The Gardener

Squirrel Repellent--Well Tested!

2013-05-19T21:02:39Z

A couple weeks ago I bought a big bagful of lily bulbs which isn't a great thing to do when you have squirrels hanging around your yard. I was determined to have lilies though so I decided I should try my luck with using hot sauce as a deterrent.
I soaked my bulbs overnight in water and then gave them a good dowsing in Louisiana hot sauce from the bulb all the way up the sprouting stem (I used the house brand from MuleWart).
My Hubby was a lot stingier with his bulbs. His only got a few drops splashed on them.
The squirrels dug his bulbs up but then left them alone. (I had to go back and recover his.)
They didn't even bother to dig mine up!
And the moles haven't come anywhere near any of them either which is a good thing since apparently I have the Vigo County franchise rights on mole reproduction in the state of Indiana.
(It's so funny: The moles won't cross over into the Lawn Nazi's yard next door in spite of him telling me that he doesn't use lawn chemicals!)

gardening @ 2013-05-19T11:48:00

2013-05-19T18:48:20Z

This spring, something I've been waiting for for years has happened: the laburnum, AKA golden chain, tree is blooming. This is a big deal to me because I grew this plant from a seed. Then, when I put one in the ground, the gophers ate it. I put another one in the spot. The deer ate it. It survived, but now instead of a regular tree shape with a single trunk it's a giant multistemmed thing. But that's all okay, because it's now taller (barely) than the house and it's doing this:

Watermelon

2013-05-19T03:34:54Z

Has anyone ever grown watermelon vertically or trained them onto a fence? I just prepped a section in the back (that actually gets enough sun) for some edibles. I've had to get creative as my garden has lots of shade. Anyhow, it runs along a chain link fence and has a walkway, so the growing section is only about 2 feet deep and about 20 feet long. I have some watermelon starts to put in, but I was thinking that in order to make use of vertical space, staggering the plants and having every other one trellised to the fence, high enough to get it off the ground but low enough that the fruit won't have to go into slings. I hope. Has anyone done something like this and did it work out well for you?

Please Read This If You Dislike Monsanto or Certain Other Big Corporations

2013-05-19T00:01:20Z

I know that at least some of the people who are members of this gardening community dislike Monsanto and would avoid buying its products if they could. According to this article I found, there's a new app called "BUYCOTT that shows you a product's corporate family tree while you shop" and thus lets you avoid buying products that put money in the pockets of corporations you dislike.
(BTW: The comments section that follows this article has some interesting comments that might be worth reading too.)

Here's the name of the article and the website if you're interested:
New App Lets You Boycott Koch Brothers, Monsanto and More by Scanning Your Shopping Cart
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/app-lets-boycott-koch-brothers-125701452.html

Plant ID

2013-05-18T19:25:06Z

Transplanting to outdoor containers

2013-05-17T01:17:45Z

Hi All,
I'm in a bit of a last minute scramble...I think I was avoiding this. I have a whole bunch of indoor starts (greens - kale, chard, asian mustards, spinach, lettuce) and they have been hardened off to tolerate sun during the day but come back in at night. Probably didn't need to do that but I had been anyway. I'll be traveling next week and I'm thinking of planting a bunch of them in large containers outside (will be watered via drip/sprinkler system). I live in southwestern Montana (Zone 4b) and it looks like next week's low temperatures will be low-mid 40s and high temps at mid-60 to low-70s. Showers/thunderstorms are predicted next week as well. Most of the transplants are of decent size (3-4" at least) so I'm hoping that helps too. Anyone have some sage advice/reassurances that planting a bunch of them out in containers right now will be successful? Or which ones might fare the best being planted out?

Thanks a bunch!! Happy gardening! :)

European Pine Sawfly

2013-05-16T12:25:58Z

I usually just watch this community and pick up advices on gardening along the way. However, just today, I had my first major gardening problem for spring. I found my dwarf mugo pine tree infested with little green worm-like pests with large, black heads. I never saw them before and neither has my mom. A quick help from Google told me that they were European Pine sawflies.My mom, who is very big on organic gardening, whipped out her book of natural pest remedies and started concocting something. And they worked. I watched the sawflies start wriggling and then just stop moving.

She put 1 medium onion, 1 whole garlic bulb, shredded tobacco leaves, 1 cup water, 1 tablespoon hot pepper powder, and 1 tablespoon of dish soap into the food processor until they are pasty in consistency. She put them in a container and added 1 more cup warm water. She let it soak for an hour, strained it, and put in in a bottle spray. As soon as her concoction touched the sawflies. They started wriggling and after a few seconds, they appeared dead. We're not sure if they were really dead of just temporarily paralyzed. I guess we'll find out tomorrow.

spring garden photos

2013-05-15T18:20:00Z

his year is very cold and late spring. All in the garden burgeon later then usually.
I put some photos of garden.

1 Pear blossom

2 Cherry trees with Muscari flowers

3 Honeysuckle

4 Cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers in a cold frame.

weed and pest control

2013-05-13T10:15:55Z

I'm hoping you good gardeners can come up with some suggestions regarding my two major problems.

I have a fairly large raised garden bed that was build for vegetables. During the winter I'm often not well enough to do constant weeding in it (I suffer from osteoarthritis) so come spring I have a very healthy mass of weeds waist high. I'd love to hear if anyone has suggestions as to organic methods of keeping the weeds out of the veggie garden during the winter. I have in the past used straw bales, layering the straw on top fairly thick which makes it harder for the weeds to get to the soil. However, this does make for a fair bit of work come spring to either remove or turn the straw. Are there any other suggestions?

My second problem is fruit fly. I have a very nice fig tree but I generally get no fruit off it due to the fruit flies. I am in Australia, on the east coast near Sydney, which is a temperate/semi-tropical area. The winters are fairly mild (mostly just wet and cold rather than freezing) and the summers can get very hot indeed, with high humidity in the middle of summer. I've considered netting the tree to protect it from birds, but that doesn't work for fruit flies of course. Are there any organic sprays around? I might mention I've tried fruit fly traps - these do catch a large number of fruit flies but it only takes one strike to make a peice of fruit inedible and those didn't work this last season.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Started from seeds

2013-05-12T21:45:40Z

A while back, I started some seeds and then they got bigger. I planted them a few weeks ago, and now they're turning into some good plants:

It's all from seed (except the parsley left over from winter). The nearest and biggest tomatoes are Sun Gold, and toward the back are some Amelias. The eggplant and peppers aren't growing as fast, the squash is volunteer (and probably will succumb to vine borer as always), and the beans were sown directly in the ground. That's a wildflower garden in back, wishing it could climb in to the veggies and have some of that nice compost, but it gets its share washed downhill.

Roses and blackberries

2013-05-12T20:24:50Z

Two different questions this afternoon.

1) I bought some cheap ($5) rose bushes earlier this year and planted them. They have all started growing and a few are showing buds already. Should I cut off the buds and prevent them from blooming this year so they can get a good root system going, or will that not really matter? I'd love to have some flowers this year, but I'd much rather have healthy plants for future years.

2) A couple years ago some birds generously planted me some blackberries. This is great because blackberries are one of my favorite fruits! Unfortunatly the birds think that since they planted them they get first dibs leaving me with a tiny handful of fruit for myself. Last year I tried using a bird net to cover the plants, but it kept getting snagged on the thorns and I couldn't get it spread out well. The birds were able to get under it and eat the fruit. Do any of you know a good way to better protect the fruit so it can ripen?

Oo, hey, just thought of one more rose question

The roses are each sending up two or three canes, how and when should I prune them to make them more bushy? I know most pruning happens in the early spring but these guys were 4" stubs on grafted roots until recently. I feel like I should do it now while they're still small rather than later on when they're big thorn filled weapons bent on flaying the skin off my arms, but I'm pretty new to roses and that may be the totally wrong thing to do.

Posted via LjBeetle

Take a walk with me to my house.

2013-05-12T19:51:20Z

Here is my yard in the merry, merry month of May. We will start with the front yard, shall we?

This bench (which you can hardly see beez of all the bluebells) is where I hide right by the gate so that I can jump out and scare people. Well, to be honest, I scare people anyway, without the jumping out of bushes.

These are the lilac bushes that are at least 60 years old. And my folding hammock because I am cool like that. The hammock on the porch is not happy.

Another view.

Side yard. That fence is probably going to fall over soon as it's as old as me. And then some. That's the barn in the background.

Here's the rhodos. That window would be covered if I didn't trim the side of the house occasionally.

Here's my deck looking out at the cow field and the staring *STARING* cows. No, they aren't invisible cows or a FIGment of my fertile imagination. They are frolicking in the other fields, I guess. Over yonder is my hosta bed I made in April.

Half the hosta bed.

The other half. This area was covered in rosehips and it took me 2 weeks of chopping, cutting, maiming and clearing to make the bed. I left a buffer zone of them along the fence line to block out the *staring* cows. I love hostas and can't wait till they fully come out and nasturtiums and other plants to fill in the gaps.

This last pic is of my leetle cute garden shed and hay shed to the right. See the two cute leetle trees in the background? That shed is perhaps 8 feet at its roof point. Those trees are at least a 100 feet tall.If there were not two of them together, there would be none. Just like a strong loving relationship, they keep each other upright. The fir in the lead is leaning LEANING toward my house. I suspect it's that cedar in the background bossing him around. That would be me in a relationship.

One day, when I am laying about in my thilthy trundle bed, it will come crashing down and flatten my 100 year old farm house like a flapjack. And you can take that to the bank. If I can hear it cracking and losing its moorings, I am going to run outside in my ratty bathrobe, spread my arms wide and welcome its warm embrace.

Thanks for coming to my house.

Planting!

2013-05-11T03:31:01Z

I planted my Rainbow Mix carrots today, and set out the tomato plants. Turns out I have 2 SuperSauce plants and 2 Roma plants that survived, along with 12 Viva Italia from Burpee, so we'll see what happens.

All the tomatoes look great, except 1 SuperSauce looks small so I'm going to grow it on in the pot for a while before I set it out.

I planted them 3 feet apart (stem to stem) and set the rows 3 feet apart, because in the past I've usually set the rows too close and then it was hard to walk between the rows when the plants bushed out. I've also got temporary posts in where the T-posts for the trellising system will go -- no hurry on putting those in until the plants are about 2 ft tall. Need to get more wire and drill some holes in the T-posts anyway.

I'm going to put the peppers out tomorrow -- I have enough space left in the tomato plot to put in 3 rows 2 feet apart, with 6 plants in each row. Since I have 16 plants, that will work out just right. I may plant my bush beans tomorrow, too -- that's easy, just run the little Earthway seeder along.

I was planning on two rows of carrots, but the seeds weren't pelletized, so it was nigh on impossible to only plant 6 per foot. So I ended up with just one row of carrots in the bit I tilled deep -- it's about 8" deep there. Covered them with 1/2" of potting soil and gently watered. I've never grown carrots before, so this will be interesting.

I've pinched the blooms off my new strawberry plants so that they grow this year instead of setting fruit.

My snow peas are blooming like crazy, but no tiny baby peas yet. Corn hasn't germinated yet, but checking my records it takes about 9 to 15 days for early corn to germinate.

I've planned to harvest the bush beans by the pull and pick method -- you pull up the whole plant and pick it clean. Then I'll put in watermelons in that patch, and plant the early corn patch with bush beans that I'll keep picked until I have enough beans put up to last us a year. We ran out of frozen corn from last year, and have discovered we just can't stand commercial canned corn. I know it would be the same with commercial canned green beans.

So that was my week. How was yours?

An Aggravating Problem For Smart Gardeners Interested In Low Maintenance Gardening

2013-05-10T19:16:29Z

I run into this problem whenever I go anywhere that sells garden plants. They have tons of veggie plants and annuals and tons of stuff they call "perennials" which are ONLY HARDY IN THE NEAR-TROPICAL AREAS OF THE US.
Perennials which are truly hardy in my zone (zone 5 according to the old reckoning) are:
1) hard to find,
2) there's not much variety,
3) they don't bother to buy very many of them each summer nor do they reorder.

I actually found a single Leopard's Bane plant (Leonardo Compact) for sale at Lowe's this year (looks like a low growing yellow daisy).
ONE.
And there are lots of different cultivars and species of this plant available. If you do your homework and choose carefully, you could have all different sorts of Leopard's Bane plants blooming for you from the first of spring through most of the summer and it's supposed to grow easily from seeds. (I finally broke down and bought some from Geoseeds. They're planted now so I'll soon see if they are easy to grow from seeds or not.)
Want to know the something funny about this plant?
Leopard's Bane isn't a new plant. I have an OLD gardening book (pre-WW2) that talks about the "classic" combination of Leopard's Bane and spring bulbs!

Makes me wonder what else is out there that's easy to grow, hardy, and isn't particular about its soil.
I found the website of a wholesaler's nursery the other day (hazzardsgreenhouse.com) and was amazed at all the perennial plants/seeds they had for sale that were rated hardy for zones 5 and under. Most of them I'd never heard of before!
---------------------------------------------------------
Do any of you know of any other on-line nurseries that carry hardy perennials or their seeds?
It would be nice to make a list of these places.

I'd also like to make a list of hardy perennials that are rated for zone 5 and lower.
(Surely that would be of help to someone around here.)

Bugs on my camellia

2013-05-09T03:02:31Z

Can anyone tell me what these bugs are on my potted camellia bush?

Sorry for the poor photo--I had a hard time getting my phone to focus well enough on the tiny insects. I only noticed their presence this evening, and thought at first that they were aphids. But upon closer inspection, I noticed a few of them had wings, which I'm not sure is a trait that aphids possess? Correct me if I'm wrong.

Some background: I live in Sacramento (9b, I think) and bought this plant from a Home Depot. When I first bought the plant, it was pretty twiggy but has grown noticeably over the month since I've owned it. It's growing in a pot on the balcony and receives some partial sun in the mid-morning, though the last few days have been overcast/rainy. In addition to the bugs, I noticed that some of the top leaves have developed a thin, sticky coating near the base, and the leaves that have the bugs are newer growth and curly. Aside from this, however, the rest of the plant looks fairly healthy.

In addition to this camellia, I've got an Asiatic lily, bougainvillea, and hydrangea that share the sunny/partly sunny corner of the balcony, along with some hellebores, a fern, an unknown woody plant, and some unknown yellow flowers I keep in a window box in the shadier parts. The only noticeable issue I've had with pests was a lone snail that nibbled on one of the hellebores (not sure how it got up into the balcony), and a couple of caterpillars that plagued the yellow flowers (and I am certain came with them when I first purchased the plants). I've picked those off, and otherwise everything else is doing well enough.

Are these bugs something I should be concerned about, and if so, does anyone know how I can get rid of them?

Thanks for the help! I haven't owned/grown plants in forever... partly because I don't seem to have a talent for keeping them alive. However, it's my dream to one day grow a large garden (I can dream...), so I'm trying to start somewhere. :)

x-posted to plants; edited for cuts

Peat Moss

2013-05-08T21:26:54Z

I've read in places that peat moss should not be used, because it is not "sustainably harvested." But I' ve never read anywhere what purpose it serves if you leave it in the bog. Anyone know?

Question about peonies

2013-05-08T13:43:51Z

Hello! I'm relatively new to gardening, but I'm learning. I've read up on peonies, but I still have a question. A lot of what I've read said something about air circulation being important. The place I'm looking at putting peonies in my garden is in a border garden that's about 20" wide, which backs up to a stockade wood fence. Does anyone know if that might be too close to allow for good circulation? I don't want to plant them where they won't survive! Any tips about peonies would be appreciated!

gardening @ 2013-05-08T08:36:00

2013-05-08T13:36:23Z

Does anyone know what this flower is (the pink one)? It was in a neighbor's yard by the street. We're in zone 5, so it's early blooming. It didn't seem to have much foliage beneath the stems. Whoever lives there has a gorgeous garden. I keep going by hoping to see someone, but no luck yet (they probably think I'm stalking them since I'm always walking by and looking at their garden from the sidewalk lol).

Straw Bale Gardening

2013-05-08T01:31:05Z

So I've got 8 bales delivered and set up in one of the raised bed gardens. Watered them for 3 days, 2 days of adding chicken manure because I have it on hand. Has anyone else here had any experience using these? I'm looking forward to this experiment.

Plant-ID?

2013-05-07T10:30:14Z

What's the name of this plant?

gardening @ 2013-05-06T13:53:00

2013-05-07T03:09:58Z

Can fertilizer labeled for tomato/vegetable be used for a blueberry plant?

Snow peas!!

2013-05-07T02:48:34Z

They're blooming!! And of course we had a really hard rain a little while ago, so I'm scared to death the blossoms were beaten off them. But maybe not! I need to run another wire for them to twine onto tomorrow...

Corn's not up yet, but then it won't be for at least another week, since I just planted it Thursday. It's also been pretty chilly all weekend, and today was officially the coldest May 6 on record for the Atlanta, GA area!

Tomatoes and peppers are doing well, and I'm sooooo glad I haven't put them in the ground yet. It's too cold for the little things just yet, and the ground is way too cool for them.

gardening @ 2013-05-06T16:07:00

2013-05-06T20:07:01Z

I’m renting a rototiller next week to dig up/extend some beds in my yard. YAY! I’m very excited about it!

One of the beds I am extending is to accommodate new drainage and some giant rocks that make mowing difficult. Its on the north side of the house and is pretty shady most of the time. Currently, its mostly hostas and violets. WHICH ARE FINE. But since I’ll be pretty much doubling the size of the bed, a little more variety might be nice. Any suggestions on some nice, lowish, shade loving plants to place towards the front of this bed?

I’m also adding a small narrow bed on the west side of the house, which is shady for most of the day but gets some intense sun late in the afternoon. Anybody have enough experience with Lily-of-the-Valley to know if this would make them cranky? What about classic Impatiens? (I don’t really look out at this portion of the yard so much, so I’m looking for super easy and nothing fancy.)

I’m in central NH, zone 4A, I think? Maybe it’s 4B. We just got reclassified recently. And we're almost to frost-free nights which means it's time to PLANT THINGS! WHEEE!

Posted via m.livejournal.com.

Propagating Tomatoes

2013-05-06T16:19:25Z

[N.B. Mods, please tag appropriately. Thank you!]

A recent entry or two got me to thinking about vegetative propagation, and a friend who's quite thrift-minded purchased fewer paste tomato starts than he's going to need, and that got me to wondering whether, as tomatoes are fairly aggressive about making adventitious roots (the reason planting them sideways in the soil works so well for them), whether or not you can propagate tomatoes vegetatively.

And---yay!---you can!
Not only that, but while it takes roughly six weeks (according to sources) to grow a tomato plant to transplanting size from seed, it takes only half that time if you use a cutting.
This site explains three methods: propagation box; water and vase; and direct planting in soil. I have found the site itself seems not to be "stable:" it vanishes and a "page not found" message appears. In order to read it, I had to highlight, copy and paste into a Word document.
http://heirloomtomatopatch.com/blog/2010/04/15/how-to-propagate-tomatoes-with-cuttings/

There are others out there, though. I used "vegetative propagation of tomatoes" as my key words, without quotation marks.

tree and plant ID help, plus looking for a recommendation

2013-05-06T14:44:10Z

The house we moved in last month has a nice tree, but I've been having a difficult time finding out what kind it is. A week ago it started to leaf out a bit and buds have appeared (I've attached pics below).

Also, I got a perennial of some kind from my mom (she didn't remember what it was, but she had it in partial sun). It has nice foliage, but I'm wondering what it will turn into.

Finally, I'm looking for some advice of something to plant to cover up the bottom of our shed. It needs to be rebuilt and fixed and repainted, but that's not going to happen for at least a year (maybe more, we have a lot of projects to do). I'm looking for something (a bushy, tallish ornamental grass maybe?) that would cover up the bottom of the shed that would still be there in the winter, so something evergreenish, or at least that I could leave up over the winter so it didn't look too awful. It's in full sun almost.

I'm in zone 5.

My garden is still in the very early stages. I need to win the lottery so I can go on a plant spending spree lol.

This is the mystery perennial

This is the lovely shed. Jealous? I'd like something 24" or higher to cover up the bottom of it: