.
What is my favorite part of gardening?
.
Either it is harvesting, preparing, cooking and EATING the produce of the garden. (The ‘cooking’ part can be optional).
OR it is sitting in the morning sunshine, relaxing next the garden and watching it grow!
Have a pleasant Sunday!
I skipped this year for my tomatoes because last year was too hot for them.
My neighbor who is a retired farmer and grows a real garden did the same and it looks like we were right, it wasn’t the day temperatures but the lack of cooling at night that made us correct to skip it.
Good morning, DIW...I love seeing plants grow...to start from a minute seed and have it develop into magnificent food and/or flower/shrub is what drives me. Some growth I could do without (poison oak)...but overall...it is glorius. This year I had two volunteer Sunflower Trees (they have branches that span @5 ft) from last years garden...they have been amazing.
I guess my favorite part of gardening is watching my plants grow healthy and tall. I have 55’ of roses to enjoy (as do the neighbors), a swervy garden bed traversing the frong lawn of 7 Japanese hollies punctuated by clay tubes containing various flowering succulents, 4 scattered dwarf crape myrtles, and then the shady half of the backyard with raised beds full of various hostas, heucheras, Japanese ferns, etc. I have a separate raised bed with a lovely pulmonaria. The sunny side of the backyard has raised beds of nandina, shasta daisies, black eyed Susans, echinacea, gaillardia, and lantana. The back of the backyard has raised beds of zucchini, cucumbers, cantaloupe and eggplant. The cucumbers are about finished, and the zukes and cantaloupe are drawing to a close. The eggplants are still producing lots—eggplant parmesan anyone? (mmmm)The strawberries finished up last month, to the disappointment of my neighborhood cuties, who looked forward to picking the delicious strawberries to take home to Mom. Next year I want to plant some varied sunflowers. Not only do I enjoy them, but so do the birds. I just installed a starling and squirrel proof suet cake feeder which is working well, but I’m waiting for the echinaceas to go to seed to attract some goldfinches. Oh, I enjoy my garden, front and back!
I did manage to find one patch of flowers in the yard (from a Crepe Myrtle tree):
This one doesn't seem to mind the heat:
And, I attended a succulent and cactus show recently that featured "hard-to-find" plants. Think I'll pass on this one!
I've already put out the fall decor because I'm so anxious for the cooler weather.
I'm hoping next month my yards and gardens will start to recover, even the native plants are stressed.
Happy Gardening to All!!
Favorite part of gardening: The Results!!
Warm figs off of my fig tree. Sweet grapefruit. Juicy oranges in January. Spectacular bulbs like amarylis and daffodils in the spring.
Harvesting/eating. Second favorite part is digging. It’s fun exercise. Worst part: pulling weeds.
Gotta pull out the little Stihl 2 stroke tiller and clean it up and drop it off at the Stihl dealer so they can get it running for me.
Looks like this. Never had much luck messing with little two stroke engines so I'll let the pros do it. 
Ought to work well for prepping beds in the tunnel. I'm generally going with no-till so it will mostly be for mixing in compost/amendments to the top couple of inches.
Brought a bunch more corrugated cardboard home from work to keep the weeds/grass from re-sprouting as I move my black plastic to new spots. The old rubber truck bed mat works really good for killing out the old grass but I only have one - 5x8 or so.
Just started a 32 cell tray of Asian greens and choy. Eight each of Tatsoi, Chijisimai, purple choy and winter choy. Got a couple other choy types and then lettuces, collard, mustard, cabbages and last but not least, onions to overwinter.
Should have started seeds 1-2 weeks ago but 2 weeks ago, got covid and last weekend I muddled through getting the plastic on and that did me in. Finally over covid fully now.
With any luck, I'll have something looking like this in a 2-3 months.
Bottom watering done on first tray. Doing #2 now and I only have 2 humidity domes so those seeds will have to sprout before I can do more trays. Then it's off to work on the tunnel. Get some wrinkles out, put all my cattle panels around it and start setting up for 12vdc solar panel, battery to run things. Clean out the shed and bring the industrial PC down and set it up in the shed.
Hot and dry for the most part here in Central Missouri this past week. I think the cukes are done. Sweet corn has been picked. Tomatoes are still trying.
The spot in the back where I had my giant dirt pile has been tilled up and sowed with a fescue blend. I was thinking the next step on fixing the pond leak would be to cut in a new keyway on the dam and backfill/repack with SoilFloc/sodium bentonite/clay, but after having a technical talk with the SoilFloc rep I’m going to hold off on that. I’ve got roughly 1/3 unit of SF on hand that’s already been paid for so I’m going to run a tracer dye test to see if I can pinpoint the spot on the dam face where the leak is located. If I can do that there’s a good chance I can seal it with a topical application on the water side and skip all of the expense and mess of digging.
I need to get started building fence but the ground is hard as a rock so I’m waiting until we get some rain before I start on that project.
ugh...
Learning.
And the occasional pleasant surprise. :-)
What is the name of the plant that has purple garlic growing from the top of the stem, sort of hanging in the air, rather than in the ground? My sister sent me a root from hers along with a photo and I’d like to care for it properly. She doesn’t know what it is either, except to say that the stem tastes like chives/onion and the garlic grows out from the top of the stem in the air. A photo of her plant will follow.
You seem like the best person to ask this question:
When I encourage my Opo plants (basically a snake gourd) to bloom by using Schulz Bloom Booster or similar products, I get lots of male flowers but very few female flowers. (Before said application, I was getting some male flowers but almost no female flowers. (Kinda like my ill-fated pumpkin plant.) The Bloom Booster, of course, in addition to high phosphate content has some nitrogen and potassium.
Last week (very late to be trying to do ANYTHING with Opo, as it’s a semi-tropical variety), I finally went back to “Super Phosphate”, which is of course just phosphate, on one plant. (Super Phosphate is not available locally any more, it would seem — will have to order online.)
POW! That plant has now produced several female flowers, a few of which are already growing into fruits.
Maybe female flower making in this case requires a higher ratio of phosphate to the other nutrients than does making male flowers?
Posting from the shed out by the tunnel. Bought a 25 foot USB cable to get the USB WiFi stick outside of the shed and 15 feet closer to the house. Speed test says almost as good as in the house.
This USB cable, a Renogy solar charge controller and a hose/filter kit for the little Stihl tiller came in from amazon today and pipe brackets from Tunnel Vision(such cool name) for the end walls came in.
Will be a busy weekend.