The 2019 Garden Season Started Today

And so it begins...

Last year, I started the hot peppers between Christmas and New Year's. That was too late.

The Lemon Drop peppers started fruiting in October, but the Reapers started blossoming in November. It's now December and they are still plugging (slowly) along.

Might have fruit by spring. Or they might start over with blossoms in spring. Who knows. One Lemon Drop that produced a mediocre crop last year survived over the winter and gave me eight or nine crops this year.

I'm getting a little bit more of a running start this year. I started eight batches of peppers today, December 16th. Some of these are not as slow as the "super-hots," and I'm just getting a terribly early start this year. 

 

About half of these are seeds I've saved from the last couple of years; the rest are from growers around the country. Some came as a gift.

I also started some Impatiens this week. They took so terribly long to mature last year. It might have been better to start these in January or February, but it's too late now. I got excited. 

I also started a batch of Schizanthus. I was in a hurry and the package looked like an Impatiens package. Well, this will be interesting.

Also, I picked some lemon drop peppers and a lemon this week.

The Most Amazing Weeds

We took a tree out of a flowerbed in the front of our yard. It took a fair bit of mass with it, leaving a substantial hole. We had just retired a couple of old compost bins, so we had a lot of compost. So we filled the hole with fresh, and perhaps not completely mature compost.

We got some of the most interesting weeds. In addition to the usual assortment of weeds, we have some fruits and veggies. We have a really healthy zucchini, and it's not a hybrid pumpkini! We have a tomato plant and what appears to be a tomatillo plant. And we have what appears to be two very healthy melon plants.


If I'd planted them intentionally, I probably would have spaced the melon and the zucchini a little better, but they seem to be happy snuggled up together.

I don't actually know what kind of melons these are. The leaves look like a cantaloupe, though they're larger than the cantaloupes I've grown in pots. But the fruit itself shows some signs of watermelon-ness (I've grown both in the past, but no other melons).

It seems perfectly happy growing in our flower bed, so we'll let it grow there for a little while and see what we get.

Serendipitous gardening. How fun!

Clematis is Blooming Well This Year

This is about 10% of the plant. It's swallowing the front of the house.We think we like it that way.

We have the best smelling front porch in the city!

Recording Assorted Starts

Left to right:
Thyme ("Mother of Thyme")
Peppers ("Hatch peppers")
Wild Garlic (from Ireland)
Lots of marigolds
   (for pest control in the garden, later)

The first batch of schizanthus flowers seems to have started. These have to start in the dark, but are not covered by soil. Kind of tricky in a greenhouse.












And I planted a whole envelope of perennial wildflowers. It's a 2012 package, so we'll see if anything actually comes up.


Here's a bunch of tomatillas:

Assorted cucumbers: slicing, burpless, lemon & Armenian:

Assorted starts: German pumpkins are doing well. Sage is just poking its head out. Trying some hatch peppers again (none started last year) and some wild irises (not sure they're stratified yet: encountered a winter).

Sage is getting going, so I started some more. Thinking I'll spread it around the garden. It's supposed to make things do well.

Here's a row of Roma tomatoes (top) and bunches of peppers:

Asparagus, from seeds:
 





We grew some purple tomatoes last
year ("Black Krim"). They were fantastic: flavorful, juicy, and strikingly beautiful!  These are a whole load of purple tomatoes, including cherry tomatoes ("chocolate cherry").  


And these are assorted red tomatoes. I'm particularly excited about "Giant" (up to 1 pound tomatoes!) and the "San Marzano" (indeterminate sauce tomatoes, like the [determinate] "Roma"):





We can't have summer without basil:












Several varieties of basil (and some "assorted herbs" from an advertising event):












And I've just up-potted some of the squashes. The two on the left are German pumpkins; the top right is carnival squash. I don't know what the bigger one is; it's a volunteer.

(Also in this pic: catnip at the top, "Dukat" dill, left & right of the big one, and a "chocolate cherry" right next to it.)



And last, but definitely not least, I kept a chunk of sweet potato vine ("Georgia Jets") last fall when I harvested the sweet 'taters. I stuck it in water, and then in dirt, and it's growing! How cool is that!

The First Grow Light

I couldn't help it. I needed to get some things growing.

In point of fact, I have some starts going that don't care so much about the temperature, but need more light than they need: kale, broccoli, onions, and such.

Moreover, it is highly likely that I will plant some more starts earlier than the sun will provide for them. I must do something to support my habit. 

So I got a 4- shop light, and some "sunlight" or "daylight" tubes (just one of the normal options: not "warm white" or "cool white.")

Because I goofed with the programming on the timer, the light was left on all night. This morning, all the sprouts under the light had lifted their heads and pointed their little stalks at the light.

I think I may be on to something.

UPDATE: I bought another one today. I also added a grow-spotlight next to the bench. I may be done for this winter, though I have thoughts of expansion for the next winter.

Comment: this photo is lit only by the grow lights.

Mulching in the Fall

It was a pretty dry fall, so the falling leaves were easy to gather. We spread them on all the flower beds around the house. It's certainly colorful.

Let's see what it does for the soil for next year's garden.

This is the new compost bin. All of its contents are new. Mostly leaves and shredded garden trimmings, layered with horse manure.

I hope it will be done in time for spring planting.

I try to turn it every week or two. But there's kind of a lot of it.

Beauty in the Back Yard

My daughter took the picture. That's the Red Door Green House in the background. This is an Abyssinian Sword  Lily. Gladiolius Calianthus, Abyssinian, for those who think in Latin. . .

Hanging Pots, an Old Fashioned Way

I have discovered several advantages to hanging plants, instead of setting them on a shelf.

• Hooks in the ceiling are cheaper than new shelves. 
• They block the sun way less for the plants beneath them.
• You can push them out of the way to reach the ones beyond them. 
• I've got hooks set up along the edge of my garage: lots of free room. 

But buying store-bought hanging planters is expensive, so I make my own. Here's how I go about it.

I start with a heavy duty plant pot (which I get free by scavenging behind Home Depot [I have permission] during the gardening season). I buy bulk chain from inside Home Depot and I cut it to length.

Punch holes in the perimeter of the pot, and work a cut chain link through. Use pliers to close the link.

Hook the other ends to the end of a short length of chain. I usually use around 18 inches for this piece: I want it to hang down from the ceiling far enough to be able to water it & admire the growing plants.

(This one has nasturtium seeds in it: it'll go outside once it starts blooming, to attract bees.)

The other end of the chain has another cut link (that's how you cut the chain into shorter pieces). Hook it into the eye in the ceiling.


 

I made a special tool for reaching the hooks in the ceiling when I can't reach them.

It's just a re-shaped L-hook (or any hook), attached to the end of a handy stick. This one's about 4' long. I glued it in, and I wrapped the end of the stick in wire to keep it tight.

Oh, I also put up a piece of rebar, specifically to hang a lot of pots from. 

Judging the Wild Things

... or at least the Wild Flowers. The test is started early March.

I have a package of "Butterfly Mix" wildflower packages, one from Ed Hume (from last year) and one from Livingston Seed (from this year).

Nothing to do but to compare them! This is, after all, first and foremost a garden journal: trying stuff to see what works best.








So here we are, April First. Here's how they're doing so far. Ed Hume has the clear advantage so far.

And again, mid-April. I think we have a winner.

New Seeds!

I got some new seeds this weekend! Woohoo!

These were the things I was most looking for:
Dill Herb (Anethum graveolens)  

Peppermint Herb (Mentha piperita) 

I really don't know how it happened, but these showed up in the shopping cart with them: 

Sunflower "Red Sun" (Helianthus annuus)
Poppy "Explosion Mixture"
Creeping Thyme "Mother of Thyme" (Thymus serpyllum)
Butterfly Weed (Asclepias Tuberosa)
Butterfly Bush "Mixed Colors" (Buddleia Ddavidii)
Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea)
Lavender "Fragrant Butterflies" (Lavandula angustifolia) 
Hidcote Lavender (Lavandula angustifolia)
Sunflower Velvet Queen 
Mixed Chrysanthemum Flowers
Leslie Land Chrysanthemum Flower 

Some of the flowers are to make the bees happy. Some are to make the missus happy. Both are good goals, right?  

Well, this is what it looks like right now. Yep, I got 'em all planted quickly. Or rather, I got some seeds from each variety planted. 

Not quite the same thing as the advertisements showed, eh?   

For the sake of the diary, here are the packages. Some of them only had a couple dozen seeds, some seeds were smaller than grains of sand. 

I was largely looking for "new and different" flowers. I think I got some!