The 2021 Gardening Thread

[MoochNNoodles]

I love how crocuses don’t wait; as soon as their patch is melted they sprout up and bloom.

My daffodil finally bloomed. Its facing the wrong way thanks to the wind.

Good news with my irises too! I found quite a few more popping up! I will need to block them off a bit because they could easily be stepped on right now. I’m just glad they survived!!

 

[NY cat man]

I started pulling back the mulch- a mix of shredded leaves and straw- and discovered new growth just emerging on most of the plants, but one of the coreopsis didn't make it. Only one of the delphiniums showed new green, but they generally take longer than the others. The tulips and daffodils are growing so fast that it seems like you can actually see the growth as you watch; like 3" since Sunday.

 

[LTS3]

US gardners - The Lowe's Home Improvement chain is having a Spring Fest starting next month. There are free growing kits, mystery seed packets, tree saplings, and other things being given away to registered participants. There will be online and in store demos on a variety of gardening and outdoor things, too.

Press release: Lowe's Makes Home The Destination This Spring

Registration starts April 1 on the Lowes.com web site.

 

[MoochNNoodles]

That sounds fun! My kids would probably enjoy all those too.

 

[WillowMarie]

US gardners - The Lowe's Home Improvement chain is having a Spring Fest starting next month. There are free growing kits, mystery seed packets, tree saplings, and other things being given away to registered participants. There will be online and in store demos on a variety of gardening and outdoor things, too.

Press release: Lowe's Makes Home The Destination This Spring

Registration starts April 1 on the Lowes.com web site.

Thanks! My friend shared this with me and I'm so excited! Have an alarm on my phone to remember, haha.

 

[Graceful-Lily]

Forgot it was 2021 and posted in the old thread. Was confused for several minutes as to why it was so quiet since December last year and then it hit me. Maybe I need more sleep...

Hoping to build a little garden outside this summer.

Not sure if I posted about this here already. Trying to grow vegetables and herbs on the left side of my fish tank.

 

[susanm9006]

Glorious nearly 70 degrees today with the same on tap for the rest of the weekend. It is still too early here to clear out the gardens but I did use this beautiful day to move some shrubs around and take out an old hosta bed that I didn’t want. The bushes were not too bad but digging out the hostas was brutally hard. No doubt I am going to be sore tomorrow.

 

[MoochNNoodles]

My rhubarb is coming up. DH worked around the yard getting it ready for the grass seed. His coworker (who does landscaping on the side) said the grass they put down in January that is now sprouting likely won’t do well in the heat.

I can start weeding gardens. Some weeds are pretty tall and surrounding my tulips. Sotime to get going!

 

[Mr. Meow]

Posts are in, frame is up. Should cement the posts into the ground before putting up the real walls of the raised garden.

Those 2x4s will eventually be 2x10s, and that indent on the right will have a bench, a trellis and be filled with river rocks and stepping stones.

 

[MoochNNoodles]

I’ve been going outside for some short weeding sessions this week. My sunflower bed is done. The hosta bed is about 1/4 done and those are coming up. Ive got almost all my tulips weeded around. Hopefully they will bloom any time now. DH got the front landscaping about 1/4 done last week. I need to get my peas in soon so I looked at those beds earlier. I just figure a little at a time will get it done

 

[NY cat man]

The purple dwarf crocus are just about spent, but the yellow ones are still doing well.

Also, the larkspur are in full bloom

The daffodils seemed to take forever, and then exploded into bloom in one day

The tulips are well along, but no buds or blooms yet.

 

[Norachan]

Nice work Mr. Meow That looks really good.

Our cherry trees have got tiny little buds on them, we may have blossoms in a few days.

 

[di and bob]

My tulips are up and starting to get big buds, I saw some blooming in town. This is their first year..... the baby lawn looks really good, dark green and really growing, got it fertilized yesterday. The weeds are dying from their spraying last week, had to hand spray since the lawn hadn't been mowed twice yet and strong enough for spray. That took hours and hours!
Our soil is horrible here, didn't grow much last year, though we didn't really take care of it, we hadn't moved in yet. Everyone in town seemed to have problems last year too, we had a late May heavy frost and a bad cool spring. We are building raised beds too, but know what the price of lumber is since we are remodeling. So we are using 16-inch long cement blocks! I think the tomatoes will love them since they like heat, and the beds are 4 feet wide so it shouldn't be too hot. They are on sale at Menards for 99 cents. The tractor's tiller needs to be fixed, sigh, so have to wait for that before we can spread out and mix up the soil for the beds. I have 12-12-12 fertilizer, compost, gypsum (to help our clay soil), and bags of worm castings to mix in. He can load the wheelbarrows with it too, that would help! I didn't know how out of shape I was until I hand loaded, hand-mixed, and shoveled out 6 wheelbarrows of soil for a couple of raised beds! My radishes and carrots are planted in them and coming up, potatoes were planted in the ground on Good Friday after amending the soil and adding a bunch of new soil along a trench we had dug for them last fall. They should be coming up soon. We have some cooler weather coming next week, i will miss the 70's that was perfect!

 

[catapault]

N NY cat man I think your very lovely pink flowers are not larkspur. The leaves are all wrong and it is too early. It's more likely they are Corydalis solida. Cultivar could be 'Beth Evans'

 

[NY cat man]

For my raised beds, I use 12x8x2in. cap stones placed on edge. I first dig down a foot or so to break up the gunk that passes for dirt here, then attack with mattock and tiller. Then, I add compost, perlite, lime- we have acid soil here, about a pH of 5- manure, and good topsoil to bring it up to level. I till the whole mass to blend it and go from there. So far, it seems to have worked.

 

[NY cat man]

N NY cat man I think your very lovely pink flowers are not larkspur. The leaves are all wrong and it is too early. It's more likely they are Corydalis solida. Cultivar could be 'Beth Evans'

When Michele got the bulbs, they were labelled as larkspur, so that is what I have gone by.

 

[catapault]

Aha! That confirms it for me. Larkspur don't have bulbs, Corydalis solida does.

 

[Mr. Meow]

For my raised beds, I use 12x8x2in. cap stones placed on edge. I first dig down a foot or so to break up the gunk that passes for dirt here, then attack with mattock and tiller. Then, I add compost, perlite, lime- we have acid soil here, about a pH of 5- manure, and good topsoil to bring it up to level. I till the whole mass to blend it and go from there. So far, it seems to have worked.

Very nice! The posts are buried a foot in the ground, but apparently our subdivision was built on the world's supply of rocks. So for me, digging down a foot for a whole garden would take me about 20 years. Mine will be completely above ground, unfortunately, but that's ok.

 

[NY cat man]

Very nice! The posts are buried a foot in the ground, but apparently our subdivision was built on the world's supply of rocks. So for me, digging down a foot for a whole garden would take me about 20 years. Mine will be completely above ground, unfortunately, but that's ok.

Lucky you. Our back yard once had an above-ground swimming pool, with crushed stone and a layer of plastic, and below is a layer of cinders from when our house- built in 1903- was heated with coal. By mixing in the perlite and other amendments, it loosens up the soil and gives the plants a fighting chance, something that the hard clay does not.
As an aside, I make no claim to be an expert gardener by any means. Prior to buying this house 16 years ago, we never had any place to grow anything, even with window boxes, as the windows always faced the wrong way. We are learning as we go along, with plenty of mistakes in our wake to show for it.

 

[Mr. Meow]

Nice work Mr. Meow That looks really good.

Thank you! I'm hoping to get the real walls soon.