A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Banter Hall Gardener's Chat What did you do in the garden today? #6

I pulled up the squash plants. I may have gotten a few more squash from them but after all the rain they were soggy. My cukes and tomatoes still look pretty good.

I stared out the window at the zinnias. Then I fertilized the indoor plants. I can't wait to get outside.

Hope your feeling better soon TK. Time to get out those tonsils?

I deadheaded some things and cut back some more stuff. My black raspberries are ripening, very late this year...

I'm going out in a few to weed out(oh if Carol seen me she'd tan my hide ) some gallardias, they have taken over my side flower bed.

Hey there ladies and all missed chatting with you during the summer and I've been trying to catch up a bit going through the forum.

I've been sooooo busy this year, but definitely did not have a good year in my garden. We haven't had much of a hot summer and a late summer to start with. Now we're supposed to get frost this week .....way to early, will cover my squash hoping I'll get something out of them yet.

Some of the cool loving veggies did good like the peas and my cauliflower and broccoli. Had lots of radishes, romaine lettuce and leaf lettuce, so I'm thankful for the little we had.

Maybe we'll get some nice weather after this frost....who knows.

Hey there rosepetal. I remember that name that I have not seen in a while. I just planted broccoli, lettuce, peas, and cilantro a few weeks back. I either completly forgot about doing cauliflower this year, or the feed store was out of them when I got my other fall seeds. it's still too hot here for radishes. oh yea, and I planted some carrot seeds last weekend too.

Just in again...I cut back the ornamental crabapple tree, it seems to grow more on the right side, dead headed everything else, dug out two burning bushes that seem to draw in the snakes...and cut back my weigela(I really planted it a little too close to the house). De seeded everything I don't want to re seed and pruned back the rose bush again. I am tired and chewed up by flies so it's time to rest.

Rosepetal, can you just imagine if we tried to plant anything this time of year...Cricket you sure are lucky.

I gotta admit, you canadians make me feel like one lazy gardener! I have such respect for the hard work you put into gardening with the season you are given.
my garden hasn't done real well this past year. we're in a pretty wooded lot and the trees have really spread. the extra shade has made a big difference this spring and summer! hubby took out one tree and tomorrow I'm gonna see if he'll take out one more. he makes fun of me for my reusing and recycling, but it takes some real persuading for him to cut down a tree even if it's dead. now you tell me, who's the tree hugger??? he he. If I wasn't scared to death of a chain saw, i'd just do it myself. but chain saws and getting on the roof are very stressful for me. (lizards freak me out a bit too) he he

I think we work so hard because we only have a short time to do it in then we shovel snow for the other 7 or 8 months of the year.

Start spray painting the trees you want cut down and send him out.

you have no idea of the barter system we have!

did anyone have a great garden this year? Ours was ok but nothing to write home about. Seems everyone was either too dry or too wet. I did plant a few things today that I picked up at Lowe's. I went for bird seed and couldn't resist the flowers. I got a few portulacas, petunias, and snapdragons.

great question, sheri! who had a great garden this year?

Of course I had a great garden. for the first time in my life it was my own. Even if I do grow more weeds than anything else right now lol.

Not me....too much rain.

I weeded a flower bed and planted some seeds in place of the weeds

Well got my pine tree trimmed up and my apple tree as well, things have a tendancy to over grow in the Eastward facing direction. I've got one apple on my tree, first time ever...maybe now we can figure out what kind of tree we have It was a tree pulled out of the pasture many years ago..

that's awesome you got an apple tamara!

Awesome for sure, that poor tree has been to hell and back. It got run over in the pasture with the hay mower then run over in my yard with the lawn mower. Broken twice from ice storms and now is finally making something of itself. I've been pruning it over the years to try get a shape back to it, it lost it's central leader and just had 4 prongs growing out at the sides. Ugliest tree I had ever seen Now I've got a leader training it self upright again and keep trimming back the rest to try equal it out.

All that work over about 8 years and all I have is one apple

I think I had a pretty good garden this year. Everything grew really well, and it's the first year that my plants have filled up the beds I dug. my castor beans are taller than me (I'm 6'3") and my first attempt at brugs rewarded me with blooms! but my garden's nothing compared to most...i was inside most of the summer, there wasn't really much for me to do. the rain (surprisingly) didn't do much damage to my plants...the humid and wet weather didn't even bring powdery mildew to my peonies until two weeks ago and it hasn't spred since, so I'm not complaining.

Well today and yesterday I got out in the tree bed and did some weeding. There is still a lot to do but I'm getting there. And as I work around the trees I dig up the moss set it aside increase the soil level up against the edging and then lay the moss back down. It's time consuming but it will help keep the soil in place I hope. At least on the shady side of the bed.

That amended soil is really getting incorporated into the clay so it is much softer.

After I dig up the weeds I rake over the area so it is getting nice and smooth on the sunny side where I don't currently have a wide spread ground cover. That area still has to fend for itself pretty much. I've started mint, and my spring yellow flowering groundcover over there. Hopefully it will take off next year and I can begin dividing it and spreading it around.

A good garden you ask, I'm just thankful for what I got and forget about what I didn't get.........

I just came in from pulling all my pepper plants out of my greenhouse. The aphids were still crawling heavily this morning after spraying and treating them with whatever I could think of the last week. So this morning I said enough is enough I must save my tomatoes at all costs and out they went.

I washed down every space I could spray water on and gave my greenhouse a good clean up.....it seems so empty now even with some flowers and my tomatoes still there but I'm only too glad to get it cleaned up.

We had a good hard frost this morning, had my squash and zucchini covered so they'll be alright. I wander though if it's still worth covering my squash, they're only as big as a big baseball, not sure they'll do anything this year anymore.

still working on getting rid of all the grass that took over everything this summer

Grass grows where you don't want it and doesn't where you want it. It should be renamed mule weed lol.

"Great" is certainly a relative term. I had a great garden-- but nothing like Tamara's. (I've enjoyed your pictures!) I'm sitting here knowing I should be outside but I just can't bring myself to. I love the hot weather-- like Fall but know that Winter is truly awful here in Cincinnati-- but I'm postponing this morning's chores until... I guess later when the heat index is 99 degree. So I've been poking around the forum.

I joined A Gardener's Forum earlier this spring. It's the only one I belong to and I like it. So since I'm just goofing off, and found this thread, I thought I'd tell y'all about my garden this year. We moved into this house about 8 years ago. We bought it b/c it had the most spectacular back garden area. Potentially spectacular, that is. The first year I just cried b/c I knew it could be a beautiful place but there was so much work... . (Who hasn't been there?) But bed by bed, step by step, I got it going. Here's a pic part of the perennial garden, followed by a pic of The Synaptic Junction (my husband's outdoor kitchen and our hang out).

[img]<a href="http://s72.photobucket.com/albums/i175/clc0312/Marica_garden/?action=view&current=05-29-08_2003.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i175/clc0312/Marica_garden/05-29-08_2003.jpg" border="0" alt="The shack"></a>[/img]

<a href="http://s72.photobucket.com/albums/i175/clc0312/Marica_garden/?action=view&current=05-29-08_2003.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i175/clc0312/Marica_garden/05-29-08_2003.jpg" border="0" alt="The shack"></a>

This year I decided to rip up the front yard and put in a vegetable garden that could sustain us through the winter as long as possible. (It's a weird front yard b/c the house sits way back from the street; the front yard is just a very long narrow (10') strip that runs beside the driveway.) Here's what it looked like in early June.

[img]<a href="http://s72.photobucket.com/albums/i175/clc0312/Marica_garden/?action=view&current=06-02-08_1945.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i175/clc0312/Marica_garden/06-02-08_1945.jpg" border="0" alt="early June"></a>[/img]

Here it is later in June.

[img]<a href="http://s72.photobucket.com/albums/i175/clc0312/Marica_garden/?action=view&current=06-20-08_0945.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i175/clc0312/Marica_garden/06-20-08_0945.jpg" border="0" alt="mid-June"></a>[/img]

I spent a LOT of time last winter imagining what it might look like and it turned out pretty much like I had hoped.

[img]<a href="http://s72.photobucket.com/albums/i175/clc0312/Marica_garden/?action=view&current=07-26-08_1818.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i175/clc0312/Marica_garden/07-26-08_1818.jpg" border="0" alt="imagination"></a>[/img]

(That's Doris Scaredeer leaning on the stone pillar in the background.)

Of course, then came the squash borers, and powdery mildew, and too much rain (fungus issues) and not enough rain (stunted second crops), and the sunflowers were so heavy they fell over, and as soon as I had decided that tomorrow was the day I was going to pick that melon, Spud (the groundhog) would eat it over night, and if I see one more lemon cuke... . But over, all I've gotten a pretty good harvest. Here's a few day's worth.

[img]<a href="http://s72.photobucket.com/albums/i175/clc0312/Marica_garden/?action=view&current=08-23-08_1838.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i175/clc0312/Marica_garden/08-23-08_1838.jpg" border="0" alt="leftovers"></a>[/img]

(That's a gallon of homemade raspberry wine at the end of the table.)

Anyway-- my total harvest to date is about 150 lbs., and that doesn't include the tomatoes and peppers that are out in back garden.

The idea was that I was going to grow a LOT so that we could just bypass the produce department this winter. I have good days and bad days when I assess how well I've done, but here's the deep freezer a couple of weeks ago (with lots more canned & pickled).

[img]<a href="http://s72.photobucket.com/albums/i175/clc0312/Marica_garden/?action=view&current=08-24-08_1130.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i175/clc0312/Marica_garden/08-24-08_1130.jpg" border="0" alt="ant's storage area"></a>[/img]

Over 40lbs. of frozen veggies, with two 12 lb. banana squash, lots of fall greens and tomato sauce still to go.

Don't know if you all would consider mine a "great" garden-- but if the zombies attack, at least we'll have frozen beans to eat!

Thanks for letting me share!

oh no! no pics. I'll try again.

Sorry about that. Here're the rest.

Looks great Marica!! It looks like you have had a great harvest! Good for you! The raspberry wine looks yummy too!!

WTG I'm at the crying stage. At this point I'm just wondering if I'll live long enough to get the front yard done. Not even considering the wooded area or the back yard for now. I had no idea how much work just to maintain this amount of lawn. Without having to consider the current and future flower and veggie beds. I've started with clay and rock so I have a very long way to go.

Today I got the lawn between the house nad the tree bed cut and the lawn between the driveway and the tree bed cut. So all I have left in the front is the street side and the future veggie garden. Woohoo. That's much better than I did last time around. I'm definitely getting stronger which is a wonderful thing. Of course my arms currently feel like jelly but that's ok. Now it's time to hang out the laundry. That should be interesting with Jelly arms.

tkhooper the more you do the better you'll feel, that's what I find out each summer.

Had a good day today canning corn and freezing some too.

Most of my garden got hit hard by our frost early this week, even my corn look horrible. But hopefully I'll still get more out of them.

Good luck with your corn. I noticed that most of the people with gardens here have harvested their corn. I didn't have a veggie garden this year so no corn.

Your right the more I do the better I feel and the better I sleep although usually that means a nice long nap during the day so I'm up most of the night but I hope one day to be able to stay awake all day and then get a good nights sleep.

today it was all inside plants that required care so nothing got done outside. But my back doesn't seem to care that it was inside stuff it still hurts.

moved some plants around this morning

and got some bulbs planted for next spring.

what kind of bulbs?

It's raining here. Hurrican Hannah.

here too!

i'm trying to wait until the end of the month before I plant my spring bulbs. But it is hard to wait.

It's raining here so I won't be doing any lawn cutting today. It's a nice soaking rain for me but I've heard it could cause flooding in other areas around me.

I've been pulling out the last of my garden..the frost nipped it all.

all but one of my cucumber plants has given up the ghost. They were fine day before yesterday and full of blooms. We had some hard rain and now they are dead. Why does a lot of water kill them if they've been so dry?

I planted some more collard greens, broccoli, and cilantro. none of my fall seeds are coming up. I just figured every other weekend I'll just keep putting the seed out. tomorrow I plan to put out more cilantro and lettuce. something is eating some of the seedlings, but some are just not coming up at all????

I have no luck with direct planting. So I start just about everything in pots unless it just won't transplant. And then I usually end up not growing it at all.

I don't know why plants will do that. But, I have seen the same thing as you mentioned.

Today I plan to go out and assess what damage my garden might have sustained. The rain got very heavy before it stopped. Enough that I am reassessing what I'm going to do with the sidewalk garden.