Birfing aside for a moment, how many gardeners do we have? I have plans so far to grow tomatoes, sugar snap peas, red & white onions, cucumbers, hot peppers, sweet peppers and spinach. (Well, plus the herb garden, and shit loads of flower gardens) I still have room to put in one more something, but can’t decide what. What is everyone else growing?

All seriousness, I'm not sure. I'm not sure I'll have enough time this year to get a garden in. The garden was demolished and is not longer there. I'm not sure if I will have much time to get one in this year. Maybe enough time for late veggies. We'll see.

I'm so happy you started this thread! We bought some seeds, and listeme's sis brought some extras over. We're looking at our despicable lawn and contemplating gravel.

We put off erecting a fence for the dogs, on account of cost. But it would have had pros and cons, as it would block some late afternoon sunlight from our very confined growing area.

We have mostly container gardening on the deck -- about 8 large pots -- and plan to make zucchini succeed, squirrels bedamned. Usually we do a few tomatoes, too, and shield them from the squirrels with netting, which works pretty well. There's one overhanging branch which is apparently the express lane to the all-you-can-eat buffet.

I am a little concerned that some of our pots and the old soil in them are harboring molds, pests, and disease. But I don't know if or how to start fresh. Smaller clay pots can be sterilized I believe.

We have a raised bed below, about 5'x5', onto which we dumped a barrel of kitchen compost in the fall, and hope for grand things this season as a result. We have seeds for peas, lettuce, beans, radishes... I also plan to order some potato root stock. I do love fresh garden potatoes. I saw a link to a clever way of growing them which I will try to find and post.

Last year the bush beans did very well, the beets were miserable. I will probably build at least one more raised bed this season. I also have plans to extend part of the flower bed to reduce lawn and increase herb and perennial space.

Our native soil is clayey and acidic. Very tough to condition it and make things happy.

This is a random brain dump, I'm sure both listeme and I will post here in a more organized fashion as we get going and have questions, etc. In general our goals are:

• Do more this year than last
• Continue to learn effective organic practices as well as push the envelope of what is possible in a suburban townhouse
• Enjoy some meals of our own produce.

Anything more is icing on the cake.

I gave up on veggies a few years ago, but have some fruit - a couple mulberry trees, apples and blackberries. I love my garden - current obsession is verbena bonariensis grown through other plants like nepeta, so it appears to hover above. This years new project is a hot border - all reds and oranges. Bishop of Llandraff (single dahlia) will be the star of this show.

If I were to go back to doing veggies, runner beans* would be my first choice - the ones in the supermarket are horrible.

* I have a feeling they are called something else in the US, but can#t remember what.

They are generally called green beans, garden beans or pole beans over here. Same thing though, I will be growing them again this year.

Everything in my greenhouse is doing wonderfully, I will have a ton of lettuce plants to put out (and I already have a couple of six packs in one of my raised beds). I have peas growing in containers in there right now and they can be moved outside this weekend I think. My tomato seeds germinated and were then immediately mowed down by lurking slugs. I think I shall just buy plants again this year.

Verbie - about the potatoes, are you talking about the tower method? I tried it one year and it worked but I didn't pay enough attention to it and some bug ate all the leaves off the plants.

I never had a problem with squirrels eating my tomatoes, but had a fit with a groundhog a couple of years ago. He was finally taken out by a contractor we had here doing some work at the time who happened to have his .22 handy.

I’ve always had problems in the past with diseases on my tomatoes. We had a damn tomato blight a few years ago and no one could grow a tomato. After doing lots of reading about it I discovered buying any tomato plant from a nursery (or any market) is a 50/50 crap shoot that it will bring some kind of disease with it and spread to the other tomato plants. Even growing from packaged seeds can sometimes be a problem if the seeds contain bacteria. I found a really nice meaty tomato from a local farm and mined the seeds then decontaminated them as directed by putting them in water and covering with plastic wrap. You then poke a few holes in the wrap and sit them on a windowsill until a white scummy stuff forms on top of the water. Then scrape off the scum and wash the seeds. Once they dry out just put them away for next season. This year will be my 3rd generation of tomatoes doing this and so far it’s been great.

I don’t have a greenhouse but I usually start my seeds inside in Feb, and my tomatoes are already about 4/5 inches tall. I have two 6’ folding tables, one in the dinning room and one in the kitchen with growing lights. MrDaisy built me some frames to hang the lights on. Peppers and spinach are also up, but just barely.

I love working/piddling in my yard/garden.

As for veggies, I always have maters and a couple of varieties of peppers (always serranos and sometimes others). *sometimes* pole beans, *sometimes* yellow crookneck squash, *sometimes* cukes. My garden is adjacent to my golf practice area so... it's convenient.

As for flowers, I rarely really "plan" a flower garden. Out front I have several pots of (in the spring) *mostly* petunias (I love the wave ones) and some elephant ears in other pots kind of around/under a tree.

In the back I have a large bed with about a dozen roses (all read) and then mix in that bed with whatever looks pretty when I go to the nursery to look around. Same with a smaller bed right off my patio.

Don't ask what most of the flowering plants are... I usually dunno.

I also have all manner of gnomes and things. Gotta have 'em to make things grow.

Heirloom tomato, beefsteak and roma tomatoes with basil planted in between. Bought Zuke and summer squash seeds yesterday. The average date of the last frost here is May 15. Starting the seeds in the next week or so. It's pointless to plant any of those before the soil reaches 60, which means days in the 70s and 50s, or late May. I made an anti-abyssinian device out of chicken-war last year to save my seedlings from inquisitive noses and paws.

Blue hydrangea is my new favoritest garden plant. The crocuses are blooming like mad and the daffodils will follow directly.

Groundhogs are the smelliest, destructive-est, pesti-est critters. The make me as crazy as the gophers made Bill Murray in CaddyShack. If I thought I could get away with using a .22 inside the city limits, I'd do it. A bb gun doesn't penetrate their thick hide ( yes, tried it ) . I've used a live trap to trap them and take them to the creek, but that area's developed so much it's almost impossible to do it anymore without someone seeing you and it's illegal here to do it. Go figure, you can own lions and tigers and bears, but you can't dump groundhogs.

Edit: Wow, you've really got a green thumb, realist!

Oooh, I love to garden. My last garden had all of the usual stuff (love fresh green beans and fresh-picked lettuce!) plus horseradish, rhubarb, lemongrass (just buy it at the grocery store and stick it in water until it roots, then plant it) and lemon verbena. Also, nothing like strawberry and raspberry beds with plenty to can and freeze.

Verbie, do they call them potato root stock there? I've only heard them called seed potatoes and I've had perfectly good luck with cutting up and slightly drying potatoes from the grocery store. I always can't wait to get those first new potatoes.

I almost got an earthbox to plant this year but settled for a Meyer lemon tree instead. Lets see if I can take care of it and the Aerogarden...

OMG I LOVE the face on that tree! How did you do that?

It's a kit. That particular one was purchased at Cracker Barrel but they're available many places... Target, Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Lowe's, Home Depot (at least here) and on the intertoobes. My grandkids loved it when they were small.

Be sure to inter-plant some flowers with the veggies.

Santa Cruz county has a lot of organic farms and they plant things like marigolds and white alyssum to attract beneficial insects.

I planted some lettuce sets last month (it's California) but am going to pull them out, dig out all the dirt from the raised bed and replace with new. My cat and the kitteh next door have been using it as a cat box! once I discovered that, I took kabob skewers and put them pointy side up all around the bed, but then someone sent me the link to the toxoplasmosis article in the NYT and I decided not to chance growing edibles there. Will be flowers next.

MsDaisy, plant some arugula this year and you will never have to plant it again. I will be checking in with this thread periodically. I failed at growing cukes last year and want to see what I did wrong vs what you are doing right. Also, we had a terrible tomato year. I hope this one is better.

Tomatoes
Lettuce and other salad greens
Sweet peas
Green beans
Snow peas
Sunflowers


I'm still on a dahlia kick, so there will be some of those, and am entering a euphorbia phase. There are just so many kinds!

Very nice, realist. Your yard looks like a very nice place to be.

kimba, I love hydrangea too. So easy, quick growing, long blooming. The perfect shrub. But it doesn't grow here!

I'm gonna plant some up north. I had a bunch of them everywhere else I lived.

My current yard is empty. I mean bare. I hired a guy to put in a little brick path a couple of weeks ago. He said he'd drop off the bricks and come back in a week to put it in. He didn't drop off the bircks. He just didn't show! I called him up and he decided the job was too small cuz I didn't wanna have the driveway pavers put in this year.

I want that in first so that I can then figure out some plants to go around it.

I had a couple of trees (pretty big) put in a few months back. That's all that's here.

I think I have to hire a landscape guy to just come and do the stuff.

Oh my, a Meyer lemon! I planted one of those in my backyard when I bought this house in 1987. It is a delight, bears heavily and constantly (as opposed to seasonally), and makes the most wonderful lemon sorbet and lemonade. From my desk here, I can see about 20% of the tree, and there are almost 40 ripe lemons on it.

By the way, if you need a hedge or foundation planting, try rosemary. I have a 30" high rosemary hedge along the side of my garage that started from just a single plant. It goes beautifully with the Meyer lemons, too.

I got a kick out of the dandelion poster. I love the other names for it - pissabeds, and, I think, piss-au -lits? Dandelion is much nicer.

I don't have much sunny space so I'm restricted to container planting. I generally grow lots of herbs, arugula, spring lettuces, and heirloom tomatoes.

Realist, I love your garden. The ants on the picnic rock... A shoe planter...the whole thing is v
ery pretty and inviting and cool. I go to yard sales and look for garden ornaments. I like angels with broken wings. I have a couple of those.

Thanks, mimi.

It is. I love spending time in it and on the patio. It's very relaxing, soothing and refreshing.
Now if I just didn't have to work to make/keep it that way. Though I actually enjoy the work very much. It's my therapy... well, that and golf.

I had my priorities when I moved in. The backyard was completely bare, so I did first things first...
put in the golf practice area... which is very nice. Covered, can be completely enclosed if needed, lighted if needed, heated if needed, fans if needed.

Pffft, attracting bugs has never been a problem for me. Repelling them is the problem. I’ve tried everything. Every year up until last year I’d have to kill literally hundreds of black widows in the veg garden every year. Meanwhile everything else was eating all my veggies so last year I left the widows alone and they ate all the other nasties. I had tons of produce, but you have to be careful where you put your hands. The widows generally try and stay away when you’re in there, and I know to stay away from their webs. Year before last when I was out there I heard a horrible ZZZZZZ’ing noise and turned around to find a carpenter bee caught in a widow’s web. It were a hell of a fight I tells ya! (But I got a pretty good picture of it)

realist, you appear to have snapdragons, iris and a small dahlia in one bed and in another, a profusion of sweet william.

I can never see sweet william without thinking of an old joke:

"I can't plant sweet williams; I have bills enough as it is."

Brit if your tomatoes are in pots, a good way to keep the slugs off is to smear a band of Vaseline around the pot - the slugs won't cross it and it's much more eco friendly than pellets. No good if they are in trays though.

less messy is a line of Diatomaceous earth. More expensive but permanent is a band of copper.

My last garden was an 18" wide raised bed all along the back fence. I had a horrible snail and slug problem until I spread a line of DE all along the edges and put containers of beer inside. Once all the snails/slugs inside the barrier were killed, I just had to keep the band of DE intact (not a problem in CA where it rarely rains in the summer).

Make sure to buy food grade around edibles and pets.

A little bit of salt works, too. I used coffee grounds to keep the Mormons off my porch. That wasn't quite as effective.

Salt on the vaseline is even better as it doesn't get washed away. Doubt it works for Mormons though.