gumbo2176
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 3065
Joined: Mon Jul 19, 2010 2:01 am
Location: New Orleans

Re: Almost Spring '16...what are you doing (or have done) To

JayPoc wrote:I guess I just get tired of peeling shrimp. The fact that the crawdads essentially peel themselves is the key thing for me. But I'm not a fan of the head end, so if I can't find a partner willing to take the extra heads, I'm a poor guest.

You're relegated to the kid's table if you don't suck the heads. LOL

User avatar
rainbowgardener
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 25279
Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2009 6:04 pm
Location: TN/GA 7b

Also we did our first eating out of the garden - just some baby greens and herbs and wild violet leaves and flowers snipped into a salad, but still it was eating from the garden!!

The viburnum shrub I planted last fall is getting ready to bloom. The serviceberry is finally getting ready to leaf out after I was starting to think it was a goner. A couple of the little sticks the National Arbor Day foundation sends are starting to leaf out.... Yay, spring!!

User avatar
rainbowgardener
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 25279
Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2009 6:04 pm
Location: TN/GA 7b

I gave myself a limit of $50 to spend at the native plant sale and came home with one plant each of bee balm, sweetspire shrub, blazing star, coneflower, coreopsis, anise hyssop, all good sized, well started plants. When she rang me up, it was $49! :)

I'm looking forward to when I will have flowers in the yard!

So far I'm just planting all the flowers along the backyard side fence lines, with not much rhyme or reason. I figure once everything is established and I see how it looks, I can make it look a bit more landscaped.

Image

Image

mine won't have so much trees or be a shade garden, because in the middle between the fence lines is all my vegetable gardens, so I don't want to add any more shade to the yard. But the idea is just because your fence lines are straight, doesn't mean your plantings have to be.

Incidentally last fall, I planted a pokeweed in a back corner. But then that corner ended up with a bunch of fall leaves piled on it, at least a foot deep, probably more. I thought the pokeweed got smothered out. Yesterday I discovered it standing up proudly out of the leaves!

gumbo2176
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 3065
Joined: Mon Jul 19, 2010 2:01 am
Location: New Orleans

WOW, your landscaping is beautiful and quite the contrast to the white picket fence bordering your property. If your vegetable garden is anywhere close to your flower garden, I'm jealous. Nice job, and a whole lot of work to maintain.

User avatar
rainbowgardener
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 25279
Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2009 6:04 pm
Location: TN/GA 7b

No, no, sorry.... I should have labelled it more clearly. That unfortunately is NOT my yard. Those are just pictures I found on line. I just always like to find inspiration pictures, to help give me a visual idea of what I am aiming for.

Right now our fence is just chain link with neglected lawn up to it and flower plantings that are barely visible and nothing blooming yet. I should post a picture of that! Make everyone feel better about their yard! Remember, I just moved here last fall and we had a bunch of stuff to do on the house and deck, before we even thought about the yard. Then I've been building all those raised beds for veggies. When we moved here, there was NOTHING planted except said very neglected lawn and a row of ugly "green ball" hedge plants across the front foundation. It will be several more seasons before it even approaches my inspiration pictures!

Eventually we want to put bamboo fencing over the chain link to make it more decorative, the kind that comes in a roll and you just roll it out and tie it to the chain link. Here's another one of those inspiration pictures:

Image

The bamboo makes a nicer backdrop for your plantings.

gumbo2176
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 3065
Joined: Mon Jul 19, 2010 2:01 am
Location: New Orleans

rainbowgardener wrote:No, no, sorry.... I should have labelled it more clearly. That unfortunately is NOT my yard. Those are just pictures I found on line. I just always like to find inspiration pictures, to help give me a visual idea of what I am aiming for.

.


OH OK, like people who go on diets and have pictures in their minds of slim, trim athletic looking people as motivation and inspiration to once again get back into that closet full of 3 size smaller clothes.

When I was working out pretty heavily with weights a few years back I had no delusions of looking like a young Arnold Schwazzenegger, but I didn't want to look like Tom Arnold either, so I settled for somewhere in between------well, actually closer to the side of Tom Arnold to be fair. LOL

Hope you achieve your goal, and when you do, post pics.

JayPoc
Greener Thumb
Posts: 769
Joined: Wed Nov 28, 2012 12:00 pm
Location: Virginia, The mountains Zone 6a/6b

Testing, testing...is this thing on?

Had a reasonably productive weekend outside. Got a few maters in the ground. Planted some carrots and herbs in containers. Dug up the bed out front and helped the wife plant some flowers. Planted a couple of hops rhyzomes...a new experiment for me. Started a SMALL second wave of mater plants. Harvested a little kale. tossed the compost pile a bit. Spent a lot of time watering, which is soooo bizarre for April. We've had less than 0.2" liquid equivalent this month, and most of that was snow that sublimed more than melted.

Mr green
Green Thumb
Posts: 372
Joined: Sat Mar 14, 2015 6:08 pm
Location: Sweden

rainbowgardener wrote:Also we did our first eating out of the garden - just some baby greens and herbs and wild violet leaves and flowers snipped into a salad, but still it was eating from the garden!!
I did also eat a little something from my garden, some bishop weeds, and naah didnt like them this year either. :evil:

Planted more seeds today, zinnias, sunflowers, poppies, gem corn and kohlrabi. And something else. As usual I'm weak on labeling so I can get some good surprises... :roll:

HoneyBerry
Greener Thumb
Posts: 1216
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 1:10 pm
Location: Zone 8A Western Washington State

I don't know what happened but we seemed to be skipping Spring here. It is 85 degrees today. That is unheard of for this area. It is supposed to do it again tomorrow and then taper off some on Wednesday. Usually we don't get sun and hot weather like this until August or September. I've lived here all of my life and I have never experienced anything like this. I heard it's even hotter in Seattle and Everett. Seattle is hotter than Honolulu or Miami today, that's what I heard through hearsay. It's nice weather, but it is scary at the same time. I wonder what the future holds.

User avatar
Gary350
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 7396
Joined: Mon Mar 23, 2009 1:59 pm
Location: TN. 50 years of gardening experience.

I am finally going to get to plant my garden today it is hot 85 degrees already. Rain finally stopped it took a week for mud to dry up so I can till the soil. Only 20% chance of rain for the next 2 days then 60% Thursday and Friday.
Last edited by Gary350 on Wed Apr 20, 2016 4:02 pm, edited 2 times in total.

ButterflyLady29
Greener Thumb
Posts: 1030
Joined: Mon Oct 19, 2015 9:12 pm
Location: central Ohio

Yesterday I replanted peas, after cursing the squirrel that is digging in the only pot where peas are actually growing. Replanted lettuce and spinach too since they never came up. Then planted some kolrabi and pak choi. Also finished cleaning and weeding the row of mixed varieties of raspberries in that garden.

Today I weeded the asparagus patch.

User avatar
applestar
Mod
Posts: 30514
Joined: Thu May 01, 2008 7:21 pm
Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)

I got the big bales of PromixBx potting mix and a new bag of dolomitic lime a while ago, and the big bag of super coarse Perlite I needed to mix with it to fill SIP containers was delivered yesterday. I went and bought fertilizers I needed today.... Now if I could just find the energy I need to get it all done. I managed to let that fall out of my pocket somewhere..... :roll:

:>

User avatar
SPierce
Greener Thumb
Posts: 732
Joined: Thu Mar 10, 2011 9:57 am
Location: Massachusetts

Nearly all my plants are up and growing; now I'm just watching them sprout and moving them back and forth from inside to outside, since it's still too cool to leave the tomatoes, peppers, etc. out at night!

The brussells sprouts and brocolli are out, fully, all day and all night. There's a small animal that keeps trampling some of them though - so they're now up on top of 3 bags, instead of down on the ground until they're ready to plant in.

Picked up yet another type of soil to try out and see how it does, but I really don't like it so I'm not going to use the bags. They don't look right, so will probably put them up for sale on craigslist or something.

User avatar
jal_ut
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 7447
Joined: Sun Jan 18, 2009 10:20 pm
Location: Northern Utah Zone 5

Rain, rain, rain......... been rather damp here. Won't be planting anything till we get some sunshine. The garlic planted last fall are up and growing though. I did manage to plant some onion sets about a week ago. So this morning I went out and fed the cats and fed the wild birds and looked at the wet garden plot and came in and played on the computer. I do have some tomato and pepper plants growing indoors.

User avatar
Gary350
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 7396
Joined: Mon Mar 23, 2009 1:59 pm
Location: TN. 50 years of gardening experience.

It is too damn cold here. No global warming here. We had 90 degree weather for 5 days rain stopped and mud dried up so I planted seeds, beans, okra, squash, melons. Temperature dropped to 46 it stayed cold nothing came up. It warmed up again no seeds germinating. We went to the ocean for a 5 day vacation returned home nothing coming up. It warmed up to 89 and sunny weather man say rain on the way so I planted more seeds it got down to 40 degrees last night and todays high is 65. Nothing is growing. Tomato plants have tripled in size bell peppers are just setting there. Onions have grown 6 inches. OK I will just wait there has been times in the past when I could not get seeds to grow until 2nd week of June soil needs to be warm about 65 degrees minimum it just means we wont harvest any beans, squash, okra until about August. More rain and thunderstorm later today. The New Madrid fault line on the Mississippi river from Memphis to St Louis is rumbling we average 2 small earth quakes every day sometimes 7 TV News says, Fault line is cocked and loaded we could get a big one like the big earth quake of 1812. I hope it does not damage my tomatoes I am looking forward to having a good crop of tomatoes this year.

imafan26
Mod
Posts: 13962
Joined: Tue Jan 01, 2013 8:32 am
Location: Hawaii, zone 12a 587 ft elev.

I potted up some toscano kale, Big Beef tomato, Sweetie tomato, Eleonora basil, Hawaiian chili, diva and armenian cucumber. I cleared out the kai choy cabbage finally and took out some of the beets. Still lots to do.

User avatar
KitchenGardener
Senior Member
Posts: 274
Joined: Mon Apr 25, 2016 8:30 pm
Location: Northern California; Hardiness Zone 10a, Climate zone: 17

So every few days, I get a good meal out of what I've grown - I made a great salad out of lettuce and herbs, radishes, green onions, and the first baby beets and peas of the season. Grated on some parmesan cheese and - heaven!

Harvested half of my container yukon gold potatoes (I'm taking them out as I used them) and got more than I expected! I think I got about 10 potatoes, a marble size one, some egg and tennis ball size ones, and a few biguns! Definitely way less than you all who really know what you're doing but more than I expected. I am very happy.

I also called it a day on one of my snow pea plants. I took photos and will start a thread asking for your thoughts, but the plant was in bad shape. It was in a line of other pea plants, each about 4 inches apart and the others seem fine, but this one produced kinda deformed looking pods and, while being by far the biggest plant, had succumbed to something that caused severe chlorosis. So weird.

Other than that I don't have enough to do, so I've been forced to rearrange/transplant my flowers growing in pots, and stalk slugs and snails late at night...

User avatar
jal_ut
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 7447
Joined: Sun Jan 18, 2009 10:20 pm
Location: Northern Utah Zone 5

Sitting here watching it rain. Nothing is growing. Guess if it ever warms up things will grow?

User avatar
KitchenGardener
Senior Member
Posts: 274
Joined: Mon Apr 25, 2016 8:30 pm
Location: Northern California; Hardiness Zone 10a, Climate zone: 17

It seems that rain is a relative rarity here these days and its raining today, so I am very happy!

Jal-ut: I hope you get to planting soon!

PinkPetalPolygon
Senior Member
Posts: 142
Joined: Fri Mar 18, 2016 5:57 pm
Location: California Zone 9b <3

It was my turn to water the other garden for the next couple of days... coincidentally, unrelatedly (!? Although I could argue I was blessed, hah) - I heard rumbling of rain in the forecast so I just didn't do it.

Then I got too busy to even check on it if I wanted to, hah. And a few days passed. Okay only 3 days passed total. I am sooo protective over these things though and I swear the whole time I was thinking have to go check have to go check, hahah!

So I went to check today. And oh my gosh. !!!

I walked into this landscape
And I was feeling kind of guilty

It WAS like 80 degrees before the rain so in my amped up mother hen thought processes I was sort of hypothetically imagining me leaving it by itself for 3 80 degree days? Oooh. I think it was just an interesting sensation to have it all on me. My best girlfriend and I just spent some $$ on some nice plants last weekend

And in my paranoid mind I was thinking, oooh, what if I go there and everything is messed up because I didn't force myself to just go check!?

Oooh I will say the basils and peper patch needed a dose of sluggo, if not a slug exorcism >__<; other than that..

I walk in all apprehensively

to see everything before me

And it looked amazing!!! This one gourd/pumpkin/etc plant we had ... had gone mad vining for the first time, it grew like 2 feet in 3 days!! and we got our first tomato in that garden and the rain storm fully watered the entire plot very deeply... any watering I woulda done before the storm REALLY would have been overkill! I was amazed that me sitting back and staying out if it was the best thing to of done!

I weeded the general area, planted a mystery volunteer tomato seedling in a forever-container, watered seedlings & plants that weren't in the rain, and had a great day! :)

User avatar
Gary350
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 7396
Joined: Mon Mar 23, 2009 1:59 pm
Location: TN. 50 years of gardening experience.

Tomatoes, bell peppers, potatoes, onions, garlic, are all doing good. If it ever warms up I will plant seeds, beans, squash, okra, melons, more.

User avatar
jal_ut
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 7447
Joined: Sun Jan 18, 2009 10:20 pm
Location: Northern Utah Zone 5

Watching it rain again............. It has been a wet season here. I did manage to get some corn planted, but the seed will likely rot in the ground. Oh well, I will plant some more the day I see the sun again.

Vanisle_BC
Greener Thumb
Posts: 1354
Joined: Mon Apr 13, 2015 9:02 pm
Location: Port Alberni, B.C. Canada, Zone 7 (+?)

Surrendered again(!) to my wife's wisdom; bought 2 yards topsoil and had it delivered instead of sticking with one yard and picking it up in 2 runs with my utility trailer. Part of it will go to fill our new asparagus raised bed, where again I submitted to her advice and bought a 6x3x1 ft cedar box instead buying lumber and making one.

Do you cook asparagus? Ours never makes it to the kitchen!

Taiji
Greener Thumb
Posts: 921
Joined: Fri Oct 05, 2012 3:19 am
Location: Gardening in western U.P. of MI. 46+ N. lat. elev 1540. zone 3; state bird: mosquito

Planted some corn last week. Wet weekend, but big warm up coming. I think it will be ok. Harvested rhubarb this morning for pie this afternoon!

dtizme
Cool Member
Posts: 90
Joined: Sat Jul 06, 2013 10:23 pm
Location: Port Elgin, Ontario, Canada. Zone 5a

Planted some carrots, beets, lettuce, onions and green onions yesterday. Waiting till the weather warms up to get the tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers out. I'm guessing another 2 to 3 weeks for those. We had a mild frost last night but it's looking to get better over the next few weeks.



Return to “Vegetable Gardening Forum”