Your summer garden plans?

[carnation]

Ooo, yay! I'm glad you bumped this!

I'm concentrating on fragrant plants this year so we can sit on the porch or deck and smell wonderful things! So far, I've put in lavender and have cut back the roses and rosemary and I've got more roses, sweet peas, daphne, and jasmine to put in.

We're also going to plant several different annuals for cut flowers. Marigolds usually have a really strong smell that a lot of people don't like but I'm potting up a bunch to put in my classroom next fall so that my students can experience one of the smells of Mexico's Day of the Dead. (I'd burn some copal incense too but might get fired for it, lol.)

[ThetaPrincess24]

We have seeds started for:

Moonflower
Marigold
Zinnia
Shasta Daisy
Iceland Poppy
Sweet Pea
5 kinds of lettuce
Zucchini
yellow squash
tomatoes
4 kinds of peppers
Cosmos
Echinacea
container eggplant
Snap Peas
Cucumber
Parsley
Stevia
two kinds of Petunia
moss rose
black eyed susan
roma beans
lobelia

I will probably start the sunflowers this week.

We planted a lilac bush and are hoping to add one or two more rose bushes. I think we got all the trees planted now. The grapes, blackberries, gooseberries, red currant, and strawberries are coming back strong. I am worried about the blueberries and raspberries though.

[LAblondeGPhi]

Since I live in a loft downtown, I only have about 20" worth of ledge to grow things on, but I currently have some strawberry plants, and several seedlings of assorted lettuce, tomato, cilantro, chives and some unidentified seedlings I got for free at a give-away.

Sadly, the basil and the thyme seedlings I got last week are long-since dead. Poor little things, I promise to water you regularly from now on!

[carnation]

We've been harvesting loads of blackberries this summer; the plants didn't thrive until we cut down a sickly tree that was shading them. Now they've taken off and we'll need to stake them this winter!

We've also finally gotten some sweet peas going and I can't wait to smell them!

[IrishLake]

We have our biggest veggie garden yet this year. red, yellow, green and purple bell peppers. banana, hungarian hot wax, chili, jalapenos, red jalapeno, habanero peppers. orange cherry (that reseeded from last year), red grape, heirloom, beefsteak tomatos. potatoes, rhubarb, cilantro, oregeno, basil, cucumbers, and baby seedles melon. oh and strawberry plants (done producing though).

then for flowers, i always put in a ton of impatiens (seems to be the only flowers that thrives in my flower beds, due to only a few hours of direct sunlight), some begonias, lavender, columbine, sedum, snapdragons, and wave petunias. some are in hanging baskets that i reused form previous years.

[carnation]

Yesterday we planted a ton of the big marigolds to put in pots. I'm taking them to school in late October so my Spanish classes can discover what it smells like on Day of the Dead in heavily populated areas. Well, that and copal incense but I can't bring that, lol.

We also sowed seeds for various other annuals so that they should be at their peak for the county fair.

Anyway, our red plum trees started to bear this year and so did the raspberries. Our sweet peas haven't done so well, probably due to the heat.

[Kevin]

This is the first year in the new house, so we figured we'd just see what grew. Lots of stuff. The front yard I'm mostly happy with except that we have a raised planter built up against the front of the house--sort of a 2-foot retaining wall with dirt in it. Most of it is filled up with a large variety of flowers. The rest is filled up with English ivy. Come Fall, I plan to nuke the Ivy--I hate the stuff, remove the retaining wall and do something different. Maybe hedges, dunno.

The back yard is another issue entirely. We had a little flooding problem this Summer, had a 10" rain (that isn't a typo), so we had a pretty serious French drain system installed on the back of the house. The rest of the back yard is a mess of weeds and feskue. The garden is nothing to write home about.

My plan is to regrade the back yard (I have about 3 tons of fill dirt from the French drain install) into a sort of split level thing with both levels being level or real close to it. Going to probably build a short retaining wall and some steps to split the levels. Again, with the roundup, will be nuking all of the grass (roundup), planting some Rembrant feskue and installing sprinklers. Got some general fun times planned in the garden too, but that's the wife's domain, not mine.

There is a strong likelihood a landscape architecht will be involved in my plans though. Don't want to flood my house or any of the neighbors again.

[carnation]

Jen, use a high-phosphorus fertilizer to encourage the berries. I'm about to go buy some geraniums because I've seen some studies that say that the scented-leaf kind discourage mosquitoes.

Kevin, I am impressed!!!!

[christiangirl]

Right now, I'm just trying to keep my mother's plants alive while she's gone! She has some of everything: lemon and orange trees, tomatoes, collard greens, mustard greens, strawberries, violets, a ton of roses, pomegranites, plums, spider plants, aloe vera, and a bunch of other things I can't identify. I ran around at midnight last night watering all of her indoor plants because I've concentrated so much on her garden, I forgot about those! Luckily, bamboo doesn't need a lot of attention but the violets and orchids needed water.

I'm a horrible gardener. I have a brown thumb (literally ). My mom bought me a cactus when I moved into my new apartment and it died--that ought to give you an idea.

[aephi alum]

I am unfortunately restricted to container gardening for my veggies and herbs, as we have a deer problem. I have three tomato plants going, and one of them (cherry tomatoes) has just started to yield ripe fruit - delicious! Only one of my cucumber plants survived, but it is thriving. We should be getting some jalapeno peppers soon. The mint is doing well. My cilantro bolted, but I'm going to harvest the seeds and try to plant them next spring. And, as always, there are my faithful chives... they come back year after year, and my oldest chive plant (10 years old) has survived two house moves.

Garden-wise, I had my usual spring flowers - forsythia, azalea, rhododendron - followed by some lovely roses. My hydrangea is blooming and my lady's mantle is very happy.

I will be looking for bulbs this fall, but I've got plenty of time between now and then.

[honeychile]

Help! How do you dry seeds for the future? At a convention last year, I was given seeds from someone, and it was a cool & personal gift.

I'm talking about peonies, mostly. I love them. If they grew all summer, I'd fill my yard with them. I know that you plant them on September 13th (you don't know how close I came to being named Peony!), but is that the plant or the seeds? Help!!

I'm still killing off the renegade morning glories that killed a lot of my other plants in the front of the house, and I'm toying with trying a crape myrtle for the sunniest place of the back yard. I'd love to be like Kevin, and do some terracing, but frankly, I can't afford it.

Also, there's a horrible weed around here - my mother had part of her yard mulched, and it came in on that. The local conserventory (sp?) says that they're having a terrible time killing it, too. I've been told to cut it down when it's somewhat dry, spray Round Up on it, cover it all with newspaper (held down by rocks), then mulch if I want. I don't trust mulch anymore, so just getting that week killed will thrill me. Has anyone else heard about the newspaper bit?

[carnation]

You can pretty much plant a peony plant any time of year but the seeds go in in spring or fall around here. With the seeds, you can just store them in a cheesecloth bag until spring.

Honeychile, you know how I have the best luck with killing weeds? Cut the weed off an inch or so from the ground, then apply herbicide to the cut surface.

[honeychile]

Originally Posted by carnation

You can pretty much plant a peony plant any time of year but the seeds go in in spring or fall around here. With the seeds, you can just store them in a cheesecloth bag until spring.

Honeychile, you know how I have the best luck with killing weeds? Cut the weed off an inch or so from the ground, then apply herbicide to the cut surface.

I managed to select three dead peonies from the garden center this year, so I think the seeds may work better. I've let them dry - so now, into the cheesecloth?

This weed is some sort of mutant! Picture a dandilion that grows up to five feet tall, with tiny thorns on all of the green parts. It's miserable to pull out, and simply will not die. My boro will not allow the use of napalm, and I can't afford to have all of the dirt removed. SO MANY YARDS have this, it's a real nuisance. I've never hated a plant quite so much! Is it restricted to my area, or have others seen it, too?

[carnation]

It's been a frustrating year gardenwise. The southeast has had awful heat--I don't remember the last time that our daily temperature here didn't rise about 90. So...we've lost a lot of plants, not to disease or lack of water or plain stupidity but to the heat. I think that both new hydrangeas may not make it and there are others too.

[Jobellesis]

After the May floods, it's been mostly hot and dry here, so not a good year for a brand new yard. I moved a couple of years ago from the house I had planned to die in. I didn't dig up most of my plants because I thought the buyers would want them. I drove by about a month after I sold it, and my neighbor, who bought my house, had just plowed most of them under. I wish I had known he was going to do that! One thing that made itto my new house in a potted plant was my hummingbird vine. I didn't know I had it. It was hiding in a pot with hollyhock. I planted the hollyhocks. They didn't do so great, but the hummingbird vine did. It is absolutely beautiful, but I don't have much else. I have to start all over again because I have a new house without an established yard. This is the fourth time that I have started with a new yard. I hope it's the last.