Peppers And Lipstick

The peppers are really starting to come in! I can't wait until the purples and reds bulk up. Definitely growing the whites (Diamond) again - that plant is absolutely loaded with little peppers yet to come. It seems to have put up with this year's wacky weather the best of all 144 plants.



What is the deal with my Lipstick plant?! This is suppose to be one of the easiest to grow, and I can't seem to make it happy. Tried high humidity, low humidity, more water, less water, more sun, less sun . . . UGH! This thing is making me crazy. I've had it for three years. The first two years it was wonderful - loaded with blooms and leaves. There weren't any sudden changes. So, why all of a sudden does it look as if it's at death's door? Poor thing. I just can't figure out how to make it happy when I was doing so well with it!

Redundant

Yup, it seems I'm posting about the same things constantly, but I really need to start keeping track of what's going on in the yard like I'd promised myself way back in this post. But, after this, unless it's something exceptional, I'll start keeping the posts to every other week or so.

What with the horrible weather we've had all growing season in the New England states, it seems a little mean to be posting about everything doing so well now that the heat has turned itself up here and the rain has dwindled to every other day instead of daily. Sorry.

The flowerbeds aren't looking half bad now that the plants are getting some sun. I had to prune out a lot of the flopping gloriosa daisies, but it looks a little neater now.



The Hosta have exploded into bloom.



The area around the lower pond isn't as full and lush as last year, but considering the weather it doesn't look half bad.



I've never had cucumber plants this loaded with blooms. The cucumbers are delicious!



Even though we haven't had a ripe tom yet, I'm considering the 'hay bale' experiment a smashing success.



Finally, a couple shots of the veg garden (so I'll remember what was where).





Happy growing!

Mid July Update

Wow, what a difference two whole days of heat, sun and no rain can make. The ground actually looks dry - I'd forgotten what dry soil looks like!

For those of you in the upper eastern states - hang in there, it's on its way. I'm outside blowing the good weather in your direction. Man, my lips are tired! :(

An update on how well the tomato bale experiment is doing: Fantastic!



Thank God I haven't seen hide nor hair of the blight. ~fingers crossed~ Pays a bit to start your own seed in this instance. I think I only have one close neighbor that gardens and he grows his own also.
:)
Bonnie Plants first said they accepted that they were to blame, now this:

Dennis Thomas, Bonnie Plants general manager, insists there never was any evidence of blight at any of the company's 61 growing stations nationwide and that his company did not ship out any infected plants. "None whatsoever," he said. "The last inspections we've had in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and in West Virginia today, showed negative."

One of those things that makes you go, hmmmm...

On to happier stuff.

I only got one plant from the strawberry petunia seed (stupid weather!) but what a bloom it is!


Things that are finally taking off:

Popcorn


Potato (don't mind the weeds. potato is a DH thing, not a me thing, so unless he weeds them...)


Peppers (looking better!)


Onions are looking good.


Carrots have gone bonkers!


Yellow and green bush beans are finally flowering. Interesting how you can easily tell which row are which.


We had the first cabbage salad of the year yesterday. Yum! Was fabulous. I honestly should have let it go a few more days, but well, you know...
The cauliflower is almost ready and huge.
Half a gallon of peas in the freezer so far.

I guess that's it for the veg, so on to what few flowers I have that the freaking slugs didn't eat.

The view from my living room last week.


The honey bees are swarming the borage now that the sun has returned.


The bee balm is finally open for the hummers. They've been cleaning out the feeders in a day!





I lurve gloriosa daisies.


The lavender is looking beautiful.


Lilies are so fab they almost glow.


and last but not least, the coolest visitors of all to my flower beds-


Hope everyone's gardens are growing like gangbusters!
Happy gardening.
:)

(wow, I actually titled the post as June instead of July - talk about a Freudian slip - I'm still subconsciously waiting on some nice june weather! lol)

Much Better Weather

The sun finally came out and things are looking better.
More flower beds are going in.

The shed is built. Yay! We've needed one desperately for the last 25 years.
DH came across some used wood someone was getting rid of and, hurrah, it was enough to do the whole thing! Plus a leftover piece for a sorta-deck for the sliding glass doors. The kids, boyfriends/girlfriends and friend showed up to help get it finished. (They thought DH and I were a little to slow on the progress I guess. lol, it was just the two of us, what did they expect?) The friend just hung out and supervised. The kids brought a whole BBQ meal too boot! (I have some great kids, eh?)
:)
In progress.


Finished. Well, except for some paint.



With a little sun and heat, the peppers are looking much, much better! Please ignore all those weeds - it has been way too wet to even walk in there.


The peas are covered with blooms and pods.


The toms have blossoms! Woohoo!



Even the azaleas I grew from seed are looking pretty darn good.




Lynchnis - major color. This poor thing is sooo in the wrong spot for it.


The peach leaf bellflowers are at their best right now.


As are the delphs.
The rose campion is so bright it glows neon.


Anthony waterer spirea is going gangbusters.
The Halward's silver blooms a few weeks before the Anthony, and I neglected to take pics.


The sweet william and stella are doing well. Not sure I like this combo, but it's staying this way for a while.


The slugs have gotten completely out of control with this weather(think hundreds within a few square feet). The beans are half eaten away, the marigolds, zinnias and dahlias are nothing but tiny stumps having had their leaves totally eaten away. I've resorted to starting watermelon and zukes inside to get enough growth on them to survive - the slugs have cleaned out 3 plantings of seed so far. Even the cosmos are fair game. Ugh!
The population seems to have depleted a bit with the sun and being a little drier. Or, maybe because of the salt shaker.
Yes, at this point salting the little bastards is very satisfying.
I take comfort in the fact that I'm not the only one in NY to be suffering through 'the year of the slug' - they seem to have taken over the entire state and parts of Pennsylvania to boot.

Hope all is going well in the garden for everyone!

So Much Going On

Wow - long time no post.
Been very, very busy.

And my daughter found me a camera! I have a freaking camera!
Wooooohoooo! This is such a big deal for me. A really big deal.
I haven't figured out how to take the best pics with it yet, but I'm learning. Slow, but learning.
Why do they have to put a thousand bells and whistles on the damn things? I just want to point and shoot for pete sake.
Now I'll be posting tons of pics, the one thing I dislike about most blogs. Ack! lol.
:)

There is so much to update that I don't know where to start.

We had a freeze/frost last night. A frost on June 1. Urg!
We ran around covering and dragging pots inside last night. (Yes, I've completely, purposely forgotten about the post where I gave advice about not planting anything around here before June1. Shhh!) Hopefully, we are now home free as far as the weather goes. The record last freeze/frost date was June 7, 1889, so I think we're good.

Toms and peppers don't look so hot, but that's what I get for trying to push the growing season. Serves me right. They'll catch up and be fine, they always are.

We're a month or so into the hay bale planting. Here are a couple not-so-great pics. (hey, I said I was still learning.) Sorry about the monster size - I wish I could figure out how to resize and make them smaller. Something to mess with when I have more time.





I know you can't see the toms, but they're in there. I'll try to get some better pics later.

And here are some of my WS jugs. Yes, I know they should be in the ground already, but we've had really crappy cold and rainy weather so I haven't gotten all the flower beds where they need to be weeded yet. ~sigh~



I'll get there when the weather starts cooperating.

Our hummers are here feeding/chasing like crazy. I had a black swallow tail butterfly on my Lupines. Poor thing, it's so cold! And of course I took pics. This could turn into a real problem.

Hope everyone's gardens are sprouting like gangbusters!

Overwintering Successes - So Far

.
.
I was so happy to finally be able to get outside and see what made it through - so far.
I'm not stupid enough to think that old man winter might not give us one more good smack upside the head, but here's to hoping, anyway.

The two rhubarbs that we transplanted last fall are budded. (thought they weren't too happy about their location as I wasn't able to harvest anything after two years)

Some lavender made it! I can't believe it. I was sure it was all going to croak as I left it in an exposed, wet area all winter. But, tada! It's out there and alive. Even seems as if it has grown a lot.

A few of the rhody seedlings are looking good. A surprise there, too! I can't find any of the azaleas.

I'm not too sure about the garlic, though. They had beautiful green shoots last month, but then we got a quick thaw that was just long enough to get rid of the protective snow cover, followed by ten below 0 F. I dug one up just to be nosy, and the roots look good, everything else just looks like mush. I guess I'll just have to give it some more time and see what happens.

I got some pepper seeds (chinese giant reds and a mix, 56) in soil last Friday the thirteenth. (Figured that was as good a day as any the way our luck has been running) No sprouts yet. It's much too early to expect any.

This weekend I'll be sowing the green ones. All I have is the leftover Cali Wonders, so they'll have to do.

The cabbage, cauliflower, brussel sprouts and broccoli seed I started a while ago are growing nicely. Short and bushy - perfect. I'm also out of seed for those now.

Only two weeks to getting the tomato started. Oh, I can't WAIT to smell that foliage!

We started getting the ponds cleaned out, but with the temps going into the mid-teens F this week, we'll wait until next weekend to get the pump and filter up and running. We lost two koi. ~sigh~
:(

Oh, on a side note, I had an opportunity to tell the Nielsen Company exactly what I thought of HGTV, and wow, do I feel better!

Flipped Off

I guess even the veg get a bit disgusted with the neglect they begin to suffer around this time of year. How not cool is it for them to flip you the bird?

Of course, my oldest daughter just couldn't resist messing with it :)
I think that even our pond residents are a little disgusted that our daily conversations have become a lot shorter these days. Then again, maybe they're as depressed as I am that fall is here - which means winter can only be closer than we'd like it to be.

The tomato sauce is cooking.

:)

I'll end up being able to freeze about eight gallons. Not bad! I was finally able to get ahold of some vinegar, so I'll be able to put up a few quarts of pickles tomorrow. Yay! The only things left to get into the freezer are the brussel sprouts and we're still waiting on the corn from having to wait on the weather and getting the seed in the ground late. Zucchini are still coming in at the rate of a couple a day.

Oh, and the popcorn is still to come!

The flowers are trucking along as if it'll be 80 F forever. Now that it's fall, we've finally arrived at summer. Stupid weather! We ended up only getting three very small Moon and Stars watermelons. It was just too cold for them to grow worth a crap. On the bright side - for some reason, my son's hot peppers produced great! Go figure. My green peppers didn't do crap.

I'm at that early fall 'don't give a crap' point. It'll pass. It always does.

Quick Update

This post is a little pic heavy.

:)

My daughter stopped in and I got her to take some pics for me with her cell phone. The plants would probably look much better with a real camera, but I'll take what I can get and be glad. The sun set before she could take all she wanted to, but she got over 50 for me, so I'm very happy!

Everything was looking so fabulous . . . and then we got slammed with a devastating storm. The blue borage was lying totally flat on the ground and had to be ripped out. It was looking so good and was in full bloom. Our 12 foot sunflowers got blown down. The celosia was almost 4 foot and taller than the rose of sharon, but is now lying almost flat to the ground.

At least we didn't get hit quite as hard as some people did who got hit by lightening along with the wind and lost power, siding and shingles off their houses and roofs. My Uncle couldn't milk for 14 hours! Poor cows.

:(

The new (this year) front bed. There are tons of plants crammed in here - that's what happens with wintersowing - more plants than you know what to do with. Here's what is crammed in there, somewhere...

Mammoth Sunflower

Sunflower - vanilla ice

Sunflower - cinnamon sun cross

Borage (was)

Nicotiana

Foxglove

Celosia

Coreopsis

Balloon Flower

Canterbury Bells

Rose of Sharon

Gloriosa Daisy

Blanket Flower

Sweet William

Black Eyed Susan

Cleome

Cosmos (regular and seashell)

Lavender

Snapdragon

Portulaca

Chamomile

Nasturtium

Marigolds

Spirea

Fennel

Parsley - flat leaf

Parsley - Italian

Calendula

Strawflower

Blue Fescue

Aster

Zinnia

(and probably a few more I can't remember)

Shade bed. I'm in love with the balsam impatiens this year!

Blanket flower with a very happy bee.

Cinnamon Sun sunflower cross. (and another happy bee)

Center of the front bed - everything got blown flat :(

Asters and snaps. I adore the purple against the yellow snaps.

Black Watchman hollyhock (thanks Kim!) backed by the weeping pea tree. Between the bugs and the hail, the leaves don't look so hot, but the blooms are fantastic.

One of the Rhodos I started from seed. Or maybe it's an azalea. I didn't do so hot with the tag organization. I know - dumb, dumb, dumb!

The impatiens in the bench planters were wonderful this year. They looked so nice combined with the snaps until the storm showed up and made the snaps lean and blew their blooms off. The petunias popped up all over the place in the pathway, so I just left them to do their own thing. The Balsams stood up to the storm very well!

These Poinsettias are cuttings from the ones I got last year for 50 cents. (3 plants for 50 cents - can't beat that!) They aren't doing too well with the crappy summer we've had, but it will be a nice winter experiment to see how well I do getting them to bloom. I think I've absorbed every tidbit of info I can get on doing it!

Sweet Pea (white) and Spot (red) with a few Golden Orfe. Everyone else are usually the camera hogs, but were nowhere in sight. The water looked like crap all year with this awful weather, but I don't use chemicals to clear it - I'd rather have happy, healthy fish.

Gloriosa Daisies in the second front bed. I got quite a few doubles this year that I'll be saving seed from to see what shows up next year.

Zinnias in the front bed. Some got broken and blown flat, but most made it. For once, I'm glad I really packed them in there! Surprisingly, the Cosmos behind them made out well as the Zinnias worked as a grand wind break.

My daughter's favorite. The stem got a little bent from the storm, but it's still a gorgeous bloom.

The tree bed. The Lobelia was very happy here this year. The foxglove and columbine should bloom next year. The Polka Dot plants are some I got from a hanging basket (that had tons of stuff crammed in) on clearance at Lowe's for 50 cents. Go me!

My son's hot peppers. Damn storm! They looked so wonderful before they got blown sideways. At least he'll still get peppers! And yeah, they're hot. :)

I have more pics, but I'll save them for another day.