Adventures In Gardening
2006
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july 23, 2006 Good news from the garden today. I supported and tied all the tomato plants thanks to a makeshift structure Rick made for me from some wooden broom handles we found in the basement. There must be 50 green tomatoes in there. Some of them are huge. I hope that nothing happens to them before at least some of them can ripen and be eaten.
This triumph prompted me to plant the hydrangea that the girls got me for Mother's Day and I subsequently killed. Maybe its brown remains will spawn a new green hydrangea bush. Hey, it could happen! July 13, 2006
The strawberry patch was overrun by weeds thanks to soaking rains and me going away for a week. It was a tough and buggy job weeding the patch, but when it was done we saw that the amount of runners was amazing. I don't know if the weeds triggered the plants or if the rain did, or if it was just time, but the 20 original plants have spawned numerous new little plants. This week I planted a row of lettuce. I'm hoping it will be somewhat shaded by the tomatoes and the green beans going next to it, since lettuce apparently Faith's volunteer sunflowers are huge, towering over and shading the rosebushes. At least two of the plants have flower buds, high over our heads. June 7, 2006 Slow and steady may win the race, but it's not going to get us fresh veggies this summer. I'm very disappointed that I still have not planted any of my vegetables from seed. It's taken me this long to get six of my nine tomato plants into the ground.
The strawberries in the box have put out runner after runner and have filled the box with all-new plants, but the plants in the patch remain rather small and I don't think there has been even one runner. I'm not sure if I should just wait on them or what. In fact I'm just not sure what to do. I don't know that I'll be motivated to keep the patch weeded if there is not going to be a reward of strawberries until next spring. In fact, as you can see in the picture, I already let it get rather overgrown and am having to work backwards. May 18, 2006 I haven't kept up with this diary so far this season, but to be honest I haven't done a whole lot of planting yet either. Most of it will be coming in the next few weeks. For now, here is the recap:
March 26, 2006
The strawberry plants are still in the refrigerator. I REALLY need to draw up a garden layout so I can get them in the ground. march 23, 2006 Technically I should have gotten started by now with my garden, but a cold spell came back (it actually snowed two days ago) and has put me off. I'm hoping to get a garden layout drawn up by this weekend and buckle down and get some planting done. We have a bunch of landscaping plants coming in, too, to make matters even more complicated. On Sunday, March 19, I planted, in teeny pots indoors, 25 pansy seeds and 10 tomato seeds. Decided to go with 10 tomato plants this year instead of last years overkill of 25. If I can get five truly good mature fruit-bearing plants out of it, it will be perfectly enough for us. I made up a planting schedule in Excel and according to it I should really have my lettuce in the ground already. Lettuce likes cold weather. But I haven't tilled or turned over a single shovelful of dirt yet. Also, Burpee delivered my strawberry plants over a week ago and they are still in my refrigerator, way in the back where they are hopefully lying dormant until I get them in the ground.
January 1, 2006 Got my Burpee seeds catalog and here's the list of what I want to try growing this year (including the things I liked from last year):
That's not at all ambitious, is it? Visit last year's gardening experience at Gardening 2005! |
Over in the side flower garden, good things are happening. We have two blooming sunflowers, and the other two stalks have buds. The yellow rosebush has two new buds on it, and the white rosebush has its first bud. And... patience paid off! All along, we have thought the pink rosebush was dead. It was brown, and nothing grew on it, all the way up to the last time I checked, only maybe two weeks ago. Now... new growth!! New leaves, green leaves growing out of two of the old brown stalks. I can't believe it came back, especially after all this time being shielded from the sun by the four sunflowers.
Despite my neglect the garden is doing all right. The nine tomato plants I put in the ground are beautiful -- lush and bushy and loaded with green tomatoes. I need to get them staked, though, before all the tomatoes rot on the ground.
prefers cooler weather. We killed the lettuce in the container on the back porch.
I surrounded each plant with mulch, and then was annoyed to come out one morning and find one plant completely buried beneath the mulch. I wasn't sure how that had happened, but I went to dig it out, and along with the tomato plant I found a fat cat turd. Now I'm a cat lover, but if I catch one of the neighborhood felines using my garden as a litter box, there will be trouble.
Three out of the four rosebushes are finally starting to show a lot of new growth. I'm afraid the fourth is dead, but I'm reluctant to pronounce it just yet. Also sharing the bed with the roses are four volunteer sunflowers, and FIVE volunteer tomato plants! The tomato plants are much smaller than the ones I grew from seed, but I'm very impressed with their hardiness.
The strawberry harvest is pretty much over. Although it was fun and tasty picking and eating our own strawberries, we really didn't get a whole lot. I'd say we got 2 pints at the most. In addition, at least 2 cups were eaten by birds (or the dog -- I caught him in the strawberry patch on more than one occasion).
Strawberries -- Burpee sent 25 strawberry plants, and we planted them around the third of April: 20 in a plot by the south fence, and five in a container that sits by the back porch. Surprisingly, the five in the container have thrived the most. We have strawberries reddening as I type. The ones in the plot are not doing badly at all, they are just not as lush as the ones in the container. What I don't know is if I need to be worried about birds eating the strawberries.
My seedlings are coming right along. The salad greens are already well above the rims of their cups. I'm not sure whether to replant them, only to pick them in another week or two, or just leave them to crowd in there.
Some of the tomatoes have sprouted and some of the pansies; interestingly, the ones furthest from the window were the first to come up in both cases. I don't know if it's something about the light or something about the climate. At night and occasionally during the day if it's cloudy, I will set one of the seedling trays on the top of the stove to warm the soil. 
The freesia I planted last summer that grew halfheartedly and really did nothing surprised me by coming up early in March, all on its own. Shouldn't I have dug out the bulbs and then replanted them at some point or something? I didn't know, but now it does appear that all but one of my bulbs have sprouted of their own accord. Maybe I'll get more than one flower this year!
A nursery whose name I have forgotten shipped me 12 blue hydrangea bushes. I had planned to put these in front of the white privacy fence that we still don't have up. Now I'm not sure whether to go ahead and plant them where I think they should go, or change my plans and find another place to put them.
