2024 planning

My wife and myself have been having discussions on what we will be doing this year for the planters and baskets.

For the front, which is south facing we will be going with ornamental grasses, geraniums and drought tolerant plants.  It gets the sun most of the day and the house wall means it gets very hot and dries out quickly even with me watering twice a day.

In the backyard we are doing the impatiens again.  They seem to like the location and if they grow like the last three years they will be well over 50 cm in height giving us a massive corner of green and colour.  The fence between us and our neighbour will have the hanging boxes, but only ivy this time.  Geraniums in the boxes didn't do very well.  For the various hanging planters we will be a light-weight mix with lots of peat moss.  Flowers will be mostly geraniums as they last all season.  The only exception will be a small container with a few herbs.  I use a lot of herbs cooking and fresh herbs are nice.

We will probably cut back on the number of planter boxes though.  They took up a lot of room in a small yard and the wife would like a bit more room for our folding table and chairs so she can sit outside and enjoy the yard unlike last year where it was quite crowded.

One other item is that we are not planting tomatoes and sweet peppers.  Even with the mesh protection, various animals seemed to get in and enjoyed the products before we could harvest them.

Preparation for 2019 gardening season

Now is the time we start looking at what we are going to plant for the season.  My wife and myself start discussing what worked well in prior years, how the backyard was laid out and what supplies we will need for the coming year.  We also start stocking up on some of the supplies we need as the stores are now starting to put out gardening materials.

Last year was a hard one on the plants.  It was so hot that most plants struggled even with watering multiple times of the day.  The planters where we had peat moss mixed in did better as the soil could hold a bit more water than the black earth mixes.

The plantings I had hung on the wall need a mix that is much higher than peat moss and varieties that are heat and drought resistant.

The pots I stacked vertically worked well and that will be repeated.  The clay pots did the best vs the plastic pots.  My wife like them as she got a waterfall of green and colour that she could see from the living room.  She has mobility issues and it is a struggle for her to get out into the back yard so I have been going more vertical with the plantings and picking varieties that grow tall so that the living room window is a window to a wall of colour.

I found that the dollar store trellises worked very well.  I hung it sideways below the top of one fence with hooks and then hung small pots from that.  Part of the plantings died as I didn't use enough peat moss and the plants I chose were for colour only and they were not drought tolerant as the pots dried out quickly.  This year it will be a peat moss mix with plants that can handle the heat and being drier.