How Does Your Garden(s) Grow

[Pepper]

So the Canadian frost must be over by now. Everyone should have marked off, raked, turned over soil, mulched and planted by now.

I did all of that, and went to the nursery only to be told that the best time to garden in South Florida is in the fall. Most of the veggies I was interested in wilt because of the sun.

So I have my area marked off and ready for the fall. I mostly keep turning over the soil and pulling up weeds.


I did plant sweet peppers and cucumbers. I made two attempts at calalloo. I think I got one plant from the second attempt. Not sure if that one thing coming up is a week or calalloo.

Sweet peppers started out OK, but as soon as we hit near 100 degrees for one week straight, they started regressing. Cukes are coming up nicely. They thrive on sun.

I also planted sorrell, and they are doing well

Made my two attempts at scotch bonnet. The second one took and I have about 4 plants sprouted. Soon time to transplant and see where they go.

I am going to weed this weekend. Photos soon come.

[Nylah]

Re: How Does Your Garden(s) Grow



My cucumbers are struggling to grow 2 plants already die off from the hot dry weather.

green pepper plants are coming along nicely though. And so are the banana and other type of sweet pepper plant I have in pots the heat sresses them but they seem to bounce back nicely when u water them.

Lettuce is growing out of control but the Bok choy is only now starting to come along.

My herbs (all except my Basil) are just flourishing. Pure bush they are all becoming

I have bought 3 basil plants so far and they struggle to stay alive or thrive. This last one - genovese is hanging in there but just barely.

I bought an African basil plant 3 weeks ago and planted it with an oregano plant and that one seems much hardier than the delicate genovese kind. However, it has a totally different taste.

[kia027]

Re: How Does Your Garden(s) Grow

ohhh scotch bonnet.. have to add that to the list.

we have passed lettuce season
tomatoes are coming up
callaloo is starting to take over the yard

onions and scallions growing nicely

have not checked to see what else is out there

[Nylah]

Re: How Does Your Garden(s) Grow


So I harvested the rest of my green onions

Now that I know that they are pernnials I'll plant some in the fall for spring harvesting next year.

Look at the roots on these suckers





My Englsih Thyme is starting to get bushy. I have to keep plucking the flowers of each day though so it doesnt go to seed.

[Nylah]

Re: How Does Your Garden(s) Grow


Pots are beginning to bloom now. The pansies are doing well. I am just waiting for the snapdragons to bloom.



dont remember the name of these orange flowers but they are quite hardy it seems



a couple of snapdragons in the pot with the orange flowers are blooming

[Nylah]

Re: How Does Your Garden(s) Grow

this is called a mouse flower because when they are in full bloom the flower head look like a mouse face



Hanging basket in the front is in bloom



and the pots on the steps are beginning to gear up as well




sweet bananas slowly coming up :

[Nylah]

Re: How Does Your Garden(s) Grow



more pots blooming








I have no idea if this Lavender or Russian Sage

[Nylah]

Re: How Does Your Garden(s) Grow


And I just noticed my green peppers coming along.
Kinda been ignoring the plant until today



And broccoli
I had no ide how these things grew until I planted them myself

[ILP]

Re: How Does Your Garden(s) Grow

my garden is a hot (to be read: nonexistent) mess

what mi did have:
lilies
butterfly bush
roses
tomatoes
and some other things mi nuh know wah dem name...

di rabbits have stripped to nothing

[kia027]

Re: How Does Your Garden(s) Grow

nice garden pics nylah! I will take some pictures of MrKia's garden soon and share.

ILP u need the rabbit thing someone else had asked about to save your garden... or put the dog out more to scare the rabbits away.

[ILP]

Re: How Does Your Garden(s) Grow

you know which post it was kia?

as for Evander (the dog), im gwan sometime like im inna cahoots wid di rabbits. im go out deh ahn chase dem off, den im dig up di place. when im come back inside di rabbits come back and nyam wah im dig up.

mi cyan win, eidah way....

[Stormmey]

Re: How Does Your Garden(s) Grow

Lawd Nylah your garden looking splendid....and you say you have jamaican spinach is wich part you live inna Calgary again

btw that is Lavender bush

[WitchyOoman]

Re: How Does Your Garden(s) Grow

I have dozens of different tomatoes growing this year, and habaneros and hot cherry peppers and bird's eye peppers, kohlrabi, watermelons, musk melons, crookneck squash, cardoon, rasperries, garlic chives, 3 different mints - spearmint & peppermint & chocolate mint, pickling cukes and regular cucumbers, strawberries, dill, 4 different basils, hyssop, chamomile, oregano, sage, 2 different lavenders, mulberries, celosia, and my climbing tea roses.

Mr Witchy built a shrine to the Blessed Mother, according to my design and wishes, this past May (the BVM's month); I'm growing geraniums there.

Pix soon come.


<span style="text-decoration: underline">ETA</span>: I forgot to mention the dozen and a half heads of Iceberg lettuce, romaine lettuce, and 2 dozen heads of green cabbage, too.

[Nylah]

Re: How Does Your Garden(s) Grow



I love chocolate mint that stuff is divine! I grew that a ginger mint last year but someone who though they were weeds and also thought they were helping me, pulled them out

Witchy - what kind of Basil are you growing? I added African Basil to my garden and I am looking for other nice ones

[WitchyOoman]

Re: How Does Your Garden(s) Grow

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Nylah</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
Witchy - what kind of Basil are you growing? I added African Basil to my garden and I am looking for other nice ones </div></div>
Nylah, I have --
<span style="font-weight: bold">Thai basil</span> (<span style="font-style: italic">the purple-spiked-flowered basil with green leaves, not the thai Royal purple-leaf basil</span>)
large-leafed <span style="font-weight: bold">sweet basil</span>
and two variegated white-and-pale-green small-leafed basils

I dunno what the last is, exactly.

See, each year, we buy hundreds of dollars worth of seedling plants for our vegetable garden from the Maplewood Garden Club druing their annual Mother's Day weekend sale, but this year, coz Mr Witchy had been laid off in February, we couldn't affrord anything. A friend is an officer of their Club, and she asked them to please consider donating seedlings to us, as we were avid supporters of their club and their annual fundraising sale for years and years. They agreed to set aside at least a dozen plants for us, and anything over that that did not sell at the sale, to give to us for free. They set aside a few heirloom tomatoes, since I am known to love raising heirloom tomatoes, and a few old standby tomatoes like Rutgers and Big Boy and Big Girl and some early grape tomatoes. The were generous as hell, and gave to us <span style="text-decoration: underline">everything</span> that did not sell.

We ended up with stuff that we've never even heard of this year (kohlrabi and cardoon)... and stuff that we've never tried to grow (lettuces and cabbage)... and stuff that we have given up on trying to grow (like melons).

They gave us, free:
about 35 tomato plants
about 2 dozen heads of cabbage
abut 2 dozen heads of lettuce
pickling cukes and regular cucumbers
crookneck squash
hot cherry peppers
habaneros
birds eye hot peppers (those little devilishly <span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #990000">HOT</span><span style="color: #FF0000">T</span><span style="color: #FF6600">T</span></span> bitty pepper things)
musk melons
watermelons
strawberries
kohlrabi
cardoon
and tons of herbs - 4 kinds of basil, dill, hyssop, oregano, sage, and others that I forget right now without going out to look...
and 2 flats of celosia (neon-bright spiky/ferny funky-looking ornamental non-edible flowers)

We couldn't even plant it all!!

We had to ask our neighbors to help us with the planting. My back didn't permit me to do much of the grunt work, and hubby needed a hand... and the Swans kindly lent us two pairs of hands to do much of the hard grunt work.

We all shoehorned the food plants into the raised beds of the tiny front garden plot that I have inside my picket fence. God Alone knows how we managed to squeeze it all in there... but we did. More or less. The melons are outside the fence, as are the herbs.

Plus we have our old raspberry bushes, our mulberry trees, and the mints from years past... Chocolate mint survived from last year, even though the pineapple mint did not. Spearmint for years and years ago. And some kind of Jamaican mint... we brought some rooted plants back with us one year... around 2000; it's similar to our spearmint, but a bit different of taste.

Just up the riveway, alongside the house, past the climbing tea roses, this year - in May - Mr Witchy finally got around to building me the shrine to the Blessed Mother that I've been begging him for for a few years now. We have small pots of geraniums of dark pink and red all along the shrine, too.