It's Only Been 30 Days!

Okay, I've already mentioned how weird our Spring weather here has been.  So this afternoon, feeling guilty about neglecting my veggie garden for nearly two weeks, I wandered out for a look see.  We were gone for four days and the last week has been non-stop storms and rain.  (It is clouding up again as I type!)  The weeds are finally tolerable, that was good.  Totaling the rain gauge for the week, we received 4.5 inches of rain so far.  But to be fair we did need part of that.  But much to my surprise, was the size of the tomatoes and peppers.  They've only been in the ground since June 2!  So, of course, I run back into the house like a crazy person to get my camera.

These are my tomatoes.  This year I planted 8 Celebrity tomato plants, 4 Roma tomato plants and one Sun Gold cherry tomato plant.    They've never been this big after one month, EVER.  I plant an interesting variety of pepper plants.  I have green peppers, banana peppers, jalapenos, cayenne and a couple of habanero plants.  My husband has a couple of different ghost pepper plants, but that's for another blog post.

So, I start looking closer at the peppers, and I couldn't believe my eyes.

There are actually peppers on these plants after one month!  And these plants didn't really have any blooms on them when I planted them.  I have Never had these kind of results.  The only thing I did different was I bought the plants early and re-potted them until I could get them into the ground.  (Plus a little Miracle Gro along the way!)  I just may have to re-think how I go about vegetable gardening from now on.  

Decisions, Decisions

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One of the most challenging things about gardening is knowing when to give up on a flower bed.  You take great care in planning it and planting things you think will look good, but it just doesn't look like you picture it in your mind.  Our yard on the west side of the house is very narrow (almost non-existent).  The bed I put in is only about three or four feet deep.  I thought this would be a good place to put assorted daylillies.  Really nice colors too!  Yellows, oranges, reds, even a couple of white ones.  But they were so unimpressive, after going through seven years of pictures on the computer, I couldn't find a single picture of them! Yikes.

Last year's drought was pretty hard on the daylillies.  So I decided last fall that this year I would dig them up and put something different in.  I knew I wanted perennials, but the bed being so narrow had me stumped.  I kept changing my mind.  Then I saw what I had to have in a gardening magazine!


Echinacea 'Julia' PPAF, Butterfly Kisses Series!

Our house siding is cream colored (looks yellow!) so I thought these would be perfect.  So then I decided I couldn't put just those in.  There had to be another flower I could put in.  But the color had to coordinate with the pumpkin color of the coneflowers.

That's when I found this.  Perovskia 'Little Spire'.  A Russian Sage that only gets two feet tall!  Perfect!  So I ordered the 'Little Spire' from my favorite mail order nursery, because of course no one around here had such as thing.  Then I set about trying to find 'Julia'.  My favorite local nursery had it listed on their website.  Fantastic.  It was the first week in May so I hurried and got together my plant purchasing list and off I went.  Alas, no 'Julia'.  Their supplier was backordered.



The internet is a beautiful thing.  It took a few days, but I did find the elusive new coneflower.  And of course it was more expensive than I had planned.  But I had what I wanted.  Digging up the daylillies was a snap.  The drought had pretty much dried up the tubers, so I wouldn't have had any flowers this year anyway!

All the plants have adapted well.  I have filled in the bare spaces with pots of dahlias and a couple of little sculptures, but I have high hopes for my new garden.  And I plan to take way more pictures of it than I did of the poor daylillies!

Newbie Blogger

Never blogged before, but I wanted someplace to share my garden.  I want this to be my outlet for my triumphs, frustrations (lot's of those!) and anything else the crops up.

Because of the weird Spring here in Northern Indiana (in the shadow of the Golden Dome), my veggie garden got planted late.  Didn't get my tomatoes and assortment of peppers in the ground until June 2.  The latest ever!  As a side note, every year we collect tons of rocks, broken glass, plastic toys and the yearly marble out of this modest garden plot.  This year as I'm planting away and picking up rocks, I realize I sure am getting a nice pile of these things.  So I start put the rocks into the plastic cups the plants came out of.  At the end of the day, I just had to take a picture of my haul.  I think my garden can officially be called a.......Rock Garden!

Okay, not as funny as I thought, but clever!  Maybe not.  Anyway those are eight 16 oz. plastic cups and all those rocks came out of my garden.  (These were just the ones I bothered to pick up--tons more)

Not sure what to do with the rocks.  I  have artistically arranged prior rock collections by some of the downspouts around the house, so that's probably where they will go.

Until next time, Bach out!