Ronincats has more garden in 2017

After our lovely rains, it was time to get out in the garden today and weed and also thin out the carrots. This is what followed me inside today. This is also the time here to prune roses and deciduous shrubs and trees, so I have some more action ahead of me.

Here we have temperature in the 20s and a couple inches of snow.
What are the little red carrots?

Starred!!!

>2 qebo: I'll have to see if I can find the seed packet. All I remember is "rainbow carrots", Katherine. Yes, I know. I grew up in the midwest and for all I've been out here 37 years, this climate is still a source of total amazement to me.

>3 fuzzi: Hi, fuzzi. Just said hi to you on your 100 books thread.

>1 ronincats: The carrots look lovely!!

>2 qebo: We don't have 20s....unless it is windchill; but it was 37F on my car gauge as I drove home from Walgreens. Brrr!!

While about 10 degrees cooler than yesterday, it was perfect weather for gardening this morning in the mid to high 60s and I put 2 miles on the Fitbit before noon. We planted two tomato plants we bought while we were out yesterday, along with some basil and cucumber plants, out front. I picked sweet peas and roses in back and got all the grass out of my back garden plots, although not the herb bed yet. That was some serious grass, with all the rain we had. Now you can see the catnip and kale and arugula and the lone romaine plant that were actually in the beds. Here is what I brought in, apart from flowers, this morning. That's one beet, fennel, carrots, peas, and strawberries in the baggie.


We put one of the tomato plants in the raised bed that is slowly being cleared of lettuce and carrots and fennel and kale and will hold this year's tomatoes. (the other bed had them last year and you are not supposed to grow them in the same place two years in a row.)


Then we took peas that were slowing down production out of the one tub and put in the other tomato plant. The peas in the far tub are still producing.


And this is that bed of drought-tolerant plants we put in last June--remember how it looked a little sparse then?


Finally, today's sweet peas. They smell heavenly!


And lots of people have added new threads for this year since last I visited the group--I'll have to go visiting now.

Let me add in this photo from a few weeks ago when my apricot tree suddenly burst out in bloom all over. Many years it doesn't because we haven't had a sustained cool spell at night to stimulate them. Today I looked at the tree, and there are baby apricots all over it! I am excited.

>6 ronincats: lots of people have added new threads for this year since last I visited
Spring has sprung in this part of the world.

Do you sit in that chair?

What's up with that cactus? I guess you can't just prune a cactus.

Actually, we usually sit up on the porch if we sit in front--a little less exposure to the street. This is a throw-away chair my husband scavenged from a neighbor and spray-painted to match the thrift store table I decorated (and house trim) to create one of those "interest points" in the landscape the magazines always talk about. I'd want a cushion if I sat there, although it makes a nice spot for a short rest while working. The porch is full of craft show furnishings at the moment and a little crowded. I tend to sit in back on the deck if I want to relax and read. It has a western exposure and nicely cushioned furniture.

Actually, that cactus gets topped regularly so it doesn't push the roof off the porch. Looks like it's about that time.

>7 ronincats: Those blossoms are pretty and the apricots will surely be tasty, but I'm more excited by what appears to be a female monarch butterfly visiting your tree. After last year's depressing numbers, I'm hoping for a bumper crop of caterpillars this year.

>6 ronincats: nice report, and I am happy to see the drought-resistent plants doing well.

>7 ronincats: love the Monarch!

Are sweet peas hard to establish? And I'm amazed they are an early spring bloomer. My experience is with perennial peas, which look the same, but have no odor and bloom in August. I would love to add the odorous variety.

>6 ronincats: Nice harvest, and nice looking beds!

We usually plant enough tomatoes to fill about half of the raised beds in our garden, so we flip them back and forth from year to year.

>12 2wonderY: Sweet peas are easy to get going. They're similar to Iris; if they weren't so lovely, and didn't smell so very good, we'd call them a weed. They do better where there's not all day sun, and don't seem to care much about not enough water. I put in some plants several years ago, and now spend my time pulling them up from the spots I don't want them to be in, and encouraging them in the spots I do.

I grow pink ones (because that's the color of the original plants), and have seen them cover the fence in their favorite spot (between the house and the hydrangea). I thought the winter might have been too harsh (our winter was incredibly harsh for the area), but they seem fine, and have already come up.

Here they are, from 2015, when they insisted on coming up where there was no place to climb, so I gave them one.

My sweet peas don't naturalize, but I do replant them every winter, along with regular snap peas and snow peas. I had some volunteer green beans come up in February (from last summer's vines, planted in the same bed as the peas) and just brought in the first harvest from them. I've been replanting those for the last month with no luck--still have animals digging for grubs and using the bed as a litter box. Today I replanted some cilantro, lavender, and a California native iris, the latter two out in the perennial bed. I put cucumber seedlings and basil in last week. The beets are about ready to come up, I've been harvesting carrots regularly, and the edible peas are slowing down. I need to get the fennel, lettuce, kale and carrots out of the bed up in >6 ronincats: to make room for more tomatoes. The two we planted 10 days ago are flourishing and blooming. Almost all of my roses are blooming, 9 out of 12 plants. And the sweet peas continue!! They smell so wonderfully.

these are from my garden yesterday.

My new iris!



Milkweed!

Sweet! All of it, but particularly that early blooming milkweed. Do you know the variety?

>16 ronincats: I particularly like the carrots. Not yet a peep from milkweed here.

>15 ronincats: Try sprinking garlic and/or cayenne pepper on and around plants to get critters to leave them alone. The digging thing sounds like raccoons, skunks, or opossums; sprinkle the ground liberally where they've been digging with ground cayenne pepper and garlic and see if that helps.

>17 2wonderY: Looks like a yellow variety of butterfly weed--A. tuberosa. I had some last year; hope it comes up this year.

>16 ronincats: pretty!

>18 qebo: my milkweed has buds!!!! It didn't bloom last year.

The yellow iris is iris douglasiana.

Note the volunteer green beans at the top, ready to be picked!

>22 ronincats: You've inspired me... well, that, and the day is nice. That's a lovely picture just in general. String beans are one of my very favorites.

>22 ronincats: nice angle, it adds something to the composition...the vines reaching for the roof peak.

Pretty! We've had a cool down here in NW Indiana this weekend, but we're supposed to go back up into the 70s again next week, so growth won't be slowed too much. Still, we're so far behind you in our growing season that except for those people who planted lettuce and other cool-loving, fast-growing crops, no one without a greenhouse will be getting crops for many weeks yet.

Having a heat spell today, so have been watering like crazy. The cucumbers did not make it--I planted them in the same place I did last year and they did not thrive so I planted green bean seeds there today, as well as some more carrots. Harvested a big turnip, the only one that grew, and we had turnip greens for supper. Also carrots and basil tops.

One of the tomato plants is as tall as I am and has set 3 tomatoes already. I put cages around the smaller ones today, finally. And did some weeding.

>26 ronincats: are those the multi-colored carrot variety? I've seen red and yellow types offered in seed catalogs.

(edit: never mind, you mentioned it before, upthread, I just missed it)

Yum, turnip greens...

Wow - everything here is impressive, from the photographs to the gorgeous flowers, vegetables, and my first ever sighting of baby apricots.

What kind of soil mixture do you use for the vegetables?

Thank you!

>27 fuzzi: Yes, a rainbow carrot seed mix.
>28 m.belljackson: The baby apricots are getting big--should start changing color soon.


We filled our raised beds with organic topsoil mixed by our local nursery City Farmers--they sell it by the yard or half-yard--the latter fills our pickup bed.

I also forgot to mention that while out on the deck over the weekend, I saw a Mourning Cloak, a Gulf Fritillary, AND a Monarch all flitting around in the back yard.

>30 ronincats: butterflies!!!

I have milkweed blooming, still no Monarchs...

These followed me in from the front garden today. I'll be doing a bunch of gardening tomorrow.


Oh, and this was my apricot tree last week (it's bare of fruit now!).

>32 ronincats: Oh, my. You have carrots, fresh from the ground. I'll be right over...

>32 ronincats: That is quite a range of shapes.

So, I did get some gardening done today. Some of you may recall that at this time last year we were engaged in changing our front yard from a bare earth/clay space to a soak zone with drought resistant plants and two large raised beds for additional garden space in the sunniest spot on the property. So here are today's results:

>35 ronincats: looking good!

I love seeing your harvests, all those lovely "yellow" fruits and veggies.