2020 gardening thread

[Jenny]

Bought this (among a lot of other stuff) yesterday. First time I've tried a lettuce bowl planter. Should eliminate the rotting lettuce in the fridge bisque, anyway, but will probably introduce some other issue I’m not yet aware of - likely to do with watering it, though.

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I’m a bad mom! Had the bowl outside earlier today and it fell over (landed upside down naturally) and now the non harvested lettuces are kind of smushed! I picked the broken ones, and tried to fluff up the rest.

 

[chilehed]

I'm not much of a fan of myrtle. Pachysandra's nice. I love Canada Ginger for shady spots, it has a beautiful velvety sheen and seeds around nicely. The flowers are weirdly cool.

Five or six years ago my wife found some flats of mixed creeping sedums for cheap, and they've turned out to be the most marvelous weed ever. Within a couple of seasons they were popping up everywhere, and now we have drifts of them all over. Great for exposed sunny spots, and easy to divide. The first photo is a drift under a viburnum carlcephalum, and the second is a closeup of a golden form making nice with a creeping phlox.

 

[Scruffy]

Hm. My understanding has been that if there soil is allowed to dry fully, the fruit will crack. Then Google showed me some articles suggesting watering every 2-3 days. In my experience, they would dry out and die with that kind of treatment. But I suspect it all has more to do with soil drainage than anything else.

Yes, soil drainage and type of soil; clay holds moisture longer than loom. I don't know your watering system or what your tomatoes are planted in, so it's hard to make a recommendation, but basically tomatoes are heavy feeders are they like to drink. I would just make sure the the roots are not constantly wet. BTW, if you're not aware, it's better to water tomatoes at the roots than over head, less chance of blight or rot if leaves and fruit stay dry. So your drip system is a good start. Oh, and BTW, I've had experience with tomatoes splitting because of too much rain, so there's that.

 

[chilehed]

My Pagoda Dogwood is finally in bloom.

 

[David Chaus]

^^^Nice!

 

[David Chaus]

Rhododendron in full bloom.

 

[LiquidFeet]

I'm so glad we have this gardening thread. There's no reason to disagree about anything here, just visual goodness and affirmation of each other's gardens. It's a pleasurable thing to visit during the day -- to get away and feel good about something.

 

[Crank]

I finally fixed our severed sprinkler pipe. I took less than 5 minutes and we now have sprinklers!

 

[socalgal]

I finally fixed our severed sprinkler pipe. I took less than 5 minutes and we now have sprinklers!

Hip hooray for small victories!

 

[chilehed]

Rhododendron in full bloom.

Beautiful. I wish I could grow rhodos like that, but my soil's too alkaline.

 

[chilehed]

Another shot of the Pagoda Dogwood, nearly in full bloom. I don't understand why these aren't used more: beautiful in leaf, flower and fruit, fragrant, loved by birds, architectural habit. IMHO it's as pretty as trees get.

 

[SSSdave]

Rhododendron in full bloom.

That's a spectacular tree! One rarely finds natural trees with even 1/10th as many blooms. Expecting to soon drive the 350 miles up to Redwood National Park sometime soon as our both Pacific rhododendron and its cousin western azalea both bloom in our redwood areas at this time each spring.

 

[luliski]

My beautiful basil and cilantro seedlings dried out the past few days . That's what triple digit temperatures and a twelve hour workday will do to to my garden. I will try again, although I've read that cilantro likes cooler weather.

 

[David Chaus]

That's a spectacular tree! One rarely finds natural trees with even 1/10th as many blooms. Expecting to soon drive the 350 miles up to Redwood National Park sometime soon as our both Pacific rhododendron and its cousin western azalea both bloom in our redwood areas at this time each spring.

This is definitely Rhododendron country. Rhodie’s are in full bloom around here right now. There are a few in my neighborhood that are larger.

The Rhododendron Species Garden is spectacular this time of year.

 

[Monique]

It is beyond me why some plants thrive while others fail. One of these cucumber plants is not like the others ...

(I don't think any of them are "thriving," but at least two of them aren't dying!)

 

[crgildart]

Tomato plants still alive!

Getting bigger.

 

[Don in Morrison]

Vegetable garden for seniors. No stooping or crouching necessary. You can do it all standing up. There was, however, a lot of back pain involved in building it.

 

[kimmyt]

We recently re-vamped our strawberry cage, so now I call it the strawberry fortress. A hail storm last year took out the chicken wire on top so we wanted to beef up how that was secured, and we made the wood sturdier (I had built it to be taken off and on so only used 1x2s which were getting weathered and the screws were starting to pop out). Here is the finished product. Had to fit what scraps of chicken wire that we could to the top, so it's not as pretty as it could be but I didn't want to buy a whole new roll.

 

[VickiK]

@kimmyt I like your gnome.

 

[kimmyt]

@kimmyt I like your gnome.

Thank you! He's a little worse for the wear, with a hole in the top of his hat from a bad hail storm, but he stands watch over my strawberry patch.