It’s June and we have some fruits developing on our haskaps and strawberries; I think something has gotten to our serviceberries and plums though (curculio maybe). And so many more flowers!
Geraniums, Spurge, Lily of the Valley, and tricolor Willow:
Blackberries and Irises:
Rhododendron with a solitary bee:
Some of the weeds have been going haam too; I think I removed about 2 miles of Asiatic Bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus) yesterday just from one garden area.
What’s growing on with you all?
I lined my disused enclosed chicken run with compost, mulched it with burlap, and planted the whole inside perimeter with a bunch of varieties of pole beans hoping that they’ll grow to the sloped roof and hang down for easy harvest. They’re just starting to grab onto the walls now. I also shook a large packet of bunching onions around the perimeter. No idea how any of this will turn out, but I’m hoping it’ll get completely overgrown, turn into a cave, and be a fun place to hang out in with the kiddo when the heat gets (more) extreme.
Related adventure: this year I grew about a hundred and fifty extra seedlings to give away in front of the house, and they’re almost all gone after half a week. I thought about it for the last few years and finally decided to just do it. Lessons learned: cherry/pear tomatoes were unsurprisingly popular, and I overestimated how many people like eggplant. Next year I need to grow way more culinary herbs and novelties like roselle, ground cherries, artichokes, and goji–those all disappeared fast. I also put out seeds: everyone loves sunflowers and tithonia, but literally no one wanted to grow chard.
I love everything about this project of yours, and hope it goes beautifully for you! Hopefully you and the kiddo are cool about spiders, they also enjoy hanging out in that kind of space!
I have several young goji and sincerely hope for fruit this year from which to do seedlings. Were the seeds harvested from your plants, or ordered from somewhere?
One of my gardening buddies had a look of horror on her face when I told her I was doing showy chard in the gardens (chardens? might be). It’s a plant which has some strong feelings associated with it.
Thanks!
The goji were from Baker Creek seeds this year, but next year it’ll be from cuttings. I thought I killed all the goji I got as cuttings last year, but one was just hiding under the chicory. Cuttings apparently start fruiting a year or two faster, and I’ll need to hack it back in the Winter anyway, so win-win.
Chard is totally underrated, both as food and an ornamental. I grow red chard, and in the late fall it turns the most unearthly dark-green/purple with glowing red veins. I keep the pink chard towards the front of the garden because it looks like someone’s goofing around with the saturation, but in real life. I also grow white chard (Lucullus) for eating, and last year the leaves were delicious the whole Summer here in the high desert and literally the size of my five year old. Like, the entire kid. In the Winter some of the outer leaves die off, but the bulk survives, so it’s great for visual interest in the front yard during the cold months. Big fan of chard
Very cool! I’ve had success tip layering them as well; our first round got shaded out a little much so I’ve got their rooted cuttings in more sun this year.
Holy moly! And I totally agree - I did ‘bright lights’, ‘silverado’, and ‘bali’ this year and am very excited for them to do well. While I sort of get folks who are hesitant about it, I very much don’t understand saying no to plentiful, beautiful, delicious food.
Been falling way behind with gardening because of our full only-thing-standing-is-walls renovation + upkeep of around 50 small trees and a few hedges, but my mother in law came over and weeded all of the overgrown plant beds from the previous owner and planted some tomatoes, pumpkins, and courgette. 😁
What a nice thing for her to do! Here’s hoping your reno goes smoothly enough for you to have time to enjoy the fruits of her labors
My little patch is going strong for the time being. I’ll update later when I’m not in a spot that hates my connection to upload a pic.
Currently we have some pleasant tomatos, carrots, parsley, basil, and a safe container of mint elsewhere so it doesn’t attempt to take over. Outside of the plot, the grape vine is loving every bit of sunshine it can grab and the blueberry bush is also quite happy.
Nice! We’ve just got a grape stem, so I’m a little jelly (hah)! Please do share a picture of your veggies, I’m going to show it to mine and call them all slackers
here’s my little plot in the back yard. I forgot to take some pics when I got home, and it’s a bit dark now.
figured out that our big fruiting tree is… an apricot tree! sadly, it seems to be struggling. it didn’t fruit at all last year, and some of the bark is sloughing off the trunk, so i’m not sure how much longer it will last. i think it’s nearly done fruiting, which is good because the fruit flies are going NUTS out there.
What a great kind of tree to have! It’s a shame it’s struggling - iirc y’all have some tough fungal diseases to manage down there and some of the treatments are pretty involved. Have you gotten to eat any of the fruit? I feel like that would be a wonderful way to really get to know the tree even if it is on the way out.
my partner ate some of the fruit, but they don’t seem quite ripe enough to eat.
and yeah on the fungus! it was heavily infected last year, though we pruned heavily and it seems mostly gone this year. i’ll have to take a pic sometime, poor tree was shooting off ten billion branches trying to survive the neglect so it’s really bushy and awkward looking.
My potatoes are in an absolute riot of growth, to the point that they’re shading out plants next to them! Lesson learned, next year they get a bed to themselves!
The cucumbers and squash are growing up my trellis arch really well, so I’m hopeful that by the time it gets really hot I’ll have some shade there.
It’s been wonderful to harvest fresh lettuce for my lunch daily, and I’ve had some great salads with my radishes. Definitely going to keep succession planting those! If I’d planned better I would have staggered them a little more in my initial planting.
Haven’t gotten the photo upload to work with the app I use (Connect) but maybe I’ll try from my computer later.
That’s great! Some radishes are super quick to grow, but I really enjoy their greens too. I don’t mind seeding them out in other places where they’ll get crowded out if I know I’m taking their tops.
Sometimes I have trouble uploading pictures as well, whether through the Beehaw pwa, site, or another app. One workaround I use is
to display the pictures in the thread, so if you or other folks use things like imgur or imgbb that’s an option as well.
the palm tree out front dropped its pollen branch (idk what they’re actually called), and it was a lot of fun watching the tiny pollinators have a field day with it. I have to cut it down before it makes a huge mess, but I usually give them several days to party
there are some Britton’s wild petunia across the street that are the only plants outside enjoying this heat wave, they’re blooming like crazy. vibrant purple flowers
the sage and amaryllis in my front flower bed are spreading out like crazy, and three different snake plants that I’ve propagated have started producing babies
Palms are very outside my wheelhouse so I just looked those up and wow! Those flowers are impressive! I’m really happy knowing that you let the pollinators do their thing with it then do your maintenance on it.
What are your plans for the snake plants you’ve propagated? Adding to your collection, sharing, or some other equally awesome thing?
oh they grow all over the place down here, I just heard somebody say that propagating them was hard so I figured I’d give it a shot. turns out it’s really easy so I’ve got like four of them now, though my backyard has probably 200 ft² of them growing naturally.
I’ve always fantasized about selling my props to local plant shops, but I never have a plan when I start propagating something. I found out how easy sage was to propagate, bought one plant and now I have a dozen and I don’t know what to do with them
I also start and prop way too many plants sometimes without a real plan for all of them… I say just offer them up somewhere! We’ve posted about them on some of our social media sites, or put up little “plants for sale” flyers at a nearby gas station and our town library. Even if you’re not going whole hog and going to market it would be a great way to share your work and maybe swap for some more awesome plants to play with.
