Tag: flowers

March 12, 2025 – Finally, A Compromise

March 12, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I know, I know. Every time I talk about my gardening I talk about my failures. It makes me feel like I present myself as incompetent. While I am far the best gardener, much of my failures are the result of taking chances, big ones or neglect. The lack of content in recent years is the result of me eliminating my garden beds and waffling about new ones.

I have taken to getting free seeds from the library. I have messed around with using the landscaping irrigation, I have been doing mass seed starting rather than buying starts that I know will thrive. All of this leads to gathering information but not necessarily success. All the while I tell myself that it is OK because I do not have a place to plant anyway.

Since I completely ignored any type of planting last year, I have these planting boxes that we purchased for our anniversary party sitting empty. We actually loaned them to friends for their wedding last summer but truthfully, there is a lot better use for them than an occasional ice holder. I asked my wife what her plans were with these things and she said that she wanted to plant in them this year

Of course, her idea is ornamental. She wants to put flowers and things in them. But she also wants to add two more. One of which will be a salsa garden. Ah ha, this is where I am going to plant this year. My salsa garden just might include tobacco this year (he he).

As I have said in the past, our indecision about where we will finally plant our roots has prevented me from starting the front yard garden. We don’t want to do it if we are putting our house on the market. But again, that has been three years now. I am pretty sure that I am planting some fruit trees in the front regardless. They are a low investment cost and I am applying for a matching city grant.

I am giving the old apple tree one more year. If it doesn’t produce again, it is a goner. That would be three consecutive years of no production at all. I already know that it is in pretty bad shape but as long as it was making apples, it would earn it’s keep. I don’t know if my results are bad luck or the tree finally has outlived its life. This is the year I will make the decision.

As for my seeds, most of them have not done much. I have two out of five tomatoes sprouting. There are collards and wouldn’t you know tobacco. That means no peppers or thyme or basil or purple coneflower. I will definitely buy peppers and thyme as starts, I don’t know what is going on with everything but I am going to keep messing with things.

My idea is don’t do things too drastic (plant trees in the front yard) and concentrate my work by planting in planters. Using Permaculture design principles, zone 1 is something you go by everyday. zone 2 is frequent visiting, zone 3 is occasional and zone 4 is wild. My front yard is zone 3+ for me. The side yard where I plan to put the planters are zone 2+ if you say a couple times of week is frequent. The idea is that you want things that need intensive management in the lowest zone possible. This is why the pots by my back door get watered every day because they are in zone 1. It is also why my recent gardens have failed by neglect.

End Your Programming Routine: No promises I have the best of intentions but I think that if I start with a small footprint and a limited number of things in a frequently visited area, I increase my chances. I almost feel like all these years of substandard production makes any work a waste of time. This year I plan on keeping it simple to increase my odds and give me a boost to keep trying different things in the future.

March 4, 2025 – Maybe This is the Trick?

March 4, 2025 /

I finally got my seeds started. Once again, this is another year of experimentation so I wouldn’t be surprised to get very mixed results. I am thinking that I should probably put more effort into grouping seeds by preferred environment rather than trying to ‘fill up my tray’. The last time I did this, I only got half a tray of germination because I think some seeds sprouted before others. and not everything got ideal circumstances.

One of the reasons I was dragging my feet this year was that I wanted to mark the individual cell. I also wanted my efforts to be cheap or preferably free. In the past I have used tape on the row but then I am afraid to break-up the cells for fear of losing track of what plant is what. I believe that once germinated, I will need to transplant into larger vessels to get these plants to thrive. Do you see the method to my madness?

What I came up with this year was to use some plastic drinking straws that have been around forever. Since I am not selling the straws on eBay, I might as well get some use from them as I have been handling them so long. If I really had my stuff together, I would take advantage of the color code to do something. But in this case, I simply grouped different seeds by color.

What I am ultimately hoping for is a couple plants for each row. I don’t have the space for five tomato plants anyway. If I am lucky and get everything to germinate, then I will attempt to give the plants away. Using that logic, I only planted smaller numbers of certain things like peppers because five habenero plants is too much for anybody. I am pretty sure that I can get my dad to take whatever I don’t want. If nobody wants them then I will still be money ahead than buying starts anyway.

Basically what I started were mostly hot house vegetables. Tomato, bell pepper, jalapeno and habanero. I planted cabbage and collards as well. For herbs, I planted thyme and basil. I picked two tobacco varieties just to see what happens and the rest is purple coneflower or echinacea. I am really hoping that the flowers make it because they will be perennial and I would like to do some mass planting.

This whole effort of starting from seeds was really an attempt to experiment with succession planting. That is to get a second garden going as the season wore on. My problem is that the summer season seems so long and endless that I actually lose interest during the dog days of summer. This is all been an attempt to skillfully growing food in case I ever needed the production.

It is easy to keep focus on the tray when the weather is bad and the daylight is low. As time moves on, there is the feeling that I can start seeds later, I can water the cells later, I am busy with this project or that one. It becomes out of sight, out of mind. This is the whole reason I didn’t even attempt to start seeds last year. I already know my tendency to ignore the garden. As it turns out, there is no way I would have kept one alive when I wasn’t even pretending to try.

There is no doubt that my most successful year gardening was my first. I was coming off of a brutal year on the road and just wanted to be home. My second best year was potentially going to be 2020 when I was home and got plants in the ground but spent all my time remodeling the apartment. For that reason, I don’t believe that successful gardening is as much skill as it is being present.

End Your Programming Routine: I am not holding my breath that this year will be any different than recent years past. That being said, you don’t learn if you don’t try. I am happy that I got started and I am pleased with my markers. If I can manage to be present enough, then maybe I will be on my way to a bumper crop.

August 28, 2020 – Talking ’bout gardening again, finally

August 28, 2020 /

We have had a landscaper for probably eleven years. It was really helpful when I was frequently travelling to keep up on the yard maintenance. Of course I have established that I have not worked in over a year and how busy I was this spring/summer, but now that is over, we let Jose go yesterday.

It is sad, he has a son the same age as mine. When you have someone work for you that long, they are more than a contractor. He used to come every week summer or winter and do things in the yard. I really didn’t think that he needed to do that, but he was trying to make a go of things and I could afford to support him.

Ultimately, it worked out for both of us. We were the only house that he was doing in this geographical direction. He told us that he was hoping to pass us to his brother next month so that he could focus on a more concentrated area closer to where he lived. So, with that I broke the news to my boys yesterday that we now have new responsibilities. Ones that they have never been a part of, routine yard maintenance.

So, with that change there are going to be some other changes to the yard. We are going to try and focus on a more productive yard and food systems. We investigating remodeling the yard to more intensively grow more food. In addition, I want to do some experimenting with greens, grow lights and hydroponics for a more year round harvest. More details about the plan later, we just started talking about this yesterday and I haven’t had time

This could probably be a four post topic. Next subject is the Victory Garden. Hopefully we won’t have to rely on the harvest for survival. I will post results maybe next week.

Finally, what I really wanted to show was what a coastal, USDA zone 9a, temperate rain forest garden looks like. I was very impressed with this yard. I should have taken more pictures.

Do you see the size of the hydrangeas in the background? They are massive. This picture does not do the color or the plants justice. I looked up the climate particulars and thought that I would share what zone 9a looks like. The average annual low of 37 degrees with an all time record low of 6 degrees. The annual high of 80 degrees with an all time record high of 99 degrees. Seventy-two inches of rain fall in a year, mostly in the winter and spring, but some rain all year long.

All this lushness comes at a price. There is a lot of gray throughout the year. The dampness (or humidity) and wind is always present, so it often feels colder than the actual thermometer. It is typical to be pretty breezy when the sun is out, I find it a unpleasant at times. Soils are sandy with little organic matter or clay and water holding ability.

But grow where you are planted. I am going to try and take advantage of what I can do where I am at. For the most part in temperate zones, every climate has conditions that are good for some things and not others. Have a good weekend.