Gardening 2010

[heidiiiii]

I KNOW it is January and there is a cold snap on the way but I thought I could start this thread early for a couple reasons. Some of you may do cold framing. Some of us are probably already planning on what we are going to do this year. Some of us may need some ideas..

I really am thinking of this years gardening because it is time to buy our garden plots at the community garden. Chelsea and I are going to get two this year. She wants to grow some herbs and experiment with different crops.

I have a short list of things I can plant in Early March for cold weather crops. Radishes, Lettuces, Broccoli, cauliflower, and beets. Anyone have any other veggies to add to that list?

We really want to get the most out of the plots this year. So we want to rotate cold weather and then move into Late Spring/Summer..and then try to get some more cold weather crops in September/October.

I am going to plant some tomatoes there but the majority of the heirlooms that I plant, I will do here at the house. I want to have some things I can tend here .

What are your plans for this coming garden season?

[jujurodgers]

Turnips? I personally live where our growing season is like 3 months! could freeze in july....last year it snowed on may 31 all day! i built a greenhouse off our trailer/home, off my art room, so i could have tomatoes!! for several years i started seeds inside and then planted them, like 60 plants, outside in june...never got more than a few tomatoes!! ....and never gets warm enough here in the night during summer for a lot of things to grow. spinach is another good colder one i think. We just plan and hope for enough time to grow anything LOL Hubby has big planter boxes outside and he grows zucchini for the most part....our pumpkins and gourds did next to nothing! It can be so discouraging!!

[grazhina]

Tomatoes need warm nights to thrive.

I may start seedlings indoors again this year.

I've got that new big planting area since my above ground pool is gone. Even after the shrubs are all moved in, there will be empty space. Besides, I'd like to replenish my short, double petaled Coreopsis and my short Shastas. I lost them all in a bad freeze a few years ago. The tall versions, though good bloomers, get all gangly unless you keep after them.

I'm not letting myself go overboard though, and get enthralled with too many pretty blooms. I don't have that much bare space left anywhere.

DH always wants to grow tomatoes, but I grew them here for 3-4 years and never had a good crop. Even when I planted something like Early Girl, I never had any till mid August, and within a couple of weeks, the nights were too cool and they'd poop out. I also had to cope with those nasty disgusting huge tomato worms and aphids. I decided that tomatoes from the supermarket were just as good in summertime anyway.

I get more bugs up here than I ever had in PA. I can't even keep flowering plants in the house. Little bugs will just suddenly show up and start feeding on the plants, which is why I tossed any plant the bugs seemed to like out one year. In over 20 years of gardening and growing houseplants in PA, I'd never had bug problems like I've had living in Maine these last 12 years.

[jujurodgers]

we do not get too many bugs here...but i tried growing gourds in my greenhouse and suddenly there were aphids everywhere!!! tried that dish soap spray...didnt work! PA is a great place for growing things isnt it? I have heard that you can get used to how things grow in one place and move just a few miles away and it will be different! LOL

[heidiiiii]

Julie.

You should talk to Gina aka Wolfie. She lives in Montana and does alot of her growing inside with grow lights and such.

I always have too luck with tomatoes. Even when that tomato blight hit last year, none of mine were effected.

I can never ever grow squash or zucchini. No matter what I do, they rot out. And they are supposed to be the easiest to grow!! LOL

[KathieB]

Thanks for starting this thread, Heidi. :lol:

I've been eyeing the back garden from the comfort of indoors since the snow melted. Both of our big Mexican urns toppled over. Soft ground from all of the rain/melted snow. Didn't realize they were tipping until it was too late. One of them is in a half dozen pieces. Too muddy to get to the other one, but I don't think it broke. Lloyd says he thinks he can salvage the broken one. (If not, the broken bits will make interesting accents here and there highlighting special plants.)

I hadn't thought of putting in early crops, as last year I was still busy digging beds. I do want to add topsoil to the three stone-edged plots beside the shed to raise them up some. The section nearest the shed has Stella d'Oro daylilies in it and I'll plant nasturtiums in between again. The center and end sections could easily raise an early crop. I want to put strawberries on one of them and basil, dill, etc in the other when it gets warmer.

I am going to put in tomatoes (3 plants) along the fence again. We got a dozen or so tomatoes last year, even though they weren't planted until very late in the season.

Have been eyeing the front garden every time I leave or return to the house. Have visions of masses of flowers (perennials) in some of the bare spots. Still have to level some areas when the ground dries enough and plant either an oval flower bed or put in grass seed. The jury is still out on that one. May put some annuals in the planters by the front door but not into the ground.

Am eager to see how the scrawny mail-order seedlings I put in last year do this year. However, have decided I'm too old to plant scrawny mail-order seedlings and will splurge on decent sized plants from local nurseries. For example, the mail order butterfly bush ended the season about the size of a medium-sized dandelion. Pfffft! No way its going to camouflage the sump pump cover beside the front stoop this year.

[jujurodgers]

I have no room inside other than my little greenhouse...and then our nights in the summer are often like around 60 or lower! I should talk to her LOL

wow....yeah zucchini about the only thing that reliably does good here but then other than our monsoon season it is relatively dry and we dont get fog or anything like that!

[KathieB]

Julie, where do you live?

[woodland_miniatures]

I actually started thinking about my "garden", is confined to on or very closely around my little patio, in November or so. Well, my mistakes and successes from last year were still fresh in my mind then - that was only my second summer here and the conditions are very different from Seattle, where I've done nearly all my gardening. Much shorter growing season, much colder winters usually, much warmer days and cooler nights than Seattle, much less rain and much more sun.

I THINK I maybe know what will work now....:lol:

BUT, there's a major problem with my doing any gardening this year: all this summer the new owners of my building are expected to be doing big-time refurbishing inside and out, and that means redoing the patios (old and cracked), replacing the patio roofs including their posts, and I don't know what all else. Be a shame to get some flowers, herbs and veggies just going really well and then have them all disturbed by the construction, wouldn't it? So I may only have my over-wintered perennial herbs this year....

[Debz]

I will be planting tomatoes, carrots, turnips, potatoes, onions, beetroot, butternut squash, leeks and peas. I already have some of my seeds and keep looking at the packets in anticipation of better weather for planting.

[heidiiiii]

Mary,

Put the veggies in big planter pots if you have them. One of my neighbors uses those white industrial buckets. Pokes holes in them, one plant per bucket. Did not cost a lot of money either.

[woodland_miniatures]

Actually I've got my eye on some very large (20") clay pots my hardware store has had since the middle of last winter. He's not asking much for them and might even knock off a few dollars when I buy the four or so I'd love to have. If I put them on caster platforms, they'll be moveable to wherever work isn't going on.

But I do think I'd better forget about putting up netting on the wall outside my bedroom and growing sweetpeas there, since I believe they're also going to paint the outside of the building. Oh, well, can't have everything!

[heidiiiii]

I lucked out a couple years ago with some perennial sweet peas. I went to this garden center and she had some. I was thrilled. So I was going to buy two very small plants. She threw in the lot of them...10 plants total..No one seemed to be interested in them. They grow so lovely on the fence up on the top yard. I love to pick them and put them in small vases in the bathrooms.

They smell lovely.

[woodland_miniatures]

That's exactly why I wanted them, I had visions of waking up each morning with this wonderful scent wafting in through my bedroom window....maybe next year!

[grynche]

I'm expecting a bumper crop of ants, several different varieties. They thrive in the pure sand with a few grains of dirt mixed in that passes for topsoil in my yard.

[heidiiiii]

I'm expecting a bumper crop of ants, several different varieties. They thrive in the pure sand with a few grains of dirt mixed in that passes for topsoil in my yard.

ROFL! I have not had enough coffee..I had to read that twice.

[grazhina]

I'm expecting a bumper crop of ants, several different varieties. They thrive in the pure sand with a few grains of dirt mixed in that passes for topsoil in my yard.

I had that! At my first house the backyard was nothing but weeds and ants. I hated it. The buggers used to crawl up the wall and under the kitchen window or the door too.

One day I grabbed a can of ant killer and started to walk up and down through my backyard spraying the grass. Well, actually weeds, cause they outnumbered the grass. It was some kind of house and garden spray, and I flat out didn't care if it killed what grass I had or not at this point. I sprayed until the whole can was gone. It only covered about 1/3 of the yard (I had a big yard).

A couple of weeks later I noticed a difference in the front part of my back lawn. It felt softer under my feet. The anthills were gone and there was actually grass! The grass started filling in the bare spots and choking out the weeds.

I went out and got a few more cans of spray and by the end of summer we were barefootin' of lush, soft green grass. The ants must have been killing the grass.

Ants are also aphids best friends. They tote the aphids around on their backs. I read that somewhere. If you have a big aphid problem, get rid of the ants and it may help. I had a lovely Alberta spruce that was attacked and destroyed by aphids very quickly. When I dug up the spruce, I found the ground was teeming with tiny ants, it was like the earth was moving. I sprayed the soil, sprayed the root ball and since part of the spruce was still green, I transplanted it somewhere else. The little spruce is thriving, 6 years later.

[LLyn M.]

Heidi...What about brussel sprouts and cabbages??( We're lucky here to have Pansies all year round-my favourite flower-well, one of them.) We had no luck with tomatos last year because it was too hot so this year we will start them indoors in about a week or so.

[SurferGurl]

Y'all don't want to hear from us in sunny Southern California. I live in the desert, about 15 miles north of Palm Springs, and I have lots of flowers blooming, several dozen sunflower seedlings, lots of yucca, aloe, agave, and just planted some tomatoes. It gets down to mid 40s at night and almost 70 in the day.

Don't envy us too much... pretty soon, it will be between 110 and 117 in the daytime, dropping down to a brisk 90s at night. Thank goodness for air conditioning!

[Sherry]

The problem at this new house is shade. I wanted lots of trees and I got them. We have maybe a 20x30 ft space that is not in the shade all day. So I'm pretty limited in what I can grow. After DS2 built the retaining wall in front, we planted loads of ground cover, hostas, and monkey grass behind it. It looks nice, but I'd sure like to have some flowers. The back yard is the same way, all shade. I love the trees, but what can I plant under them, or in the shade that they create?

[grazhina]

I have a neighbor with a shade garden. I know she has fuschias and bleeding heart, columbine, trollius, monkshood, coral bells and astilbe .

Jacob's Ladder grew in a shady area for me, and the Virginia Bluebells look good too, except my husband ripped most of them out in a fit of weeding one year.

Impatiens is very colorful and since it's an annual, will bloom all through summer. I love them, but when I plant them in my garden here in Maine, they get eaten down to bare sticks one by one. My marigolds vanish the same way. I've seen slug trails near them, but slug bait and even the stuff I spray on my roses doesn't protect the impatiens or marigolds. I'd like to plant impatiens on my island this year. It's pretty full with just some smaller empty spaces, perfect for the bright colors of impatiens.

[heidiiiii]

I have pink and white bleeding hearts. They do well in shade and full sun. I have astible (sp?), many varieties of hostas, and other things that I forget what they are called. My top yard is shaded from all the trees. I used to have columbine that wound around a arbor but it died a couple years ago and I never replaced it..maybe I will this year.

I was not able to do ANYTHING last year. My back was too bad. It killed me a little bit inside to watch it. It was not even just last year..I was declining the year before that. I have so much to cut down..I am so thankful that I made the decision to pay a kid to rake the leaves in the fall. I will not have to do THAT this Spring.

My first thing that I am going to do is clean off the back patio. We have alot of junk out there right now. Fred and his buddy were going to toss it all in November but the guy hurt his hand. He had surgery but he will be back in the Spring and they will clean up the mess. I want a new table and chairs with a market umbrella. I am going to plant flower in pots and have some herbs in pots back there.

[KathieB]

Grazhina, are the bare spots such that you could use planter pots/urns to raise the impatiens and marigolds above ground level? Maybe this would deter the slugs. The empty pots could add color during the winter, too.

[grazhina]

Kathie, the slugs climb right up the pots.

I think I may forget about impatiens even though I like them so much, especially the double flowered ones. They need to be watered well, since mine would be in the sun all afternoon, and they'd need to be doused with an ammonia solution after every watering and rain to keep the slugs off It's too much bother, I think. The slugs leave my hostas alone when I spray them with ammonia, but it doesn't work with the impatiens or marigolds

Of course, we did rip out the big shrubs along my front walk. I always thought that might be where the slugs hung out in the daytime. The new shrubs are smaller, and leafier, being hollies.

Remember my mentioning how ants carry aphids around? Nasturtiums are another favorite flower of mine. I used to have them in my old gardens every year. Here they got attacked by aphids, now matter how much I sprayed against them. One year I got smart and put them in hanging baskets on my porch. My midsummer, though, they had aphids.

I'm tired of fighting assorted insects to keep my flowers going. You should see what happens to impatiens when I try to grow them in the house. Something comes along and sucks the life out of the leaves and the little plants die. Someone gave me a gorgeous miniature ivy arrangement, and it grew wonderfully for almost a year, til spider mites attacked it again and again and again. I'd spray, cut it back, spray the soil, repot in clean soil and a clean pot, the ivy would recover, and the spider mites would come back. The only house plants I have left are a dracena, 2 aspidistras, a golden pothos, 2 gigantic jade plants and a big ficus tree. I bought the ficus about 15 years ago and have to chop off a couple of feet every once in a while. The other plants were ones my mom gave me around 30 years ago.

The bugs leave all of them alone.

Maybe I should google plants slugs hate for my garden. I wonder if I'll find anything.

[KathieB]

Grazhina, there are a ton of plants that slugs don't like ... well, half a ton, anyway!

Here's another list ... although this one has impatiens on it, so who knows?