ScoopPC11's Blog

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.