2019 Garden JournalsteemCreated with Sketch.

in #gardenjournal20195 years ago

gardencover.jpg

It has been nearly a month and quite a blazer outside since the last update. There was some success, changes, and even a loss. It is interesting how much a garden reflects life and the constant need to adapt to keep letting it grow. Often times letting your winners go free without restraint while raining in and trying fix what’s not working out.

Tomato Plant

tomato.jpg

I’m really hoping what white discoloration on the leaves is from watering during the day and sun damage. Have not been around to water them at night when it is much cooler than 90 degrees. If it is something more than that it’s still early enough in the season to replace them if needed.

As of right now, there are five tomatoes of much bigger size than the single one that managed to get last year. This plant itself has more than tripled in size. With the second set of five flowers above this section coming in nicely. I always seem to get one plant that just goes hog wild and if it’s the Beefsteak Tomato I’d take that any day of the week. Most of what I eat could easily use some diced up so there won’t be any waste on my end.

Herbs And A Pepper

herbs.jpg

While I did start a bunch of herbs all in smaller clay pots I just could not get enough water on them and as a result, they suffered. Even trying to water them a couple of times a day till I just pulled one of them out and realize it was bone dry. As a result, I pulled a few of them out and put them into much bigger containers. While that does end up spacing them out more than I would have liked due to limited space. There was just no way of getting around that.

Hopefully, they will recover and I’ll get to enjoy more parsley, dill, thyme, chives, rosemary, and other stuff. Not all of them are in the photo as they are all over the place for now. Some of them I have trimmed back just a tad and added it to food whenever I was in the mood. So much better than any dried herbs you can buy. It’s kind of shocking how much flavor is lost in those preserving processes. I do have a food dehumidifier myself for that fateful day I need to go that route.

As far as this pepper a Tabasco if I recall it correctly. It has started to flower. At some point, I’m going need to find a stick or a pole to help support it. For now there not enough weight for me to worry and I rather just let it grow wild. I can always prune it down a little later. I have been neglecting to turn my potters more often so they would be growing a little straighter.

Growing From Seed

seeds.jpg

I also got a much deeper and wider seed starter than I had last year. Up to this point, everything has been bought as a plant. Last year it was just one failure after another trying to grow from seed. While I was tempted to just skip trying. I felt why not I already had some seeds and this really is not much of an investment in time or expenses to try again.

I ended up last week planting two rows of Cilantro and Bunching Onion each. If these happen to fail then I’ll just wait for the next growing season which starts in late August and goes all the way to October. There a good chance it’s already too hot. That is something I did not mess with last year trying a much later growing season. Unlike other parts of the country, we don’t get snow and maybe a couple of hard freezing warnings at best.

More Peppers

peppers.jpg

Other than the ugly pole used to prop up one of the bell peppers I’m really loving this arrangement. These Marigolds mixed in are really adding a much-needed color pop to the area I have all these in. Depending on how these two grow I might do something like this again last year at a bigger scale.

At some point, I do want to try layering different things I want to grow to save on space. With how tall these pepper plants get that might be a solution. I’m not settling in yet if I want to try carrots or potatoes. I’ve also not done any research as with my garden I just prefer to try and see what happens. If things don’t work out it’s not a big deal.

Last Years Plants

jalapeno.jpg

As far as the two plants from last year just the jalapeno is left and its stem seems to be recovering nicely into a green color. The red pepper plant sadly was not getting any better and become even more bridal and darker. Since I was not even expecting anything to survive from last year I’ve moved onto to just focusing on the jalapeno.

So far it has had a failed flowering attempt. Afterward and some pruning I did last month it seems to look much healthier. I do need to remove all the weeds again that have started to grow in the dirt. Otherwise there nothing much I can do but water it and hope it will start producing. Sometimes you just need to leave something alone and let it do its own thing.

Final Thoughts

It has been very hot, humid and very little clouds cover down here for the past month. We get a little rain here or there but that is never enough. At least once a day I have these plants to use as an excuse to go outdoors and be a little active.

Other than some replanting and whatever is going on for the tomato this year has been far less eventful in issues cropping up. I hope all your gardens are growing great! Cheers to this amazing weather.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar.

Sort:  

I'm having garden envy about now but I don't have time for a garden this summer.... which means the weather will probably be perfect for one. lol

Awww, I hope next year you will have some time and it's even better! It's crazy hot out there these days. Hoping they don't fry giving them so much water.

Your pepper plant looks about how my tomato plants looked at the end of last year...and I think I found out why, to much of a mulch garden mix attracted ants, when I emptied the pot there were what seemed like thousands of ants beneath the soil. I don't remember if I got back to you on those flowers I told you surprisingly came back this year, I did take a picture...
Photo05082016_1.jpg

They were pansies I planted around two Japaneses Willow trees I had bought, the next year the trees didn't come back so I took them back to Menards and they said they've give me a store credit because they didn't have anymore. I told them I'd rather have my money back so I could go buy them from someone who does have them. Before I dug one up and took it back I went on line and it said sometimes they get some bacterium from the soil at the nursery and they can overcome it so I planted it back in the soil, they never did come back, at least not as a tree, the one I removed sprouted new growth from out of the ground so I left the trees there for the summer, the tree branch you see broken in the picture is from the neighbors dog whose lease got rapped around it and it snapped this past winter. The girl left me an apologetic note but I told her don't sweat it I thought it was dead anyway I had just left it there to see if it would overcome whatever inflicted it. The flowers got covered by leaves as I was saying and they survived the winter. The other tree didn't come back but whatever caused it to branch into a bush is doing pretty good so I took the flowers from the dead tree and placed them around the bush this year...the bush is so beautiful, still small but beautiful Japanese bush, I will also have to take a pic of that and show you. At least I got something for my hundred and twenty bucks, though I admit it's the most expensive bush I've ever bought...lol. It's going to be gorgeous when it grows up though. I am trying a new idea this year in regards to planting tomato plants since someone just happened along with some and gave them to me, I will have to post pic's if it works out. Sometimes things don't work out one way but we find others ways of making it work, that's the wonders of life.

attracted ants

Ants are the only thing I’ve not had any issues with so I hope not. I took out a bunch of spiders that had set up in the area I was using before I started. I’m hoping they stay away.

Japanese bush

That does sound like one expensive bush! The Japanese do have some amazing plants so I would love to see it!

Here is the pictures of the bush
Photo06031941.jpg

Photo06031942.jpg

Photo06031942_1.jpg

Those are not flowers on the bush it's the actual leaf colors, when I first planted the trees I got so many compliments even from people just walking by, the trees, known as Pink Beauty Hakuro Nishiki Japanese Willow are a rather small tree, about six to ten feet and they don't branch out much deeper than that either, maybe up to twelve feet, which I liked that idea, I've never had trees right out in front of my house because I like the full sunlight for my indoor plants so these seemed like a perfect choice and I've always had a thing for Willow trees. Here is what it looked like when I bought them..
41usHY3zePL.jpg

Here's a couple pics of them in bush version I found on the internet..

a1b5700d-e13b-453e-8d7b-729758385c7d_1.32a8609c68580ab6f1611b0d8efeee07.jpeg

Tri_Color_Dappled_Willow_450_MAIN_large.jpg

I didn't clip the branches off last winter that were left, I wanted to see what would come back, some of them spouted leaves on them while others didn't, I will give them a couple more weeks to be sure the bare ones don't sprout leaves before clipping.

That is amazing. Worth every cent from the looks of it :)

Once it matures I think so too.

I will try to remember to take a picture tomorrow and post it, at first I wasn't quite sure but the foliage this year has really started showing the colors of the Japanese Willow on it.

Hello!

This post has been manually curated, resteemed
and gifted with some virtually delicious cake
from the @helpiecake curation team!

Much love to you from all of us at @helpie!
Keep up the great work!


helpiecake

Manually curated by @eonwarped.

Coin Marketplace

STEEM 0.29
TRX 0.12
JST 0.033
BTC 63464.16
ETH 3111.33
USDT 1.00
SBD 3.98