First Garden Post of the Spring!

Well, as usual I stopped blogging half way through the gardening season last year.  Actually it was a tough summer - very hot and wet.  Many of my varieties of peppers and tomatoes didn't do as well as previous years - except the Ghost Peppers, which grew like a damn tree!

Well, here it is, March, and gardening season is upon me again!

I'm curtailing my gardening activities a bit this spring because of shoulder surgery I underwent about 5 weeks ago. Luckily I'd managed to turn and prep most of my garden beds prior to the surgery and covered them up with landscape fabric so they'd be ready for planting come April and May.  I'm not doing as much early spring gardening this year.

I did start some sweet peas about 6 weeks ago - they're coming up nicely, as you can see here:

I also have yellow onions that I planted in the fall and they've overwintered quite nicely and look like they're picking up the pace again - they're still pretty small, I do not expect to harvest them for several months still.  This particular location in my back yard is about the only place that gets full sun all winter long.  Most of the rest of the back yard is heavily shaded by my house in the winter.

I also picked up some lettuce starts at the farmer's market this morning and planted them today.  I got two varieties of leaf lettuce - one green (buttercrunch) and one red (don't remember).  We are right in the middle of lettuce planting season here in Raleigh!

I also planted some Cilantro from a seedling a month ago and it's doing very well.  Cilantro is a cool weather herb that is an annual but it does easily re-seed itself in the heat of the summer and so you will often find it "coming back" every year.

Here's a few more pictures from the garden today too.

Heather in bloom - it started blooming about a month ago.  It's nice to have some color in the yard in February!

Strawberry Plants - they look like they're still mostly dormant, it's been chilly.

Camilia - also a nice late winter flowering plant.

Helibore flowering and looking very nice along with the groundcover I planted last year.  It's not doing much covering yet.

Work Garden Update

My patio garden at work is going fairly well.

Here is a "front" and "back" photo of my rubbermade tote garden... containing SIX cucumber plants (Straight 8), a Muncho Nancho jalapeno, and Genovese Basil.

And here is a potted Sungold tomato plant growing vertically on a string tied to the rafters of the patio roof.

I also have a Celebrity tomato in the same size pot.

These plants all get direct sunlight from sunrise to around 1pm, and then they are shaded by the building the rest of the day.  They seem to be doing very nicely, given that they only get 6 hours of sun.

Weekend Landscaping Project

Getting the back yard sodded last week motivated me to finally do something about the completely dead "yard" on the side of the house.  It gets almost no sun, and not a lot of rain either because of the tree coverage.  The ground is so hard I could not even get the tiller to dig into parts of it.  We've been talking about putting a walkway of some kind in for years, and so that's what I'm doing.

Three trips to Home Depot yielded 100 gray landscape blocks, and 50 rectangular caps.  I dug out part of the hill in order to flatten the path some, and then laid out the blocks and caps.  Another trip to American Soil and Mulch to procure a yard of their compost blend garden soil to fill in the area on the house side of the path, and to prepare the back of the side yard to receive sod, and the weekend is over.

Obviously, I'm not done yet!  I think we're going to do a gravel path here, some crush and run undernearth and then maybe a nice screened gravel on top.  TBD!

Here's the pics...

The back of the path will be finished off with sod.

A few of the path from the front of the house.  On the right we're going to plant some hosts and shade loving ground cover.

A view of the path from the back yard.  AGain, the area up front in the picture will be finished out with sod, and then the rest of the path will be gravel.

Vines: Onward and Upward!

I have a number of vining plants that are vigorously growing in the heat of late spring here in North Carolina, and I thought I'd share some photos here.

If you look closely, you can see the ornamental gourds on the left are starting to reach for the lower branches of the oak tree.  On the right, the cucumbers are going a little slower, but they were started later too.

The morning glories on the right have already started to cross the top of the bench.  The cardinal climbers on the left are a little less vigorous, but they've finally started going too.  I guess I won't be moving this bench again for the rest of the summer!

Champion Pumpkins, which I planted too early.  Look, I already have a pumpkin!

So I have six cucumber vines in this planter.  That's at least two too many.  They  are really sucking up the water and I am they need a full dose of water every day!  I feel like I should give them some hydro n utrients!

Newly installed cattle panel trellis for the pole beans.  I need to use some rope or something to straighten it up a bit.  Just planted the beans this weekend.  I also planted a tomato and some sweet bell peppers here.

Here is another Champion Pumpkin, growing in a 5 gallon bucket!

I say Tomato... you say Tomato...

Something is lacking about the blog entry title.. I guess it doesn't translate well into text!

So, my tomatoes are doing very well so far!  Even the one that fell over a couple weeks ago before I strung it up seems to have survived the stalk crease, no worse for the wear.  As expected, the Early Girl variety already have big plump tomatoes on them.  These two plants started as fairly large seedlings that I purchased from the Farmer's market, so they had a bit of a head start on my own seedlings.

My other seedlings planted in the "String Garden" are also doing very well, as are the eggplants as seen in this picture:


I also have several "Celebrity" tomatoes growing in containers that are doing very well.  If you're unfamiliar, the Celebrity variety is a hybrid, determinate variety that only gets about 3 feet tall, making it perfect for containers.  It has medium sized slicing tomatoes on it that I've found to have very good flavor.  Here's a picture of one of these in a 5 gallon self-watering bucket planter:

You can also see my pickling cucumbers next to it there, also doing fairly well.

New Sod!

Tired of of the summer heat killing various parts of our fescue lawn every year, we opted to swap out the fescue for bermuda!

We did the back yard (inside the fence), along with all parts of the yard outside the sidewalk.

View from the second floor.

New sod!

We haven't had grass HERE in 5-6 years!

I didn't actually intend for them to do the part on the right... but it looks nice.

Another view of the back yard.

Garden Photo Update

Here are some photos from the garden this morning!  Click on the first one and you can enlarge and go through a slideshow.

Rubbermade Tote with cucumbers, basil, and a "Mucho Nacho" jumbo jalapeno.

Celebrity Tomato

First tomatoes, as expected, on the "Early Girl" variety.

Blueberries galore!  One of these plants is doing better than the other.

Tomatoes are strung up and ready to reach for the sky, peppers and eggplants caged.

Zucchini, only three weeks after transplant!  Dill and Lemon Basil along the back.

First zucchini!

Slicing cucumbers "Straight 8"

Celebrity Tomato in the pot, bunching green onions, garlic chives, yellow onions,  a couple peppers, and "Better Bush" tomatoes.

Tallest pea vines ever!  Plus Broccoli, Oregano, Garlic Chives, Dill, Rosemary, and Cabbage.  Also planted two little nasturtiums next to the broccoli.

Broccoli.

Pumpkin Buckets

Zucchini, slicing cucumbers by the trellis, and catnip.

Same as above.

On the trellis, ornamental gourds, plus sage, parsley, and texas taragon.

Pumpkins

Pickling cucumbers and a Celebrity Tomato