Asperagus, came home from a short trip to find huge stalks of it. Was able to eat some of it. Now getting one or two a day. I just eat them raw. I have two varieties of strawberry plants, one I grew from seed a few years ago and another I bought as plants last year. The new plants are massive this year and so are the strawberries. I've been picking them early because of the birds and other critters in the yard but let one get riper and was going to pick it today, only to find it and another eaten by something. So, went out in the wet yard (been raining all week) to bird net most of them.

I did use insect netting on my cabbage plants this year and it seems to be working, although, somehow, insects still managed to get under the netting. The cabbages are really getting big and yesterday I made a stir fry with two of the massive leaves from one plant.

Right before a short trip a couple weeks ago, I planted some tomatoes, eggplant, chives, onions, flowers, sweet potato slips and those cabbages out, hoping there wouldn't be a frost and so far they all seem to be doing fine. I still have a bunch of stuff to plant, although, I have too many plants that I started. I gave some to the woman who watched Chewie while I was gone but now have to find room for the rest. Gave some to a friend. I don't know any other gardeners.

The peas I planted a while ago are only now starting to grow. My garlic is looking great. I have volunteer zucchini possibly coming up in one of my beds, volunteer cosmos in the side yard, which I spread the seeds there last year on purpose, hoping they would come back. Potatoes are also doing good.

Have a few things still to plant from seed, like corn, watermelon, beans, squash and okra. Hoping for a break in the rain tomorrow to get some of it out there. My raspberry bushes are huge this year and loaded with raspberries already. My little peach tree out front is also loaded with peaches. Crossing my fingers about those, was not expecting any for a couple years at least. The persimmon trees are finally leafing out.

Didn't have good luck with pepper starting this year. I started Padron and an orange bell pepper, no germination from 1 year old seeds. So, I had bought a red bell pepper to eat and just used those seeds. I now have too many little bell pepper plants. Will probably compost all but two as I don't have a huge garden.

I don't plant much in the way of vegetables - I only have arugula which I am enjoying, and a couple of pepper plants that I overwintered indoors so I am already harvesting a very few, and rhubarb. No sign of my asparagus yet!

I got all of my potted citrus outside on Saturday. They had a rough winter indoors this winter - aphids that kept reappearing, then fungus gnats, and a neglectful owner who went too long between watering as the sun grew stronger through the window. So, lots of leaves dropped, but they kept blooming, go figure! I picked 3 key limes today.

My blueberry bushes are loaded with blossoms & baby berries. I am making a new netting cage for them & I need to get that done soon! I finished putting newspaper and cardboard mulch around and under the pots this AM before the rain set in.

I need to get my netting up over my cherry bushes too. I use an old patio unbrella frame to hold the netting up. I have found that if the netting isn't held away from the plants, the critters can get to the berries & cherries (and peaches and apples) without much difficulty.

One fruiting vine that I am going to get rid of is the pair of hardy kiwi - a male and a female, supposedly. EIght or more (I've lost track) years in ground, grows rampantly (and they get BIG) but never once a sign of a blossom or fruit.

I have lost 4 roses this spring - one was no surprise b/c it was just one of those grocery store minis, but the other 3 were well established, and since we did have a mild winter, I am very surprised that they died. I'm not seeing any growth from one of my chrysanthemums as well - an established, comes back every year plant - that didn't this spring. Do they have a limited life span? I don't know..

Primroses, iris, lilacs, woodland phlox, the tall purple allium, virginia bluebells, clematis, dames rocket, weigela, quince, viburnums, all in full bloom and just a few rose blossoms starting.

"I need to get my netting up over my cherry bushes too"

raee, I'm curious about your cherry bush. Among the many Brecks flyers and catalogs I receive there was one advertising a "cherry bush". I put it aside thinking I might try it, but then decided not to. Now I might dig it out of the paper bin again.

How old is yours and was it difficult to grow? Breck's says it takes five years to bear fruit. Sounds like yours isn't huge, which I would like. Where do you have it planted, i.e. moist ground or can it tolerate some dry periods?

I'm also in Ohio - Wayne County.

Since I am moving, I am in the process of planning a new garden, and I just came up with some ideas today.

We are going to be in Cathedral City (Palm Springs adjacent), and so the climate here is very different from coastal Los Angeles, where the mean temperature varied less than 10° between summer and winter, and so many things grew all year and only required changes in watering.

In the desert, our winters will be similar to L.A., but the summers will be brutally hot, and so many plants will not survive. However, some plants like the heat, such as the chocolate Habanero chili plants that I used to grow. In L.A., I had to start the seeds in a heated terrarium, but I figured out that I can start seeds outdoors here and can get rid of the terrarium, which I do not have room for here anyway. We have a patch of sandy ground with one palm tree and nothing else that is about 12 or 16 feet square (I think).

Since it is getting close to summer, I am not sure what I can put outside here that would do well, but I think I will try basil first, although I might have to water it twice a day. Until now, I was not here long enough to take care of outdoor plants, but once I am here full time, I will be able to water twice a day, if necessary. It won't take that much water for what I have in mind - much less than what the neighbors use for their front lawn - something I do not have here.

I will have to learn which edible plants are heat tolerant - something I tried to learn when I was in Texas but was not that successful at. I also do not want to try to grow anything that will require huge amounts of water. We can grow dates here, but I will continue to go to date farms to buy those - I won't try that myself.

I think most of my plant growing is going to have to happen in the winter. So far, we have not had a frost since I have been here (2019 - 2024), but a light frost is a possibility, and I will have to take that into consideration when I plant herbs here. I will be planting them in pots, and so I could always move them if there is a chance of frost, or cover them. It pretty much never got below 40° at my house in L.A., and so this was never an issue for me there.

I'm going to try my favorite herbs to start with - parsley, cilantro, chives, dill, and basil and see how those will do this summer, but I do expect them to bolt (except for the basil), but maybe I can get some use out of them before that happens. I think all of those will grow really well for me in the winter, and if I lose some to a rare frost, I can replant them.

Our gardens are mostly about perennials, flowering trees/shrubs and pots of annuals. We do grow herbs - rosemary, thyme, sage and chives are fairly reliable perennial herbs for us but we sometimes lose the rosemary and thyme if winter temps get brutally cold. The only vegetable we grow now are tomatoes. We can't plant them safely until the end of May so our tomato harvest is a long way off. We hold off on planting annual flowers and tender herbs until the end of May, as well. Our last frost date can be that late.

My mouth was envious of amylou's post describing her bounty of vegetables. Like seagrass, unless you have a greenhouse planting doesn't start for another couple of weeks. It is going to be unusually hot this weekend so the garden centers will be hopping and people will be pushing their luck with planting. We can still get cooler temperatures and a rain storm through though.

Schoolhouse, I actually got my 3 bush cherries from the Spring Hill/Breck's etc garden center in Tipp City, years ago, during one of their overstock clearance sales. It is closed now sadly.

So, I have a Carmine Jewel, and either a Romeo or a Juliet (can't remember which was which, and one was eaten to death by deer 2 winters ago.)

Not at all difficult to grow - I started them out in pots because I wasn't sure where to place them permanently. They are hardy, haven't needed any protection except when we've had those late hard freezes when they are in bloom. My yard is very clay-ey, with a high water table - water would stand after a good rain, but I have deeply double dug my planting areas, adding organic material, so the spot that they are in doesn't have that problem now. On the other hand, the past couple of years we have had some extended periods of no significant rain rain (3-4 weeks) and I have watered them along with my other potted trees. They are in half-3/4 day sun - my neighbor's huge maple shades the yard until mid morning,

I don't remember how long until they bore fruit - IIRC it was only 2-3 years before a light crop. They produce well now. IMO they are not in any way sweet (despite the claims), but they are a nicely flavored tart cherry that I like to eat fresh. They are not large cherries, typical of a tart variety.

The Carmine Jewel is about 6 or 7 foot tall and I will probably cut it back a bit. The other one stays at about 3-4 foot - so was the other one before it died.

I have a couple of saplings that have sprung up around them - either from seeds that sprouted or root offshoots. If you'd like I could send you one.

Lars, I have my Thai basil in pots. It gets morning sun, but is in shade by 1 in the afternoon. Seems to like that here in south Louisiana.

I no longer grow a lot of veggies in the garden. Tomatoes and hot peppers is about the extent of it. I am trying a few long beans this year; seeds were a gift from my physical therapist. Also have garlic chives, thyme, rosemary, Spanish tarragon, and a little dill is still hanging in there.

I have quite a few flowers in the kitchen garden -- zinnias, salvias, gomphrena, pentas, and Country Girl chrysanthemums for fall blooms. Kept one of the potted passion vines in the garden. It seems to be doing very well with only morning sun. I'm letting it crawl along the fence.

Amy...Outstanding garden YOU have planned.

I've got mostly ornamentals. Cat mint, garlic chives, fruit trees. (Pear, cherry, Honey Crisp Apple, Crabapple, Walking onion). My lily bulbs are just now emerging.

It's supposed to rain an inch tomorrow, then snow an inch tomorrow night. I might have to throw a tarp over the lilies.

I’m so envious of your gardens. I have no room to grow anything other than a few roses. I really miss my citrus trees and my herb garden. Maybe someday, I’ll have the huge built-in grill that I will never use removed and replaced with a raised bed that I could use for an herb garden.

I have planted many pots and urns with annuals and the veggie garden has six tomato plants and four zucchini plants. Our community garden shut down because the company (Ames) is for sale so 12 years of having a large garden plot there is gone. There were 155 plots with a watering system and shed with tools for use. Sad.

Thanks for the info raee. Just what I wanted to know. As far as the offer of the saplings/seedlings, I have to think of where I'd put them first. Wonder if they would be true to the mother plant(s)? Probably.

Oh, @lily316, that’s so sad. I think we have a community garden attached to the local senior center, but I haven’t had a chance to explore that yet.

Can a veggie gardener tell me something about peas? Until I saw vgkg's photos, I couldn't imagine what a pea plant (bush?) looks like. How many plants does it take to result in the 12 ounces of petite peas I find in a bag in my grocer's freezer? Do the plants yield only a single crop? How long does it take for the plants to produce?

When DS was a toddler, we planted a few peas. I think we got three pods.

Chisue, it takes a lot of pea plants to get a bag of peas. I usually only grow snow peas because I prefer them and you can eat the entire pod. You can also eat the pea leaves and tendrils, which I've had in stir fries and salads. The more you pick the peas, the more they will produce blooms and keep producting. When you wait for a normal pea pod to mature, less likely it's going to make more blooms. My snow peas produce over a longer period of time since I'm constantly picking the tender young pods.

I think the days to maturity is about 60 days for a normal pea plant.

Chisue, in the pea trellis pic I posted above (will load again below) it's a 25 ft long trellis with peas planted on both sides. The pea variety is "Frosty" and I planted them in early March here in central Va and I'll start picking them this weekend (approx 60 days as Kathsgrdn says). The plants will produce pea pods for about a 3-4 weeks before they top out (they don't like the summer heat). That 50 ft row (includes both sides) will produce enough peas for the 2 of us with about 20 meals. I'd venture to guess that 1 row of peas just 4 ft long would give you more than 12 oz easily over 3-4 weeks.

After the peas are done I'll compost the vines and re-plant the trellis with late Corn on both sides. Once the corn is done I'll compost the corn stalks and re-plant the trellis with Autumn Turnips on both sides. During the winter I'll add compost to that row and use the appropriate amount of fertilizer during each veggie transition. Been doing this succession planting method for about 10 years without any problems.

vgkg -- Thank you! It seems to me that paying $1.50 for 12 ounces of petite peas is quite a bargain! I wonder if this is stoop labor or if there's a machine to harvest peas...then they have to be 'hulled', washed, 'eyed', packaged, and shipped frozen. Nothing beats *fresh*, but we do have a great choice of good food in America. It's also been relatively cheap for decades, compared to other first world nations.

Here in Kansas City, it is just now time to put out things that would get hurt in a frost. I have bought my Sweet million tomato plant. I have planted this for several years. And it does produce millions! not bothered by drought, fungus or bugs. I have a bowl of them on my counter all summer, and keeps me from munching on other things. my grandson learned last summer he could eat them any time he wanted.

I am ready to put out some bush green beans. Need to make a little 2 foot trellis to keep them upright. Going to plant these with my 2.5 year old grandson, just for his experience. I wonder if he would eat snap peas better.

2 cherry trees are doing well, despite some golf ball sized hail here. Cherries are about pea sized and don't look damaged. Something so calming and satisfying about having a few little things to plant and eat. Not my photo, but shows how the sweet millions grow in clusters, almost like grapes. Very easy to pick.

Not long after my husband died, a little volunteer peach tree came up near a spot where he used to sit. At first I wasn't sure what it was, but it looked like peach tree leaves, and it didn't look like any of the other weeds, so I didn't cut it down. Now, three years later, it has bloomed and is bearing peaches. I figured it out a couple of years ago that it was indeed a peach tree, but I didn't know if it would need a pollinator variety, to bear. Evidently not. I call it Jody's peach tree because I am sure he ate a peach and threw the seed down.