…. aaaand it looks like none of you other gardeners do, either. Too busy to take pictures yesterday, and nothing but dying vines & neglected flowerbeds as subjects if I had.
Prove me wrong: What’s going on in your gardens, this week?
This post is in: Garden Chats, Open Threads
…. aaaand it looks like none of you other gardeners do, either. Too busy to take pictures yesterday, and nothing but dying vines & neglected flowerbeds as subjects if I had.
Prove me wrong: What’s going on in your gardens, this week?
Comments are closed.
stibbert
well I’ve got nuthin’ for gardening, I just can’t keep up against the thistles that infest our beds.
my fall project is to re-wire the 4 sidewalk-lamps. I’ve got a 100′ spool of 12/2 wire + grd ext, & must replace the failed wiring w/ above-ground connections that won’t get shorted-out when the rains come.
BillinGlendaleCA
@stibbert: A lighting project awaits me as well. I had lighting installed, however the landlord and his minions kept breaking it. I’ll wait until they finish with the yard(and it cools down) before attempting long term repairs.
My garden; it’s wilting in the 100 degree+ temps.
raven
Some flowers and plants.
raven
Not sure what this vine is but it’s growing all over stuff.
raven
Single flower.
raven
Green maters.
JPL
I have fall greens sprouting but it will still be a few weeks before they are ready to pick. It’s about time to dig up my sweet potatoes. The greens are so nice and healthy, I just hope the potatoes are good.
@stibbert: That sounds like a challenge. I had lights on my retaining wall in the back. When they stopped working, I decided to just take them out. In the six years that I have been here, I used them once. My lighting project today, is to change a light bulb.
JPL
@raven: I still have a few tomato plants. My oven has a setting for dehydrating so I might try drying the ripe ones.
Poopyman
The one car garage I use as a shop busted a garage door spring last week, and while trying to figure out how to fix it I nearly brained myself when I knocked an ax off the wall from above my head. As it was it took some skin off my bicept and then it crashed into the light switch box. So my lighting project is to replace the switch in the box that controls the outside lights.
Fuck that spring.
raven
@JPL: We’r still flush with butterbeans and she has enough ripe maters to keep her going for another week.
raven
@Poopyman: Be careful with those spring, they can kill ya.
munira
confronting the yellow jackets that have taken up residence in my compost bin, wondering what to do with the rest of the tomatoes, harvesting and shelling beans – crazy busy time of year.
Mustang Bobby
My re-potted orchid really likes being outside in the shade and the rain. It’s been outside for a month and it’s putting out roots and hasn’t died yet. My vanda is also putting out shoots, so it seems my curse has been lifted.
satby
Anne Laurie, I fully intended to send you some pics about seed saving, because that’s the stage my garden is, not sure if anyone would be interested though. But events of the last 2 days derailed that in the nicest way possible and I spent yesterday before and after work writing thank you notes to all the wonderful people who kicked in on my pet rescue fundraiser. Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude! No tomatoes, but plenty of that!
Not even the news that my crap job decided to treat my written request to return to my old schedule as a resignation notice could bum me out. The universe is telling me go do something else.
So, would anyone be interested in a seed-saving discussion next week? I’ll do pics if so.
different-church-lady
Kiddin’? I pulled in the first beefstakes of the season yesterday. I always end up planting late. One year I didn’t get tomatoes until October.
Still have abundant chard and sunsweet cherry tomatoes as well. The basil, on the other hand, is starting to peter out.
munira
@satby: yes, i would be interested.
different-church-lady
@Poopyman: Not many people can say their garage is an ax murderer.
OzarkHillbilly
@stibbert: @BillinGlendaleCA: When we bought this place the first thing I did was have the mercury vapor lamp removed from the utility pole. (I hate those things) My wife wanted to put in solar powered walkway lamps, but I was against it because I want to be able to have darkness. It is something so few people are able to experience these days. Something I only get a hint of if I face southeast (St Clair and Sullivan to the north and west light up the night sky). I may yet do what you are just to make her happy (she has never said a word since, but I know she’d like them) but I like being able to look up and count the Seven Sisters on a clear winter’s night.
@JPL: I oven roast my excess cherry and grape maters. Sprinkle some garlic powder on ’em, roast ’em, and freeze ’em. Great for cooking. Or just snacking for that matter.
@raven: Your wife is a wonder. Gorgeous.
OzarkHillbilly
@OzarkHillbilly: Please release me let me go…. Should have known better than to reply to so many in one comment.
Baud
Finally, a garden thread with no gardening. Perfect for this black thumb.
Tommy
@different-church-lady: LOL. I wish a garage wasn’t mentioned. I have a two car garage where I almost never pull my car into it, unless there is a huge storm coming. I am anal about stuff being clean and clutter, well I can’t cope with clutter. Usually in the summer it is super clean and clutter free so I can work on projects. Then in the winter, I am not sure what happens, but by spring it looks like a tornado hit it. And somehow over the winter months a ton of stuff (insert junk) has accumlated. Again not sure how this happens.
Well this year, and I didn’t put a garden in because I had a ton of household projects that needed doing (most got done I might add), my garage is in shambles. Not sure how it happened, but I should really get out there today and clean the darn place. But it is supposed to be a stunning/wonderful day weather wise as yesterday. A high of 74 and not a cloud in the sky. Since maybe a week ago it was in the 90s and high humidity ….. well enough said.
stibbert
@raven: that’s a pretty pic, raven.
my plan is to dig up the existing wires from the GFI wall-box, then string the new wires from light-to-light, while keeping the connections above-ground, so they don’t get wet.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: Yes, please do.
satby
@munira: @OzarkHillbilly: ok then!
satby
@raven: Your pictures of your garden always look so beautiful! You and the princess do nice work.
Tommy
@Baud: You know it has taken me a few years and a lot of epic failures, but my garden is a thing of beauty. I never, never, never in a hundred years would have thought I could grow something, but alas it is in fact possible. In my very limited experience, I’ve found two things help with success. Good soil. If you don’t have good soil you can make your own. Easier than you might think (and pretty inexpensive). Just Google it, tons of ways to go about it.
Two, just some love. If it is isn’t raining, just a little water every day.* Weed, weed that garden. If you stay-on-top-of-it maybe 10 minutes a day max (I have a good sized garden). But that is just my experience. Yours may vary :).
I got my garden working, and now don’t laugh at me, but I’ve always wanted house plants. I kid you not I’ve killed cacti. This lady at my Farmer’s Market has a ton of house plants. I told her how I wish I had like 10 plants in every room of my house. I wanted for lack of a better phrase a mini-rain forest in my house.
She started to work with me. About repotting (or not I might note). I found I have either over watered or underwatering for the fear I was watering too much. Choose the wrong plants for the room/amount of sun. She spend a ton of time with me. I am happy to report I started off small with one or two plants. When they didn’t die after a few weeks I got more. I now have about 10 plants in my house. A few huge ones (small trees next year) and NOT A SINGLE one has died. In fact they seem to be flourishing. This makes me very happy.
*That rain barrel I got two years ago was a wonderful investment. I had no idea. I mean no idea that it could collect so much darn water from my gutters.
OzarkHillbilly
OK, Anne’s already asleep: @BillinGlendaleCA: @stibbert:
When we bought this place the first thing I did was have the mercury vapor lamp removed from the utility pole. (I hate those things) My wife wanted to put in solar powered walkway lamps, but I was against it because I want to be able to have darkness. It is something so few people are able to experience these days. Something I only get a hint of if I face southeast (St Clair and Sullivan to the north and west light up the night sky). I may yet do what you are just to make her happy (she has never said a word since, but I know she’d like them) but I like being able to look up and count the Seven Sisters on a clear winter’s night.
Xantar
OT:
Mark Sanford: what a catch!
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL:
I oven roast my excess cherry and grape maters. Sprinkle some garlic powder on ‘em, roast ‘em, and freeze ‘em. Great for cooking. Or just snacking for that matter.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Your wife is a wonder. Gorgeous.
Raven
@satby:She really does the bulk, and I mean bulk, of the work. It’s her calling to make the world a more beautiful place and she does pretty well.
Raven
@OzarkHillbilly: any northern lights?
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: Right there with you on darkness! I’m far enough from any burgs that I should have almost perfect darkness, but many of my neighbors leave floodlights on all night. I can never figure out how they sleep. But way back in my yard, not too much light pollution, so I can see the stars well for the first time in my life. Saw my first shooting star at age 54 when I moved here.
OzarkHillbilly
@Raven: I go to sleep too early and both mornings I forgot to go look (DRATS!) St Clair would have impeded at the very least. I would like to take the wife north for the light show someday but of course it is impossible to predict.
Shakezula
We didn’t do much except try to coax the pumpkin vines (from seeds from last year’s volunteers) into not taking over the back of the house and tear out four-o-clocks, the only survivors of Mr. S’s experiment with one of those wild flower seed mixes (note – do NOT use those things).
Also, catnip. I don’t know where it came from but that stuff, being a mint, grows like crazy. I don’t know why we don’t have stoned cats strewn all over the lawn.
Cherry tomatoes have also taken on weed status. And the sage, and the chives. The only thing not doing well – The tomato plant I bought and the mint, of all things.
My experiment growing peppers in a cage is coming out OK. The plants aren’t producing that well but they didn’t get eaten by a groundhog.
But I did pick the second of the spaghetti squash (from another volunteer) yesterday.
Baud
@Tommy:
Oh, I can grow things. We call those things weeds.
I have been thinking of adding plants to my office space, where I currently have none, to help cheer me up a bit at work.
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: I googled roasting tomatoes and one recipe says 325 for a few hours and another says 450 for thirty minutes. hmmm
Tommy
@Shakezula:
My cat isn’t a huge fan. She’ll roll around in it and sniff it for a few seconds. But then just walk off disinterested. I have some catnip spray she seems to like a little more, but nothing like I’ve seen other cats react to it. I grew some catnip in my garden for her a few years ago, felt like I was being a “cool cat owner,” and she could have cared less. I was like you ungrateful bitch, I could have grown something for myself in that darn space :).
With that said I’d pay for a pic of like 15 cats stoned, just chilling in your backyard. That would be priceless.
OzarkHillbilly
@Tommy: Something to do in Scotland?
Some things to think about doing anyway.
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL: I set my oven at 200 for several hours (until they look done) so I guess I am more drying them than roasting.
Tommy
@Baud: Yeah I can grow weeds with the best of them. I am a freaking world class weed grower (wait, that didn’t come out right).
All of the plants I’ve killed through the years, and I’ve killed a lot of them, came from big box stores. I look for correlations in things. The first time I buy plants from a lady that just has two greenhouses on her farm, nothing dies and the plants are growing like crazy. This aloe plant I got for the kitchen in a little over a month seems to have almost grown another 1/3. Two whole other plants sprouting on the side.
Many people here know far more than I do about this topic so I’d ask for suggestions, but I thought I’d never have plants in my house that lived past a few weeks/month. I know see it is very, very possible. Maybe those big box stores that are easy to get to and “cheap” are not the way to go. I say give it a try.
Personally I couldn’t be happier. I am in my home office with green plants all around me. I’ve wanted that for a long, long time!
Tommy
@OzarkHillbilly: Thanks. Moving the trip I want to plan to Scotland to late spring/early summer of next year. Using the travel agent of a friend of mine that is a world traveler (almost two months out of every year). Basically, and of course this makes sense, if I plan the trip months out and not go in the next few weeks he can make my money go twice as far. Or put another way, stay twice as long. Weeks not days.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Last night on the local news, they showed pictures of the Northern Lights over Acadia Park in Maine. They’d really be something to see.
Poopyman
@different-church-lady: Only attempted so far, but it’s just waiting for the next chance, I can tell.
@OzarkHillbilly: We moved here in part because I wanted a dark sky and decent horizon – i.e. the ability to get out from under the tree canopy at our old place. Sadly, one of my neighbors installed a huge but pretty diffuse lamp on a dusk-to-dawn controller to discourage our sticky-fingered co-neighbor. So I now have to use what trees we do have to shield the scope from the lights. Sigh.
Also too, a lot of people including myself either see 6 or 8 Pleiades, never 7.
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: I spent my 18th summer and fall on Lake of the Woods (border of Ontario, Manitoba, Minnesota) where the nights were so black you literally could not see your hand in front of your face. The light shows I saw there were unsurpassed by anything one could ever see at a planetarium.
@Poopyman:
I think in reality I only imagine I see 7, but hey, it’s my fantasy and at 56 y.o. I’m sticking with it.
Tommy
I got rid of cable a few months ago and went with a Roku (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, among other channels). But got an HD antenna a few weeks ago, you know got to have my college and pro football. Before I did this I was one of those dudes that watched all the Sunday morning news programs religiously. I have admit not watching them for a few months was a welcome experience. I have often wondered why I even tortured myself for all those years.
Well I just turned on Meet the Press, for no other reason then it is kind of imprinted into my DNA I guess. I couldn’t even get past the intro of the stories they’d cover before I powered off the television and went back to Pandora and my “chill out” channel. I have a feeling doing this will add a number of years to my life.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
That’s like my convincing myself that I can see Orion’s sword when I can just make out Orion. I probably have really only seen it in a shot from Hubble.
PurpleGirl
@raven: Thank you, Raven. (You take such good pictures.)
greennotGreen
This year, with my focus being on planning a new house and renovating the existing one for a guest house, I haven’t put any energy into my landscape, but I still have a “garden.” It’s just that it consists of greenhouse plants that I put out for the spring-summer-fall.
Is there a way to embed a picture? I don’t have a Flickr account or a blog.
OldDave
@OzarkHillbilly:
My MIL lives about 20 miles south of Arnold in the middle of nowhere. Many nights you can look up and see *everything*. Last time I saw the Milky Way here in South Florida was when Hurricane Wilma turned off everyone’s lights and took the humidity with her. For a day or two, it was glorious.
greennotGreen
@OzarkHillbilly: This is one of the reasons I’m moving to the country! I’d like to see stars again. Unfortunately, it’s still not a truly Dark Sky area, but it’ll be way better than where I live now. I’ll return to my childhood, lying out on the warm concrete driveway, looking at the stars, and dreaming of being rescued from the mundane by aliens.
Tommy
@greennotGreen: It is nice. I live on the edge of a small rural town, with about a 5,000 acre field in front of my house and then endless woods in all directions. Still some light of course from the town, but not much. Nothing like when I lived on Capital Hill in DC where at some levels there was so much light even at night it seemed like daytime
My little subdivision is an unincorporated part of the town. The only thing that pisses me off is I and the people around me get charged a few dollars by the city each month to pay for our street lights. One is actually in my backyard on a utility pole. I don’t see much of a purpose for it. I’ve noted this to my neighbors, do we really need these lights? Nobody I know thinks so.
Poopyman
This looks like a good time to pimp the International Dark Sky Association, dedicated to bringing back the night sky.
Ironically perhaps, the most compelling rationale for utilities and municipalities to install dark-sky friendly lighting is cost savings. Whatever it takes. You might want to talk to your local electric companies about installing lower-wattage full-cutoff lighting. The modern designs still throw the same amount of light, they just put it only where it’s wanted.
greennotGreen
@Poopyman: An amateur astronomer friend of mine turned me on to that organization. Amazing how your view of night-time lighting changes when you think about what’s going up instead of just what’s at your feet.
Steeplejack (phone)
@greennotGreen:
You can’t embed a picture (or video).
greennotGreen
@Steeplejack (phone): In that case, you’ll just have to trust me that my plants are the most gorgeous, most floriferous, most skillfully grown plants that have ever existed, at least on a shady deck in the south part of the city on my street.
Tommy
@Poopyman: I think it was 60 Minutes (or maybe CBS Sunday Morning) had a story about this a week or two ago. A part of West Texas has the “darkest” skies in the lower 48. This huge tourism boom of people coming there just to look at stars. Stare up at the night skies. What was so heartwarming was one man had worked with towns in a few hundred miles radius, got state and federal funds, and installed the type of lighting you are talking about. In fact in a few of the large towns (and they are towns not cities) it is now even in the zoning regulations those types of lights need to be used.
Asked why he did it, he said he didn’t want to lose the night skies. Good to know sometimes one person can make a difference (almost makes me feel small I don’t do more “stuff”).
OzarkHillbilly
@Tommy: I would be very surprised if you can not have the light removed. Everywhere I have lived I was able to remove it.
Gvg
I just had to cut down a glorious Tibochena. covered in pollinators mostly metallic green mini bees, so many on warm mornings that the bush was buzzing so much it seemed to be shaking. sigh, the 7 Year old was afraid of it, we’ll the bees. he didn’t believe us that those bees aren’t the aggressive kind. final problem is the dog has a swollen neck and scratched himself raw. Rikki may have been stung. Sister has seen him trying to catch bees several mornings in his mouth…does not of course listen to our warnings. I had planted that bush near the front door deliberately because they are beautiful and we are preparing to sell. Oh we’ll, I took cuttings which if they root can be placed outside of the fence. other front door plan things are doing well but that bush was gorgeous. Purple flowers for months.
Tommy
@OzarkHillbilly: Not so sure. I’ve often thought about a pellet gun ….
JPL
@greennotGreen: Just send Anne a photo so she can post it next Sunday.
Poopyman
@Tommy: Laser pointer at the photocell is a lot less incriminating.
Scamp Dog
@debbie: Reminds me of a classic xkcd comic.
Poopyman
@Scamp Dog: And it glows in the dark!
becca
@raven: that looks like hummingbird vine. Little red flowers?
Stuff is as invasive as kudzu. I made the mistake of putting 4 tiny seedlings years ago and now I find it everywhere. Especially this year, as I broke my knee in June and haven’t weeded the beds as often as needed cuz of crutches and braces. Covered two raised veg beds before I could hobble out and thwart the buggers.
I would also rethink planting cosmos and 4o’clocks in smallish urban lots. More unintended consequences searching for the mythical carefree garden.
WaterGirl
@greennotGreen: With imgur.com I believe you can upload images without having to make a login. So upload a couple of your photos, see what the URL is, and come back and post the URL here.
p.a.
@Poopyman: related to Cole?
raven
@becca: I have ZERO say in what gets planted. She’s got wisteria in the front an won’t listen to me a bit.
eta
Official response “I know all about that and I plant it because I like it!”
Marvel
Broccoli’s looking hale & happy….
http://imgur.com/2xxnDlo
greennotGreen
@WaterGirl: Okay, I did it, although this thread may be dead now. Image 1. Image 2.
satby
@greennotGreen: Might be dead, but that is gorgeous! Really looks great!
stinger
@greennotGreen: Beautiful! I can only imagine what your home looks like when they are brought indoors!
greennotGreen
@stinger: Actually, they mostly go into the greenhouse since the easiest way to water all those plants (and there are many more) is automatically with overhead sprinklers – sort of impractical with wood floors. But quite a number do come into the house.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@greennotGreen: Another vote for very, very nice. Thanks for sharing.
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who often visits dead threads because it’s too hard to keep up with the faster kids.)
becca
@raven: looks like you have the space to do what you like. If I had some acreage, I’d feel the same way as your pard.
This reminds me of my fateful decision to plant black bamboo to hide an eyesore building. The building is gone, but the bamboo is still flourishing and traveling about the neighborhood now. It’s a constant battle to keep it from taking the whole backyard.
Again, urban gardeners, beware.
Dog On Porch
I begin landscaping in 10 days. First order of business is to plant 4 more gingko trees to join the one already growing on the slope of my side yard.
Kudos to Martin Longman of the Washington Monthly for calling Lindsey Graham what he is– a coward. It’s the perfect word.
Anne Laurie
@JPL:
From my experience, lower and slower is more reliable. I like Smitten Kitchen’s recipe. In our ancient, unreliable oven, at (nominally) 350 degrees I can pull out the tray of cherry tomatoes after somewhere between an hour and a half & three hours, and leave the tray of quartered full-size tomatoes to keep cooking down for another couple hours after that. When I get impatient & try turning the heat up ‘just a bit’, that’s when I go back 20 minutes later and find I’ve scorched them into charcoal!
Anne Laurie
@greennotGreen: Email your pics to me, and I’ll put them on the front page next week!
Bill Arnold
@OzarkHillbilly:
Total agreement about the darkness. I grew up without streetlights, and know how to walk outside in a wooded area even on a dark night (hint; look up at least occasionally to see the path or road. Trees don’t grow on roads.). Live in a new development now. You can guess with reasonable reliability who moved from the city (NY); they’re the ones who are afraid of the dark and light up their yard all night. (I have some motion detector floods outside.)
Bill Arnold
Don’t have pictures. Mid-Hudson valley. The monkshood has started to bloom . The tithonia (Tithonia rotundifolia, aka Mexican sunflower) plants started from seed in the spring are still going strong, 7 feet tall, but past peak. The castor bean plants (a red-leafed variety, also started from seed) are still growing (6 feet), will continue until first frost. Some roses and irises have rebloomed. Cardinal flower started blooming last week. Peaches were ripe about 2 weeks ago.
Sweet 100s are the only tomatoes still heavily producing, both in garden and in pots on deck. Finally managed to find a combination of soil and additives (local dirt, compost, calcium (garden lime), magnesium (sulfate), a little iron, a little garden sulfur (slow acidifier), a little liquid fertilizer every week) that works for sweet 100s in pots. That, and watering ever day or two, and large bases for the pots that hold another gallon or two.
debbie
@Scamp Dog:
I’ll never look at the night sky again without thinking of that damn cartoon of yours.
WaterGirl
@greennotGreen: The thread is surely dead now, a day later. Thanks for taking the time to put those up – that’s beautiful!!