How does your Garden grow?

14 years ago

I loved talking about our flower gardens in early summer & sharing pictures, so I'm hoping you all can share some pictures of what they look like now.

Some of you have already seen these, they are the before and after pictures taken after we built the new room. Everything I planted was new to me, all an experiment.

The plants were planted late, May and June. And I thought I was going to have to plant a shade garden because the house now faces north, but it gets sun all day long! Except the porch thank goodness. :)

Please show me your flowers too! I love looking at other people's gardens.

Oh, still no new porch furniture. :( :(

Before:

After:

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Comments (9)

folkvictorian
14 years ago
So many different and beautiful flowers and plants, Oakleyok! Boy-oh-boy, you must have a long growing season for those plants to thrive like that!

Our flowers are mostly past their prime, but here are some pics I took during the summer months. We've planted many perennials since we moved in in 2003, but last year my neighbor phoned and offered me some plants that she was thinning out of her gardens. OMG, she must have given us the equivalent of $200 of perennials if we'd gotten them at a green house.

Here are a few of my growing things:

Peonies in the bathroom:
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Coneflowers:
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Our gardener:
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Turk's Caps:
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tinam61
14 years ago
folkvictorian! Your little gardener is precious! I too, love periennels and I see you another container gardener. I love doing a *garden in a pot*. LOL

No pics but things are thriving here since we have - FOR ONCE - had plenty of rain over the summer. Also, cooler than average temps for August, I think we only had 3 or 4 days of 90 degree temps. That is unheard of here.

One of my clematis is blooming (white) along with the sweet autumn clematis that has started blooming. My gardenia is full of blooms again and the roses are still going strong. Also two mandevillas, geraniums and begonias. My salvia and sweet williams (both periennel) have done great this year, as has the ivy and creeping jenny. The crape myrtles are still in bloom as is my pink lemonaide honeysuckle (another vine). Petunias in planters - I did the peppermint striped ones this year. I use all pink, blue/purple and white flowers.

Our veggies have done WONDERFUL this year - we're still getting tomatoes. Probably had the last of the cukes last night.

tina
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Betty, Did you take the broken rose branch and root it? Might as well make lemonade when life gives you lemons. The wind here is ridiculous today. It is a wonder the row covers haven't blown away but I do have them pinned down pretty firmly. I have tried to keep the peppers warm by having them in the greenhouse during the day, and bringing them inside the house if I think the greenhouse will drop below 40 degrees or so. My poor pepper plants barely know what real sunlight is because they haven't seen it in so long. I want to plant all the rest of my hot-season stuff, but have been waiting for some consistency in the forecast too. Since I couldn't direct-sow anything today (I would have had to remove the row covers), I started a lot of warm-season herbs and flowers in flats, and a few veggies like cukes, melons, watermelons, Armenian cukes, etc. I hope to pop them out of the six-packs and into the ground the minute the first tiny bit of green pops up out of the soil-less mix. I intend to put bean seeds in the ground tomorrow. They raised tomorrow night's forecast low from 44 to 48, so I feel like it will be warm enough. Our 3-day average soil temp dropped from the low 70s to the mid or upper 60s with with this last cold front, but the soil in the raised beds is still pretty warm. Likely the row covers have helped them stay warmer by holding in the heat. Carol, I am concerned about the weather too. I am hoping that the cold spells haven't lasted long enough to cause bolting. If they do, they do....there's nothing we can do about it. The reason I have covered my onion bed's hoops with the 10-degree row cover for every cold spell is not because I thought the onions might freeze but because I hoped it would keep them warm enough that they'd be less likely to bolt. I guess we'll know in the next couple of weeks if they are going to bolt, and I am hoping they won't because they are so lovely right now and will make a great crop if they don't bolt and if hail doesn't get them. Our Sugar Snaps are producing faster than we can pick them and eat them. I guess it makes up for the early heat wrecking the crop the last two years. Either we need to start eating them at every meal, or I need to freeze some. I planted mine in paper cups in February and then got them into the ground as early as I could, but I planted a certain percentage of them every week for 3 or 4 weeks, trying to spread out the risk of a late freezing getting them. I also staggered the potato plantings quite a lot. The first two beds that I planted are the tallest, and the third bed is not far behind. They are getting too tall to cover so we're in trouble if we get another cold front, which I hope doesn't happen of course. I was looking at the first two beds a few minutes before sunset, and the plants look like they've grown 6-8 inches since Tim covered up those beds on Wed.evening. You can see the plants pushing and straining at the row cover. I think it keeps them so warm that they grow faster while it is on them. I haven't planted a single bean yet, but hope to rectify that tomorrow. We have a lot of rain chances in our forecast for next week, and since lately our rain has come only in little bits....a few hundredths of an inch here, a tenth of an inch there, we really need that rain. Maybe if I get the beans in the ground and then it rains, they'll sprout quickly to make up for going into the ground so late. You still might get more parsley volunteers. Just this past week, volunteers started popping up like mad. I imagine when we rototilled all the soil repeatedly while rebuilding the beds this spring, we exposed a lot of buried seeds to sunlight. While weeding on Wed. right before putting on the row covers, I saw volunteer seedlings of all kinds---okra, watermelon, ornamental purple-leaved peppers, flowers of several kinds, tomatoes, etc. I even saw basil and corn volunteers. The basil can stay but I'll yank out the corn since it is in the middle of a row of garlic. I know you don't like cilantro and won't try to change your mind about it, but I grow it near potatoes and I do believe it helps keep the potato bugs away. I planted about 30 lbs. of seed potatoes so we have row after row of potato plants and I haven't seen a single CPB yet. Grasshoppers, however, have arrived in full force. Dawn
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Oakley
Original Author
14 years ago
I love your Coneflowers! Mine did good then got attacked by a black bug. lol. Now they're coming back to life.

Our growing season is from April through September. We get all 4 seasons here in Oklahoma.

My secret was buying easy to grow plants. :)

In the front of the flowerbed are Carpet Roses I bought from QVC, and they are growing like weeds and really blooming!

That's a darling picture of your little helper. You should frame it!
IdaClaire
14 years ago
You've got a gorgeous cottage garden goin' on there, Oakley! I love it! My new front bed has been a bit stifled by our terrible heat this summer, but I'm hoping it will really bounce back and things will start growing nicely when cooler Fall temps finally roll around.
spitfire_01
14 years ago
OakleyOK - tell me about the topiary on your porch. I haven't been brave enough to put a shrub in a container yet, b/c I'm afraid that I would kill it. But I really like that look. I'd like to try some on the back patio.

I've started a tradition (2 years now - does that make it a tradition?) of taking a day off work each spring to work on a landscaping project. The first year I created a new bed on the north side of the house. It is doing great. This year, after much inner conflict, I decided to use my day to make a vegetable/herb bed. I actually made two beds. I spent my day off and several weekends digging up bermuda and amending the soil. I do think in the long run, it will be nice, but my garden was a bust this year. I'm a little bummed b/c I used so much of my (teeny amount of) free time and so much energy for practically no return. The weather is so nice right now, I'm anxious to go outside and plant a few shrubs to make myself feel like I made progress this year!

Somewhere I have a few photos, but we have switched computers and I never seem to have anything where I need it!
folkvictorian
14 years ago
Yes, Oakley - tell us about your topiary! How did you get them to be so perfect????
natal
14 years ago
Oakley, what are those purple and white globe flowers?

Folkvictorian, I did a double-take when I saw the name on your Turk's Caps. I grow the other turk's cap (Malvaviscus arboreus var. Drummondii) for the hummers.

The Sweet Autumn clematis I planted on the kitchen garden arbor at the end of February is in almost full bloom.
Oakley
Original Author
14 years ago
I'm LOL about my "topiary." They're artificial boxwoods I bought from Home Depot!

Natal, they're Globe Amaranth. They bloom all summer long, loves the heat and sun, and really start to take off around late July. When I planted them they didn't do much but never lost their blooms, then they started growing like crazy in July. I'll definitely get them again because they're so easy and add a nice touch to the garden.
lynninnewmexico
14 years ago
Like you and Jen, Oakleyok, our summer heat was hard on my gardens. But, it's been raining pretty much every day or two for the past two weeks here . . . on and off, this is New Mexico, after all! So, with our Autumn lower temps now in the high 70s, my garden is looking like it's on steroids! I was sitting out there yesterday and had to run back in for my camera. Not so much to show you all, but so that *I* can remember NEXT July, just what it will eventually look like once our monsoon rains arrive again ;^D
Lynn
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How does your Garden grow?

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folkvictorian

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