Garden Chat

I was about to ask if that was an affordable option - depending on age, health conditions, $ available the answer might be “no”.

Plant tax:

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Hubby is anti-life insurance, and he’s 69 with cholesterol issues. I think he would say we can’t afford life insurance.

Other options are adding a shower to the basement bath, so I could take in a boarder.

Or adding a garden suite for an AirBnB or rental of some sort.

Reducing costs by doing a number of things, including solar, growing our own vegetables and fruits, etc.

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I assumed that there was a reason!

I love the idea of gardening and mini-farming to help meet or exceed my basic needs. In practice I’ve never managed to grow enough to cover what I invest in the garden each year!

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Pumpkins have sprouted! I’m so thrilled. Bed also includes basil and two flowers.

I wasn’t sure what would germinate, so I’ll have to thin them soon. Pumpkins!! The up-to-200 lbers are in the middle.

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I am thrilled about Pumpkin Watch 2022!! Popcorn is ready

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Mine sprouted recently too! I’m hoping to actually water enough to get actual pumpkins this year. My goal is to make a pumpkin pie out of home grown pumpkins.

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No pumpkins here! Yet… :joy:. We’re in prime pumpkin growing territory, but our soil is so bad the only thing I dared plant in that line were cucumbers in 18” deep raised beds! Maybe next year. Hubby is already thinking about a raised bed full of strawberries. Another with squashes of various types might be interesting.

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So some of you many know that I love houseplants and do pretty well with keeping them alive. But I’m not a gardener and don’t have much experience with outdoor plants. But I have this house and yard now, and love plants, so… here I go?


A couple weeks ago, I pulled the weeds out of these pots that came with the house and put in flowers and moved them to next my front door. And they promptly died. :sob: But I will try again. My plan is to put in these begonias I got today. The tags say partial sun and I would say they get partial sun there by my door, at least in the afternoons. Any tips?

And I bought all these foxgloves. They were all 50% off except two I got for free because their big stalks are broken. Those are the ones leaning over on their neighbors for support. Obviously, I haven’t planted anything yet, but this is my plan. I should… dig holes in the soil and stick them in? Should I do something to the soil? I’m a novice who needed pretty flowers today so my plan was impulsive at best.

And then because my husband likes purple, I bought these purple sage plants and my plan is to plant them in those pots. And hope they don’t die like my flowers by the door did.

tldr: I don’t know what I’m doing and now I have all these pretty flowers and I’m open to advice. I live in the pacific northwest and summer hasn’t bothered to arrive yet.

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tell us more about the soil. Is it hard, clay, sandy, moist, muddy?

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Hmmm. Well, it started raining again right after I took these pictures so I’d say muddy. :laughing: I guess I need to investigate if it’s any of those other things.

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Foxgloves are pretty tough. The flowers on the ones you just bought won’t last much longer (they drop off from bottom to top, similar to the blooming pattern) but if you leave the stalks they will self-seed in the same area and if those plants get started this year you will get blooms from them next year. You can also scatter the seed anywhere you might like to get them popping up. I have a few reliable patches in my yard, and always spread the seed around a bit and enjoy seeing where they pop up.

:Purple sage is super easy/not fussy! All the sages do fine in less than optimal soil. Also easy to propagate from cuttings. I’m enjoying watching the succession of blooms – my standard sage bloomed first (and the bees went NUTS for it), now the variegated sage is starting to bloom, and I’m guessing purple will be next.

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My broccoli has started to broccol and my peas have tiny pea pods!

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Yay broccoling!

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Yesterday I transplanted my hostas because where I put them was far too sunny for their desires and they were getting scorched. In their place (and in the place of some random flower that looked good for a week and then died) I put Zinnias, Marigold, Sweet Alyssum, and Calendula.



I think I killed my rhubarb trying to move it and I’m kinda bummed about it.

I’ve also been going ham on propagating plants to give away on Buy Nothing.



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Went to Lowe’s to just “check out the clearance rack. Maybe get one plant.”

#lieswetellourselves

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Yep, that looks familiar.

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Why do I have one white jalapeño?

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Good gravy, something is FINALLY GOING RIGHT

This is 36 hours after reassembling the pile (AGAIN) with new grass clippings. I think I have come to the conclusion that there are just too many browns just in my lawn (leaves, pine needles) to add much additional browns this early in the season (though, like, it doesn’t feel very early!!), and maybe ever? In a way it’s good, because I have more pines than deciduous trees, and I like mulch the deciduous leaves in place around the base of those trees as would naturally occur in the forest, so I don’t have a huge stock of dried leaves until fall, and even then not even that much.

I do worry that with so much grass clippings I had to add that I’m going to get bad matting in the pile if I wait until day 4 to do the first turn. So, not sure what I am going to do.

Ps my original pile (which is still partially in place) is growing volunteer tomatoes. :joy:

In future, I might just make cold piles to leave for a year, and be careful to try not to include seed heads, because this is more energy than I can really manage…

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Shower for day to day, Centre for settling in the roots of transplanted plants and Jet gets an occasional showing when something needs to be washed.

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