Yes, it requires a lot of turning around, squatting, and moving things from one place to the other on a fairly frequent basis, but I managed to get in some garden time this afternoon on my porch. I decided to take a few photos to show those who may be interested, what I've got going so far this year. Once I was done I sat back with a cup of coffee and relaxed a few minutes, taking in the scents of the plants and the air, and then finally thought to count the plants on my deck.... I have 32 different "sets" of plants going on right now. Every single seed bed I planted rooted and took off and now I've got to find someone to give all these plants to. I don't even like tomatoes.. what in the hell do I want with 8 or so tomato bushes? Tomatoes anyone?
Anyway, I'll get on with it because I have still yet to post the other photos from this weekend that I just found, so I'll do that next.
This is the planter I filled today when I moved all the miniatures from their seed beds. I've got two variations of marigolds in here as well as a Zinnia. The zinnia's all did very well until we kept dropping the pots and breaking them. Somehow, during the gardening, only 1 out of 5 managed not to get broken.. and this was the ONLY plant that got dropped.. we never dropped any other one..just all of these.. and all at different times in different planters. I was apparently not destined to have Zinnias this year. However, I beat the odds and now I have one.. at least so far. We'll see how long this one lasts.
On to more tomatoes. I moved all the tomato seedlings to their own pots, with plans to give most all of these away once they are hearty enough to be transplanted again. Anyone want beefmasters? I got a few that need to go...
These were my freebies. I spent so much money on the online nursery that they kept throwing in free plants. These too will need to be spread out before they get too big, so I'll have peppers for anyone who like to grow them. I'll probably keep one of the plants for myself, just to see if I can tweak it's natural cycle a little. I seem to have pretty good luck with most plants. I was growing tomatoes on an eight foot bush in the dead of December last year, so we'll see what happens this year.
This, my dear friends, is Cat Mint.. designed to keep the cats away from my other garden plants. It's supposed to have that effect on squirrels too, or so I've been told, but we'll see. I tried seeing if Cordy would dislike it, shy away from it, or just plain run to the other side of the room. As with all the other natural deterrents that are supposed to make cats run away.... she licked it and started chewing on the leaves... Stupid animal. She's immune to evertyhing. There's nothing out there that is supposed to work on cats that works on her. Luckily, she seems to have grown bored in her older years with destroying my gardening efforts and now seems content to watch me from the window as I labor at my hobby.
This is a Lantana, surrounded by two more marigolds. I'm really interested to see how the Lantana looks as the season grows. It just came in yesterday but all its leaves were damaged during shipping, so I hit it with a little dolomite, a little rooting hormone, some coca-cola, and a cigarette ash that fell in by mistake.. we'll see what we get in a week or so.
That's my tomatoes there onthe left, tied up against the arbor for the cucumbers, zuchinni, and squash. The cucumbers are finally starting to fight for sunlight against the other two. For a few weeks there I was worried. The Squash are doing fine and the Zucchini (far right) is trying its best to dominate the entire planting box. It's going to be interesting to see who comes out on top with this planter.
This is one of my prize plants this year. It's a mild-climate Japanese fern that starts out green. As summer starts it will turn purple with silvery grey edges, and as the season get later the purple will start fading at the top to a dark red outlined in silver.. so I'm really interested to see what this one does.
Ok.. that's it for my gardening today. I'm off to post the pictures Marisa was asking about, and then it's shower time for me before heading out to the club with Doc and the gang.
Toodles.
