More Wildflowers!

As  alluded to, I did some big changes in my bed formerly known as the "Edibles Garden"...

I ripped it all out! 

I forgot to take a true before picture, but here's the first picture from May after over an hour of just moving the pots and starting to clear the front 3' of weeding 😳😳 It was a LOT! (It would have gone quicker if I hadn't been trying to save the violets to transplant to my new wildflower garden path.)

Eventually I got the entire thing weeded, then dumped a bunch of compost, churned it all together (these are very technical gardening terms) and sprinkled pretty much the entire 1/4lb (over 120,000!) bag of native wildflower seeds!

Time to wait...

Early July they were sprouting!

(Naturally also with many tomato and squash seedlings basking in their release from the compost bin. Also by then I had pulled out the pea plants that were finished and planted more seeds in that strip.)

3 weeks later they were knee / thigh high and obvious that only one species was dominating...

And that species was cosmos!

By mid-August we had a cosmos jungle!

Beautiful! And a good thing that they took over too since researching each of the species listed on the seed packet led me to discover that very few are actually native and some are quite aggressive. 😡 

I need to be vigilant next year about watching the seedlings, comparing them to the photos I stored, and ripping out any undesirables that are trying to gain ground.

Thankfully over half of the seed packet was annuals anyway, and since nearly everything was crowded out by the cosmos, I shouldn't have to worry about them having reseeded themselves.

Hoping! 

We went away for a week at the end of September and came back to find that despite the growing season being basically over, it had grown another 2 feet, showing no signs of stopping, and was now less jungle and more I'm-here-to-take-over-your-species:-all-humans-must-bow-before-my-greatness.

Look at it compared to the height of the grill! Or my second story deck for that matter!

Next year should be quite the adventure. 😳

Meanwhile, I did keep a few edibles there in pots...of course my herbs, a cherry tomato seedling from a friend, aaaaaand.....the cherry tomato reseeded volunteer I've come to rely on every year! 😁😁

Husband mocks this little volunteer since it usually takes SO long to get going that we don't get tomatoes until October. This year however, it did great! It outstripped the friend's seedling and started producing first! We've had a great little crop through the whole end of summer that's continuing now into October!

So that's the adventure of my massive vegetable garden put to bed....no pun intended. It seems it will be much more productive as a wildflower bed and now that I have a baseline established, I can continue propagating and collecting true natives from others and make it a spectacular extension of my other bed. 

And now we need to have a moment of silence for the end of an era....

RIP, cilantro.

Yes, unfortunately I neglected that bed far too long and I let the wonderfully native, beneficial, though "weedy" fleabane crowd pretty much everything else out. I had hoped that when I ripped it all out and turned over the soil, perhaps a rogue seed would make its way up and the cilantro would live on! But alas. If that's the case, the cosmos crowded out any chance of its coming to true life.
Such a bummer; that was a delightful, happiest of all my  accidents. And one I'm quite certain I could never duplicate, though maybe some time I'll buck up the courage to get a plant and see how it fares and if it seeds as vigorously and heartily as my beloved original. [sigh]

But lovely! (minus the trash cans 🙄)

Early Edibles

At the end of March things were already hoppin' in the garden...

My sacrificial kale was quite bushy.

(Thus named because caterpillars skeletonize it every year, and then it grows back and they feast again, and so on...all summer and fall long! But since they pretty much only care about the kale, I've decided to just let them have at it; keeps them from my other edibles, even though I'd love to have fresh kale :-/)

And since it was too early for the caterpillars to come steal it, I got a healthy little crop and enjoyed several salads!

And now it's 4 feet tall and flowering. Alllllrighty then.

It's also next to the sapling I've let grow for a few years waiting to identify it (it looks like some kind of fruit tree). This year we feel quite confident that it's a seedling of our cherry tree!!

We're going to re-plant it and hopefully keep it pruned to a reasonable size (our wacko cherry tree is crooked and scraggly and about 20 feet tall!) so that it can be netted from the birds and we'll get cherries!

Got the peas planted...

And now they are a couple feet high, though perhaps stunted because the cilantro shot up and will soon be going to seed in front of it...

And little lettuces!

I didn't get my tomato seeds started on time and found out I'm totally out of peppers and a few other seeds, soooo...this will be a buy a few established plants kind of year (if I can ever get to a store!)

I did plant quite a few flowers and two zucchinis (I really only need one, but two is safer in case one doesn't come up).

Several weeks in and only ONE of the flowers has come up!!! 😫 

But figures both zucchini did! 🙈

So time to just pop some seeds in the outdoor pots and they'll just have to be delayed this year 😒

My aspirations for edibles is minimal ... since that's my usual crop anyway! That bed really isn't great for anything besides accidental cilantro, some herbs, peas, and a few tomatoes that don't need to get bigger than cherry size. 

At least my flowers keep me sane!

End of the Edibles

Yes, I'm still alive!

2019 was a buuuuusy, life-changing year!
In 2017, I posted 54 garden posts.  
In 2018:  32.

2019?  9    😯🙈 
And off to a rough start in 2020 when my first is in April!

Aaaaaand...just a couple things have happened since I last blogged here. 
You know, small things like most of the major holidays, me becoming pregnant and doing absolutely nothing productive through much of the winter, and now this little thing called a global pandemic.
Granted, the quarantine caused by that last one, while rough and life-altering has actually been great for both gardeners and bloggers! 
So at a few different times I have been writing posts, just not publishing them, so sorry if these come rapid fire as I catch up with where I left off!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I mentioned  previously  that my 2019 edibles were a pretty miserable failure.

Oddly enough, at the the end of October, we had produce!

A very respectable green pepper popped up!

Tomatoes finally started ripening....just in time to not fully ripen before cold hit. Alas. At least husband got some cherry tomato snacks while out mowing or grilling for a week or so!

I planted a second crop of peas, which shot up beautifully! 

Buuuuut as I was pretty much exactly 2 weeks late in planting them, they didn't sprout peas until the first frost...had I been 2 weeks earlier it would have been perfect. No fall peas 😞

But the one thing I can always count on is cilantro!!!

It has completely overtaken the edible bed and went to seed for most of the winter and then dutifully came back in January. I can't tell you how delightful it is to go out into your garden in January or February and get fresh cilantro for a curry! 😄

Thus ended a rather dismal season...but seeing as I put a whole lot of almost nothing into it, I didn't expect much else!

Here's to you, 2020!

If I Had to Garden for Sustenance...

                      ...we'd have survived for a rather hungry single day.

This year's produce totaled:


A nice crop of sugar snap peas.
A respectable bowl of green beans.
Several salads' worth of various lettuces.
Two whole zucchini!
A fairly reasonable amount of herbs (though after several years, the thyme and rosemary finally bit the dust).
And quite the abundance of accidental (and largely unneeded) jalepeños.

                                                          

And of course the jungle of cilantro (I apparently didn't take a picture of it when it was a jungle - waist high "weeds" filling the edible bed!) which irks me immensely when it takes months to go to seed, re-seed itself, take root and start producing more edible cilantro...right through the good avocado season 😑

New crop of cilantro finally coming back up after months of the seeding process

I'm now on my fall planting of peas which are looking excellent...

First time trying this, so we shall see what the harvest yields!

And found a use for all my jalepeños:

Spicy-food-loving husband is very happy!

So yeah, probably ridiculously obvious to say that I have such respect for the mad skills and endurance of people like those exampled below; and how not having a grocery store to run to when your crops fail (or not having the funds to do so) adds immense anxiety and hardship.

Gardening for fun instead of sustenance and/or livelihood is definitely a luxury I am blessed with.

Spring!!!!!

Ok, can we say fail?! Pretend like I posted this in April when I actually started writing it, ok?!


Well, we are still under renovation, so gardening has taken a bit of a backseat again. I've only had a few days where I've been able to get out and do some clean-up and planting.

Buuuuut.....

Yes, after a late start, we are finally, fully under way!


The first crocuses popped a few weeks later than normal in the 3rd week of March.

The daffodils shortly after...

The honeysuckle came back!

The row of chives around the stoop foundation is called mole control. They seem to hang out under there, so I thought if I "blocked" their entrance into the beds with a smell they don't like it'll help...?
I'm skeptical, assuming they'll just go under the bulbs, but hey, at this point, it's either this or I get real serious on the poison options :-/


And I didn't trim down the clematis before it started leafing, so I sacrificed some and left others...

And within 3 weeks it looked like this:

And just before we left for vacation at the beginning of May they bloomed!

Beautiful tulips coming alive in mid-April!

But RIP hibiscus that was a total skeleton, so I finally cut it back 😥

Except oh wait, that's apparently what it was waiting for an I'm an idiot! 😄

And happy, happy, happy! The cilantro is back.....aaaand totally consuming the edibles bed.

And look how cutely my pallet is doing!

I planted various types of lettuce in several places, which did splendidly (except for the kale that instantly got eaten by caterpillars again, so I just left it and decided it was the sacrificial crop that kept them off my other nearby plants! 😠) and we enjoyed quite a few salads!

Things coming to life in the wildflower border....

Knockout roses and mazus reptans in bloom with the clematis - such a lovely season!

Aaaaaand then we left the country for 3 weeks! (Well, 10 days, then home for 2, then visiting family for almost a week.)

And still trying to finish up those renos, so gardening stayed on hold by and large. 

I'm very thankful for the plants that basically just do their thing with or without me. That was my goal in "planning" - to have mostly perennials that are minimal work. 
The nature of a billion beds means the weeding is far from minimal, but good old plants just keep blooming and growing even if I forgot to cut them back and/or fertilize them properly and such. 

Perfect! 😁