Here we are finishing up the first week of June in which we have had snow flurries for two days followed by lots of rain. I doubt there will be much success in the gardens. The only benefit to this weather is that the Cannon’s Double azalea I planted last year will get some extra time to acclimate to the spot I plan on moving it from (grrr!). I don’t think it’s in a shady enough spot and will struggle to establish itself. I know where I plan to move it, but it will be in a location that’s too close to part of the fence that we’ll be working on next so it’s best to stay put.

I peeked into my tomato bed and saw one–ONE– seedling coming up. This is after the first round decided not to show and the transplants from the seeds started indoors took a nosedive. The seedling is one of the pomodoro tomatoes that is supposedly a trooper, so they may be the only tomatoes I get this year. I’ll most likely break down and buy some nursery plants, but I’ll do so grumpily.

The Brussels sprouts and artichokes are looking healthy, which is great. Onions look like they survived the transplant, but I’m sweating over the scallions, gherkins, an eggplant and two watermelons. During a break in the rain, I planted black beauty zucchini, eight ball zucchini, lemon cucumbers and loofah seeds. I still have more eggplant, watermelon, spaghetti squash, etc. to plant, so I may do that tomorrow.

My exciting news is that I was gifted with Egyptian onions!!! I’ve wanted these since I saw a photo in one of my garden books. The person who gave them to me presented them and asked if I knew what they were. From just the one photo of a much more mature plant, I nailed the answer. He was so floored that I knew what they were, my gift went from two plants/bunches, to four. I hope they do well.

I’ve spent my garden time during the week trying to come up with a plan for a walk-in hoop house and durable cold frames. The last few years of gardening have been dismal and I’m sick of it. I’m kicking myself for not getting that greenhouse last year. It occurred to me too late that I could have installed grow lights in there…and I still scrunch my face when I remember Ralph’s belated realization that we could have had a special pipe installed for a potential greenhouse when we put in the geothermal heating.

I suppose it’s all for the best. I’d prefer to have a structure that is over the actual planting beds so that I don’t have to deal with unsuccessful transplants. I guess a walk-in hoop house will be the way to go. I just hate how it looks. What to do, what to do…

After drooling over cute veggie gardens and potagers, I decided to rip out all of the clover in my veggie beds. Whether they did anything for me as a cover crop, I have no clue. I just know that they were smothering my brussels sprouts, onions and garlic and was unattractively patchy. The clover that grew along the soaker hoses were lush and healthy. Everywhere else was dirt.

Also, finally fed up with the crap weather, I went to Home Depot after work and got pvc, clamps and 4 mil plastic and made a hoop house over half of the bed that is right off the patio. I decided to let the pvc criss-cross when they go over the bed, then I zip-tied the point of intersection. This just feels like it provides a sturdier structure during a strong wind storm. Currently the plastic is thrown over and then held down by fist-size rocks…not really working. I’ll be trying to fix that after writing this post.

Then Saturday, left home alone, I took scraps from mending the fence and made a cold-frame-esque structure over my smallest veggie bed (aka my experiment bed). I also added a huge bag of soil, planted more tomato seeds and transplanted my scallions there. The 4 mil I threw over it was blowing around in the wind even worse, so with duct tape in hand, I made a nearly fitted cover over the frame. I know that one of the universal truths is anything made out of duct tape is automatically white trash. However, since this is a temporary solution only, I’m dubbing this my Ghetto Greenhouse. Besides, it rolls off the tongue better.

So between web surfing and then many of the gardens I saw in Napa, I feel like I’m back to square one as far as thinking of a future, more permanent veggie garden. I fear I won’t be able to come up with a solution that I will find as cute. I know that sounds dumb. It shouldn’t matter that it isn’t cute, but that it produces good crops. I want both.

So much for getting back to regular posts. :\

The last week and a half we’ve been repairing a fence that had two posts snap in a big wind storm. We went with metal posts and have given the neighbor the “nice” side of the fence. It has given me a slight kick-in-the-pants to clean up the backyard better.

Most of the veggies this year will be in the front yard while I decide what’s to be done for a permanent veggie garden, preferably in the back yard. Right now, I’m thinking the tomatoes and shade-loving veggies will stay in the back. Mainly because tomatoes aren’t really the prettiest plants.

I have grand ideas to help block the neighbor’s house from our view, but I’ve pretty much frozen my garden budget in hopes to be able to make a trip east to visit friends and Hersheyland.

I am so behind on some garden projects like starting seeds indoors, planting out seeds that can go outside right now (sugar snap peas, cabbage, garlic, poppies). The artichoke has a nice little cluster of fern-like leaves mounding, bulbs are poking their first leaves out, the roses has some new green and my beloved hellebore is blooming and showing lots of new growth. No signs of new hellebores from the seeds I planted last year. It does take three season (warm-cold-warm) for it to germinate so hopefully it’s still a few weeks early. This surprise fence project has really thrown me off. :\

The wallflower looks like it might finally be done. I still see a little bit of new growth in there, but it’s never looked this “asleep for winter.” In fact, it’s almost seemed evergreen for the last 3 years. A poppy clump, however, has been alive and kicking all winter long. I’m totally amazed by that.

The weather is supposed to be warmer this week. I hope to get the seeds started indoors and some weeding done if there’s little wind. A good motivator for me to get out there and weed is the reptile rescue guy appreciates the dandelion greens for the lizards he is currently housing. Since we don’t use chemicals (because of the dogs) I’m one of the few people he can accept them from. Lord knows I don’t like thinking of lizards starving.

Again, I dropped the ball on maintaining my blog…even with garden-related stuff. I tried to do a serious push to get all open client projects done so that I can take a little time off to recharge, get my site up, do some personal work. Here it is, early November, and I think I am close to wrapping up any open client projects.

Gardening season is pretty much over. However, I have lots of carrot and flower seedlings popping out of the soil. I have decided to incorporate veggies into my front garden, but in a very discreet way. I would prefer to not have the front look like a veggie garden if at all possible. Fortunately I can still use my smallest veggie beds and will most likely use that for tomatoes. Tomatoes aren’t the prettiest of plants and need cages or staking, so they will definitely not blend into my roses, peonies, hellebores, etc.

Since I will be incorporating veggies rather than creating a separate bed in the front yard, I will focus my attention on either creating some sort of easy-on-the-eyes barrier between the neighbor’s house and ours or figuring out what to do with the spots the veggie beds are currently in. I tried to do a quick sketch of an idea I had to show Ralph and he didn’t seem thrilled about it. Didn’t hate it but wasn’t as excited about it as I was. I’m hoping a Photoshopped visual will better convey my idea which essentially boils down to expanding the back patio just a teeny bit. However, I will take the winter to sketch out at least 3-5 ideas on what to do with the recovered space. I even suggested to Ralph that we could have the pond curving through those soon-to-be ex-veggie bed spots, but he just kind of “meh” me. Maybe he was just in a very non-commital mood.

Post sounds unfocused and choppy? That’s because I need to get to bed. I’ll write again before the week ends, I promise.

This has been a rather odd year for the garden. The last 2-3 years have had a long spring with lots of overcast and some snow or threats of snow. Because of this, it seems as though my tomatoes have not grown an inch since I’ve planted them, plus, I’ve already lost two. Thank goodness for the one volunteer that came up from last year. I would plant more in the front yard, but the soil is so clay-y and I need to sit Ralph down to discuss areas that he will need to voice opinions over (namely the area where he needs to get into to fiddle with the sprinklers).

What is growing is either suffering from immediate harsh sun; bleaching flowers or crisping leaves. The new peony and penstemon I bought this year will have to show me what they got next year because they are looking shot.

As far as amending the soil in the front yard, I was using this one spray that was seeming to work miracles, but not enough to let some plants thrive. I’ll have to find a way to dig up the soil and amend it for next year. If I do it now, I’m hoping that I might at least be able to plant in the fall. Everything is just so stunted that I feel like this year is lost. Let’s hope that I’m wrong.

This weekend was supposed to be fairly low-key with my only goal being to plant my seedlings. Then a client who I’ve been checking in with for months about doing their web site called to say they needed it up ASAP. So Friday, Saturday and Sunday was spent working on the site and getting it up for a Monday launch.

I found a half hour on Saturday to work on my smallest veggie bed. This year it is the bed of experimentation. I’m growing scallions, romanesco broccoli and cabbage all from seed. I had to rearrange it a bit due to the horrible soil I got that is nearly pure clay. Because of that, my scallions are too clumped together and the broccoli and cabbage grew on bent stems. I spaced these all out a bit better and hope they survive because today they are looking ragged.

Today, Sunday, I planted all of my tomatoes, eggplants, okra, watermelon and lemon cucumbers in the remaining beds. The artichokes have a few baby buds and the peas finally have blooms. My Kentucky Wonder Beans are looking a little runtish. Unfortunately, with trying 4 new things this year, I ran out of room for the zucchini and other squash. Decided to fill in the front garden with these, making it a true cottage garden. I had to plant the seeds in the sunniest of spots remaining inside the fence because the thought of them being outside the fence bugs me for some reason. The soil in horrible, so I’ll take the next day or two to think of alternate places to throw a few seeds in. There’s always the border around the backyard. I just consider that iffy since we don’t have a soaker hose in place there yet. Maybe it’s time to just put one in since I plan on focusing my efforts on filling that in next year.

I was hoping to email both Angela and Brian before the weekend ended, but I guess that will just have to wait until tomorrow.

Oh yeah, one branch on the thought-dead rhododendron has blooms. Maybe I’ll just move the poor thing one more time to see if it will survive after all. My peonies are also looking a bit runtish. Will give them a good dose of bulb food when it’s time to cut them back. They were barely over a foot this year. Got plenty of blooms from them, but the plant is supposed to be about 3′ tall.

Hi Gardening Michelle 2011,

It’s me again, GM 2010. I’m writing to remind you of a few more things to make gardening easier and hopefully more successful.

You’ve got enough iced mocha cups now, both with and without holes on the bottom. Remember to put the ones with holes into the ones without holes, but make sure the ones without holes have a little water in them. This will let you water from the bottom, which is better for the roots and will also reduce the frequency you need to water. Plus, if you use fish fertilizer, the top cup will block most of the smell and your house won’t smell like a pond. Just make the holes a little bigger because I’m not sure the water is getting soaked up as regularly as it should.

The plastic salad bins worked great as a greenhouse for the eggplants, consider getting at least one carnivorous plants for the gnats that may appear again (name it Audrey III), get the italian veggie seeds at Rail City and remember to start only half of your flower seeds indoors. Start the rest of the flower seeds outside, once you know what the seedlings look like. That way, you’re not pulling up poppy seedlings because they look like dandelions.

Oh! Before I forget, your lilac is going to look all fallen over as it did this year for the first time. Either remember to prune or trellis it somehow, because it looks like crap.

Smooches, GM 2010

Today was the long-awaited plant swap. Unfortunately, one of the other ladies didn’t show up so it was just the hostess, Shannon (who I brought along) and myself. The hostess, Kris, and her husband Bobby were very nice. Unfortunately, the only downside was that I didn’t get any plants out of it. Kris had prepared goodie baskets for the two people who were posting on the forum that the swap was first suggested on. Shannon’s seedlings were too few to share since she is starting her first garden, so I told her she was more than welcome to offer some of mine since I brought a ton. Came home with maybe half or a little less.

After running errands with Ralph, I consolidated what was left in the living room and was able to fit them all on window sills. The card table was put away and the plant holder is now back on the porch. I fed the compost bin, tried seeing if I could root some cuttings from the winterberry bush and started cleaning up some of the nursery pots to store away for next year. I’ve learned so much this season that I’m already looking forward to next season.

That’s right, snowed. So needless to say I’m not outside in the yard. I did give the seedlings indoors a bit of fish fertilizer because some of my eggplants were getting yellow leaves. I ended up pulling out a handful of seedlings that looked too beat up to even bother with. I figure that, since I have packets of seeds, I could pick out the ones that I had extra seeds for.

Of the two tomatoes I started (black zebra and Tula black seaman [no joke, that’s the name]), the zebra started slower but is now looking more developed than the Tula.

Ralph has decided to only use one of the Topsy Turveys this year for his Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes, so I may use the Topsy Tree for some of my seedlings. I also have a pot that a now-dead indoor tree used to inhabit. I will probably fill it up with sugar snap peas. In previous years I would only plant like 6 sugar snap peas because the plant quantity seemed like a good amount, but the average harvest was usually only enough to use as garnish (5-6 pods per plate). In one of the garden beds, I’ve planted 10-15 sugar snap peas, but this will allow me another set to harvest and to move in the shade if needs be. Plus, if it has a decent yield, I can always take out what’s in the bed for other plants.

After the fish fertilizing and seedling thinning, I think I have some better ways of starting seedlings for next year if I have to do it indoors. I feel like I’m blabbing.

I spent just enough time outside to water things. My Disney rose bush is looking pretty bad. I’m already determined to go buy another one, but I will wait and see what happens this week. 3-4 more tulips bloomed. I thought these were in an area I only planted friteralia in but I could be wrong since these are solid.

I didn’t realize the plant swap was so soon. I thought I had at least another 2 weeks. I’m not sure my offerings are looking too healthy right now. Might post that on the forum and see if others are suffering the same fate. We’re all in the same area, so there is a chance that it’s not just me having a black thumb. I’ll make sure everything is well-watered and then bring them all out in the sun tomorrow. It just feels like a bad gardening day.

A blue jay decided to build a nest above one of our back patio lights; the one closest to the grill. Between a metal patio roof, light fixture and grill, I’m worried that the eggs will cook rather than incubate. Ralph thinks we should move it before eggs appear and the bird get territorial.