and my disgruntlement with a couple of my tightwad clients ("Oh! The TERRIBLE economy! I can only have you for one hour a week, but please, let's have the garden be just as glorious.")

Okay, I'll stop doing all the unnecessary work that was padding your bills.

I got my 2 indoor self-watering boxes filled with 4 cu. ft of potting soil today (it's also all over the floor and the cats are v. excited about it) and planted 3 tomato and 4 basil seedlings. Then I repotted a 9-year-old ficus and started scouring Craigslist for places with small yards/gardens/mature fruit trees, even though our lease isn't up for more than a year.

But you have the most awesome apartment in Seattle.

Mr. Jaq mentioned that when he caught me looking at CL and pointed me at Urban Garden Share.

Yeah I think he has a point. I'd give up my left pinkie and shave my tongue to live where you do.

Veggie garden in! All in various size pots, like a rooftop terrace garden. I can't wait to post pictures of the Abbondanza!

My wife and I are, historically speaking, TERRIBLE gardeners. But we bought this house two years ago, and it's got so much yard space and some plots already dug out. Long-term, we're planning on doing some interesting stuff at the end of our driveway, where we've got an area that's 4.5' x 27.5'. We also have a plot out front that's roughly L-shaped, about 187 sq. ft. total, that we really might need a pro landscaper to help us design and fill in.

For now, we've started with a 4' x 15' plot against our garage. We dug it out, edged it with some nice brick, filled it to about 6" with soil, covered in red cypress mulch, and put in some vegetable plants from a local garden center. Did it all over this weekend, with two very intensive days of yardwork. We've got four different kinds of tomatoes and three different types of peppers. Pics in one of my Flickr sets: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pdennison/sets/72157619750080676/

I suspect that you're a right-brain dominant person given the exactitude of your garden measurements. Why not run with that and plant in clean geometric blocks? Go formal.

I just visited a very formal garden here on the Vineyard. Between the very lush lawn and the big shaggy foundation shrubs there was a 12-18" perfectly clipped boxwood hedge, outlining the bed. And big urns lining the parking area. I was making a delivery for the nursery where I work. My own garden is a barely-tamed jungle, but I do love a formal garden. Or touches of formality within a more organic garden, like some tight-ass clipped topiary amidst the billowing perennials.

I saw one garden in Garden Design mag that was just a grid of evenly-spaced blue fescue grass tufts planted in gray peastone. Total industrial chic.

I can't wait to post pictures of the Abbondanza

I just googled to see what sort of a plant that was :(

Should take some pictures of my vegetable plot, if only as a reminder of what was grown where. Pretty busy there at the moment, mostly just picking stuff - lots of broad beans (fava beans?), mange tout, lettuces, new potatoes, spinach, chard, rocket, baby carrots... Got a bit of a glut of strawberries - have been taking home a big tub of the things every night for the past week (not the worst crisis to have really though I guess). Loads of redcurrants too, they're a bit of a faff to pick, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them exactly. Oh, and I've got about a hundred fresh bulbs of garlic stinking out the junk room too. Anyhow, good luck with yours Beth!

Oh, and good luck with your veggies too there Pancakes! Still haven't out my peppers and tomatoes, still cluttering up our bedroom with those (my wife is oddly tolerant of this).

one of three cayenne plants (other two are in-ground):
http://i40.tinypic.com/jq41mo.jpg

one of two 'Royesta' tomato plants:
http://i42.tinypic.com/dm78fb.jpg

wider view of tomatoes and cayennes:
http://i40.tinypic.com/291nv4y.jpg

crookneck and zuc:
http://i41.tinypic.com/2628huw.jpg
http://i43.tinypic.com/28h0ft0.jpg

discarded cactus i found and potted:
http://i43.tinypic.com/slr8g3.jpg

new japanese maple sprouts i potted yesterday:
http://i39.tinypic.com/2s693kk.jpg

other ferns, jap maples, mosses and misc stuff I've got going on:
http://i42.tinypic.com/x39t9k.jpg

I love your nursery!
It's hard to weed out those Japanese maple seedlings, isn't it!

Esp. the red ones!

Wow, I wish we could grow tomatoes that looked even half as healthy and robust as that here.

thanks! They'd have been easier to find if I'd gotten to them when they were still red. the parent tree is surrounded by liriope..

Oh, yay! I can actually contribute to this thread this year!
I normally just do herbs -- rosemary, basil, sage, oregano, & cilantro. Easy stuff!

This year, I'm sharing a little space with a friend. We are beginners, so we are maybe a little too excited about things. First time for tomatoes & peppers.

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y21/amdraheim/P1060810.jpg
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y21/amdraheim/P1060805.jpg
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y21/amdraheim/P1060821.jpg

Lovely fruits of the earth, all of you! I just put some herbs in on my fire escape, all I can manage this year (and very late) but I spent yesterday eve in someone's nice Brooklyn backyard garden. They have hot peppers, lettuces, all manner of squashes & zuch & cukes, plus upside-down tomato plants and CORN and much more right in their backyard.

Round about 8pm it got cold, so the man of the house dug a hole in the middle of the formal garden arrangement and built a FIREPIT in it, on the spot. How much did I want a back garden THEN?? So, so much.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v472/birdnestsoup/2009_0623sissinghurst0212-1.jpg

Our patio at the back of the house at the moment. Got about a billion pots and tubs that look terrible and dry out ever so quickly in the warm weather. Need to build a couple of raised beds and get everything in the ground, think things would be a lot happier then.

Our little apple tree looks so tragic in that photo, such weak bare branches and hasn't fruited at all this year. Dunno if we can put this right by pruning or maybe we're just stuck with it. Or maybe it's having a rest this year after last years huge effort (3 whole apples, woot!). Anyone know? It's on a semi-dwarf rootstock and is in about an 18" pot. It's pathetic really, I'd chop it down, but it's not even worth it for the firewood.

Is it getting enough sun? We moved ours from a shady bit to a sunny bit and it looks much healthier this year. Some apple trees really need to establish themselves so it not be happy in the pot.

The whole patio looks great though.

This old sage bush has gone crazy this year. What can I do with all this sage?
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3586/3633170855_9db50cb186.jpg
Also you can see on the table on the left (which gives you some idea of how big the sage bush is) the opium crop is coming in nicely.

Beautiful! Don't do anything with it. Consider it an ornamental.

Isn't it? It doesn't usually flower this much, the bees love it. I guess I'll just keep taking a leave here or or there for culinary purposes.

Is it getting enough sun?

You might be onto something there. It is in the sunniest spot, but we have a north-facing garden and it's shaded on the west side by the honeysuckle on the trellis. You can see it's stretching out a feeble limb to the light. Might take it up the allotment and it'll have to take it's chances out in the wilderness... school of hard-knocks etc.

Your sage looks like ours, never seen it flower so much as this year. And I dunno what to do with ours either, I just leave it for the bees. Yours is about 10x the size though, you big show-off.

you could try to duplicate this incredibly delicious soup:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51pbJDLsU1L._SL500_AA280_PIbundle-12,TopRight,0,0_AA280_SH20_.jpg

take it up the allotment

(haha - looks a bit rude taken out of context like that)

ANYWAY, yes, do this - when we had one, this was our default solution to plant problems. Usually worked. You have to be choose the right time to move it though - my brother - a gardener by trade - says they don't like moving, and with them in full swing at the moment (even if it is a pathetically small full swing) you need to wait from them to be totally dormant - so you may be trying to dig a hole for it in October/November. And, of course, once you've moved it, it probably won't do much next year. Give it time (as Bob Flowerdew no doubt says)

My tomatoes are happy happy in these 95-degree days, except maybe the Yellow Pear variety in a pot. Fruit on all six varieties, just waiting for payday.

So, a step up from photos of the garden I work in -- a video tour. Enjoy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El41Hpbv6B8

My garden is ripe with green pea-ness:

http://photos-e.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs102.snc1/4882_97988861595_681036595_2514508_7966338_n.jpg

Sigh, this thread is making me miss summer.

I considered trying my hand at winter vegetable growing, but we have a serious possum problem around our street. I had some robust and bountiful cherry tomato plants last summer that shot up while I was away in perth, and 2 days after I came back and proudly noted all the ripening tomatoes, they were ALL GONE - eaten. :( Need to work out poss-prevention stratgeies. Also how best to obtain supplies of pots, potting soil, wire mesh, tools etc when I dont have a car or drive. Booh.

Ned taking it to another level!
Amazing use of space. You've got so much stuff in your plot - and still got somewhere to sit (and think).

Tempted to do my own tour but my whiney/nasal/essex/midlands accent would be offputting.

Thanks!

You've got so much stuff in your plot - and still got somewhere to sit (and think).

That was very intentional -- when we were first putting ideas together for the spot I insisted we had to have that, just so we could relax as desired.

Just watched yer video Ned, such a tidy and well-tended little plot. Awesome tomato patch too! Trying to figure out what pests you're trying to deter with the cages on your squashes etc. It's mostly the slugs that get mine, so I have to build little walls of grit to keep them back, but it's obv. not those lovable gastropod dudes you're dealing with there.

Squirrels have been a problem here and there, also birds but obv. that's well past the seed stage...

Oh those buggers! Yeah, not a lot you can do about those really.

Also how best to obtain supplies of pots, potting soil, wire mesh, tools etc when I dont have a car or drive. Booh.

Trayce, I get lots of that stuff online. Not bags of soil and stuff, but you can certainly get even that heavy stuff delivered from mail order folks here. Worth looking into?

Oh too much 'stuff' in that post.

Our crazy allotment plot - this is the top half, goes all the way up to that fence at the top...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v472/birdnestsoup/2009_0627Allotment0240.jpg

...and this is the bottom half, the even scruffier wild bit...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v472/birdnestsoup/2009_0627Allotment0235.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v472/birdnestsoup/2009_0627Allotment0271.jpg

Lots of companion 'planting', basically we keep the weeds we like and are merciless towards the more unruly ones. We do like borage though.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v472/birdnestsoup/2009_0707BekkasBirthday0032.jpg

Dinner for the next few nights - mange tout, swiss chard, lettuce, Anja salad potatoes, carrots and onions and heaps of jammy blackcurrants.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2009/07/04/city_gardening/

How does your city garden grow?

Seed sales are way up, and raising your own food is all the rage. It's a good time to be an urban farmer

By Amy Benfer

Thanks for the link. Definitely a huge trend in the UK too, guess I'm part of it.

The downside of urban gardening is that if you don’t test your soil, you might be growing your very own backyard poison apples (or snap peas, or collard greens or carrots), which sort of defeats the point

This bit does worry me a bit. Our site has been allotment gardens for many years and it is well away from any major roads, but the amount of rubbish that we dig up is unbelievable. Lots of imported hardcore has been buried to make banked terraces on the hillside and other tenants do stuff like burning all their old house furniture and tv sets onsite. God knows what we're really ingesting, not sure how we'd find out either, other than y'know, POOP ANALYSIS.

Three varieties of cherry tomatoes are starting to come in, and the big ones should start to ripen next week. Potted basil and thyme are pretty much all else I've got this year, but have big plans for next year. My parents leave for three weeks in Idaho tomorrow, so I'll be making regular runs over to their garden for blueberries, cucumbers and tomatoes.

i don't have a garden, but i do have a leaf miner on my gerber daisy. help!

We're about to move house (4 doors down! chortle) and the new place has a bit bigger a courtyard than the old, so I'm really going to dedicate myself to the garden even from late winter onwards (I have some fledgling spinach to plant out at the moment). I aim to get to the point where I can actually supplement my food supply with my own grown things (herbs aside, which I've always done).

What are good for pot/courtyard gardens for veg? Mini tomato varities sure. Chillis? Capsiscums? Is it worth bothring with any root veg such as carrots or potatoes at all?

Trayce, you should be able to grow most things in containers or small raised beds as long as they're in a sheltered spot that gets plenty of sun. Did a bit of that before we got our veg plot to verying degrees of success. Just make sure that if you're using tubs, you don't get ones that are too small, as they'll dry out too quickly, and I'd probably go for plastic ones too, for the same reason (plus they're lighter to move).

Spuds are fairly straight forward in big buckets or even large plastic sacks, and if you stick to baby carrots or round ones like 'Parmex' you'll be fine there as well. They're pretty cheap to buy though, so if you're stuck for space, concentrate on stuff that's either expensive or hard to find fresh in the shops. Soft fruit is definitely a winner there.

Good luck with your move!

verying varying

I have harvested some killer radishes from my window-boxes. Arugula did not fare as well. I think the lack of sun is more to blame than the window box, though. Lettuce is booming. Homegrown lettuce is so tender! I think certain varieties are too delicate for commerce.

The basil is flourishing, and there is a single flower on one of the 3 tomato plants. I'm not especially hopeful that it will actually set fruit though:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2447/3758399564_47deed92d4.jpg http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2615/3758409092_3725ef9c32.jpg

So pretty!
Indoor Northwest tomatoes might require serious blossom-booster.

My tomatoes are ripening later this year, which is great for me schedule-wise -- I should be through with a heavy work deadline before the deluge. In the meantime I'm getting plenty from my parents' garden while they're in Idaho, including 2-3 gallons of blueberries over the last couple of weeks.

I made two double-batches of pesto last night, and still have enough basil for at least two more.

What nut do you use in your pesto?

Pine nuts. Last night I toasted them for one batch and left them raw for the other.

Mmm. Traditional. Mr BP reminisces fondly over his late sister-in-law's pesto w/ macadamias (and she was Italian, from Italy!). Tropical nuts have the unhealthy oils, though.

I had some pecan/walnut pesto on a caprese sandwich last week - not bad. Macadamia pesto sounds amazing.

Now I'm going to have to try it with toasted pecans. Glad we have a bunch in the freezer.

squirrels are literally eating half of my tomatoes. i predict 85% chance of sling-shots and pinto beans.

I've been continually frustrated at my tomatoes since I started growing them the last few years -- I can grow the hell out of tomato vines, but I just don't get the quantity or size of fruit that my dad gets. I was over at his garden a few weeks ago pondering this and suddenly realized that he prunes the hell out of the leaves on his vines, and I think that must be one of the keys. Less greenery = more energy, nutrients, water go into the fruit. So I've started popping off more leaf branches, not just the suckers that grow in the crooks, and it seems to be helping.

too much nitrogen, maybe? i barely prune at all, mostly let things run amok, with pretty good results. lots of sun, plenty of water, good soil, and i just sprinkle some 10-10-10 every few weeks.

Could be...I definitely need to test pH here and there in the back yard, especially since we had five yards of extremely poor soil dumped back here to fill in the holes and ruts after the tree fell in the back.

I devised a canopy system of tie-ups for one of my tomatoes (a cherry tomato that runs on much longer vines than other tomatoes) this morning that is frankly genius, using some scrap wire that the electrician left behind when he worked on our carport. The vines will sort of fountain up and out, rather than have to be held close to the central stake.

Supposedly a slew of the heirloom tomatoes are now good to go, so I'll be seeing about them on Tuesday...

I was out this evening mapping out the back yard for Gardening 2010, and pricing tillers online this morning. Raised beds, trees, flower beds edged with the bricks that used to be our chimneys, and a long trellis of 4" hogwire along the eastern fence. I'll run sweet peas early in the spring, which should be finished at just about the right time to tear 'em up and put in the tomato seedlings. It'll be interesting to run tomatoes on trellises instead of stakes.

Yeah next year I've GOT to remember that these puny consumer-grade tomato cages are not up to the task of supporting my industrial-strength plants.

Two years ago I hit on the bright idea of using 3/4" galvanized electrical conduit. Two bucks for a 10' length and they'll last for decades.

Posted this on ILCooking...after a few days of not messing with the tomatoes, I went out and picked today -- 25 lbs.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/WilliamCrump63/tomatoes090509.jpg

I'm saving tomato seeds this year instead of buying new ones next February...risking cross-pollenation, but I'm doing it anyway. I'm going to have hundreds more than I need of all 3 varieties that I save, if anyone wants any. Already done the fermentation on the Matt's Wild Cherry, and they'll be drying for the next week or so.

Damn, great stuff. :-)

Most recent video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nNqusKjvy4

Woodchucks ate my pumpkins. :( It could have been rabbits instead of woodchucks, but I think the local woodchucks are more likely supects because they're such fat bastards. I'm guilty of profiling, yes.

Sucks. :-/ We lost a melon or two to nibbling creatures, probably squirrels.

I never knew ILX was so into gardening. I love the hidden corners here you stumble upon sometimes.

But anyway, we just moved to a new flat, which has a garden that until recently was a building site, and is now just earth ... well clay, really, mixed with sand, rubble and concrete. Then there is a concrete base at the far end that used to house a garage. I was quite looking forward to doing a garden from scratch, but I am now daunted and panicky. We also have zero money.

We need to lay a lawn. I'd like a small paved area, but realistically can't even afford the paving stones at the minute, so will leave that till next year.

So tips/suggestions/resources? Tell me about topsoil and grass seed.

It's 10m long, 7m wide, in North London. This whole "facing" thing confuses me, but the back of the house points north-north-west. We're on the end of a terrace, so it's quite open. There's a 45cm slope down to the back of the house and it also slopes right to left, although I haven't measured that. There's a new 1.8m-high panel fence on two sides, and the only surviving plants are a huge old rose, a yellow pyracantha and some brambles.

Start a compost pile or worm bin. It takes awhile (faster with a worm bin), but compost is a great, inexpensive soil amendment.

Yay new video from this morning's work:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-auU_AYY5pk

Have spent the last few weeks:
-- tilling up most of my back yard (thanks, neighbor-with-a-tiller)
-- levelling it all (by shovel and wheelbarrow, oh my achin' back);
-- building a raised bed with looser/fluffier/sandier soil for carrots, radishes and onions next year), and
-- prepping an area for a brick walkway using the remains of the chimneys we removed when we had our house reroofed in May. Will probably start setting the brick tomorrow.

I have a lot more garden area tilled up than I have specific plans for. I need to see if there's anywhere that would lend itself to an asparagus bed.