ScoopPC11's Blog
ScoopPC11's Blog
Last Post 102 days, 6 hours Ago
May 11, 2008 | 2:50 PM PST
And how did I celebrate? By working all day while my husband took his mom and sister out.
But no worries...I took my mother out on Friday.
Anyway, I'm waiting for him to get back from his jaunt right now. My sister-in-law was going to give me a planter that I can grow hanging cherry tomatoes from. So when he comes back with that I will probably work on that tomorrow on my day off.
In the meantime, I planted my two beefsteak tomato plants. I looked ahead at the weather, and it looks like the frost season is gone now. I was getting concerned that the two plants were going to wither if I didn't plant them soon. One started to wilt because I hadn't watered it in a couple of days. I put water in the pot, and it bounced right back about an hour later. I'm still going to wait until Memorial Day before planting impatiens or a few other shady plants on the side, though, just to be on the safe side. I'm still remembering last year's initial impatiens disaster.
I may just stick with a container garden on the side this year, and possibly have raised gardens next year. It's only really because of time in this case, because I can't do a heck of a lot in my current condition, and I'm the gardener out of my husband and I. I may leave the front garden I was going to create directly in front of the house to next year, also, just because hubby has other things he has to do around the house before he can get to it. I'll have to ask him about a game plan.
May 5, 2008 | 5:15 AM PST
My husband bought my top soil for me yesterday. So now all I have to do is put it down. This is going to be a challenge.
As I mentioned before, I am pregnant. I can't go too long or else my tummy starts hurting or I get out of breath. But what I have to do with this particular bed is remove some of the dirt that is there before putting the topsoil down so I don't feel like all the soil is going to fall to the sidewalk since these particular beds are on a slant on the side of my stairs.
One of the pots that I used to grow spearmint last year I think I will end up using as a transport because it is on wheels. It's a self-watering container that I lost the watering pipe to when we moved (I can't remember the name of it, but it was advertised as a good starter container garden for vegetables). It will make it easier for me to move the top soil from the back yard to the front where the beds are.
I still haven't decided what I am going to put in this front bed other than veggies. I'm probably going to set up a couple of my bigger decorator containers up front to grow some herbs.
My sister in law is going to be giving me a container that will let me grow cherry tomatoes upside down. That I will be excited about when I have it set up out front.
Apr 27, 2008 | 2:25 PM PST
So it is time to start another garden.
Because of the cost that I learned from last year's container garden, this year is going to be limited since I need to afford to have the baby that's going to be with us in late August/early September. Most of what I had last year were experiments, so this year it's knowing what I did well with and what was a pain last year.
Right now I have planted in containers two strawberry plants (in half barrels) and pansies. I bought two beefsteak tomato plants that I am going to plant in a few weeks, but in the meantime I'm keeping them watered and putting in the window until I'm ready to plant them. Since I'm using regular neutral potting soil from Wal-Mart, I mixed in some garden sulpher into the potting soil to make it more habitable for the tomatoes.
Since we moved, this year we'll be able to put some plants into the ground. But I've already told my husband that the beds will need to be raised by at least a foot in order to have adequate root development and drainage (as I was digging the beds I ran into huge blocks of cement underneath, possibly put there in order to create the slope that's there now). Good news is that I can have more vegetables this year because our whole front yard is a big sun spot. But I think that I will have to still test the soil since it is an artificially created area.
So, this year...we'll see what happens.
Jun 4, 2007 | 11:59 AM PST
Unless I find some new mints, anyway. :-) Right now, I have the following mints: peppermint, white peppermint, apple mint, ginger mint, variegated peppermint, alpine mint (I think it's supposed to be a bush, but it's not behaving like one at the moment), spearmint (LOTS of it -- thank goodness it's in a container!), pineapple mint, chocolate mint, orange mint, catnip, European pennyroyal, and vareigated calamint (which is blossoming with these little purple flowers). Only recently harvested the apple mint, ginger mint and alpine mints for the first time. Most of them are in the freezer. Since I have an abundance of spearmint, I've been harvesting, freezing the bottom leaves that I pull off the plant, and dry the rest. I think once my husband and I get a bigger place I'm going ot make sure the new place has a BIG freezer section.
My backyard is so full of containers of plants right now that even a lot of the neighbors are commenting on it. (In praise, not in annoyance, thankfully) I might still move some more around, but I already had to move some others because one of my columbines broke in the high wind, so I bought two new ones and placed them in a long container with the other columbine that was doing fine. Now my mums are suffering from tilt syndrome -- I put more mulch down to weigh it even again, but it doesn't fix the fact that the top of all their stems is bent to the right. I hope they outgrow it.
Two of the speedwells are starting to bloom. Yippee!
At least one of my tomato plants is showing serious growth, and will have to start tying it off. Yippee!
May 20, 2007 | 11:50 AM PST
It has been raining for several days, actually. Going from drizzling to pouring in mere moments. I worry a little bit about the plants that are out there because they are all in containers, and I'm afraid of the rain killing some of them. But I also can't pull them all underneath the carport, either, so we'll have to see what the rain does. It's been keeping me from doing one of my favorite activities in the morning, though -- watering. I'd gotten so used to watering first thing in the morning to get me in the habit, and now no one needs to be watered.
It killed my planned project for this weekend, though. I was finally going to plant the petunias and spikes I bought earlier this week. And next week is going to be a killer, though -- I'll finally be able to plant the impatiens, and it's going to be tough to do so because I have to work all weekend, including Memorial Day itself. So I think that since I have to work this weekend I'm going to take Tuesday off and plant the impatiens then.
May 14, 2007 | 5:43 PM PST
I was at Lowe's today. Spent more than I should on experiments for the one patch of full sun that I get in the yard plus some other plants that I bought to fill out the arrangement involving the hostas and daylillies. Plus I bought some half barrels and a wooden window box planter. Those went in the front of the mobile home so that part of the home wasn't neglected. One of the teenagers form the neighborhood happened to walk by when I was transplanting the hosta, and said that she had never seen so many flowers in anyone's yard in the park before. But my husband was impressed when he got home. He called me his "Green Thumb Honey". :-) Now I have a bunch of containers left over that are usable from transplanting all of the hostas and daylillies. I already used one to plant a lamb's ear with some begonias, and the other ones I'll have to decide at some point.
May 14, 2007 | 4:30 AM PST
For Mother's day, I acquired some plants from my mother-in-law. She was dividing out her hosta and other plants, so I took a window box-sized container of hostra and some daylilies from her, and last night put together some plans on what I'm going to do with them. I'm thinking of buying a half-barrel at Wal-Mart and putting together an arrangement in that using those plants.
I don't think the cucumbers are going to survive, so I'm going to reuse those containers for some of the plants, as well. Judging from the ones inside the house that are left over, I don't think they would survive out there, anyway.
May 9, 2007 | 11:35 AM PST
Don't always believe what the tags say. I bought two primrose plants the other day, and both died because I had them in the sun (which the tag said "sun to partial shade"). Because of the heat yesterday, they instantly wilted with no hope of recovery.
I think that's my main one today. I planted ten of the 18 cucumber plants yesterday. If those die, I'll know the frost is not over, but they seem to be handing the new location well. Some are standing up on their own without guidance, but I still tied them to craft sticks just to make sure they stayed straight.
I planted the new guinea impatiens and snowstorm flowers yesterday with the sweet pea (another lesson in not believing the tag -- it said "full to part sun", but everything I read says "full sun"), and have started taking it in at night just in case the frost is not gone yet. The snowstorm that I have right now is "pink", so I might get some "white" to play up the white and pink petals of the NGI. That container is the one I might enter in the contest (if not the contest, at least give me practice ideas).
My ageratums are starting to shoot right up in the containers in the house. Makes me wonder if I should just keep them in the house. But those are going to be pretty when they blossom. And the impatiens in the house are still alive, so it was definitely planting them too early that did them in.
May 7, 2007 | 7:31 PM PST
The container garden was started roughly last week. I've been buying plants (and containers) for a week now, and have learned a few things along the way.
1) Planting impatiens in April in New Hampshire kills them.
2) Overwatering does not help, either. I developed a bad habit of watering the plants every day, even though they don't really need it.
3) This comes from this weekend -- my stepdaughter's friend asked me about my seedling chamber. I told her it was to grow seedlings, but that nothing was going to come up. Her response: "What that green stuff in there?" I lifted the lid, and sure enough all of my cucumbers had sprouted, but the tomatos had a few small, spindly vines or no vines at all. Moral of the story: buy seed with an expiration date for this year.
So far in the containers, I have columbines, ageratums, daylillies, lily of the valleys, false spirela, delphiniums, speedwell, and a few other things I can't identify at the moment because I don't have the tags readily available (they are on my desk at home). Oh, and pansies. Which are thriving. I'm thinking of buying some more and putting more in there. I looked in a wooden barrel set up by a garden club, and I found myself looking to see how close they put their pansies so I could judge how close mine should be.
I also have plenty of herbs: different mints including orange mint, pineapple mint, spearmint, peppermint, and chocolate mint; lavender, lemon verbena, and catnip. The catnip is serving a very useful purpose in the garden: I bought it specifically so that my husband and I's two cats will leave the other plants alone. And so far it's working, although I've noticed that fresh catnip doesn't have the same effect as dried catnip, which tends to be more concentrated.
Right now, I'm just waiting to plant my cukes and the impatiens I bought to replace the ones that died. But I don't think I'll be done after that.
