Does anyone else like to play in the dirt? I spent 3 hours this morning out by my pond trying to dig out the viney, stupid clover things and thistle plants. I HATE that stuff!
I only do flower gardens right now. With all the darn deer and elk that run thru our yard, I'm afraid to do veggies until we can build a fence around a garden.
I've been trying for about 3 or 4 years now to grow tomatoes. I usually get about 2 or 3 tomatoes off a plant.
I keep trying though. This year I'm growing lettuce as well as some herbs. At least they look nice and healthy. I don't know why I can't grow tomatoes. I love eating them, they just don't like growing for me.
I love fresh garden tomatoes! I tried once to grow when my mom gave me a tomato plant....my biggest problem is those darn "tomato bugs." They are so ugly I just cannot stand to see them and to kill them is even worse! So no tomato growing for me AT ALL EVER!!
That being said, when we did our low maintenance front and back yards I created a tropical feel! So the only trees in our yard are queen palm trees and giant bird of paradise, they aren't trees but end up looking like them.
I can grow tomatoes if I cage them from the deer. I usually do but this year I just didn't want to fight them. So instead I plugged in extra delphiniums, columbine, lupine and I splurged and bought a big Red Hot Papaya Echinacea. It's so bright and cheery! So far, the deer have decided it's ikky too.
I've only planted flowers & bushes - mostly perennials. A couple years ago we planted some blueberry bushes, but they haven't really taken off yet... Hoping to create some raised beds this fall so I can have my first veggie garden next spring... We've had some wild turkeys, hares & a red fox in our yard, but I haven't seen any deer (maybe they traipse through our yard while we're sleeping?), so I don't know if we'll need to do any preventative measures for that.
I love the idea of being a gardening but not the actuality of it. I don't like dirt or bugs and I end up killing the plants anyway. So envious of those that have wonderful gardens though!!!
I don't like the bugs either, especially spiders. We seem to have a lot of them this summer too. I about did a header into the pond when a rather large spider popped out between some rocks and took me by surprise. I'm almost finally done with that particular flower garden. It generally takes me 3 days to clear it in the summer.
@ Lizanne- if you do think the deer might come to munch tie deer tape onto a bamboo pole or fence post. It will keep them away for awhile. My mom has it all around her garden and it's working very well.
Gardening is a survival of the fittest game at our place.
I've helped my mom plant vegetable gardens and they've always thrived. I've also helped my stepmom with hers. But I have a massive phobia of bugs so I don't really like gardening LOL!
Nope! Everything related to our garden is definitely my husband's! I wouldn't say that I don't like gardening but it is really down on the list behind a LOT of other things I love to do so I never come to have time left for that.
Moved into this house 3 years ago and it has (for the UK) a reasonable sized garden (just over 1/3 acre) which quite daunted me at first but now I LOVE it - it has taken over everything. I plan the garden, I plant the garden (with the help of a gardener for 3 hours once a week and a young man that mows and chops hedges once a fortnight) and I photograph the garden. We've barely done anything inside the house but we spent a small fortune on the garden. It's all flowers at the moment plus a small "orchard" area with 4 apples, 2 pears and a plum tree and it is all designed to encourage wildlife so we gets lots of birds and insects and bats and hedgehogs and frogs and newts (pond). I have an area set aside for veg but it has to wait untill I've finished restructuring.
I wish we could dig up a section in the back yard to have a "real" garden, but we only rent so we can't do as we please with the place. I just use big pots on the front patio like big wash tubs for the tomatoes and lettuce. The herbs are in big flower pots and we have some window boxes along the front windows with flowers. We're actually going to have some salad tonight with the first pickings from our lettuce.
I can´t grow even cat grass (the one they eat to spell furballs), need to buy them at Sunday market :(show some pics of your gardens on this topic ladies, I bet they´re really pretty.
We have planted a veggie garden this year, attempting again down here in Arkansas. The ground is hard clay and we have a terrible time trying to grow stuff in it. So far, so good, though. When we lived in Illinois and had veggie gardens when we lived in the country, it was so EASY to grow things, not down here. It isn't for the faint of heart here, in my opinion, and am in awe of anyone who's garden turns out well. LOL
I planted a little corner flower garden a few years back. It looked nice for awhile that year but the grass (don't ever get Bermuda grass) and weeds won. The next year I didn't really do anything with it and this year I weeded and babied it, the daffodils grew and died back, the seedum is doing well, the catnip... well, let me just say the catnip LOVES this rotten soil and has taken over most of that little corner garden. LOL
It took us over 20 years to get our front and back yards landscaped and healthy. We too had very clay and limestone "soil" and so it took a lot of conditioning. That is the key. We had to dig out a lot of dirt (all in all I took probably 15 tons with our little S10 pickup to the "dirt" dump) and bring in a lot of manure and topsoil. Here are the before, middle and after photos of our back yard:
This was taken when I first planted my garden. Because I had problems last year with a squirrel I added the chicken wire this year.
I plantes stuff in pots because we have wild rabbits and I didn't want to fight them.
Sharron, that's ingenious.
I just started growing herbs on my own this year. I usually kill things, so I picked some hardy plants. So far, only the boxwood basil died.
@Amber wish you luck with the other plants. Mine are doing well not that the squirrel found a new home someplace else.
It was him or me there for awhile hahaha. I will take new photos in a day or two so you can see how things are doing.
@Janet I love your yard. Mine is desert wild hahaha
@Cindy: I've heard that building raised beds solves that problem because you are actually making & mixing the soil and components. So no worries about clay...
@Brandi: I've never heard of deer tape, but it's definitely something I'll look into when we finally build our beds. Maybe I need to install a camera to see what crawls around my yard when I'm not up? LOL One night when I had insomnia I was quite surprised at some of the animals that came traipsing through at the crack of dawn - a red fox, wild turkeys & some wild hares. Some stayed for a little while & left, and others were just passing through. We have two apple trees out back & my youngest swears he saw a deer nibbling on some of the apples in the fall, but I never saw it.
@Janet, your backyard is lovely.
@ Lizanne. Deer tape looks like a roll of duct tape but it's basically a roll of bright thin plastic that flaps and scares things.
@janet I love your yard! I just wanna lay out on a chair with a book and some lemonade or tea!
Great pictures! I want to see more, lol
Janet, 20 years and hard work and your yard is just beautiful.
Sharron, that is a neat way to do your garden! I have tried having plants on my deck but it is jut too blooming hot and it burns them up, the soil gets toooooo hot and burns off the roots. Our GARDEN garden is actually in our neighbor's yard and our trees start shading it around 4 in the afternoon, which is a GOOD thing. We have a long row of sunflowers on the west side of the garden, part of them are shorter than the rest. The shorter ones are all the ones that don't get any shade from the trees. I was amazed. LOL
Someday I would like to try a raised garden. I'm thinking raised about waist high. No bending and the Bermuda grass can't climb the legs to find the soil. LOL
I had to split my lettuce plants into more pots because they are growing like crazy and we can't eat enough salad to keep up with it. I'm going to thin it out again today and give some to our neighbour. It is pretty nice to have fresh lettuce and herbs handy.
We're trying to expand our butterfly garden. Right now it's about a dozen butterfly bush and lantanas intermixed, so it's really simple, but the mixture of the purple with yellow, oranges and pinks is beautiful. Plus, the deer don't seem to like it. I think it's the strong smell. We've seen some really beautiful butterflies over the past week or so too.
I love growing sunflowers too, I actually got some to grow over six feet tall outside our condo in Chicago for a couple of years, but I have yet to try them here. I'm not sure if the deer will eat them or not.
I do a grape tomato plant in a large pot on the deck every year. Some years it works out and some not, but they grow and ripen really quickly so when it does work it's about as close as instant gratification as you're going to get in gardening! Looking good so far this year!
@Tiffany I just love the butterfly bushes! I got one from my Mom's yard when she died and planted it in our front yard-it really grows great! We also have two in pots in the back yard!
New photos of the garden
Things are growing nicely not that the squirrel is not eating them
I try.....I'll have to see if I can dig up some gardening pictures. I got frustrated one year paying $4 for a butternut squash at Walmart, so I decided if I can grow it, I would! So, this year, I've planted: lettuce, cabbage, watermelon, yellow corn, red corn, tomatoes, dill, parsley, chives, cilantro, acorn squash, butternut squash, cucumbers, cheddar cauliflower. We'll see what survives. It is a learning process because each year, you get different things (bugs, fungus, etc.) and have to learn how to deal with those. But it isn't for not trying around my house!!! I also have a pot of magnolias, but I do mostly what I can eat (fruits/veggies/herbs). The herbs are supposed to be a natural bug deterrent (they don't like the smells) and the flowers are supposed to help draw bees to help pollinate everything else!
Be on the lookout for the cute little white butterflies flittering around. They're cabbage moths.
Some laid eggs on my 12 broccoli plants which hatched into cute little green caterpillars that ate all the plants up in a matter of two days!
I'm hoping that at least the caterpillars spin their cocoons on the remaining stumps and my kids can get a science lesson out of it.
Tiffany-sorry they got you but I like your positive attitude about the science lesson!
Had a hail storm come thru and it broke several of my delphiniums. Grr. They're really tall this year- I'll have to get out there with my camera soon.
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