2019 Garden Thread

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i put the pile of rocks there, because the fuzz bucket loves to lie right on top of it!
 
Living in the PNW, if you didn't have a top on the bin you'd have a soggy, anaerobic blob by June. And the chickens would have it launched all over the yard!
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we used to have a road sign attached to a string, so we could pull it from our window... it was fantastic. My neighbors must have thought we were a little nuts...
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My tulips are up a few inches and yesterday they got covered in a few inches of wet snow with more coming tonight. My new peach tree and 50 strawberry plants arrived yesterday as well in the snowstorm...
 
Our tulips are blooming and happy in this spring weather. Dafflodils are nearing the end of their bllom. Lilacs are next.
 
Our tulips are blooming and happy in this spring weather. Dafflodils are nearing the end of their bllom. Lilacs are next.

I miss tulips, daffodils, and lilacs. All my life those were the joys of spring, but they just aren’t plants that would thrive in this area. We do have some lovely alternatives, though. It rained on Sunday morning after a long dry spell, and I really enjoy seeing the rain lilies come out a few days later.
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The weather was quite warm last week, then we got some cooling storms with about an inch of rain. It warmed up again to the eighties and even nineties on Wednesday. The peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes seem to be enjoying it.

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I personally enjoyed the cooler days, and I’m hoping for some more rain by morning. If the front does push this far south, I may even need to pull the frost cloth out again (not for actual frost, just a little heat retention).

The current “mulch” by the way is oak catkins that Sunday’s storms brought down in our back yard. The kids helped clean up and we used two big wheelbarrow loads around the taller plants. We need to add some wood chips, but blueberry netting will be higher priority tomorrow.
 
I can recall motorcycling in south Texas and loving the scents of spring there. You are way ahead of us this year. Feb here was deep freeze.
 
I can recall motorcycling in south Texas and loving the scents of spring there. You are way ahead of us this year. Feb here was deep freeze.

I’ve definitely noticed some sweet aromas in the air for the past few weeks. I think it has been oak pollen. Last month the mountain laurel was fragrant (it’s always described as smelling like artificial grape flavor). On Saturday after a brief and, thankfully, not-too-damaging hail storm, the air was positively tangy. I think it was bruised cedar, rosemary and Mexican oregano. The cedar is invasive all over our land, and the herbs are huge shrubs in our landscaping. It was a beautiful smell in the post-storm air.

We certainly didn’t have the cold February you had, but it means that we won’t have any peaches or cherries this year. Three days of freeze in March froze our small fruits, and I was even worried about whether there was too much leaf damage on the peach. It seems to have recovered nicely. (We only had a few peaches last year and no cherries because of squirrels, but this year there are none left to try to protect.)

Last year I really did not understand that despite the early and late frost dates there isn’t a nice, long growing season in this part of Texas. It’s simply too hot in summer, and plants hunker down for self-preservation and nothing more. It’s apparently two shortish growing seasons in spring and fall. I’m doing my best to get my plants growing and producing sooner rather than later because the days are heating up, though the nights can still be cool on occasion, and it goes against all my previous gardening experience to rush to get plants in the ground.

My six-year-old daughter is really delighting in the buds, blossoms, and tiny fruits she finds. She delighted me the other night by seeing that a cucumber tendril had wound itself tight around the wire and exclaiming, “Mommy, the cucumber’s tendrils are getting more muscles every day!”

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She’s also very proud of “her” baby tomatoes and peppers.

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Part of moving our garden area this year involved relocating our blueberries. We put them in an unused bed in our backyard that had unfortunately started growing a lush crop of poison hemlock earlier this spring. Moving the plants wasn’t too hard, but we also needed to disassemble and reassemble “the cube” my husband had built last year. He added a door last weekend, and now the bird netting is up, but I have easy access to the plants to water and to harvest in a month or two. (Let’s just hope the squirrels aren’t voracious enough to chew their way inside.)
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I know it’s starting to warm up in other areas of the country now, too. I’m looking forward to seeing what other folks are up to this year.
 
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Yesterday I brought the Apple trees home!


I'm way behind in putting the garden in this year.
 
We had our first cucumber harvest today. We’ve been using some parsley, dill, and green onions here and there, but this was our first fruit. My kids love pickles, so we collected some of our sunburned dill and started fermenting the two pickling cukes. The slicer I chopped up and added to homemade yogurt with some mint and green onions to make a sauce for our lunch.

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There are some other cucumbers set, but they’re still quite small. I’m enjoying seeing green tomatoes on the plants and wondering when they might start showing a hint of red. It’s been a pleasantly cool May so far with some rain (we have escaped some of the very violent storms the state has suffered), but it has also meant less sun than normal. I don’t mind that, and the plants don’t seem to either.
 
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Looking good. In 2015 we had our first cucumbers at this time, not this year.
 
We're finally getting some spring produce and have our first little tomato set plus a 2" zucchini. Getting there.
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That's crazy! We don't even have zucchini planted yet, tomato starts just went in the ground this week and the strawberries have only had blossoms for a week. You must be in a pocket a zone warmer than us.
 
We are close to the water which protects us from some of the inland cold. Broccoli went in the ground in March and is getting pretty big now. Corn is about 8" tall.
 
We're finally getting some spring produce and have our first little tomato set plus a 2" zucchini. Getting there.
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I love that bowl of lettuce, Begreen! Thanks for the update. My kids were reminiscing fondly just yesterday of the “lettuce ranch” we had in Virginia. I tried lettuce last summer but didn’t succeed. This spring has been cooler and wetter than last year and probably would have been great, but I didn’t attempt it. It’s in my plans for fall.

We had the potential for severe storms and hail yesterday (it didn’t materialize), but my husband and I set up shade cloth/hail protection over our blueberry cube and over the two long garden beds. I think we’ll leave it up for this week which looks to be hot but with more storm potential.

We started seeing a Sweet Million tomato blush red last week, and then a Juliet. I was surprised yesterday to see some red in a pepper. I took photos just in case a hail storm did come through. If you look at the cucumber leaves, you can see where some small hail punched through some leaves about a week and a half ago. The storm dumped about 2.5 inches of water in an hour or two. The hail was thankfully only marble-sized and of short duration.

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You are at least a month ahead of us. I'm glad the storm didn't damage much. You might want to try growing some lettuce under a shade cloth to keep it cooler.
 
The hops are hopping! These are first year cascade hops.
 

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Poppies popping! The snow in summer was blooming until the snow came for real.
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Build a tall trellis. They can get 10-12' tall.
I had 16' high posts for our hops at the last property and they would grow down another four feet from the top!
Couple of pics from that property...Cascades, Galena, Mt. Hood and Nugget

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Build a tall trellis. They can get 10-12' tall.

I read they can go way over 20’ but I am trying a 10’ pole with wires leading away like a hop teepee. I expect a big ball of hops at the top.
 

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Wow, that is some serious hopping! That's enough hops to start a brewery. Nice garden too.
Thanks, it was an amazing garden. About 85% of our veg for the year was grown in this garden. Couple of show-off pics...

Fifty row-feet of red and yellow onions...
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Cabbage that grew like they were on steroids...
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Walls of peas and beans...
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And every other day we'd get a bowl of tomatoes...
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Then in the fall before the rain or frost got them...
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We're hoping the new property is going to be as productive.
 

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Very Nice! It must have been hard to walk away from that garden.