Gardening 2020

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posiepurrs

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I just know what I am hearing on my gardening forums. Seeds, other than onions usually have at least a couple of years viability. I have focused on heirlooms and open pollinated so I can save seeds.
 

LTS3

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I know of a few local regular libraries that offer seeds to patrons to grow veggies and flowers with. There's a worldwide list of seed libraries here: Sister Libraries It might be a good place to find heirloom seeds and unusual veggies and such.
 
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posiepurrs

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I know of a few local regular libraries that offer seeds to patrons to grow veggies and flowers with. There's a worldwide list of seed libraries here: Sister Libraries It might be a good place to find heirloom seeds and unusual veggies and such.
I did that this season. Most of the offerings were regular hybrid seeds, but I really couldn’t be picky.
 

NY cat man

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We are supposed to get a frost tonight, so I tented my tomatoes to protect them. Most of the flowers are already done, except the second blooming of the phlox and delphiniums, and of course the sedums are just starting to reach their peak.
A question for other gardeners: I had no trouble with blight on the tomato plants until leaves from a neighbor's maple tree that had black spots started to land on them. Could that maple blight transfer to my tomatoes? If so, what can I do in the future to minimize or prevent a recurrence?
 

NY cat man

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A last hurrah for summer colors before the drabs of autumn and winter set in:
The second bloom of our phlox
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and the Delphinium, also
IMG_0216.JPG
the coreopsis keep soldiering on
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as do the evening primrose
There is a lone coneflower left
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and a holdout black-eyed Susan
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and the cosmos are still blooming as well
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The sedums, however, are just now coming into their fall colors
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And that, friends and neighbors, will probably be it for this season, at least from this patch of dirt.
 

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N NY cat man Your flowers are gorgeous. Around here, our gaillardia is still blooming, as are our fall-blooming azaleas. It's a perfect time for the mums. We have sedum and it's so pretty. But that's pretty much it.

So far, we've survived the frost warnings here. We have to get through tonight yet. We have sheets all over the garden. :) If we can get through tonight, our night temps will go back into the 50s for a while. That will give the peppers and tomatoes a chance anyway. Still getting a few zucchini and yellow squash. The green and wax beans are done and I'm going to remove the plants. The asparagus is no longer producing berries and they can be cut down now.

We have seven butternuts in the basement, out of the 26+ squash that we started out with. They simply split too much to survive the splits. There are still a few in the garden that haven't started to change color yet and the stem is still green. Once the ones in the basement have been there for a while, I can start using them. Rick goes down and turns them every week.

We are digging up sweet potatoes. Actually we don't have to do much digging at this point, as they're starting to grow up through the soil. I'm really glad we decided to grow them as they're doing quite well and we do love them.
 

NY cat man

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N NY cat man Your flowers are gorgeous. Around here, our gaillardia is still blooming, as are our fall-blooming azaleas. It's a perfect time for the mums. We have sedum and it's so pretty. But that's pretty much it.

So far, we've survived the frost warnings here. We have to get through tonight yet. We have sheets all over the garden. :) If we can get through tonight, our night temps will go back into the 50s for a while. That will give the peppers and tomatoes a chance anyway. Still getting a few zucchini and yellow squash. The green and wax beans are done and I'm going to remove the plants. The asparagus is no longer producing berries and they can be cut down now.

We have seven butternuts in the basement, out of the 26+ squash that we started out with. They simply split too much to survive the splits. There are still a few in the garden that haven't started to change color yet and the stem is still green. Once the ones in the basement have been there for a while, I can start using them. Rick goes down and turns them every week.

We are digging up sweet potatoes. Actually we don't have to do much digging at this point, as they're starting to grow up through the soil. I'm really glad we decided to grow them as they're doing quite well and we do love them.
I would love to be able to grow azaleas, but given the size and layout of our property, that just isn't going to happen.
 

Norachan

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the cosmos are still blooming as well
I love cosmos! Huge numbers of them grow wild around the lakes here, but they don't like it up at this height.
there was a preview catalog enclosed in the package, and I noticed that she had bookmarked several pages. This cannot be a good thing.
:spew:
 

Winchester

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Michele's tulip bulbs- all 105 of them- have arrived, so I will have my work cut out for me for the next several days in planting them all. Too, there was a preview catalog enclosed in the package, and I noticed that she had bookmarked several pages. This cannot be a good thing.
:flail:Dear Richard feels your pain. I was talking to him about planting a ton of daffodil bulbs around the edging at the southern side of the she shed. He looked at me and walked away. He was saying something about money and trees.

N NY cat man Do you plant your tulip bulbs in cages in the ground? If we don't, the voles get them every time. They don't bother the daffodil bulbs.

It seems that we dodged the frost bullet, thankfully, although Rick says he's going to cover the garden yet tonight. Starting Tuesday night, our nighttime lows will be back into the 50s, still chilly, but a lot better than the 30s! It's quite colorful looking up there; we used old queen sheets to cover.
 

NY cat man

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:flail:Dear Richard feels your pain. I was talking to him about planting a ton of daffodil bulbs around the edging at the southern side of the she shed. He looked at me and walked away. He was saying something about money and trees.

N NY cat man Do you plant your tulip bulbs in cages in the ground? If we don't, the voles get them every time. They don't bother the daffodil bulbs.

It seems that we dodged the frost bullet, thankfully, although Rick says he's going to cover the garden yet tonight. Starting Tuesday night, our nighttime lows will be back into the 50s, still chilly, but a lot better than the 30s! It's quite colorful looking up there; we used old queen sheets to cover.
No, we don't. We don't have voles to worry about, but squirrels are another matter. I use aluminum screen to cover the area around the bulbs, then spray the ground with a product called Repels-All. It sure worked to evict the skunk that took up residence in a crawl space under the house. It also dang near repelled me from going in to seal up where the varmint had burrowed under the footing, as, among other things, it uses what is basically pepper spray.
 

rubysmama

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I haven't been following, or posting in, this thread much this year, but here's what's blooming today in my garden.

Chinese Lantrens
(They're so invasive that every spring I think about digging them out, but I then I remind myself how pretty they are in the fall, so I let them stay. Luckily my neighbour doesn't complain that they grow on their side of the fence as well. Though to be honest, we don't know which of the former home owners originally planted them)

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Speedwell - still hanging on with blooms

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Dianthus - 2nd (less vigorous) bloom of the year. First were in July.

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Geum - also 2nd blooms of the year - first were back in May
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2nd last Daylily - one lonely bud left to open
(noticed flower colour is much paler than earlier blooms. Cooler / less sun, maybe?)

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Chelone (aka turtleheads)

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Rudbeckia and Echinacea

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Sedum, plus the Rhododendron getting its red autumn colour
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And last, but not least ...

Annual Geraniums

IMG_1902.jpg
 

Winchester

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N NY cat man We have a lot of voles and they can be destructive. You can really see their trails when we get a good snow pack as they burrow around under the snow pack. When the snow melts, you can see where they were. They love bulbs, not daffodil bulbs, but others. We have a lot of squirrels, too, and they love to chase each other around the yard.
rubysmama rubysmama Beautiful pictures. I'm very jealous as pretty much everything around here has died back very early due to the lack of rain.

We are still getting some tomatoes, but they've pretty much stopped turning color. It's so dry. The peppers are turning black from some kind of blight or something. It's pretty much time to say good-bye to the garden, we're thinking. Still getting a few zucchini and yellow squashes. We probably have 5-6, maybe more smaller butternuts that are still growing and haven't split; we have ten butternuts curing now in the basement. Rick will be digging up the sweet potatoes this week. It's not really a question of temperatures at this point; it's a question of water.

I've stopped using a compost bowl for Morris (our Mantis composter) until next spring. It's too chilly at night to get a decent heat anymore. It was nice that we didn't have to throw peelings, egg shells, tea and coffee grounds, etc in the trash for the summer. I had a lot of peelings and such when I did tomatoes and peppers that we could throw into Morris all summer long.
 

rubysmama

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rubysmama rubysmama rubysmama rubysmama Beautiful pictures. I'm very jealous as pretty much everything around here has died back very early due to the lack of rain.
We had a hot and dry July and August, so plants, including my lawn, got crispy. But September has brought us some rain, so things have bounced back.
 

MoochNNoodles

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I bought my mums today. Ace Hardware had beautiful ones for a great price again. They aren’t quite open; so they should last a while. I might go get a few more for my back steps. I plan to add dried cornstalks and maybe a few pumpkins. I still have some flowers blooming in the backyard; so no rush. But I do love having color out there.
 
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posiepurrs

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I am working on enlarging the vegetable garden again. It is going from 648 square foot to 1156 square feet - all hand dug! Have to do something to tire me out and deal with stress. LOL Thinking about trying three sisters gardening next year since I plan on growing corn, pole beans and squash. I need to start some perennials from seed for the beds I am overhauling too. I want Gaillardia, coneflowers and rubeckias for the beds as well as asters, and some other flowers of different forms. What I would like to get my hands on and can't seem to find it is florist carnations. I bought seeds last year that I thought were the correct flower form but they are more like pinks. I want fully double carnations with sturdy stems to cut.
 

susanm9006

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First frost advisory tonight for my area. We will see if the raspberries survive it. They are still loaded with unripe berries and usually have well into October before frost kills them. I picked a bowl today but hate to think that is it.
 
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