What are you growing this year?
My deck garden is somewhat abbreviated this year: tarragon, rosemary and thyme (because roast chicken) and basil (because pasta) and a lemon tree that in four years has never, ever, ever given any indication it is going to produce any lemons.
A.
I ran out of gardening steam last year, so it’s just a few pepper and tomato plants.
The terrace will have herbs in pots. Plus the cat fence that is going up even as I type, to allow Spencer to go out with limited supervision.
We don’t get much sun, and that only in one part of the garden which happens to have a tiny patio on it (the rest is deep shade and rather sad grass). So this year I decided to go with nothing but pots that I can move around to catch sun. So its all herbs and two tomato plants. The beauty of this system is that since I’m travelling right now I just drove all the plants over to my mother who is watering them for me on her deck.
OK, fence completed. Spencer immediately squeezed through the space between posts. We didn’t think a 17-pound Maine Coon would fit. Now for Plan B.
Weeds…sigh. For several years some cherry tomato vines would germinate/grow on their own, but not this year. I think the cold weather in January and February finished that cycle.
But hopefully this summer I’ll take care of long overdue landscaping, mostly filling in low spots and adding pathways and so on. I dug up bricks by what seemed like the ton, and will mix match those with pea gravel for pathways, drainage, and so on (already added a gravel pathway on one side). I’m also going to remove a sweet olive tree that’s a little too close to the house and replace it with??? Open to suggestion. Maybe a dogwood, crepe myrtle…or kumquat, though I worry a fruit tree might attract pests…
pole beans, onions, scallions, + trying carrots. the watermelon seeds were all duds. oh and tomatoes.
Mainly herbs – mint, tarragon, bay leaves, basil, marjoram and the like. The nice thing about these is that the deer hate them. We’re also trying for a few tomatoes, but there usually isn’t enough warm weather around her to get any. We also planted some escarole, but the plant that is growing seems to be some kind of lettuce. We’ve had a lot of trouble with this. We’ll buy seeds for some kind of endive or escarole and up from the ground comes an ordinary and horribly bland lettuce or mache. It doesn’t even look like the plant on the seed packet. Are these mutants?
Tomatoes, green beans, leaf lettuce, radishes. The radishes have gone to seed, but were great while they lasted, both red and white. The lettuce has been great wilted with a hot mixture of crisp bacon, vinegar, and sugar. The plum tomatoes have set nicely, and the slicers have lots of blossoms, so we’re hopeful. The green beans are starting to come on. Up along the railroad tracks in the backyard, the wild black raspberries are ripening; the railroad chose not to spray with Agent Orange this year (thank God), so we’ll have enough for a few sundaes, plus jelly. I sampled them yesterday while mowing lawn, and they’re tasty. There’s a stand of actual blackberries on the other side of the tracks, but I don’t find them particularly tasty, and their thorns are more formidable than the raspberries. Hopefully, it will be another productive northern Illinois summer in our small garden.
St. Augustine.
Great on salads.
Tommy
California is in serious drought, for going on three years.
I let the back yard die, and planted no gardens at all.
I’m watering the front yard just enough to keep it sorta-green (The neighbors across the street _really_ _care_ about lawn maintenance, and I want to stay on good terms — but another winter with 50% of normal rainfall, and I’ll have to let the front yard die too, fussy neighbors be damned.)
30 tomato plant, 16 peppers and chiles, carrots, kohlrabi, green beans, radishes, broccoli, brussel sprouts, onions, potatoes, basil, parsley, thyme, marjoram and dill. And then the ornamentals….