The 2021 Gardening Thread

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WillowMarie

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Mr. Meow Mr. Meow Wow! Everything looks so perfect and orderly, very impressed! Plants are growing, top

Norachan Norachan Love the jungle feel. Your yard and surrounding land is similar to my dream home and surroundings. <3 I love it when it feels like you're in the middle of nature.
 

posiepurrs

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That's so pretty. Do you have any tips on how to keep iris happy? I had a few that bloomed for a few years, but now they only put up leaves and no flowers. I think the winter here might be too much for them.
If it is only foliage you may need to split it up. When replanting don't plant deeply, the top of the rhizome should be showing. Our minimum temperatures where I live are -10 to 0 degrees F or -23.3 - -17.8 degrees C. They are usually hardy to -20 --30 degrees F.
 

Mr. Meow

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Mr. Meow Mr. Meow that looks amazing! I really like the little bench you've made in the middle.
Ty! Although I'm going to have to cut it because I've decided to build a trellis over the rock/bench area. We'll see how that all goes 😬

Mr. Meow Mr. Meow Wow! Everything looks so perfect and orderly, very impressed! Plants are growing, top
Ty! I need to cull some of them so they can grow with enough space. This year was more of a "proof of concept" year, where I'd find out if anything would actually grow at all in the garden. There's a section where I had sun sugar tomatoes planted and had a 0% germination rate, so I don't know if it was the soil or the seeds.
 

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Does anyone know how to deter squirrels from coming into your backyard? They have been destroying everything and it's been driving me crazy.
I use a spray-on product called Repels-All, available in most hardware and big box stores, but I don't know if it's available in Canada. It doesn't smell that great, but it works.
 

susanm9006

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This is yard but not garden related, but I didn’t know where else to put it. I have an experiment going on with my bird baths which in this hot weather have been horrible to clean. Within a day they seemed to be packed with algae so I went online to see what might help. I found what some say is a solution and I just had to try it out. So for a couple days my bird bath has had eight pre-1982 pennies at the bottom. The copper in the pennies is supposed to prevent algae growth and so far it seems to be working!
 

MoochNNoodles

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My gardens are taking off. I should have peas soon and the beans are flowering. We’ve picked maybe a dozen cherry tomatoes but my plants are having some issues. I’m not sure if its the heat/water, nutrient or something else. So I fertilized them the other day. I’m watering twice a day and I bought these water picks to see if they help but it’s been hard to regulate the drip rate.

My sunflowers are around a foot tall. The wind seemed to hurt a few the other day but they are straightening back up.

The corn just got side dressed this week. Next is to thin and hill them a bit. The wind was aimed at them too. It’s making me look up wind screens. I will add some poles and twine as it gets taller for support. Next year I might try relocating it to a more sheltered spot.

My petunia planter is bursting with blooms now. It smells wonderful! And my new rose bushes are filling in nicely!

I tried again with the lima beans and not one sprouted! So I bought 4 more tomato plants and put them in their place. No sense wasting the garden space! Weeds were growing just fine! There are 4 lima bean plants around the tomatoes. I figured leaving them to see what they do could be interesting.
 

rubysmama

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This is yard but not garden related, but I didn’t know where else to put it. I have an experiment going on with my bird baths which in this hot weather have been horrible to clean. Within a day they seemed to be packed with algae so I went online to see what might help. I found what some say is a solution and I just had to try it out. So for a couple days my bird bath has had eight pre-1982 pennies at the bottom. The copper in the pennies is supposed to prevent algae growth and so far it seems to be working!
Very interesting. Keep us updated, as if it works, I might actually put my birdbath out again. I haven't put it out for 2 years, because where I put it is too far for the hose to reach, so impossible to clean out.
 

susanm9006

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Very interesting. Keep us updated, as if it works, I might actually put my birdbath out again. I haven't put it out for 2 years, because where I put it is too far for the hose to reach, so impossible to clean out.
several days later and the water is still clear and algae free so I would say this does work. I keep my birdbath out all year with a heater in winter And use gallon water jugs to clean and fill it then.
 

rubysmama

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several days later and the water is still clear and algae free so I would say this does work. I keep my birdbath out all year with a heater in winter And use gallon water jugs to clean and fill it then.
That's great that it's working. Since we no longer have pennies in Canada, there's no chance of getting one with change, but I did keep some before they went out of circulation, so if I'm lucky I might have some of the older ones from when they still were mostly copper.
 

Mr. Meow

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Welp...the 2 tornado warnings and severe storms we had killed half my garden. So it looks like the storm might have killed all my corn, some of my cucumbers, some of the sun sugar tomato plants I started from seed, and it snapped a few flowering pieces off the pre-started sun sugars from the plant place...
PXL_20210619_231025650~2.jpg
 

NY cat man

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Our gardens are transitioning from spring to summer flowers.
Blue Star sea holly
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Michele's Asian lilies
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Our 'Rickin' Red' dianthus
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Our 'Wizard of Ahhs' veronica
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Butterfly weed
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Coreopsis 'Daybreak'
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The first flower that I've seen on the hens and chicks
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The first bloom on the 'Cheyenne Spirit' coneflower
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The first flowers on the tomato plants, after I wondered if they would ever grow at all
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And finally, the 'Purple Bells' clematis
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WillowMarie

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N NY cat man thanks for sharing all those beautiful pictures! lots of lovely colors and shapes. <3 I've never seen the specific coneflower you have and love seeing the different stages of how the petals may start small and grow bigger as the flower continues to bloom.
 

catapault

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Very colorful, N NY cat man The flower peeping out of the strawberry jar opening looks more like a copper leaf begonia than a hen and chicks.

And if you cannot find copper pennies, rubysmama rubysmama how about a very small piece of copper pipe to put in the bird bath.
 

NY cat man

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N NY cat man thanks for sharing all those beautiful pictures! lots of lovely colors and shapes. <3 I've never seen the specific coneflower you have and love seeing the different stages of how the petals may start small and grow bigger as the flower continues to bloom.
We have several varieties of coneflower. There is 'Butterfly Kisses', 'Coral Craze', another whose name I have forgotten, as well as the 'Cheyenne Spirit'.
 

WillowMarie

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We have several varieties of coneflower. There is 'Butterfly Kisses', 'Coral Craze', another whose name I have forgotten, as well as the 'Cheyenne Spirit'.
Nice, are any of your other varieties in bloom yet? Such descriptive names! I'm familiar with native varieties around here, like purple coneflower and pale purple coneflower.
 

NY cat man

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Nice, are any of your other varieties in bloom yet? Such descriptive names! I'm familiar with native varieties around here, like purple coneflower and pale purple coneflower.
Not quite, but they are getting there. There are also the phlox, delphiniums, and another clematis- 'Ernest Markham'- that have yet to bloom.
 
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