Whoohoo! Let the games begin! Spent a good part of yesterday doing cleanup. I would like to say we are ahead of the game this year, but in reality most of what we did should have been done last fall but we were too busy. So, lots of trimming and pulling out dead leaves and vines. I did leave the leaves on most of our flower beds for now, as I understand it needs to be a bit warmer before the bugs that are nesting in there are ready to move along.
Anyway, we got our two raised beds ready for spring greens. We plan to get them in the ground within the next week or two.
What I am really excited about is that we finally decided to take the time to set up a good irrigation system. In the past, weāve spent watering days moving hoses and sprinklers around to try to reach everything (only to sometimes look out a while later and see that the perfect positioning has been foiled by a change in the water pressure, or the wind, or what have you). Yesterday we purchased hundreds of feet of soaker hoses and a few spigot dividers (?) and plan to spend next weekend laying it out so that everything can be watered at once, and hopefully with a lot less water waste. We also got the necessary plumbing to set up a rain barrel that weāve had just sitting there for years. Last summerās drought was the impetus for this.
Let us know if the spigot dividers your purchased work out well! I was also thinking of setting up a soaker hose along one of my flower bed āfenceā lines.
Ok gardeners. Who has grown strawberries in a small area - especially an ever-bearing (?) variety - one that produces for a good part of the summer?
Or any strawberry. Tell
Me the pros and cons.
I have 3 small raised beds newly constructed and filled. This is a fenced area so no big critters can get to it. I only want low plants in this area and will also plant some flowers in these as I want them somewhat attractive because they are in our pool area.
One will be either herbs or greens. One maybe a short peppers or onions or other short crops. I had the thought that maybe one could be strawberries- but really
Know nothing about growing them, havenāt before.
Update on aMacMom vs. the digger. The repellant spray didnāt end up working. Donāt know if it washed off in the rain or if the digger just got used to it.
So I bought these: https://a.co/d/5EMgK8v Itās been three+ weeks now and no digger! Funny thing, my son was visiting and asked, āDoesnāt that high pitched sound drive you crazy?ā H & I look at each other and both said we didnāt hear anything. Old people ears I guess. Fingers crossed they keep working! There are plenty of places in the backyard with established plants that I donāt mind an animal digging ā just not the herb & vegetable beds.
It was a lovely weekend just now, here in East Tennessee ā temperatures in the low 70s, slightly overcast, without much rain. So I decided to start hardening off my hot peppers, as well as the larger of the tomato plants that I started from seed and have had under a grow light in the basement for about a month or so. Here they are so far: some jalapenos, serrano tampiquenos, and habaneros (in the bottom half of the picture), and five tomato plants (in the top half of the picture).
For scale, the larger pots at the top of the picture are 6" across. The rest of the tomato plants that are in the basement still have some growing to do before I put them out to harden off.
I am still about a month away from getting these plants in the ground ā I have to till up the soil and spread some compost; and my goal is to be ready to plant the tomatoes and peppers on the first weekend in May, which is about 10 days past the last hard frost date in this area.
I started peppers and tomatoes in the middle of Feb and will plant them in the middle of April. I started them on a seed mat and then once they germinated began putting the trays in the yard during the day and then in the garage at nite. The back of some seed packages say they donāt transplant well so Iāll wait to plant those. Iām really looking forward to personal-size watermelons which Iām trying for the first time.
This year Iām going to try growing the tomatoes on twine as shown in this article Grow Tomatoes Vertically to Enhance Your Harvest - Fine Gardening and others on the web. In the past Iāve used cages but they quickly outgrew store-bought cages, then made larger cages out of the wire used when concrete is poured but when harvesting it was still a problem trying to slip tomatoes out between the cage and branches. So I hope this system works better.
Iām too cheap to waste $$ on starter pucks and those fancy seed starter containers. Costco egg cartons filled with Miracle Grow dirt work great as surrogates for those.
My D is getting married at the end of May and a rehearsal dinner is at our house. The weather in my area (central MA) has been cold, but Iām taking a chance and trying to do some plantings (ground covering) in a front entryway . (Temps have ranged from a low of 38 degrees to a high of 53 degrees.) The dinner will be in our garden (have a tent) but people will come through the house and walk down the deck to the tented area of the garden.
My saved in 2022 Altai Orange seeds were not sprouting, so I looked around and found that Adaptive Seeds carried this variety of tomatoes! Ordered some. Of course, by the time the seeds arrived, half of my seeds has sprouted! Iām also testing a couple of new to me varieties: Siberia and Oregon Spring. These are supposed to be adapted to colder climate.
Bumping up! We must be all doing either garden clean up or planting a bit!
Our yard clean up is extensive. We do it all ourselves which basically means me, lol, except for tree trimming which my H does. Iām removing a small area of grass next to some stone steps (did the other side last year) which will look great when plants grow) and will make cutting the grass easier there since itās kind of sloped.
We are JUST starting to get some leaves on a few trees and the flowering trees are AMAZING right now! My Greek anemone are ALL over the yard and my Korean spice viburnum will bloom and be oh-so-fragrant soon!
I have planted radishes and arugula in one of my new raised beds and they are moving along. Might make a first trip to the garden center this weekend to see if there is some early stuff I can buy. I also need to find (soon!) some peony bushes - they should be coming soon!
Hopefully tilling up half of the garden this weekend, and getting tomato plants and hot pepper plants into the ground. Weeding in the rest of the garden. Giving away extra tomato plants that I have no space to plant.
My D is having her rehearsal dinner in the garden, so weāre working to get everything looking great and crossing our fingers that it doesnāt rain on Memorial Day weekend. Iāve been planting my deck gardens and also adding some flowering plants (Helebores, Jacobās ladder) and ground cover to our garden. Thereās a great organic farmstead near us and I planted lettuces, spinach, sorrel, tarragon, shallots in the deck gardens.
I canāt get cilantro to thrive in my raised herb bed. Have borage as a tomato companion in another bed. Iāll trim it back (or yank it) before it goes to seed, but like seeing the bees it attracts.
Made the mistake of planting mint in the herb bed years ago and it always comes back. Oh well, makes me pay attention to the raised beds that are in the farthest back section of our yard.
Maybe you already know this but a friend didnāt so Iāll add it on. Tarragon looks like it dies at the end of the season but the roots stay viable if you donāt dig the plant out; it comes back even stronger the next spring.
before! - did you??
Made quite a few pies out of those tinny berries!
