You could try some cacti or air plants. They take up very little space and don't need much attention. Just put them by a window and water cacti maybe once every two months.
I think
LTS3
has a nice collection of air plants.
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Gardening 2020
- Thread starter posiepurrs
- Start Date
I think
LTS3
has a nice collection of air plants.- Thread Starter Thread Starter
- #22
Just a thought for those having problems with tulips - Did you let the foliage mature and yellow before removing it? The plant needs the leaves to store nutrients for the following season.
Yesterday my kids had a pressure canner delivered to me for Mothers Day! I am beyond thrilled - now to get used to using it.
Yesterday my kids had a pressure canner delivered to me for Mothers Day! I am beyond thrilled - now to get used to using it.
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Now that's not fair play, is it?You could try some cacti or air plants. They take up very little space and don't need much attention. Just put them by a window and water cacti maybe once every two months.
I think
Norachan
There is a small bulb called grape hyacinth. It has a small spike of deep blue-purple flowers. It sends leaves up in the fall which remain through the winter, flowers in spring. If you plant a few any time you are planting daffodils or hyacinths the grape hyacinth's autumn / winter leaves serve as a reminder that something is planted there. Another trick is to dig the planting hole, set the bulbs, partially return the soil to cover. Then add a layer of yellow sand. Finish filling the hole with soil. If, in future, you start to dig and see the sand it is a reminder that "stop!" there are bulbs under here.
I would start with something simple. A pre-potted cherry tomato would be a good one that you can enjoy the fruits of. Just be sure to water it; twice a day in warm weather. I grow all my tomatoes in pots with cages for support and they do well that way. I just have to water twice a day in hot weather. But the taste of vine ripened tomatoes is SO much better than what you get at stores!
Oooo! That's a great gift!
I have a water bath canner; but not a pressure one. My MIL cans so much stuff with hers. (Her apple butter is SO good!) The water bath one takes so long to heat up on my flat top stove. The pressure canner is a little intimidating to me. I've got 3 types of green beans to plant this year and lima beans. Those all have to be pressure canned so I'm going to freeze them. I'd like to make pickles again this year.
Winchester
shared pickle recipes with me several years ago and I got SO many compliments on them. I just haven't had good cukes the last few years so I'm not growing them at all this year. If I can get some at a farm stand that would work though. 
My tulip problem is that some creature eats the blossoms off just as they are starting to open. Not a single tulip out of a dozen or so made it.
Yes I did. I dug up a few bulbs that had been in the ground for years, and only flowered once, just before our monsoon started. I tried drying and replanting those. The rest have just been left to do their thing.
Sure it is. I have a couple of cacti and some succulents. They're very interesting plants and they thrive on neglect.
Thank you, they sound very nice. I'll try some hyacinths this year, see if they like it here.
Norachan
Grape hyacinths and hyacinths are two very different bulbs.
Grape hyacinths are much smaller, and only come in deep or softer blue. Hyacinths are rainbow flowers - deep or paler blue, wine red to deep or pale pink, yellow, or white. I chose two images with the same color value so you can easily see the difference. Hyacinths are sweetly fragrant too.
Oh, I see those growing around here a lot. Thanks for telling me their name, I've been wondering what they are.
OK, I've got grape hyacinths and regular hyacinths on my "To Try" list.
- Thread Starter Thread Starter
- #30
Grape hyacinths will self sow. I have them coming up and blooming in my lawn - which is no problem because the leaves are grass like. I have never had to much luck with hyacinths or tulips to be honest - mostly because of squirrels and other critters. A bulb (with the exception of daffodils), to them is like a Happy Meal to a 3 year old. I planted over a 150 tulips bulbs one fall and had 1 bloom, which was in my rain gutter! They had dug it up and stored it there.
My Aunt told me that covering your bulbs with pine needles helps keep them from being dug up. I just never get them uncovered before they start coming up again. It’s common for me to see them in late January and February but no blooms till Aprilish.
I had plenty of growth this year and they are spreading. I wonder if my sandy soil is nutrient deficient somehow back there. My crocuses did bloom. The phlox and bleeding hearts too.
I had plenty of growth this year and they are spreading. I wonder if my sandy soil is nutrient deficient somehow back there. My crocuses did bloom. The phlox and bleeding hearts too.
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The snow (fingers crossed) seems to be past, and things are really growing. The tulips are in full bloom, as are the grape hyacinth and dwarf hyacinth, but the daffodils have mostly run their course. One of the clematis has shot up two feet in less than as many weeks. It has the deep purple bell-shaped blooms.
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Would you have any recommendations with growing vegetables in pots outside? Starting that this month as a fun project to keep me busy. I did buy a book, but if you have any tips to share!
With your expertise in herb gardening, any tips for cilantro? Most of the veggies and cilantro will be grown from seeds as it was cheaper... so it will be exciting to see what grows!You could try some cacti or air plants. They take up very little space and don't need much attention. Just put them by a window and water cacti maybe once every two months.
I think
LTS3
Succulents!! Around Feb. I placed my succulents in a box above my closet as my kittens kept pulling the plants out and meant to give or throw them all away. Never did, and when I went to clean out my rental at school early May, there will still some succulents alive in the box! They even grew, although were etiolated due to lack of sunlight, which was evident by them growing stretched out with leaves spaced farther apart.This is what they normally look like and before they were put into a box... Healthy plants getting enough sunlight:
My plants still alive after being in a box on the top of my closet and no watering.
Close-up of one that etiolated due to lack of sunlight, but it still grew.
I haven't had much luck with some plants in the past, but succulents have been so fun to keep! Low maintenance, too. Water once a week during growing season, enough that water drips out the draining hole and good to go until next watering. If not growing season, watering can be done even less. Plus, they are easy to propagate through leaves and cuttings.
Excited about this thread and to share updates along my gardening journey.
I am in the process of redoing my upper retaining wall edge which includes rocks and plants 1-2 feet deep along the 40 or so feet of the wall. It started out with a plan to just add in some additional rocks and has turned into scraping off all the rocks, replacing landscape fabric, adding a few new plants and then adding all new rock. The current rock is small and using a blower to clear leaves in the fall blows the rock all over. The new rock will be larger and will stay in place better. It is a big project but I am only doing a little every day and it may very well take me till fall to finish.
I made the trip this morning to our local garden center to pick up two peonies. It is extremely busy at this time of year so I went at opening this morning in pouring rain and 50 degree temps. Despite that it still had quite a few customers who had the same idea. The peonies will replace two once beautiful boxwood plants that have developed blight and had to be removed. I loved that they retained their leaves all winter and provided some color in the snow so I am sad to lose them.
I made the trip this morning to our local garden center to pick up two peonies. It is extremely busy at this time of year so I went at opening this morning in pouring rain and 50 degree temps. Despite that it still had quite a few customers who had the same idea. The peonies will replace two once beautiful boxwood plants that have developed blight and had to be removed. I loved that they retained their leaves all winter and provided some color in the snow so I am sad to lose them.
I am planting cannas in half barrels and very large pots. The tubers were stored in bulb crates filled with peat moss (favorite), wood shavings (easy to obtain at feed and grain store), or dried leaves (when desperate as hard frost gets closer and closer in the fall.) I prefer canna as foliage plants rather than for their oversize flowers that need maintenance / removal. I have Canna musaefolia - quite tall with leaves like banana plants (which I also have), C. Pretoria or maybe it is Bengal Tiger - medium height with yellow striped leaves, C. Tropicana - tall side of medium with dark copper / peach / dark green splotched leaves, and C. flaccida Purpurea - narrow dark purple leaves and dainty apricot-orange flowers that the hummingbirds also like.
Accessory plants - sometimes in same pot with canna, sometimes separate pot - include Lysmachia nummularia Aurea with Praetoria and deep purple Oxalis regnellii with C. flaccida Purpurea.
Not even done with half the canna tubers and I want to finish before the rain comes mid- to late next week. Wishful thinking, I'm afraid.
This morning I made a concrete block platform and reset a tire planter on it. Refilled with compost and peat moss, also some fertilizer. Planted a large elephant ear tuber (also wintered in garage, in oak leaves.) There's a second piece to plant today. It is smaller, and will go in an old plastic pot that I spray painted turquoise a couple of weeks ago.
That will be after lunch. Right now I need a break.
Accessory plants - sometimes in same pot with canna, sometimes separate pot - include Lysmachia nummularia Aurea with Praetoria and deep purple Oxalis regnellii with C. flaccida Purpurea.
Not even done with half the canna tubers and I want to finish before the rain comes mid- to late next week. Wishful thinking, I'm afraid.
This morning I made a concrete block platform and reset a tire planter on it. Refilled with compost and peat moss, also some fertilizer. Planted a large elephant ear tuber (also wintered in garage, in oak leaves.) There's a second piece to plant today. It is smaller, and will go in an old plastic pot that I spray painted turquoise a couple of weeks ago.
That will be after lunch. Right now I need a break.
I am procrastinating getting my corn in the ground. The temps have yoyoed a bit and it's new for me. I think I need to get more composted manure too since it's a new bed and my ground is very sandy. I found some good videos on youtube that helped and I keep googling. Short of Googling when to plant the corn in my state. I should just driv around and check out the farm fields around me I suppose. 
I think nature has become a little confused in my neck of the woods. I bought some Tumbling Tom's tomato plants last week, hardened them off and planted then outside under clear plastic. Look what I found. Far too early for tomatoes.
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Dang! Would you consider shipping some of that Welsh soil over here for my garden, if it grows stuff that quickly?
My tulips are just starting to open. Most were new bulbs bought last year. Though you'll see some that just sent up leaves. After reading the comments upthread, I guess maybe I need to dig them all out in the fall, and buy/plant new each year.
I sure wouldn’t dig them out. Let them die off, give the spot some fertilizer or bone meal and add in some new bulbs in the fall. Throw a little of the bone meal In the bottom of the hole with the new ones and you should have a great show next spring.
