What to plant for spring 2018

That is the question my wife is asking me.  We are planning to buy a house this year and we are wanting to limit the number of planters we put in.  It needs to be in light weight containers and can take abuse when we do move them.  That means a soil mix that is mostly peat moss and then plants that like that type of soil.  It is also a good time to go through our old plastic pots and then recycle those that are starting to wear out and then buy new ones when we get a new place.  We also will be planting varieties that can grow in full light, partial light and low light as we won't know which way the yard will face.

Herbs and spices should be OK as I normally put them into smaller and portable pots.  I think geraniums will do well in most conditions and in prior years the planters on the fence line were almost 50% peat moss.  I am hoping the sedums will take the move OK as those planters are quite big and heavy.

It is early (very early), but, I started my initial grass seeding on the west side of the house.  This location is protected on three sides and open to the south.  It gets quite warm there and the grass is already green and growing so it may be safe to start seeding there.  I have been doing this for the last several years and slowly we are getting grass to grow there.  Initially it was a very sandy and rocky soil that had only weeds growing and when my potting soils were exhausted I spread it out there and raked it in.

Looking forward to the 2016 growing season

Now that Christmas is over and we have snow on the ground I am starting the process of figuring out what we want for the backyard this year. I figure on the following:

• Geraniums on the top of the fence.  Nice colour and greenery.
• Sedums in the boxes.  If they survive winter they make nice green cover and in the autumn nice pinkish coloured flowers.
• Rosemary if it survives the winter here in the house.  Right now it looks a bit stressed due to the dry air, but, I hope it survives.
• Sage, savoury, thyme, basil, oregano.  Basic spices for when I cook.  They are also easy to dry and bottle.
• Sweet peppers.  They did quite well the past season in a 2x2 box as long as they got a good watering every day.  Peat moss mixed in with the standard potting soil helped retain water.
• Snapdragons.  The wife loves the colours and they last fairly long.  This time though I will mix in peat moss as the boxes did trend to dry out as they were in the sun all day long.
• Impatiens for part of the fence line that is shaded most of the day.

Along the fence line on the ground we are looking for shade tolerant plants as they don't get much sun during the day.

For the remaining planters we may put in a tomato plant (hopefully this year they don't rot out).  I have to do research to see if Brussel sprouts, brocolli and cauliflower can be planted in 2x2 boxes.  I would like to see if this is possible as the price of fresh vegetables this year is a bit insane and growing some fresh vegetables would be nice.

The remaining boxes (about six) will be for the wife and I suspect she will want something very colorful and long blooming so she has a nice oasis in the back yard.

One last thing I want to research is a watering system.  I see Lee Valley has some items that will allow me to fill a water container and then drip irrigate my plants.  This may be a real help on the hot sunny days where we can make sure our more important planters don't dry out.

2010 was not a good year

I was not able to publish what I did this year as I was working on a project at work that took most of my time. From June until August I was working seven days a week 12-18 hours a day and that didn't leave me any free time to enjoy the garden.

This year I put in a tomato plant, but, for some reason the fruit started to rot as soon as it ripened and all I got were three tomatoes.  I eventually took out the plant.  Next year I may work with a cherry tomato plant. The other problem plant was the dill.  There was some critter that stripped each and every stalk of the leaves and seed heads.

When I get some spare time I will take a few photos of what did work (Sage and Rosemary had a great year).

Summer 2009 - The summer that wasn't

So far this year the garden has been almost a total bust. For most of the summer it has been cool and wet. The Blue Stocking Beebalm and the Alask Shasta Daisy has been a total disapointment. They grew up fairly spindly and much less overwhelming in their flowers and foliage. I don't know if this is because of the weather or their being in containers, but, we won't be planting them next year. The wild flowers Emily planted along with her carrots are quite nice. She has already had two meals from her carrots and there are enough for at least two more. This is quite suprising as the box is 30x30 cm.

The other major disappointment has been the Basil. I think the combination of the weather and the fact we planted it with the Sage meant that we only got two small harvest from it. Next year we will be planting it in its own container and change the soil mix to one based on peat moss. The rosemary, savoury and thyme are thriving in their own containers and we should get several more cuttings before the autumn frosts. The rosemary will be brought in and placed in the living room beside the south facing window. We have done this for the last several years and the plant survives and thrives there so we won't be changing that.

The sedums are almost ready to blossom and when they do I will be taking photos of what they look like this year. This will probably be the last year in the pot as they are starting to out-grow the pot and will need to be divided next spring into at least two pots.

Just a short note about the photo at the top. You can thank Emily for this one. She borrowed my camera and took this image. The only thing I had to do was resize the image. She is getting very handy with digital cameras, Linux, digicam and the GIMP.

Garden 2009

It has been a while, but, I finally now have a few minutes to talk about this years garden. During this month (May) we had to protect our plants twice because of frost. Don't spend a lot of money doing this as I found that the plastic drop sheets from the dollar store works quite well. We move all of the plants to beside the living room window, stick in a few bamboo stakes on the corners and drap the drop sheet over the plants. It worked quite well and in the morning nothing was damaged.

We are going with the same thing on the south side fence as last year. On the top we are planting red and white geraniums and along the bottom we are planting red and white impatiens. The two go together quite well. We are still working on all of the plantings for this year, but, so far we have put in Rosemary, Sage, Savoury, Basil and Oregano. Emily has planted a bit of carrots and wild flowers (from seed).

The sedum from last year came back and next spring we will need to divide the plant as it has almost out-grown the current pot. My next project is to edit the current photos of the garden and update the layout to show what is planted and where.

July Garden

The garden is now completely in and producing some really great herbs and flowers. The herbs have been cut back twice now and I had to use large mason jars to start to hold the dried herbs. The tomatoes are now almost waist high and I had to prune back the roma tomatoes once already.

The first picture shows the yard from the door to the house looking east. At the bottom of the photo is the sage followed by the sedum and the other plants. At the top of the picture in the hanging planters are carrots (right) and peppers (left). The peppers don't like being up there as we have lost three out of the four pepper plants. Carrots definately don't mind the planter.

The sage is definately liking the pot and I had to remove the rosemary and put them into their own pots. I put in only three plants and at this time they are 60 cm across and about 30cm in height.

The tomatoes have started to produce and yesterday I had two cherry tomatoes. The roma (left) self-seeded from last year and as I noted earlier our neighbors and in-laws got part of them. The plants were quite tolerant of being transplanted even at the start of July.

The basil (right) really likes the location and pot that we used this year. The soil is a mix of peat moss and light planting mix and they get watered every day. We used a 30cm pot and put it up on a rack about 1.25 metres off the ground beside the carrots (left). During the next week we will be thinning out the carrots by about 1/3 to allow the remaining plants to mature. Emily is looking forward to fresh carrots for dinner.










The geraniums and impatiens are also doing very well and by accident we picked plants that had very similar colours. They are along the south fence. The geraniums are on the top of the fence and the impatiens are underneath running along the fence where they get shade for most of the day.