Gardens vegetable, flower or other?

[Dagwood]

I have quite an impressive herb garden, as I find they are pretty easy to maintain.

My herb garden is going great! I have basil, parsley and chives (the ingredients I like to add to my slow cooker). I put them all in 1 container, put it directly in the sun, and water them every 2 days. The basil has really taken off and is in a fight with the chives for space. lol

I look forward to seeing your pictures Ellie.

P.S. I don't know the name of the flowers - I'll have to go home and check the package they came in. I'll post the name later.

 

[BeBopBaby]

That's a Purple Coneflower a.k.a. Echinacea. They're a periennial and they'll grow back every year. They tend to be very resiliant and drought resistant (but you should still water them!) and they like direct, hot sun. I'm not surprised it grew back. They'll keep coming back until you pull them out of the ground usually.

As soon as I find my digital camera, I'll post pictures of my garden. I spend a lot of time working in it. I have a flower and herb garden. My night blooming datura are getting big and I need to take a picture of the gigantic blossoms when they open at night. Besides the datura, I have butterfly bushes, oregano, basil, parsley, chives, lavender, bee balm, lilac bushes, mock orange bushes, cone flowers, black-eyed susans, hydrangeas and shasta daisys in my back yard. And I tend to slack off on planting in the back yard because no one sees it! lol

The front yard has peonies, lily of the valley, hostas, ferns, impatiens, bleeding hearts, rose bushes, azaleas, lilies, geraniums, flowering maples, ivy, hummingbird vines, astilbe and some other flowers I'm forgeting the names of at the moment.

Come September, I never want to carry another pail of water again. lol

 

[MaryDeluxe]

Dagwood...perennials are the way to go! They come back evey year and usually grow larger!

Here's a few pictures from my little garden. It just goes to show, you don't need much room to have a garden.

 

[Dagwood]

MaryDeluxe - you're backyard is great!

Dagwood...perennials are the way to go! They come back evey year and usually grow larger!

The Echinacea's in my post are about 15-20 inches tall. I was amazed. I think the damage to the leaves are because they are directly in the sun. Last year, they had all these bugs crawling over them - they looked like little slugs and left a trail on the leaf. For some reason, the bugs are gone this year. I don't use pesticides (I'm an organic kind of guy), but am happy that the bugs haven't returned. Have any of you had problems with bugs attacking your flowers?

 

[Sweet Leilani]

Dagwood, you can use insecticidal soap & still be organic. I use it on anything edible. It's basically just a soap that smothers bugs. Any home center has it. If it's slugs you're having problems with, put some beer in a shallow container on the ground. The slugs will crawl in and die happy! lol

Here's our vegetable garden:

L-R, we have strawberries, peppers (bell & hot), broccoli, brussels sprouts, green beans, cukes, tomatoes, sugar snap peas, asparagus, carrots, lettuce, spinach, pumpkins, sunflowers & corn. The electric fence keeps the deer & rabbits out. I grow herbs (basil, parsley, dill, sage, thyme, chives, oregano & mint) in pots so I can take them inside in the winter.
Those are apple trees on the right of the garden, so I get plenty of apples for sauce & pies. We planted some peach & pear trees last year also.

We try to grow as much as possible in our space & either freeze or can what we can't eat fresh. It's nice knowing where your food comes from & what hasn't been sprayed all over it!

 

[BeBopBaby]

MaryDeluxe - you're backyard is great!
The Echinacea's in my post are about 15-20 inches tall. I was amazed. I think the damage to the leaves are because they are directly in the sun.

It looks like the holes are from bugs. It'll happen and I wouldn't sweat it unless they really start to devour your plants. And the spots might be dry spots from not watering enough or from getting water on the leaves when you water them. If a plant gets water on it's leaves, and it's in direct sun, the leaves can get sunburnt. The water acts like a magnifying glass with the rays of the sun. I think it might be from that. Your best bet is to water early in the morning or later in the day after the hot afternoon sun is gone. Or just make sure you always water at the base of the plant so you don't spray the leaves.

Also if the slugs come back, here's a non-pesticide way to get rid of them - take a soda bottle, cut off the top where the spout is and reattach the top inverted so the spout is now inside the bottle. Then put some beer in the bottom of the bottle and lay it on it's side in your garden. The slugs are attracted to beer, climb in the bottle, can't get back out and drown in the beer. Or if you feel less industrious, you could just put out flat dishes of beer. They'll do the same thing only they're easier to escape from.

I had slug problems one year because I was watering my garden at night. Slugs are nocturnal and by watering at night, I was making the ground nice and slippery and wet - just perfect for them to slide around on. It really attracted them, but once I stopeed watering at night, they really decreased.

 

[BeBopBaby]

What a pretty koi pond. I'd love to have one myself, but I'd be afraid racoons would eat the fish!

 

[BeBopBaby]

Dagwood, you can use insecticidal soap & still be organic. I use it on anything edible. It's basically just a soap that smothers bugs.

You can get the same effect using a mixture of green palmolive dishsoap and water. Just mix it in a spray bottle and mist the plant leaves. The palmolive won't hurt the plant if it's watered down and bugs hate the taste of it.

 

[MaryDeluxe]

Thank you.

I have slugs in my garden and I think the holes in the leaves of you Echinacea plant might be from slugs. If you put out a plate of beer in the evening it will help take care of any garden slugs. I also pour salt on slugs when I find one! I also spray soapy water on my roses to keep off the bettles.

 

[MaryDeluxe]

Sweet Leilani
Wow, Your garden looks great!! I have a very small garden crammed into my postage stamp backyard. Oh how I envy your large yard space!

 

[warbird]

In my herb garden I have 3 kinds of Basil, 2 kinds of oregano, thyme, mint, lavender, horehound, corriander, dill, rosemary and sage. Theres also blueberry and raspberry bushes.

Then I have the garden which has been pared down this yr due to time it takes to care for it, i think its about 30' x 35'.

 

[Sweet Leilani]

Sweet Leilani
Wow, Your garden looks great!! I have a very small garden crammed into my postage stamp backyard. Oh how I envy your large yard space!

Thanks Mary! There are plenty of times I would trade it for your cute little space though! lol We moved here from a townhouse & before that an apartment, so one of the first things we did was lay out a plot for the garden. The first year it was really small and it's gotten bigger every year. This is the first time we've tried to grow corn, and so far it's been a success. We had to enlarge the garden by about 40% to do that.

Right now I'm being overwhelmed by green beans & cucumbers! I think I'm going to have to start a roadside stand...

 

[John K Stetson]

MaryDeluxe, I like your design: lots packed into a modest space, but you have complementary textures, colors and heights. Your eye can wander along the path and find interesting combinations. The house at one end and garage (?) at the other enclose the view no matter where you are - a nice outdoor room. The dense planting probably helps keep the weeds at bay. I can imagine how relaxing it is to sit at the table, hearing the water splash into the pond.

Re: bugs/holes in leaves - we've had a bad year with Japanese Beetles. Milky Spore (all natural) - applied to a lawn in a grid pattern every few years - helps prevent them from hatching. I need to do this again. In addition to the soaps mentioned here, you can also use a pepper spray as a repellent.

I haven't brought a lot of herbs indoors, will try to do that with basil this year. Mint - Arggh - has to be grown in pots. We had ours in the ground, and it spread very very quickly. I use ours to make syrup for mint juleps...

Edit - corrected "wonder" to "wander"

 

[Starius]

Those purple cone flowers are native wildflowers that grow throughout a large portion of the U.S. They're one of many variates that grew in the native Iowa prairie lands. (Less than 1% of Iowa still has any prairie land left.)

My father had a 80 acre field put into a 15 year Wetland Restoration Program (It actually makes more money in this program than it did growing crops. Profitable AND helps the environment? You know it won't last forever then.) The field always had some very rare near extinct wildflowers growing there, so it was a good candidate for the program.

Anyways, here are some pictures I took awhile back of some native prairie wildflowers...

Purple Coneflower

Purple Coneflower

Foxglove Beardstongue

Black Eyed Susan

Black Eyed Susan

Black Eyed Susan

 

[MaryDeluxe]

MaryDeluxe, I like your design: lots packed into a modest space, but you have complementary textures, colors and heights. Your eye can wonder along the path and find interesting combinations. The house at one end and garage (?) at the other enclose the view no matter where you are - a nice outdoor room. The dense planting probably helps keep the weeds at bay. I can imagine how relaxing it is to sit at the table, hearing the water splash into the pond.

Thank you John! I like to call my garden, my "starter" garden as I am just becoming familiar with plants. Gardening runs in my family and I have wonderful memories of wondering around my grandparents farm and my great aunties gardens. My great aunt is 96 and still has a beautiful garden! Here's to hoping gardening keeps you young

 

[imoldfashioned]

Oh, these are lovely, especially to a condo dweller such as myself. Actually, our super has done a great job with the courtyard and curbside gardens at my building, I'll have to take some snaps.

 

[nobodyspecial]

I'll have to get my garden photos loaded and post them. My wife and I are in the process of expanding the perennial gardens in our backyard. Over time we wish to reduce the amount of grass to nearly nothing and have nearly all gardens, walking paths, an arbor.... Our fountain was delivered and installed last night. Next we are going to rehab some existing garden beds and then proceed to expand the rest. The gardens will never be complete, they just get tweaked over time.

Last weekend we stayed here. Take a look at the garden photos on the website for inspiration. The photos do not do the gardens at the Inn justice, they are spectacular. Like an idiot I had forgotten my camera and had to buy two disposable cameras as I would have liked to have taken 200-300 photos of the garden.

 

[John K Stetson]

MaryDeluxe - how often do you need thin out (what looks like) the water hyacinth? We have a small water feature and the hyacinth overtook everything. We had to get rid of it...

 

[MaryDeluxe]

MaryDeluxe - how often do you need thin out (what looks like) the water hyacinth? We have a small water feature and the hyacinth overtook everything. We had to get rid of it...

Everyday!!!lol But my fish love hiding under them and they add to the water quality so I keep them for that reason. They are actually lovely when they bloom.

 

[dhermann1]

Echinacea

Echinacea is a cool plant. Being prairie flowers they like a lot of sun and moderate water. You can use every part of the plant as a tea. It's used as an immune system booster very widely.