Recently in Shrubberies Category

So I'm starting a new experiment - propagating plants from cuttings.  The subjects are rosemary, tea (Camellia sinensis), and lavender.  Here they are in that order:

The cucumbers have arrived and the tomatoes are on their way. ^_^

Here's the first cucumber still on the vine:

... and off the vine:

This morning I looked out the window and noticed that one of the cucumber vines is being unruly - it had detached itself from the trellis.  I gotta get it back in line when I get home.

Here's a long view of the cucumbers and their neighboring tomatoes and peppers.

There are already little lollipop tomatoes on the way.


The other tomatoes and peppers are growing away, too.

The zucchini has been blooming, but unfortunately they're only producing male flowers so far - no fruit yet. Poo. :-/

But I have a volunteer squash plant!  It's growing on the outside of the garden bed pictured above.

This is an argument for not mowing the grass so often - you never know what is going to sprout! :P

And the potatoes are still hanging in there.  I guess it might be time to dig them after I get home from the 4th of July weekend. Hmm ...

(yeah, they're in there amongst all the weeds! :P)

There's something else interesting in my yard that I didn't plant other than the squash plant.  I think I have varigated wild grapevines growing in my yard.

My plant identification skills aren't so great beyond flowers, herbs, and veggies, so I'm really not sure if this is a grapevine or some other vine.  Here's a picture of another one.


Since I was near them taking pictures of the strange "grapevines," here are my hydrangeas. I love hydrangeas. ^_^

The plants are waking up!  The hydrangeas and lilac started putting out buds last week, and this week the ume started.  The poor ume is unfortunately half-dead due to an unfortunate encounter with the weed-eater last year. Oops.

The daffodils have also been growing above ground for about a week.  As I drive around town, I notice lots of daffodils that are already blooming.  I suppose mine are running late.

I finally prepped the garden beds this past weekend.  Now I'm all sore - I guess my gardening muscles got soft over the winter!  I turned some aged horse manure into the raised beds and then stapled black garbage bags over them.  The idea is for the black plastic to prevent weeds from sprouting until I'm ready to plant, then the plastic is going away.  This year I'm going to try using wheat straw as a garden mulch.

I haven't planted my seeds yet, that's next on the list.

While cleaning up the garden, I found a zucchini left over from last year.  Some sort of critter had chewed a hole in it, and the insides appear to be pretty much dried out.  I'm planning to plant some of those seeds to see if they'll grow.

As far as wild herbs go, I have a nice crop of chickweed, and the cleaver's situation looks promising.  I also think the violets are reappearing, but the leaves are so small now that it's hard for me to be certain.  I've definitely got to harvest the chickweed soon because the yard is looking kinda furry and the grass needs to be mown!  (I'm not looking forward to starting that up again, either. *sigh*)

Most surprising of all is that the tulips have reappeared!  I was thinking they were dead since the dear munched on their leaves last year.   But over half of them came up!  I actually haven't seen any sign of deer this winter.  I hope last year was a fluke.

I took these pictures on Halloween.  That was two days ago, and as far as I know, it still hasn't frosted yet. Curious.

The green tomatoes I picked finally started to ripen.

Next year, I guess this will be my strategy for getting tomatoes before the critters do - pick them green and ripen them inside.

Here are pictures of the gigantic zucchini.  The plant is looking pretty unhappy now (so I figured I'd better hurry and take a picture of it!), but it was huge.  The leaves were as high as my waist.


I'm supposed to be growing mustard in this big terra cotta pot, but so far only mushrooms, left-over chard, and the radish I impulsively stuck in the dirt are visible.  The mustard has sprouted, but it's hard to see the purple sprouts against the soil/leaves mixture.  I have no idea what kind of mushrooms these are - I didn't plant them.  (And don't worry, I'm not going to eat them!)

I also didn't plant this tomato.  I had a tomato in a bucket in the general area last year, and so I guess that's where this one came from. (I rearranged it so that it's draped onto the front porch.)  It has a few blooms on it, but it's running critically late on the whole fruit-production front.


This is what the beautyberry looks like in the fall:

I was hoping that the golden leaves would hang out on the branches so I could enjoy the color contrast between the berries and the leaves, but no luck - the leaves turn yellow and hit the ground shortly thereafter.

Today I finally set up the trellis for the butter beans.  Some of the butter bean plants were waving around in the air, and one of them had a stranglehold on a neighboring edamame.

When I put the poles up and looked around, I realized that it was within the grasp of the advancing tide of bamboo + muscadine.  So I grabbed the machete and solved that problem - that's why there are pieces of grape vine and bamboo scattered about in this picture.

I also made some twine cross ties for the cucumbers.  I think it might need more, but I was tired of standing out in the heat tying knots, so I left the rest for another day.

I picked a bunch more snow peas.  I think this is probably it.  Some of the plants are looking sad, and I don't see any more blooms.  It also looks like the Hungry Hungry Caterpillar has been munching on the snow peas - I found several pods with a single hole gnawed right through them.

I'm never as on top of record-keeping as I wish I was.  I should just accept this and move on. :P

Today while madly planting the calendula and the rest of the peppers before it rains all weekend, I realized that I'm not really sure what I did with the cayenne peppers.  I think I know, but that was determined by process of elimination.  For the record, I think they're parallel to the edamame. Heh.  But that means that I don't know where the Hungarian Hot Banana peppers are - unless I alternated the two.  Luckily those two varieties should be easy to tell apart. But I might have put them with the jalapenos.  Hmm ... I guess time will tell ...

The jalapenos are interspersed with the tomatoes.  And the tomatoes ... well, I made up a little acronym so that I can remember what is what.  It's LAG, which stands for Lollipop, Amish Paste, Gold Medal.  Except there are three plants that aren't either of those.  Isn't that always the way - all these exceptions ... Anyway - I also have a German Pink, a Black Cherry, and a Mortgage Lifter.  The German Pink and the Black Cherry are the western-most tomatoes, and the Mortgage Lifter is the Eastern-most on the southern side.  Yeah, that's not complicated.  Maybe I should make a little coordinate grid for them!

I had a similar problem with the peppers.  I had three varieties left.  So, facing north, the peppers are TOY.  That's Thai Hot, Orange, and Yellow.  ("Yellow" is actually Doe Hill Golden.)

Alright, that's duly documented.

I think the chard are finally deciding to sprout, maybe.  And I'm very excited to see that I have baby cucumbers forming, yay!

Oh! And the Nikko Blue hydrangea is blooming!  The ... one next to it should start blooming any day now, too. ^_^

And I noticed that valerian flowers do have a very faint, delicate smell.

I've been trying to post these pictures since Sunday afternoon.  So without further ado and no photo editing, here they are.

This is the long view of the raised beds before I cut the fabric and planted lima beans, chard, squash, and zucchini.

Here's a close-up of the stakes I drove to keep the boards from bowing.  And I also plan to tie bean poles and tomato trellises to them.

These are the cucumber buckets.  (They're former kitty litter buckets with drainage holes drilled into them.)

This weekend was extremely productive - my family and the plants worked very hard! ^_^

The daffodils finally bloomed Saturday.  This is the first one.

Several more daffodils bloomed over the course of the day.  I think you could almost sit there and watch the blooms open.  If you didn't have other things to do - like, say, build raised garden beds.

This is what the garden area looked like before we started.

My parents brought me a truckload of planting mix.

On one of the three trips to the hardware store, we bought a wheelbarrow and compost.

Today I planted the tomatoes and peppers.  I'm trying something different this year for the other seeds I plan to plant, and I'll start them later.

Tomatoes

• Lollipop
• Amish Paste
• Gold Medal

Peppers

• Jalepeno
• Cayenne
• Hungarian Hot Banana
• Orange Bell
• Thai Hot
• Doe Hill Golden Bell

I also tossed some dill and chard seeds into one of the big terra cotta pots - the one that had garlic and mustard planted in it until the squirrels came along and destroyed the seedlings.  Hopefully they will move along and leave the pot alone this time.  ... Maybe I'd better put some wire over it just in case. *sigh*  I planted them just in time because it rained again this afternoon.

Speaking of wire, I think that all of the tulips I planted have sprouted, yay!  I'm so happy to look out the front door and see them happily sitting around the mailbox. ^_^  (If something happens to them, I'm gonna be crushed!)

The daffodils are still struggling along.  I think they're not  getting enough sun because they're shaded by some nearby bushes and bamboo.  The tulips are growing a lot faster than the daffodils are.

Oh, I also wandered around and gave all of the shrubs a good squirt of liquid worm poop.

I caught a pair of robins snacking on the beautyberry today.



The rest of my plants are plugging along.  The greens still look like dwarf greens.  I think next year I'm going to try putting a clear garbage bag over them to help them stay a bit warmer.

There are buds on the lilac and the hydrangeas.  The ume has a few little leaves on it.  I kind of doubt that it's going to bloom this year.