Your summer garden plans?

[alum]

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

[LAblondeGPhi]

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!

[carnation]

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!

[IrishLake]

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.

[carnation]

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.

[Kevin]

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.

[christiangirl]

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 ). My mom bought me a cactus when I moved into my new apartment and it died--that ought to give you an idea.

[aephi alum]

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.

[honeychile]

Help! How do you dry seeds for the future? At a convention last year, I was given seeds from someone, and it was a cool & personal gift.

I'm talking about peonies, mostly. I love them. If they grew all summer, I'd fill my yard with them. I know that you plant them on September 13th (you don't know how close I came to being named Peony!), but is that the plant or the seeds? Help!!

I'm still killing off the renegade morning glories that killed a lot of my other plants in the front of the house, and I'm toying with trying a crape myrtle for the sunniest place of the back yard. I'd love to be like Kevin, and do some terracing, but frankly, I can't afford it.

Also, there's a horrible weed around here - my mother had part of her yard mulched, and it came in on that. The local conserventory (sp?) says that they're having a terrible time killing it, too. I've been told to cut it down when it's somewhat dry, spray Round Up on it, cover it all with newspaper (held down by rocks), then mulch if I want. I don't trust mulch anymore, so just getting that week killed will thrill me. Has anyone else heard about the newspaper bit?

[carnation]

You can pretty much plant a peony plant any time of year but the seeds go in in spring or fall around here. With the seeds, you can just store them in a cheesecloth bag until spring.

Honeychile, you know how I have the best luck with killing weeds? Cut the weed off an inch or so from the ground, then apply herbicide to the cut surface.

[honeychile]

Originally Posted by carnation

You can pretty much plant a peony plant any time of year but the seeds go in in spring or fall around here. With the seeds, you can just store them in a cheesecloth bag until spring.

Honeychile, you know how I have the best luck with killing weeds? Cut the weed off an inch or so from the ground, then apply herbicide to the cut surface.

I managed to select three dead peonies from the garden center this year, so I think the seeds may work better. I've let them dry - so now, into the cheesecloth?

This weed is some sort of mutant! Picture a dandilion that grows up to five feet tall, with tiny thorns on all of the green parts. It's miserable to pull out, and simply will not die. My boro will not allow the use of napalm, and I can't afford to have all of the dirt removed. SO MANY YARDS have this, it's a real nuisance. I've never hated a plant quite so much! Is it restricted to my area, or have others seen it, too?

[IrishLake]

We buy all of our seedlings in the spring. I refuse to start from seeds. however, I had tomato plants in the garden this year that reseeded themselves from plants last year... they grew like weeds.

I have so many habaneros peppers and tomatos right now, I dont know what to do with them all. we've made salsa, canned it. made marinara sauce, canned it. I have thousands and thousands of orange cherry tomatos and red grape tomatos that need picked. I had a roma plant pop up that I did not plant, so I dont know where it came from, and that one single plant has produced dozens and dozens of fruit. I've given them away to neighbors and coworkers, and I STILL have too many.

[ThetaPrincess24]

Originally Posted by IrishLake

We buy all of our seedlings in the spring. I refuse to start from seeds. however, I had tomato plants in the garden this year that reseeded themselves from plants last year... they grew like weeds.

I have so many habaneros peppers and tomatos right now, I dont know what to do with them all. we've made salsa, canned it. made marinara sauce, canned it. I have thousands and thousands of orange cherry tomatos and red grape tomatos that need picked. I had a roma plant pop up that I did not plant, so I dont know where it came from, and that one single plant has produced dozens and dozens of fruit. I've given them away to neighbors and coworkers, and I STILL have too many.

Ashame we dont live close! I'd make a trip to help relieve you of some of your produce

[DubaiSis]

I miss gardening, and I feel your pain jobellesis. The same thing happened to me. My precious roses that I could easily have dug up and given to friends were in a cloud of weeds at my old house. I restrained myself from knocking on the door to explain how to trim them back at the end of the year, how to mulch them correctly...

Now? I try to keep a palm tree alive on the balcony through the summer. I suppose next month I could put a plant or two out there. The heat is starting to break, but desert/urban gardening is just NOT the same as a Midwestern vegetable garden.

[carnation]

This year I'm trying a moongarden. It'll have plants that are fragrant at night, mostly white ones, and we're planting them right off the deck area. Actually, the deck was crushed by a tree last week (thank God I hadn't put the plants in yet) but the new deck is already in, so here we go today!

This is the first year that I've tried heliotrope.