2023 Gardening Thread

That looks like fun!! I may have to try it.

We put our deck garden to bed yesterday. Pulled out annuals in pots, cut back a few perennials, took empty clay/decorative pots inside. I cut back lots of sage, parsley, and lemon balm, which I will dry.

2 Likes

Interesting article about how some gardening zones have changed over the years and the map has been adjusted in 2023 - you can flip back and forth between the 2012 map and the 2023 map to see if your zone has changed. Ours has changed slightly.

1 Like

The indoors produced! Harvested our first lemon. :lemon:

4 Likes

No way are those real!! Seriously they look fake they are so perfect! GOOD JOB!

This is funny to me cause I was just telling myself today that in March or so I’m going to get a citrus tree for our sun porch. I had one a couple years ago and adored it - unfortunately it did not survive our old home in the winter but I think they MIGHT at our new place.

2 Likes

Is this a certain variety??

Just a Meyer lemon plant from HD… we had tea with honey and lemon today.

2 Likes

@BunsenBurner the hosts of our new years dinner have a lemon tree that produced this year, and they made the best lemon sorbet with the lemons!

2 Likes

Go for it! I heard that Meyer lemons do well as potted plants, and my experience confirms this! :slight_smile: This plant was left for dead on the deck after a heatwave and a winter frost, nd it surprisingly sprung back to life in the spring just before I was about to dispose of it.

1 Like

It is well below freezing outside, but I’m itching for some gardening! Local nursery is closed due to cold weather, so I’m shopping virtually. Just ordered a quince tree from Raintree - it should arrive in the spring. We will be ready for it!

ETA: the quince is called Aromatnaya. It is a Soviet cultivar that produces buckets of aromatic fruits. So good! We sold our tree with the previous house and have been trying to find one. Finally it was listed as available on the nursery’s site!

3 Likes

Well below freezing here too. My husband said it was negative 12 when he got up early this morn. It did get up to 1 degree in the afternoon. It was a good day to tend to my indoor flowers.

Sunday is indoor plant watering at my house! :potted_plant:

Another month - 6 weeks or so and I can start trying to seed some plants

2 Likes

I began saving egg cartons for growing my tomato seedlings! :slight_smile: A few more weeks!

:sun_with_face: :seedling: :tomato:

1 Like

Hmm… tell us more. I have 4 egg cartons ready for dropoff at the bulk store.

I’ve tried egg cartons in the past (the cardboard ones, not foam) - they are great for seed starting but for me, they dry out too quickly, kind of like peat pots do. Also, you gotta pot up quite quickly, as the size is so small.
I used to use Jiffy seed starting trays - the 72-cell type - and a couple years ago I splurged on Bootstrap Farmer pots, which are bigger and very long-lasting.

My aim is to avoid potting up as much as possible, because I start hundreds of seeds and that gets tiresome.

So what I do is fill most of the pots with regular potting soil and put an inch of sterile seed starting mix on top - that gets them started, and then the roots grow down into potting mix and they get the nutrients they need to grow on for a month or two before I set them out.

2 Likes

I’m ordering seeds from TrueLeaf Market and Baker Creek … has anyone ever ordered from a company called Farmacie Isolde?
I’ve never heard of them, but they have a ground cherry variety that looks really intriguing: Geltower Ground Cherry

For my tomato and pepper seeds, I typically use 3-inch peat pots that I fill with potting soil, and keep under a sodium grow light in the basement in a 1’x2.5’ plastic tray that I keep filled with water. Depending on how fast the seedlings grow, I will put the seedlings from the peat pots in the ground after the last-frost-date (after peeling off the sides of the peat pots to leave only the potting soil with the seedling to go into the ground); if the seedlings grow fast, I may transfer them to larger plastic pots in which to grow, until I can get them in the ground.

3 Likes

I typically order any seeds from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, here: https://www.southernexposure.com/ ; it looks like they have a couple of ground cherries. Also, Sow True Seed, here: https://sowtrueseed.com/; they offer a ground cherry as well.

I’ve not ever grown ground cherries, so I offer no opinions about the varieties.

1 Like

love ground cherries. My hubby makes a delish jam out of them
they self seed pretty well here in PA, but i’m always looking for new varieties.

2 Likes

Hmmm - interesting thought. Where do you get your starter seeds from?

We usually pick up several small tomato plants from our local nursery around memorial day and get them into the ground outside then. Plan has worked well for the past 2 decades - but I’d like to try experimenting with seeds …

I don’t invest a lot in seeds (and to be honest, can get many free through my community garden) so I always consider the trying plants from seed as just a fun precusor to the real gardening season - I try my best to take care of them but if they get leggy and die out or whatever, it’s still a fun winter activity - if I get a few plants out it, even better.