Still Growing!

I'm still kind of coasting on gardening this year, but I haven't been completely inactive.

First, on the coasting, I've got some blooms showing up from prior years:

The trout lilies have made a big patch,
but not so many blooms

The bloodroot continues to shine bright
It moves around as the ants plant seeds

The sole remaining tulip from a big bunch
planted in 2019.

I do have plans for vegetables this year. I've rearranged some things in the yard, because I realized the parking pad I built for the Vespa was the sunniest spot in the whole yard. So I moved the Vespa, and I'll be doing Greenstalks on the parking pad. (Need to build a new pad for the Vespa but right now its on the dirt.) I'm rotating crops in the ground - I'll grow cruciferous veggies in the raised bed where the zucchini was last year. I got a six pack of broccoli at Home Depot and plopped them in there, after topping off the bed with LeafGro and compost. I plan to put tomatoes in the half of the big raised bed where I had the corn and beans last year, and zucchini in the half where the tomatoes were. I'll need to put some tomatoes in pots.

My baby broccoli

The hard thing is deciding how to fill up three 4-tier greenstalks - a total of 72 planting pockets. I need to get going on seed starts or buying plants will bankrupt me!
 

Roses and Iris and Peonies, Oh My!

Roses, and iris, and peonies, are blooming away. It's a particularly good year for them - somehow the combination of rain and temperature has hit a sweet spot. Most of my efforts for the past month have been focused on vegetables and annual flowers, but this year I also get to reap the bounty from past years' investment in perennials.

I keep meaning to write a post about all my vegetable efforts, but I'm too busy actually doing the gardening. There is "the law of the farm" which is that certain things have to happen at certain times, or else they will never happen at all. For example, seed starting at the right time, or watering something about to die from thirst. I miss some windows, but I'm trying to keep up.

So instead of a detailed account, here are pretty pictures. 

About 3 years ago, an acquaintance offered several irises from his thinning.
I made a little bed along the walk from the side of my house.

I have a penchant for red roses.
This is actually a rose bush and a peony,
almost the exact same color.
Just outside my kitchen door.

Another red rose, this one along the front wall of my house.

Another passalong iris, in the bed by the side walk.

This spot is too shady, and so it always falls over.
Along my street.

Yet another red rose, climbing this time.
At the front street corner

Siberian iris, from my mother's garden in Bellport.

I'm not sure this dark purple iris has bloomed before.
It's along the back of the house, about two years old.

 

This is the dreaded invasive multiflora rose.
It needs to come out, but it is on the steep slope
along the street and so will require bullet-proof clothing
and a balancing act to remove.

 

Eggplant Porn; or, I Ate My Babies!

 In early March I planted two varieties of small eggplants in my automated hydroponic unit. I had good germination success, and thinned the unit down to one plant of each variety: Patio Baby and Fairytale. The thinnings went into various containers - two into passive hydroponics, and three into dirt pots. I now have massive plants, medium plants, and small plants (with the Fairytale plants being smaller, but growing conditions also account for differences). All are blooming, and the Patio Baby in the automated hydroponics actually produced a harvest! I ate them last night, a cute tasty side dish to my meal.

My automated unit with two plants today

Blooms! Time to start pollinating!

Pollination works!

This is my passive hydroponic (Kratky) plant.
I picked the large jar from my neighbor's recycling bin.

I moved this plant outdoors because it had aphids.
I washed it, and I'm treating it with neem oil.
I added the trellis - it wasn't used to the wind!
But it has a baby fruit, and many blooms!
More fertilizer needed!

First harvest

Air fried with olive oil. YUM!

Spring is Springing

This is my favorite time of year, before the leaves are fully out. I love the way colors creep out slowly until the whole world turns green and shady. For now, my back yard is still in the sun. Within just a few days, it'll be all shade, and darker than in winter.

Mild Winter

 On February 1, these over achieving daffodils are blooming. They were first to bloom last year, some aberration occurring naturally. I will probably pick them and bring them in, because we’ll have a couple of very cold days. 

Also, nearby, the winter jasmine is putting on its annual show in an effort to keep me from rooting out its invasive agressive suckering presence. 

Summer Glory

 I came home to a solidly green jungle, but I woke up today to this:

I planted this a year ago in my front rain garden. It’s a native hibiscus.

Green

 With the full flush of spring, leaves popping out, everywhere I look it is SO GREEN!

This is a pagoda dogwood in front of a fringe tree
Green with white-ish flowers both

This pagoda dogwood fills my front window with green

The red columbine and the pink geranium
stand out against the green

Not all greens are the same -
this hosta really stands out!

This very peculiar flower is known as
Dutchman's Pipevine, and is host to the
(wait for it...) Pipevine Swallowtail Caterpillar!

For context, this is the pipevine on the fence behind the chairs

Notes from Outside and Inside

Jasmine on my corner

The last couple of weeks the weather has finally gotten nice enough to do some work outside. It's too early for most planting, and I don't do garden "cleanup" in the traditional sense. I let many leaves and dead plants stand all winter. Some dead stems I knock down but leave in place, I rake leaves off the grass, and I may do a little raking of leaves that have piled up especially thick some places in the garden beds. I clean up and turn over my small vegetable beds. But mostly, I let my naturalistic garden be, deliberately, in order to allow insects to live out their natural life cycles in leaf litter and inside plant stems. It's a bonus that allows a certain degree of laziness to feel virtuous. 

But there is pruning of woody things to do this time of year, before the sap starts flowing. And now that the ground isn't frozen, many weeds stand out greenly from their browner surroundings. The birds and other critters are constantly bringing liriope, english ivy, vinca, and ajuga into places were it is not wanted. To get down and weed is a not too active activity, so it needs to be warm enough to feel comfortable. I've been able to spend a few hours most days doing a bit of this, and it feels great! Besides the subtraction work, I actually got out there and planted peas this week! The traditional day for peas and lettuce to be seeded outside is St Patrick's Day here in DC, but as an experiment I went ahead and did it.

Blooming now, besides the witchhazel, are hellebores and the yellow jasmine at the corner. Crocuses are up - February 19 was the first bloom (I kept checking). Daffodils will get going within a couple of days.

Endless puttering opportunities

Every day I'm puttering with my indoor plants, spending even more time with them than outside. I'm constantly checking water levels rather than watering on any kind of schedule (screwing up watering is the number one problem with potted plants). I pull off dead leaves, transplant and prune, rotate them for even growth or move them around. I've got four of the Aerogardens going, and things transfer from them into either pots with soil or what are called "kratky jars" - simply a container with water and no soil. I've got salad greens growing in two of the gardens, cherry tomato plants (bearing fruit!) in one, and I just started some tomato, pepper, and eggplant seeds in the last. 

Two cherry tomato plants, one red and one orange
Nothing ripe yet!

Isn't this the cutest little pak choi?
I started more seeds, as much for looks as eating

Four Lettuces and a Cabbage

 My indoor gardens continue to produce. I harvested enough lettuce for two small salads for myself. I grow heirloom varieties: Merveille de quatre saisons, Red sail, Rouge L’hiver, Black seeded Simpson. The cabbage is a baby tatsoi. I started several seeds in one pod, many germinated, so I harvested all but one plant so I can see if it makes a cute little mini-head. In the same spirit, I’m trying “tennis ball” lettuce, a butter head type supposed to make cute little rounds. Kale also is said to do well, and chard and arugula.

I’ve got green tomatoes! I started two types of mini-cherry types- the plants are supposed to stay small, as well as making small fruit. One red, the other orange. I transferred several of the starts to pots, and left two plants in the hydroponic machine. The hydroponic ones are blooming away! I pollinated by vibrating the clusters of flowers with an old head on my electric toothbrush (thank you, internet) and I’ve got some tiny little fruit starting to grow! This is so much more exciting even than lettuce!

Meanwhile, outside, it’s too early for anything except cleanup. But my witchhazel is blooming, as it should. Last year this time, crocuses were blooming, but not yet this year. 

Indoor Gardening

This west-facing window also has some lights

Since I always ride the trends about half a beat behind the wave, I'm now fully into indoor gardening. Some of the plants I'm raising inside will be planted outside in the summer, some will move with their pots outside and then come back in, and some will stay inside. Most of the ones to go outside were bought mail order from a specialty place. They came in four inch pots, and they will turn into giant bananas and brugmansias and blooming ginger and bouganvillea and other delights, I hope. Some are vegetables that were started in the hydroponics systems, and will be moved to pots and eventually outside.

There is a constant balancing act here - I buy plants, then need to buy furniture to put them on, and supplemental lights to help them grow. Now, with leftover pots, maybe I need some more plants? I'll be starting more seeds in the hydroponic gardens - those work really well - but then they will need to move to pots.

The cozy corner

My updated sun room lends itself to plants. I've decided I like concentrating them in that bright room, and I've also festooned the room with supplemental lights to make the growing days longer and bright every single day (even when blizzarding like right now). I spend the middle of the day out there, and in the evenings if I'm going to watch TV. It definitely has calming impacts on me to see the greenery everywhere. And, I'm enough into the mindset of the grower than I don't really see the plant itself when I look at it; I see what it could come to be when it gets bigger, puts out more branches, starts blooming.

The south window; palms and basil and cyclamen

 

The development section in the east window
Sad looking lemon and lime trees, a very bad Christmas cactus,
a cherry tomato in a hydroponic milk jug and some paperwhite bulb starts

 

Things are Blooming

 On New Year's Day, a few brave things (exotics all) were blooming. The weather is crazy unseasonably warm and seeing even a few sparse blooms lifted my spirits. 

This is a jasmine that looks like forsythia

Lavender

My epicly huge rosemary: want some?

Indoors, my first-ever forcing of paperwhites

Red Blooms

 Still blooming in my front yard, roses and chrysanthemums. I have a predilection for red blooms!

Lilies

 The glory of my June garden is the patch of lilies i planted in the fall of 2018. It was a set of 25 bulbs sold by White Flower Farm called Strawberries and Cream. (WFF are masters of marketing.) They bloomed for the first time my first month of retirement, June 2019. Sadly, in 2020, I had to dig up most of them because of the gas company requirements. I put them back, and most but not all survived. I missed the peak this year by being away the first 10 days of June. They were still lovely!

I decided to refresh the patch with an infusion of new bulbs- again, the same mix from the same source. The bulbs arrived today, and went into the ground right away. I often aspire to this promptness, but rarely execute it, so yay me! Here’s hoping for a great display next year!