Outdoor Gardening

[maskedsonnet]

My outdoor garden isn't great this year, but I'm proud of the plants that managed to survive the super-late freeze!! So here they are with the dogs happily exploring a part of the yard they're rarely allowed in!

Three tomato plants in pots, a yucca plant in a pot being examined by Aurora, and the turmeric at the very end:



Several struggling pepper plants and empty pots that I never replanted, a sage plant, spider plant, and the daisy I took out of my Sprout and stuck in dirt today:



The Horseradish and Mint corner, where I'm actively encouraging both to take over my lawn. The mint has obliged by spreading itself across most of the garden area, but has yet to choke out the grass for me:



Eggplant. To the right is an empty pot that I put leftover Celosia seeds from the flower GAL, and there are a couple of teeny sprouts in there!! The pot on the ground is empty.



Left to right, bottom row is rosemary, sage, and oregano. The row above that is grass I haven't bothered pulling out of an otherwise empty container, pequines, and lemon balm:



Same area different angle - I have three pots of thriving pequines! There are two pots that are just growing grass because I haven't bothered caring for them after the plants got killed. Come winter everything will get pulled in all the pots and Preem'd so I don't get so many random weeds and grasses sprouting in my pots:



The turmeric and pomegranate, which are the only plants that get to come indoors for the winter from now on. My garage stays fairly warm in the winter - not enough to grow, but fine for dormant plants. And I have a nice corner for them cleared out with grow lights and a watering system, so now I won't infest my AG room with bugs!.



So that's what I've been playing with all summer!!

[Shawn]

You too have a great Green Thumb... and I think the dog loves it too.

[campingcorgis]

Very impressive!  It is great that you can do all these in your garden.  I'm afraid if I attempted, the deer would have a hay day?  Unless I built some kind of enclosure...maybe the next house!

[Sher]

I am really impressed with the success of your container plants! Great garden!

[maskedsonnet]

Jul 12, 2021 11:52:40 GMT -5 campingcorgis said:

Very impressive!  It is great that you can do all these in your garden.  I'm afraid if I attempted, the deer would have a hay day?  Unless I built some kind of enclosure...maybe the next house!

Lol yeah I had to build an enclosure in the back yard because my dogs are very passionate about digging! I'm not sure how high a deer can jump, would cattle or horse panel keep them out? It's about 4 feet tall. Super easy to put up with t-post, and also easy to take it all back down if you need to move it around for some reason!

[campingcorgis]

Jul 12, 2021 12:02:53 GMT -5 maskedsonnet said:

Jul 12, 2021 11:52:40 GMT -5 campingcorgis said:

Very impressive!  It is great that you can do all these in your garden.  I'm afraid if I attempted, the deer would have a hay day?  Unless I built some kind of enclosure...maybe the next house!

Lol yeah I had to build an enclosure in the back yard because my dogs are very passionate about digging! I'm not sure how high a deer can jump, would cattle or horse panel keep them out? It's about 4 feet tall. Super easy to put up with t-post, and also easy to take it all back down if you need to move it around for some reason!

Oh, we have a fenced yard.  The deer don't care!  I'm not sure how high it would need to be.  Probably simpler to do one of those "rooms" with chicken or other type wire?  There are neighbors that use that kind for their raised bed gardens.  But, they still need to battle the moles, I'm sure.  We've got a rather aggressive guy in the front hemlock bed right now.  Giving our "Mole Guy" a run for his money!  Here's a shot of the deer leaving our fenced field/side yard.  We have doggie safe fence inside of that fence, just as high & just as easy for them to jump.  Sigh.  

[maskedsonnet]

Goodness, they can jump pretty high then! Never fun to battle the wildlife to keep your garden

[maskedsonnet]

Nighttime gardening haul!! The ONLY benefit of night shift: it's nice and cool outside during the summer, so I'm not miserable when I want to harvest things. Parsley, eggplants, and jalapenos.



The parsley is starting to bloom, which I always look forward to. The bees love it and the flowers are pretty!! The cilantro has formed a lot of seeds, some of which I'll harvest when they're mature, the rest I'll let drop to re-seed itself. Unfortunately there weren't really any leaves for me to harvest right now, which was a bummer. I'll look forward to the fall and winter cilantro!!

The eggplant is toast, I harvested those off a pretty much dead plant. I think between the rain and the automatic watering system it's been way over-watered. I'm still trying to decide if I like eggplant tbh, I've tried quite a lot of eggplant recipes and been pretty "meh" on all of them. Not sure I'll try growing it again, but I've really enjoyed the experiment!

All but two of the jalapenos came off one plant!!! The other two came off a struggling pot-o-peno plant. It never quite recovered from the thrips it suffered before being moved outside, but it's still produced a handful of peppers for me. 

Overall I'm pretty pleased with the limited garden I've been able to cultivate this year! I've ordered slings for the buttercup squash, the fruits are getting rather large and I'm worried the plants won't be able to support them much longer without help, since I've got them tied up instead of growing along the ground. I'm really looking forward to harvesting those!!

[Shawn]

Nice one at that!   I can't wait to see what else you harvest when they are ready of course.

[campingcorgis]

Very nice, maskedsonnet!  I'm with you on the eggplants too.  Mikey loves it and I don't get it.  

Enjoy!  

[Sher]

I loved your garden update. Such a pretty harvest.

The only way I really like eggplant is cubed, battered and deep fried. I also like baba ganoush with pita chips. But I find if I sneak eggplant into stews along with a lot of other stuff, it's good.

[maskedsonnet]

Actually did this before vacation and forgot to post it! Moved my favorite, non-hardy outdoor plants to the garage where they can't infest any of my AGs, and set them up for auto-watering. They did well while I was away!

[campingcorgis]

Nice!  DH & I are working on getting MIL's garage in order.  We bought & set up one storage rack...and brought home some boxes that are from her LAST move, never opened.  We'll go thru them here at home, as MIL says she doesn't want to bother.  We have room for one more rack, so we need to go grab one and do a repeat performance.  Unfortunately, the Walmart that we bought the first one is now sold out, so we have to go to another Walmart.  Sigh.  Never simple, huh?

Your garage looks pristine!  Nice, nice, nice!

[maskedsonnet]

Thank you! Good luck on the garage cleaning, that's never fun! I've tried to keep mine picked up and organized as much as possible since moving here, clutter stresses me out. And the garage is always the easiest place to let get cluttered! It's nice going to work without being pre-stressed by a big mess in my garage lol

[campingcorgis]

Nov 17, 2021 17:38:03 GMT -5 maskedsonnet said:

Thank you! Good luck on the garage cleaning, that's never fun! I've tried to keep mine picked up and organized as much as possible since moving here, clutter stresses me out. And the garage is always the easiest place to let get cluttered! It's nice going to work without being pre-stressed by a big mess in my garage lol

That makes sense!  I get stressed with clutter too.  MIL not so much.  She says, "it doesn't bother me, don't let it bother you."  Sigh.  But it does.  Dangerous and some of it just isn't healthy!  

[Sher]

Glad you devised a safe way to save them, maskedsonnet.

[lynnee]

Your auto-watering system looks great!