your gardens

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your gardens

Post by Dauntless »

Please don't tell me this is a duplicate of wildlife...I just want to hear about the gardens people have in there house or outside there house!

Just share about the gardens in and outside of your house! The flowers you have, the vegtiables you grow, the garden accessories etc. Share about the ways you take care of your garden, like how often do you water them! I would also like to hear what kind of plants you recomend growing, or what flower is really nice! I also care about how your grass looks! If its long or not, just share that here!
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Re: your gardens

Post by TxCat »

Nope, not a duplicate. Gardens and wildlife are not the same.

I own five acres in north central Florida. We bought it with two goals in mind: making as small an ecological footprint as possible and becoming self sustaining and getting off the grid. We've been here seven years and progress is slowly being made.

The house and its immediate surroundings take up perhaps one eighth of an acre. Most of that is garden. The soil here is poor, a thin layer of tanning heavy humus over sterile sand. I had to remediate the garden beds with perlite (to increase drainage), top soil, cow manure, bone meal, and blood meal. I now have a rich loam which the various plants we grow love. Since our water table is close to the surface, we're using raised beds. These are about two feet off the ground, built of treated wood coated with a substance which will NOT leach into the soil. Each one is 8x4. We use intensive gardening methods and companion planting to cut down on the use of pesticides and to maximize the growing room we have without having to dig up more of the land.

This season I had: basil (about seven varieties), cilantro, cayenne peppers, green bell peppers, sweet cherry tomatoes, a mid-sized early variety, beefsteak tomatoes, roma tomatoes, oregano, rosemary, and thyme. Florida has two warm growing seasons: April to mid-July and September to mid-November. We're currently reading seed beds in the house for our second crop of summer vegetables and herbs. I'm hoping to plant enough to be able to can them.

On the deck I have a pot full of assorted morning glories. Dee planted them for me and I can see them from my office window.

Inside the house, I have a cactus army: all sorts of odd cacti and succulents, some of which are from the African desert. There's Dee's carnivorous plant collection (several varieties of Venus fly trap) and the Christmas cacti as well as a Norfolk pine, a mother-in-law's-tongue, several African violets, some air plants, begonias, and some water plants in the aquarium. I also have a miniature rose which puts out delicate little red flowers.
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Re: your gardens

Post by TNHawke »

I have a tiny flower bed. It's maybe a foot of dirt dumped over pavement, held together with bricks. (it was there when I moved in.) The 'dirt' looks like it was scraped out of buldozed house, all full of trash made worse by the fact that the native soil is basically pure clay. When I was first digging it up and getting it wet, I commented that I could probably throw pots with this 'dirt'. lol.
Mom gave me a mostly full giant bag of Miracle Grow potting soil, and a few flowers out of her own garden. So, I dug a hole, filled it with the Miracle Grow and planted a flower in that. I'm keeping them watered pretty well, and mostly, they seem to be doing ok. The bed is on the south side of the building, and gets full sun most of the day.
The problem is, there's earwigs EVERYWHERE, noming on my petunias. A grasshopper nomed my marigolds, the snap dragons won't grow, the bachelor buttons died, the Mexican... something or other... mostly died, but a couple of them came back and are growign new leaves and even a fresh bloom this morning! The lobella died completely. The only flower that seems to be doing extremely well is the flowering succulent, it's growing and blooming and seems to be thriving!
Hawke's IRL fiance, Lunaroki, suffered a massive stroke and died on Tuesday, March 31st, 2015.

Hawke needs to concentrate on other things, and is leaving MS permanently.

Thank you all for many fun years.
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Re: your gardens

Post by Lazra »

Just bought my first house, so the whole outdoors and having to take care of it is new to me. I don't even have a lawn mower yet (that's what nephews are for :cool: ).

What grass I have is nice and green and riddled with weeds D< . I also have plenty of bare patches where nothing will grow in the shade. And boy do I have shade. The front yard is covered with two huge trees (I think one's an oak, no clue on the other). Back yard has two pecan trees, several woody bushes taller than me, and enough cacti to choke a cowboy movie set. D:

I wanted to try planting, but I'm not much of a flower person. I grabbed some watermelon and pumpkin seeds (eh, seemed simple) and some dirt and seed trays. I've already killed most of my watermelon seedlings T_T and the pumpkins aren't looking so hot (but they're alive). I'm willing to bet most of their problems would be solved by getting them in the ground, or at least into something bigger than the seedling trays.

Would love to do a full veggie garden, but I'm clueless :P and just getting my feet wet, so to speak.
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Re: your gardens

Post by Spectrospecs »

I have a really nice garden that was even fenced in a few years ago, but I can't get anything to grow for the life of me. In the spring we either start our own seeds or buy seeds and seedlings, till the soil and add whatever compost material we have, and plant and care for them well enough. But our main problem is that every year, in the middle of summer, my family takes a two to three-week long vacation around the US, and all that's left when we come back are the pumpkins and weeds. So this year, we decided to grow only pumpkins and other vine plants, but we didn't even get the garden in. My grandmother, however, can grow anything in her tiny backyard, and always sends us home with fresh zucchini, cucumbers, and tomatoes in the summer.
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Re: your gardens

Post by Dauntless »

I also have a very nice garden. I have a small metal fence with a rose like theme on it. The grass has only a few weeds and is nicely cut. I have one small tree growing on one side of my lawn in the front yard. The tree is a cherry blossom tree!

I have a varity of flowers such as:
Paeonia, Red pink and yellow roses, Anemones, just a couple Magnolias, etc.

I have a small fountain that is by the deck of my house. The deck of my house has a couple bowls of flowers and A couple plants that I've been growing.

What we usually grow:
Basil, chives, tomato, Peas, rasberries, strawberries, blueberries (they never seem to want to grow), And carrots.

the backyard is a wide open space full of nice cut grass. We have found no weeds in the backyard! We have a big pool in the backyard as well. The fence in the backyard is bigger than the front and the back fence is wood.
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Re: your gardens

Post by TxCat »

Since we're in Florida, we get a second 'warm crop' growing season once the heat backs off. With the heat in the 80s most days now and dropping off into the 60s at night, it's now time to think about planting the garden again.

The chili peppers just waited out the heat and have begun producing again, as have some of the tomatoes. The basil plants (we planted about four different kinds for variety and they really need their own herb bed instead of being in with the other plants) are flourishing. I have enough for pesto, herbal lemonades, soups, and anything else I want.

Everything else will be plowed under and we're going to dig some traditional flat beds until we have the money to build more raised beds (I'm tired of waiting). These will be filled with tomato varieties, zucchini, yellow squash, green beans, and cucumber. By the time these are ready for harvest (around mid-November) it will be time to put in the lettuce, microgreens, winter herbs, radishes, carrots, and other root vegetables. I am particularly looking forward to the turnips. The first time I grew my own for soup stock and mashing, they were the sweetest food on the planet! Not at all bitter like the big ones you get in the grocery.

We haven't decided what we want to do for ornamentals. I wanted a cactus garden outside but it gets too cold for the poor dears. They're all over my secondary desktop in the office and fill the entire window.
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Re: your gardens

Post by Synchronized »

I have a very small garden and some potted plants. This year was really my first year messing with gardening and it didn't go so well, but at least I've learned.

In the garden plot:
Kale x3(planted early May)
Strawberry(quickly taking over, will be made smaller next spring)
Morning Glory climbing vines x2(pretty overgrown)(planted mid-july)
Cantaloupe x2(planted them in mid-July and didn't realize it took them so long to bear fruit. Don't think I'll get anything before frost).

In separate pots:
Cherry tomato x2(planted early May-- no fruit until July for some reason)
Gaillardia Goblin x2(one grew into an ugly mass of plant leaves and the other is only just beginning to flower-- also planted in early May)
Columbines x2(planted in early May, no flowers)
Sweet Basil x1(indoors and planted early May)
"Mini Roses" x1(present for my grandmother)
Peace lily x1(the only surviving part of a group of potted plants my grandmother received as a present)

I had a huge, awesome Poinsettia, but it died about two months ago from unknown causes. I may get another this winter and try again-- I never did get the other one to bloom last winter.
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Re: your gardens

Post by TNHawke »

I'm no plant expert- black thumb of death over here, actually- but Poinsettias don't actually bloom in winter. They are kept in hot houses with specific lighting schedules and then shipped out at Christmas because of the whole red and green thing. My Mom's usually died sometime in summer, although her last one has been alive for two years now.


The site managers sprayed for bugs, and I finally stopped having earwigs EVERYfreakingwhere. My little white petunias are looking much better now that they're not getting nommed to death every night. One of my marigolds came back to life after the grasshopper incident, but the other two died, the snap dragons finally bloomed. That flowering succulent though... it's steadily taking over everything!
Hawke's IRL fiance, Lunaroki, suffered a massive stroke and died on Tuesday, March 31st, 2015.

Hawke needs to concentrate on other things, and is leaving MS permanently.

Thank you all for many fun years.
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Re: your gardens

Post by PossessedFae »

We've had such bad luck with vegetable gardens here at my house. Mostly through my inattentiveness and everyone's laziness. XD

Our backyard is basically rock, which we learned when we tilled it up to plant. Basically the only things that managed to survive were radishes, onions, and peppers. I think our egg plants and tomatoes fruited too, but I don't remember. We can't really afford to amend the soil properly, so after that first year, we just kind of let it grow over. It makes a wonderful bunny pen. :lol:

This year we planted a cherry tree because everybody (but me it seems) loves cherries enough to want a tree. I want a pear tree. >.> But we have a plum tree in the back that may or may not be older than I am (I think it was planted before I was born because I think that I've played under it when I was younger, so it's at least 16 years old) and a walnut tree that is too stubborn to die. :lol: First year we planted it it died, then it sent up a few suckers (that's what I think they're called) that we're letting grow up a bit. We also had a lilac but when the apartment behind us put in a retaining wall, the construction workers took the tree out. :'c I love lilacs; I love their smell. When we move out, I plan on making my parents buy a few to plant along side my hawthorns. We have a hawthorn tree that is sending up little babies that I've been digging up in preparation of moving. (We haven't bought a house or anything since we have to work on our house, but I will be prepared. :devil: )

In the front yard I have a strawberry bed that also used to be vegetables, but now it's only for strawberries. There is a rosebush that was "killed" when we put in the planting box several years ago, but last year it made an appearance in my strawberry bed. Zombie bush, that's what it is. We also have a grape bush planted next to it that the deer really like eating the fruit off of.

On the other side of the front yard, my mother had a garden that a mixture of weed grasses, herbs, and flowers. We try to keep the grass weeded, but it keeps coming back. >.> We have several different kinds of mint in the garden that I have never seen sold anywhere (pineapple and lemon, and I think a couple of other flavors), Egyptian Walking onions, oregano (bees love that stuff), a gazillion irises, and a peony, to name a few of the plants mother has. What I want to plant is sunflowers, but the deer around here are so plentiful that the sunflowers get eaten before they flower. T_T
I have a lot of butterflies. :derp:
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