Garden 2024

@rodentraiser I need to weed areas too.

pepper, several questions on your drip system that I was wondering about: do you...
have to "blow out" your lines for the drip in the winter?
have to turn them off during a lot of rain?
how wide an area does each 'drip nozzle' cover?
for example a 4 x 8 bed? up one side down the other?
is it one continuous line? meaning if you turn off 'bed c' then beds 'd' and 'e' would also be cut off? or is each bed/area separately run from the main?

does whatever I've said make sense? gads, it's late, gotta get some sleep.

I can't believe you guys are getting tomatoes. I have 4 and they're all green and the size of BBs.

We finally got morning sun and what do you know? My camera takes lousy pictures in the sun. But here are a few:

This is my yard:


You've already seen my container garden. Here's the irises where I cleared out all the weeds about three weeks ago. And oh, look. They're back already:


My neighbors and I share a driveway and theirs splits off behind the irises.

This is the side of my driveway. It took three years to get it to this:

I still have about 15 feet to do, but now I'll need large rocks moved and someone to scrape the ground before I can put any soil on it.

This is my trailer with the arbor and canopy in front of it. We're having a La Nina year, which means a ton of snow this year and that means I get to take down the canopy. Joy. If I don't, the snow will collapse it.

The contractor had left a portion of my yard without soil and I got on to him about that. His solution was to drop a huge pile of dirt right in front of the trailer where grass was already growing. Then he used his bulldozer to spread it. Result is I now have actual lawn in the back third of my yard, meadow grass in the middle third, and dirt on the front third. Why did I start this?

Anyway, since my camera takes such awful shots in sun, I'll wait till tomorrow to get some wildflower pics. Meantime, here's my willow tree:


It's going to be around 90° for the next two weeks, including today, so I'm going back to bed and sleep while I can. See you guys later this evening!

taxlady said:

I stepped out to water the two pots of herbs I have out back. Someone had nibbled the lemon balm right off. There were a bunch of leaves lying next to the pot. There were a few leaves in the pot. But there were just tiny nubs of the main stems. I brought that pot inside because, there are two tiny, tiny sets of leaves still alive in that pot and who knows if the rest will come back with some TLC. Lemon balm is a member of the mint family.

At first glance, the rosemary seemed fine. But, looking more closely, I see that two small rosemary stems were on the ground. I guess whoever did the nibbling, didn't like rosemary.

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I wonder if it's the bunny I saw the other day. That was the first time I have ever seen a bunny in this yard and I have lived in this house for 29 years.

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The stems at the front left are my chives. Those seem to be of little appeal to the bunny or whoever it was that nibbled my lemon balm, thank goodness.

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Update on the lemon balm that got chomped. It seems to be quite happy indoors:



There has been no further sign of the bunny.

We got sun in the morning the other day and lo and behold, my batteries gave out on the camera, so I got some more today. And today we didn't have sun.

I've been watering for two days now. For my yard, it's up at 5am, turn on back sprinklers. Go out at 6am and turn off sprinklers, turn on two other sprinklers., These have timers so I don't have to walk out there again. At 7, I turn on the front sprinklers, water all the plants in front of my trailer, feed the birds and cat, then turn off the sprinklers at 8. I'm done for the day but when the rest of my yard is finally seeded in front, I'll have two more sprinklers out there and I'll be getting up at 4am for my yard.

Yesterday it was water-the-neighbors-yard. Up at 4am, go over and turn on sprinklers. Go over at 5am and move sprinklers. Go over at 6am and move sprinklers, turn on sprinkler that waters the clover behind my irises. At 7, turn off the water watering the clover behind the irises then go over and move sprinklers, water their plants in the back, my irises, my plants in the front, feed the cat and the birds, then go back over and finally turn the water off at 8.

It's 8pm and I'm going to bed.

Now my neighbors have given me permission to watch the individual equestrian jumping in their house (I don't have a TV). So guess when that's on. Qualifications start on Monday at 5am and 1pm. The qualifiers then do their jumping on Tuesday at 1am and 4am. Makes me wonder if I'm ever going to see daylight again.

Anyway, I finally got loppers at Ace, so tomorrow morning (with no watering to do), I'm going to go out and reweed the irises and then tackle the crap between my irises and the neighbors' clover patch on the other side. There's supposed to be only tall grass and three cedar trees between the two, but now Scotch broom has grown up there and all the foxgloves have bloomed and gone, so I'm going to cut down what's left. This is the only time I yearn for winter.

Unfortunately, when I checked my garden this morning for any damage from that wind last night, my Datil plant had gotten blown over, despite the stake - just not thick enough. Hopefully, it will recover, but only time will tell. Fortunately, that was the only thing that seems to have been damaged by that 60 mph wind.

To attack that problem with the ants, and whatever they seem to be bringing with them, I brushed some tanglefoot on the lower part of the plant and the stake - if they are on them, there is no way to get off now! I then made up a pyrethrin spray, and sprayed all of those pepper plants, to kill the ants there already, plus whatever they are bringing with them (I haven't seen any aphids, but there could be other things). I rarely resort to this, and the Surround I don't use on peppers (except before they set fruit), as it is too much of a pain to get off small fruits, like cherry tomatoes, and DE doesn't really do much. The tanglefoot does prevent any ants from showing up again, however.

pepperhead212 said:

Unfortunately, when I checked my garden this morning for any damage from that wind last night, my Datil plant had gotten blown over, despite the stake - just not thick enough. Hopefully, it will recover, but only time will tell. Fortunately, that was the only thing that seems to have been damaged by that 60 mph wind.

To attack that problem with the ants, and whatever they seem to be bringing with them, I brushed some tanglefoot on the lower part of the plant and the stake - if they are on them, there is no way to get off now! I then made up a pyrethrin spray, and sprayed all of those pepper plants, to kill the ants there already, plus whatever they are bringing with them (I haven't seen any aphids, but there could be other things). I rarely resort to this, and the Surround I don't use on peppers (except before they set fruit), as it is too much of a pain to get off small fruits, like cherry tomatoes, and DE doesn't really do much. The tanglefoot does prevent any ants from showing up again, however.

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Do you know what kind of ants they are? The dominant species here are fire ants, and there is a product made specifically for fire ants called Amdro. Fire ants treat it like food, and feed it to the queen. Within a day or two, the whole colony is dead.

There are similar bait type ant killers for pharaoh ants, but those are usually indoors (kitchens). The one I use is Combat.

Perhaps there is a similar product for your ants.

Fire ants and pharaoh ants will split up into multiple colonies if a bunch of them are killed by insecticides, which is why the bait-type solutions are better for them. By the time the colony reacts to dying ants, it is too late for them to split into multiple colonies to survive.

Oh, Amdro is safe to use in a yard with pets and wildlife. I believe most bait-type ant killers are.

CD

I'm reminded of one reason I appreciate the visits from the skunk. At the end of spring, I saw that there were ants in my tiny backyard. I didn't think much about it, since I don't think I am growing anything that supports aphids. I would worry about them if there had been more. But, a day or two later, I noticed that someone had been digging under a patio stone, from the edge. Wondered about that, but then it slipped my mind. A while later, I remembered that there had been ants and I hadn't seen them since then. Then the penny dropped. It was the visiting skunk who had been digging under the patio stone. Yes, it did look similar to other times the skunk has been digging. So, it was the ant colony that the skunk had been digging and the skunk managed to eat enough of the ants that the colony didn't survive. Yay!

I had ants up the yazoo the first year my trailer was on my lot. I couldn't sit outside without having them all over and I ended up getting some bait traps. I haven't had a problem with ants since. Now we get carpenter ants out here. They're like large ants with wings and I hate those things. But this year I don't think I saw any of them.

One of the other things I'm not seeing this year is blooms of California poppies. I'm still trying to grow masses of them in the garden beds, but usually there's tons of them blooming all summer long along the road into town. This year I think I've only seen a couple. Is anyone else noticing this?

I spent about two hours today pulling weeds from the irises and hacking the no-more-blooms foxgloves and Scotch broom from between the cedar trees behind the irises as well. Hey, you can see the cedars are trees now! I'll get another pic tomorrow. I started late and the only reason I could finish was because the sky was overcast most of the day.

I can already tell I'm simply not getting the clover roots up and I guess it takes about 3 weeks for them all to regenerate above ground again, so apparently this is going to be an ongoing thing. Those are white clovers. I saw I have some clover plants in my garden beds and I'll post a pic tomorrow. It's red clover and if my lawn were to look like that, then I would have a clover lawn.

So this is the before pic of the irises:


This is after I went to work on them. Better, right?


Once all that tall grass between the cedar trees starts to stand up again, it will look less like a mess. I wasn't about to weed it to infinity. The owner will mow it all down next time they come up for vacation.


This is the clover I have in my garden beds. There's about five or six of them and I just love them. My whole lawn could look like this.





I went out to take some more wildflower pics and they're still too bright - the pic washes out. So I will go this evening when the entire area is in shade or do what I should have done in the first place: read the manual.

I tore out some of the bok choy that was going to seed, left the good ones. Picked kale and okra, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers.
I put some dirt in the landscape holes, planted bok choy (green and purple), and beets, watered them. Mr bliss put in cucumbers and peas again and watered those. We have so much to do to catch up in the gardens. More of that tomorrow.

Woohoo. I think I finally figured out how to take pics with my camera. So tomorrow morning - wildflower pics!

Anyway, I got these today:

Anyone know what kind of flower this is? It's a new one for me. I know the cone flowers and the Shasta daisies, the bachelor buttons, and the marigolds, but this is the first time this one has bloomed.




This is my harvest of cherry tomatoes this year. This is worse than sad. This is pathetic! I think it's the soil. These plants were this big when I planted them months ago.They never got past the first ring on the cage.




The strawberry crop is gone. Another deer got into them and I think it's too late in the year to get anymore strawberries. . They had bounced back like crazy from being eaten last time but I think this one did them in. So I guess it's frozen strawberries for me this year. I wasn't crazy about this variety anyway, so I'll opt for something new next spring.

The rose is coming back nicely though and has a bunch of buds on it. And the clover plant I posted above? It now has 8 blooms on it with a couple more starting to bud.

rodentraiser said:

Anyone know what kind of flower this is? It's a new one for me. I know the cone flowers and the Shasta daisies, the bachelor buttons, and the marigolds, but this is the first time this one has bloomed.
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That sure looks like a marigold, to me.

CD

*i don't care* the deer have eaten off the swiss chard and beets again but they've been so nice leaving the rest for us. I accept this, this is the way of nature, share share share.
We have more late season lettuce/greens type things we put in. I hope they will be mature by our first frost in the beginning of october.
It rained today, I wasn't expecting it. I had lavender laying on a tarp so I moved it under an overhang on the deck. We have maybe 4 gallons of tomatoes, I need 8 for a batch of 9 qts thick sauce, OR, 6 gallons for a batch of 9 qts thin sauce, OR, I could do diced tomatoes as an option...thinking thinking.
None of the peppers have turned color yet. Once they start we pick them and let them change color inside in a cardboard box. We prefer them colored instead of green.

caseydog said:

That sure looks like a marigold, to me.

CD

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No, don't think so casey. That flower looks like it has a flat crown. Some type of daisy family? like Gerber?

dragnlaw said:

No, don't think so casey. That flower looks like it has a flat crown. Some type of daisy family? like Gerber?

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Marigolds are a type of daisy. They are part of the daisy family. There are multiple varieties of marigolds.

CD

but look at the poofier crown on this one, same as all the others I googled. RR's looks flat (to me) more like this..

But I have to say the leaves on RR's picture are right between the daisy and marigold's.
I guess we are both right but to be specific... who knows?
"Plants in the Asteraceae family include: lettuce, daisies, sunflowers, chrysanthemums, asters, dandelions, goldenrod, coneflowers, thistles, artichokes, sunflowers, dahlias, marigolds, zinnias, asters, chamomile, chicory, sage, tarragon, ragweed, thistle, sagebrush, and yarrow."

taxlady said:

Update on the lemon balm that got chomped. It seems to be quite happy indoors:

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There has been no further sign of the bunny.

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Another update on the lemon balm that was chomped on 28 July.

We are under a "heat dome." The temperature today reached 107F. It also hasn't rained in weeks. My ornamental plants, grasses and trees are all native to North Texas, so they will look stressed for a while, but bounce back when regular rain returns. This happens here every year in August... lots of heat, no rain.

My herb garden needs to be watered twice a day. My backyard sprinklers came on at around 5AM this morning. I can run them twice a week, Tuesday and Friday, within certain hours (city ordinance). I can hand water as much as I want.

I moved my potted basil plant to a place where it only gets direct sun for a few hours per day, and water it at least twice per day. It looks great. My rosemary plant still looks a bit stressed. I'm going to give it a good soak this evening, after the sun sets. The oregano and thyme are doing fine.

CD

I have another flower I need some info on. I'll photo it sometime today. It's supposed to start raining about 8pm tonight and we're supposed to get an inch. I hope so. There's a fire going on northwest to us at about 500 acres with no containment. I'd guess it's about 20 miles away across the canal. I'm pretty much on edge, but if the wind blows like it usually does, it'll blow the fire north instead of south.

Casey, you'll have to keep me up to date on Dallas temps. I have a friend in Brownwood who gives me the rundown, but he and his father are moving to Topeka this week. By the way, did you ever read Ben K. Green's chapter on the last horse drive through downtown Dallas?

I'm going to kill off all the orchard grass and have ANOTHER contractor reseed everything. That means all the wildflowers will have to be mown before they have time to set seed. It kills me, too. Because after all the nursing and worrying about the ONE California poppy I have in my flower bed (which hasn't bloomed), I notice that out in the yard there is a California poppy that is just waiting for the sun to open its flower. WHY?

Of course, I don't help things at all. I planted three butterfly weeds in the flower bed. One decided to not grow. It was just a dry stalk out there. So after three months I pulled it up, only to find out one of the roots was growing a butterfly weed that would have broken the surface in just a couple days. And wouldn't you know, I knocked this little sprout off from the main plant. I think I am just death to plants.

Anyway, here are a couple pics of the wildflowers out there. On account of I know none of you have ever seen wildflowers before. Hurr hurr hurr. Oh, and one of my cat. She's upset with me because I won't let her in the shed.