Your summer garden plans?
 

How will your garden grow this summer?

I've hardly started. I grew some zinnias from seed and tried to grow a bunch of morning glories and sweet peas from seed and only 2 of each came up. Dang! With this horticulture PhD, I know how to treat the seeds for maximum germination and I still can't get either to sprout. Bluebonnets either. I want sweet peas because my grandmother had lots growing in her back yard and they were soooo fragrant.

My husband has potted a bunch of vegetable seedlings. This awful drought isn't helping our gardens at all.

Since I'm moving (probably to a condo) I am looking at getting some nice hanging baskets since I won't have much of a yard.What are good flowers/plants for hanging baskets? I'm partial to pansies, but do they do well in a hanging basket?

I've been trying to kill the morning glories in my yard since I moved in 6 years ago. They pop up everywhere and make me crazy. When I try to pull them, I find that the root is going all the way under the deck to the other side of the deck. What a nightmare. You might be glad that they won't germinate, carnation, seriously.

Well, these were going to go into a giant pot and be trained onto a tepee for the fair in the fall. Too bad! Two morning glories won't do that!

Good hanging basket plants include bougainvillea, petunias, portulaca, lantana, geraniums. Pansies can work but only if it doesn't get too hot. I use them every season except summer.

I seriously think there's a giant laurelcherry root under my yard because when I try to pull up the plants, they seem to be connected to something major and we have 80 zillion seedlings every year.

Well I would love to grow some pot to make brownies. j/k I'm the girl who kills cacti, so even if I did grow some, it probably wouldn't live long enough to make it into my cuisine anyways. But yea, no gardening plans of any kind, except to amire from afar and not touch anything that's green or alive.

Thanks for the advice Carnation! It can get hot and humid in Ohio in the summer, so I will leave my pansy-planting until next Spring.

I've only planted the front yard. (We have a 1 year old dog who I'm not confident has been broken of his digging habit yet, so I'm not wasting any time/money planting flowers in the fenced in backyard yet. lol)

In the front yard, I have...portulaca, dahlias, impatiens, verbena, shasta daisies, dianthus (which I didn't plant this year - they came back from last year, oddly enough), sweet alyssum...there are a few more that I'm drawing a total blank on the flower name! Could give you a good description - ex. the orange daisy looking thing with the bluish purple center - but can't tell you the name. lol

(Note - the front yard has areas that are almost entirely shaded, along with areas that are almost completely full sun. Our front porch casts a weird shadow.)

I'm hoping to plant some red and buff roses somewhere this year - was recently recommended a climbing variety of buff rose, so I'm thinking perhaps I could put it along the fence? We'll see...

I'd also like to plant some lilacs, but probably won't get to that until next year.

Or you could go to Arkansas and gather it wild...when I was in college there, my mother and her buddies came in enchanted with the beautiful weeds they'd found for drying. They wouldn't believe me when I told them it was wild pot. When they finally did, they were panicking and wondering how to get rid of it and my grandmother--who lived right off the campus of the U of Arkansas--insisted they should burn it in her incinerator! LOL! There would have been 2000 students in the back yard within minutes!:eek:

I have some jasmine I want to plant by the front porch this week. What a wonderful smell to sit on the porch and enjoy!

Just this morning, I was thinking I should get out the planters and plant some narcusiss and asters. Being that one's a spring and one's a fall, they should be able to go in the same planter, right?

my mom and i are doing tomatoes, snap peas, cucumbers and broccoli. we do some of our plants in plastic laundry baskets. it works really well if you have limited sunlight in your yard, and you can move the plants to always have some sort of light. we just lined them with a black plastic bag poked with holes, and filled it with dirt!

My sons and I planted three strawberry plants along the side of the house about a month ago- and this weekend we were able to have our first harvest. So it was only 4 strawberries, but the boys were so excited!
We also planted gypsy peppers, bell peppers, tomatoes, green beans, parsley and oregano- oh and my garlic chives came back with a vengance.

Ugh. That happened to me, too - I had mulch put down, and the morning glories came in with that. They've run completely amok, so much so that in my Christmas cards to my neighbors, I said that the boro had turned down my request to use napalm on them!

Carnation, if you want some, you can have ALL of mine!! It's killed so many of my other plants, I refuse to plant anything else until it's gone. :(

My neighbors recommended a great nursery where the plants are good quality and inexpensive - the only drawback is that you have to buy the whole flat. So I have a flat of cucumbers (!), and half a flat each of habaneros and bell peppers (we each bought a flat and then divided them). Also, I got a flat each of marigolds, impatiens, verbena, and some other pretty purple flower whose name I'm blanking on.

Elsewhere, I got basil, cilantro, tomatoes, mint, and some geraniums and petunias in hanging baskets.

I didn't get everything down in time, so a few of the plants died :( , but everything else is thriving. I am going to have so many cucumbers...! Cucumber salad, anyone?

Carnation--I have a question for you. I live in an apartment with a patio. I try to grow things in long window boxes. My porch gets full sun, and I love to know what I could grow. If it helps, I live in Pennsylvania.

Full sun? Verbena would do nicely. I've also had good luck growing herbs in window boxes - but don't put basil or mint in a box with anything else - they're both pretty aggressive.

I'm trying square foot gardening for the first time this summer. I'm planting herbs and flowers among the veggies for natural pest control.

Plants fear me
 

Admire all of you who can get your garden to grow.
At one time, I had house plants all over apartment. I took a vacation, and while I was gone, a buddy was to water the plants. I came back, and the plants were gone, and left on the coffee table was a note saying the plants had been rescued. :confused: I called my buddy, and he told me he had to save them. He re potted them all and were happy at his house.

In our vegetable garden we have currently growing:

Three different kinds of lettuce
Basil
Oregano
Cilantro
Tomato
Cherry Tomato
Green Bell Peppers
Cayenne Peppers
Banana Peppers
Jalapeno Peppers
Habanero Peppers (my husband makes his own hot sauce/chili powder)
zucchini
Cucumber
Yellow Squash
Sunflowers

The opposite side of the yard has the now lone grape vine. We planted four vines originally--2 niagara, 1 concord, 1 red--but three of them were killed with the last late freeze :(

Regular flowers we have:
Roses
Dianthus
Ivy
Day Lillies
Columbine
Hosta
Lavender
Marigolds
some yellow flower i dont know the name of
(Irises, crocus, and hiacinths have come and gone and the Gladiolis apparently wont be back this year)

We've planted a lot this year. We did Hostas in front of our Boxwoods at the front of the house. Our side garden has Tiger Lilies, a Butterfly Bush and an Azalea. We've added a Lilac, Hydrangea, Bleeding Heart, Peonies, and Irises. It's a lot of work (especially for someone who never gardened before this year!) but it's looking awesome.

So what did you accomplish in your gardens this summer?

The drought about did us in. Some plants were watered every day and still suffered, particularly the 3 pink pieris shrubs in front. They'll have to be moved.

I finally had good luck with zinnias and have had enought to cut every day if I want! We had our usual surplus of peppers, bell peppers and cucmbers.

While I didn't get a garden in, I'm feeling terrible for the people on the other end of our town. They had several floods this summer, and have been told not to eat ANYTHING from their gardens! I can't even imagine working so hard on a garden and not even being able to compost it!

Ack! That happened in Georgia after some awful floods a few years ago. No one wanted the melons from south GA because you would cut into them and dirty water would pour out. (No telling what was in the water either.)

Sadly, I do know what was in that water - blech. :p BTW, did you know that melons are the most likely to carry disease? People rarely wash the melons before they slice them, and the ick from the rind contaminates the rest of the fruit. Double blech.

Divided and transplanted hundreds (or so it seemed) of bulbs and rhisomes this weekend. Our latest water bill reflected our very hot, rainless summer.

I realize this is old, but for the two of you with morning glory problems...

I've heard that if you take a bucket or jar of weed killer and either put the head of the flower/stem in it, or part of the root [that is still attached!] in the weed killer, then it will go throughout the whole plant through the connected roots and kill them all.

Worth a try?

May you have a blessed day! I will definitely try this, while I still have some landscaping left!

It's that time of year. Recently I went to the local nursery for cucumbers but the ones they had been damaged in a recent frost. Here's what's been planted so far.

Veggies
Green and red peppers
Celery
Tomatoes
Green beans

For flowers I was thinking hydrangeas but I'm not sure what else to put with it.

In the yard:

2 Blackberries
8 grape plants
3 raspberries, one of which is fall gold raspberries
3 blueberries
strawberries
nectarine
peach (we will probably lose this tree)
barlett pear
plum
cherry
hydrangea
japanese maple
hemlock
10 bradford pears
mammoth sunflowers
mixed sunflowers
two assorted wildflower beds
knockout roses
a white rose that i forget the name but smells like honeysuckle
mock orange


herbs:
lavender
2 oregano
italian parsley
thyme
dill
sage
rosemary
marjoram & tarragon are planned

Flowers have not been bought yet or decided on.

garden:
tomatoes
cucumber
squash
3 kinds of lettuce
spinach
carrots
5 kinds of peppers
zucchini
beans
peas

Bumping because we are back to that time of year again!


What is everyone planting/planning this year? Is anyone having any garden themed parties?

Ooo, yay! I'm glad you bumped this!

I'm concentrating on fragrant plants this year so we can sit on the porch or deck and smell wonderful things! So far, I've put in lavender and have cut back the roses and rosemary and I've got more roses, sweet peas, daphne, and jasmine to put in.

We're also going to plant several different annuals for cut flowers. Marigolds usually have a really strong smell that a lot of people don't like but I'm potting up a bunch to put in my classroom next fall so that my students can experience one of the smells of Mexico's Day of the Dead. (I'd burn some copal incense too but might get fired for it, lol.)

We have seeds started for:

Moonflower
Marigold
Zinnia
Shasta Daisy
Iceland Poppy
Sweet Pea
5 kinds of lettuce
Zucchini
yellow squash
tomatoes
4 kinds of peppers
Cosmos
Echinacea
container eggplant
Snap Peas
Cucumber
Parsley
Stevia
two kinds of Petunia
moss rose
black eyed susan
roma beans
lobelia

I will probably start the sunflowers this week.

We planted a lilac bush and are hoping to add one or two more rose bushes. I think we got all the trees planted now. The grapes, blackberries, gooseberries, red currant, and strawberries are coming back strong. I am worried about the blueberries and raspberries though.

Since I live in a loft downtown, I only have about 20" worth of ledge to grow things on, but I currently have some strawberry plants, and several seedlings of assorted lettuce, tomato, cilantro, chives and some unidentified seedlings I got for free at a give-away.

Sadly, the basil and the thyme seedlings I got last week are long-since dead. Poor little things, I promise to water you regularly from now on!

We've been harvesting loads of blackberries this summer; the plants didn't thrive until we cut down a sickly tree that was shading them. Now they've taken off and we'll need to stake them this winter!

We've also finally gotten some sweet peas going and I can't wait to smell them!

We have our biggest veggie garden yet this year. red, yellow, green and purple bell peppers. banana, hungarian hot wax, chili, jalapenos, red jalapeno, habanero peppers. orange cherry (that reseeded from last year), red grape, heirloom, beefsteak tomatos. potatoes, rhubarb, cilantro, oregeno, basil, cucumbers, and baby seedles melon. oh and strawberry plants (done producing though).

then for flowers, i always put in a ton of impatiens (seems to be the only flowers that thrives in my flower beds, due to only a few hours of direct sunlight), some begonias, lavender, columbine, sedum, snapdragons, and wave petunias. some are in hanging baskets that i reused form previous years.

Yesterday we planted a ton of the big marigolds to put in pots. I'm taking them to school in late October so my Spanish classes can discover what it smells like on Day of the Dead in heavily populated areas. Well, that and copal incense but I can't bring that, lol.

We also sowed seeds for various other annuals so that they should be at their peak for the county fair.

Anyway, our red plum trees started to bear this year and so did the raspberries. Our sweet peas haven't done so well, probably due to the heat.

This is the first year in the new house, so we figured we'd just see what grew. Lots of stuff. The front yard I'm mostly happy with except that we have a raised planter built up against the front of the house--sort of a 2-foot retaining wall with dirt in it. Most of it is filled up with a large variety of flowers. The rest is filled up with English ivy. Come Fall, I plan to nuke the Ivy--I hate the stuff, remove the retaining wall and do something different. Maybe hedges, dunno.

The back yard is another issue entirely. We had a little flooding problem this Summer, had a 10" rain (that isn't a typo), so we had a pretty serious French drain system installed on the back of the house. The rest of the back yard is a mess of weeds and feskue. The garden is nothing to write home about.

My plan is to regrade the back yard (I have about 3 tons of fill dirt from the French drain install) into a sort of split level thing with both levels being level or real close to it. Going to probably build a short retaining wall and some steps to split the levels. Again, with the roundup, will be nuking all of the grass (roundup), planting some Rembrant feskue and installing sprinklers. Got some general fun times planned in the garden too, but that's the wife's domain, not mine.

There is a strong likelihood a landscape architecht will be involved in my plans though. Don't want to flood my house or any of the neighbors again.

Jen, use a high-phosphorus fertilizer to encourage the berries. I'm about to go buy some geraniums because I've seen some studies that say that the scented-leaf kind discourage mosquitoes.

Kevin, I am impressed!!!!

Right now, I'm just trying to keep my mother's plants alive while she's gone! She has some of everything: lemon and orange trees, tomatoes, collard greens, mustard greens, strawberries, violets, a ton of roses, pomegranites, plums, spider plants, aloe vera, and a bunch of other things I can't identify. I ran around at midnight last night watering all of her indoor plants because I've concentrated so much on her garden, I forgot about those! Luckily, bamboo doesn't need a lot of attention but the violets and orchids needed water.

I'm a horrible gardener. I have a brown thumb (literally :p). My mom bought me a cactus when I moved into my new apartment and it died--that ought to give you an idea. :rolleyes:

I am unfortunately restricted to container gardening for my veggies and herbs, as we have a deer problem. I have three tomato plants going, and one of them (cherry tomatoes) has just started to yield ripe fruit - delicious! Only one of my cucumber plants survived, but it is thriving. We should be getting some jalapeno peppers soon. The mint is doing well. My cilantro bolted, but I'm going to harvest the seeds and try to plant them next spring. And, as always, there are my faithful chives... they come back year after year, and my oldest chive plant (10 years old) has survived two house moves.

Garden-wise, I had my usual spring flowers - forsythia, azalea, rhododendron - followed by some lovely roses. My hydrangea is blooming and my lady's mantle is very happy.

I will be looking for bulbs this fall, but I've got plenty of time between now and then.