Good Morning Gardeners and Plant Lovers. I hope our SMGB diaries bring you some peace and maybe restore your spirit just a bit. We welcome everyone whether outdoor or indoor gardners. Even if you have a few special house plants. And feel free to just visit for the photos. We want your time spent here to be enjoyable. Drop by any Saturday after 9am EST! And, as always, we LOVE photos!
I had planned to focus this month on my vegetable garden. Well...the weather had other plans and some cold days have slowed the growth of most seeds I’ve planted. Everything’s fine, just taking its time. This year, my kitchen patio has become extra growing space. I pulled out all the larger pots from the shed and added some new compost to freshen up the soil/compost in them from last season. The chicken wire over the tops and the orange cayenne pepper on top of the soil are squirrel deterents. Not perfect but works pretty well and damage has been minimal. Those bright green bags are grow bags! I’ve read about them here over the last couple years and couldn’t resist giving them a try. There’s a flap on one side so you can harvest potatoes and sweet potatoes if used for that purpose. I had just planted a;; these when I took the photo. Left to right: arugula, radishes, lacinto kale, broccoli rabe, then another with lacinto kale, radishes, arugula. The grow bag has….PARSNIPS! My dad would be proud. 😁 Oh, and we have new fence going up, too.
You can see the start of lettuce and arugula in the large pot on the left. There’s also spinach seeds. To the right, there are a small size beet and then small round carrots in the grow bags. At the time of this photo, they had not sprouted but will be looking great next time I do a diary update on just my vegetable garden.
I purchased a pile of organic raised bed mix by Whitney Farms. Very easy to work with, smells nice, and those seeds are sprouting like crazy!
One more photo from the set up of the kitchen patio garden. I took one bag of the Whitney Farms soil, cut in a window and planted two kinds of bunching onions, one from strawbale (thank you!) and another I bought from High Mowing Seeds. I had lovely straight rows until a squirrel incursion. I have since replanted the dug up area and neatened the rows. AND put some chicken wire over the soil. The openings are large enough for the onions to grow through. Sometimes, gardeners have to backup and start over! I found this idea to use the soil bag as the growing pot online.
The cups have tomatos (thanks CWalter!), two kinds of winter squash, and a pie pumpkin sprouting in them…..
The cups were moved to the houseplant shelf in my living room. The squash have made themselves right at home….see how one put out a little tendril and attached itself to the SHELF? I will feel badly when I have to unwrap that to plant the squash outside. Maybe I should just let it grow there and see if I GET squash???
That’s the vegetable growing update for this month. Next diary I do, I’ll have more exciting photos from the pots and grow bags! And my inground garden plot is mostly planted with arugula, collards, two kinds of kale, pak choy, mini bak choy, spinach and swiss chard. Green beans and some of the squash I sprouted will go in next. A bit of work needs to be done first but it should look pretty nice by next time.
I did some work around my pond. When I took these photos, I was wedged in along the house side, only a little bit more than 3 feet of space between house and pond. I was planting…..
Solomon’s Seal! I had rescued a bunch of this from a pile of dirt dumped along the street. I also found a Hellebore in the same pile. Someone must have redone or removed a garden.
That’s what’s been going on in MY yard. Here’s what’s been sprouting up and beautifying my neighbors’ gardens…..
These 3 Iris are all from the same streetside garden.
Some kind of very fragrant Lilac.
The gardener of this yard has oodles of Daisies all over.
I’ve been busy and so has my neighborhood! What’s going on in your gardens and neighborhoods?
Thanks to all who visit today!