Holy daffodils batman!

Spent this morning pulling apart the old flower beds in front, removing the bulbs and flattening the dirt out level.

The boards were rotted, and the beds full of weeds, mostly dandilions and some volunteer tree of some kind, and it wasn’t worth trying to save them or the dirt in them.   I’ve got cedar boards to replace them with, and some fresh topsoil and manure.

Apparently the folks we bought the house from liked daffodils.  There are little clumps of them ALL OVER, at least three different varieties, plus the ones in the beds.  I also knew they were in desperate need of being seperated just from the way they were clumped together.

This is a 15x15x6″ box.  Its full to over flowing with bulbs.

I’m not sure they’re all daffodils either…I DID pull out what appeared to be a couple volunteer wild onions, but even taking into account the different shapes that occur when a baby bulb splits off there are more than 3 different sizes/shapes/varieties of bulbs there…..


Garden & bleg

Baby pumpkin 1 didn’t make it, however there are now baby pumpkins 2, 3, 4 and 5…..however I have serious doubts about their long term survival considering we’re already in September…..

 

Does anyone know anything about purple sweet peppers?  Two of the pepper plants are producing purple peppers.  I’m not positive they’re the SAME kind of purple, the pepper shapes are slightly different.  However searching online it looks like some peppers are ripe at purple and some purple peppers then turn red when fully ripe.  Does anyone have any experience with this?


I have a baby pumpkin!!!

See!!!  Now if only the season will hold……

 

And baby honey dews…

 

Unfortunetly I won’t get this baby sweet pepper….

 

And does anyone know what kind of flowers these are?  They’re all over the yard (which is in desperate need of mowing….


Garden update

Lets see…

The peppermint is HAPPY, and well on its way to taking over its container.  I’ve already made peppermint simple syrup.  I might have to pick up some candy molds to make candy for christmas gifts.

Spearmint and horehound aren’t QUITE as totally thrilled, possibly because they’re sharing their containers this year with the sweet peppers and the honey dews, but they’re doing quite well none the less.

I have jalapenos coming out my ears.  We still have pickled ones from last year, so the first batch from this years crop got turned into jalapeno jelly.  I used the low sugar version and its just as well as Husband says its plenty sweet.  I’ll probly do another batch of pickles, unless husband decides he likes the jelly better for sandwiches, then I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the rest!

Sweet peppers, there are FINALLY more baby peppers showing, might actually get enough to be worth while!

Honey dew melons….IF the weather holds long enough I’ll have melons as I spotted several itsy bitsy babies.

Pumpkins…..lots of flowers….MALE flowers.  No sign of a single female flower much less a baby pumpkin.  *sigh*  I keep hoping….

I picked up several bags of flower bulbs cheap at Sams, which means I WILL be redoing the front flower beds this fall.  They need it, they’ve been falling apart since we bought the place, so I went ahead and ordered some specialty tulips and iris to go with the generics.


Odd week…

Not bad really, just odd…

Monday husband and I agreed to spend way to much money on a home improvement project.  Its not NEEDED, and as such I’m cringing a bit at what its doing to our savings and our budget, but it was one of those opportunities that doesn’t come along very often….more details when things are a bit further along and I’m less likely to jinx it….

Tuesday, Husband called me after he got to work to warn me that his car had been acting weird as he pulled into the lot, and so be prepared for bad things…..sure enough the car only kinda started and barely ran when he got out of work.  Since he works 2nd shift it was 1am before the AAA driver showed up.  Good thing I didn’t have to work Wednesday.

Wednesday was 4th of July, it went well, and both dogs enjoyed getting to meet new people at my inlaws for fireworks.

Thursday we got the quote on Husband’s car, $700+, new alternator, new battery, and a couple odds and ends associated with them.  Sigh.  Of course they couldn’t get it fixed in time for him to drive it to work that day….

On the other hand I got to watch Apollo scare some poor random guy that afternoon….he was working through the neighborhood looking for anyone who wanted their driveway sealed.  He pulled up, opened the door and started to swing out of the truck…..and Apollo hit the front door on his hind legs, in full voice.  I was very amused to see him stop, swing his feet back into the truck, shut the door, and roll the window down about halfway waiting for me to step out onto the porch to talk to him instead of coming to the door.  Donno if he really was looking for work, or if he was scouting, but I don’t think it matters in this case.

Friday and Saturday were quiet.  We got the left over firewood restacked so its ready come fall to use first and yet not in the way of the delivery of new wood. 

The regular blueberry bushes are producing berries, not tons, and something’s eating most of them before I can pick them, but they’re producing.  Next year I’ll invest in some bird netting.  Nothing else is producing berries yet, but everything looks healthy and growing, so I’ll take it.  I didn’t expect a big berry crop this year anyway.  Jalapenos are growing peppers, several of them of nice size already.  The sweet pepper plants are FINALLY thriving, though I don’t know how many peppers I’m going to get off them now, it’ll depend on the fall weather I guess.  The herbs are all flourishing well.  The honeydew is taking off and getting ready to send its vines over the edge of the container, and the pumpkin is right behind.  Both are showing buds, so hopefully our weird weather hasn’t screwed them up too badly.  I did finally give up on the broccoli, when I checked them yesterday I discovered that something had eaten the tops off the heads.  Sigh.


Garden update

Edited: Added a link to the gold raspberries.

 

Pictures later…..sorry

Broccoli is growing well.  The number of new holes in the leaves has dropped dramatically thank you for everyone who made suggestions.  There’s even baby broccoli’s growing on the two biggest!!

Pumpkins have great big leaves, but no vines yet, a few bug holes, but no new ones.

Jalapenos, which I bought as plants not seeds, are huge and budding.

Sweet peppers which I planted from seeds, are not happy.  Not dead, but not growing either *sigh*

Honeydew melons, which I bought plants on a whim a couple weeks ago are growing, but no vines yet.

The various herbs….well, the horehound is doing well, and the peppermint (I think its the peppermint, its hard to tell at this point) appears to be doing ok, the spearmint is only kinda sorta there though….

The berry bushes are all doing ok, with the exception of the golden raspberries which apparently refuse to grow in my soil.  I even bought a new plant with GREEN leaves at the local farm supply and it died within a week of being planted and refuses to grow again.  Everything else, including the pink lemonade blueberries are growing well.  Dispite me having neglected to weed the area….

Rhubarb, well, its not dead, but its not happy either.  I’m keeping an eye out for an older tractor tire to use for a planter for it so I can raise it up a bit like was suggested.


Rhubarb in containers? Bleg

So, my rhubarb isn’t happy.  The stalks are barely 6 inches tall.  I know what rhubarb is supposed to look like when its happy and this isn’t it.  I suspect that its because the area where its planted tends towards being either REALLY wet or REALLY dry (yah, it wasn’t a good choice of spots, unfortunetly there isn’t much of a better one the way my yard is set up, there’s a reason I set up this year’s garden in containers).

I was considering transplanting it to a container, the (fake) half barrels I’m using for the rest of the garden this year are 25″ in diamater and about that tall…..so I hit Google.  It looks like the big concern would be keeping it from freezing solid in the winter while still getting cold enough to go dormant.  But I’m going to be looking at the same thing with the herbs I just planted, so thats ok…..I think I’ve come up with a solution for them, so whats one more container?

Any one out there have any experience trying it?


The bugs in the garden: Bleg

My poor broccoli.  All the leaves have been chewed on, and several are half gone.  So far the bugs haven’t touched anything else but I assume its just a matter of time.  And no, I’ve not caught sight of the bug in question.

I don’t really want to use outright pesticides, but if I have to I will.

I have DE, and if the weather would stop raining on us every day I’ll get out there and dust everything including the garden with it (it helps with the ticks and the like, but things have to dry out at least a bit before it’ll do any good).

I don’t mind having to wash things before we eat, but we do like raw broccoli and peppers  so it would be nice if we didn’t have to use an outright pesticide on it….Any ideas or suggestions??