OT: What Grows in Your Garden?
It looks like the temps have been gradually getting warmer up north which means gardening season has begun (or in some cases, may be in full swing). I'm an avid organic gardener and after buying my house went to work creating beds throughout the yard for roses (I have over 40 different varieties), perennials, and veggies. One thing I enjoy about gardening down here is that I actually get two tomato seasons, a spring and fall season with the everything going dormant in the heat of the summer. I am just now harvesting my spring crop!
I'm always curious to know what others are growing and maybe learn something new.
So, what grows in your garden? Ornamentals? Veggies? Medicinals 😊? Anything you would like to grow but want to try? Are there any particular challenges you face in your garden?
Bonus tip of the day: Hate digging? Lay a barrier of wet newspapers over the area where you want a bed to kill the grass. Then pile as much organic material as you can on top of it: soil, mulch, grass clippings, chopped up leaves, coffee grounds, alfalfa pellets, etc. Then just let it sit for about one year while the worms go to work. By the following year, it'll be like digging through butter.
I have mostly fruit trees. Going to have enough blueberries for the first time to make ice cream this year, in a few days. Chickasaw plums very abundant this year. Lots of citrus in various fruiting stages. I do tons of basil in pots, and am going to try basil ice cream Wednesday, too, with our new ice cream maker. And just harvested the last of the over-wintered tender garlic. No tomatoes or roselle/sorrel (my wife's favorite for punches) this year, because we are going away for the summer. (We live in N. Florida, Zone 8.) Have a fantasy of putting in terraces on the little hillside on the North side of our suburban property to do lettuces in during winter and annuals over summer; if anyone has any good plans for a cheap way and fairly good-looking way to do that, I'd be interested; it would be at the entry to the drive.
I haven't gotten around to trying any fruit/berries yet, though I plan to in the future. Blueberries would probably be a great place to start. I had to look up the Chickasaw plums. They look excellent. I need to find a place for some fruit trees where they won't throw too much shade on other parts of the garden.
Good luck with the ice cream!
I'm into making ice cream as well - never tried making basil though. Do report back on that and let us all know how it came out.
I enjoy using aromatics in ice cream - did a lavender-dark chocolate batch 2 years ago that was especially delicious. Verbena another favorite to drop some subtle lemon-y flavor in there.
What type of ice cream maker did you just pick up? I'm thinking of grabbing a new one
It's a Cuisinart that makes 1.5 gallons--pretty basic, thanks. Lavender and dark chocolate sounds great--will report back!
Try adding a little cinnamon to the basil ice cream or better yet, grown cinnamon basil. Also basil and peaches work well together.
Making ice cream is a great idea. Thanks. I'm so sick of the lousy ice cream sold everywhere, it's time to take control of the problem. Any suggestion on a good machine to get?
Great thread on gardening by the way. I've been doing a lot for many years and gotten into using mostly native plants these days.
I have a Cuisinart electric machine, around $99. You have to freeze the canister prior to making it. I think it works fine for the money. Nothing comes close to the Taylor machines at restaurants but those things are in the thousands of dollars. The recipe is going to make a big difference. I just found a book by Chicago pastry chef Dana Cree called "Hello, My Name is Ice Cream." She took the Penn State ice cream short course I mentioned in another post. I found the book on Amazon. I can tell her recipes are the real deal. Here's a link to her website.
https://www.hellomynameisicecream.com/
Many thanks for the info!
I've got an outdoor space here in Brooklyn with a northern exposure. I receive a lot more sun the last couple years because a huge 6 story tree was cut down back there. Besides grass and hostas (which flourish back there), I don't grow anything. However, with one corner of the yard receiving direct sunlight until 4-5PM, I hope to try growing some medicinal plants in the near future. Need to find some seeds though. Only negative...this year has been a battle with mulberry roots.
Weeds...
and not the good kind
I am with you man.
Go Blue!!!!
Outside of the perennials, we have lettuce, cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes in raised garden beds in one small spot in the yard that gets a reasonable amount of sunlight. Fortunately, our house was blessed with hostas and other perennials when we moved in, so we mostly have to maintain. The kids do have a spot to plant wildflower seeds so they can get in on the fun.
Instead of newspapers, we went the cardboard route the last two years. Our issue was more weeds than grass. Thanks to Amazon, we were able to accumulate a lot of boxes from our neighbors and mulched over it.
Cardboard is a great option and an even better weed/grass barrier.
We've used cardboard as a weed block on our landscaping since 2010(?) when we read a book called "lasagna gardening".. we turned a non-descript clay based patch of lawn into a lush vegetable garden over one winter with nothing more than cardboard, grass clippings, and a brick of peat moss. Will never buy a roll of landscape fabric again.
That's awesome! Ya you're literally creating a layer of compost as a base with the cardboard and grass. Just continuously feeds as it continues to break down.
We did the same thing with some new raised beds alongside the back of our house for herbs, and just sprinkled a thin layer of older compost we had ready on top. Saves so much compared to filling the entire thing with fancy store-bought dirt.
Ha! Same thing going in my backyard currently. I’m midway through building a couple raised beds (that will be placed on top of many Amazon boxes). We grow pretty standard stuff — tomatoes, beans, spring mix/mesclun (not that kind of mesclun), kale, basil, peppers. House came with a couple blueberry bushes, which was rad. And my daughter planted a pit from a peach a few years ago and the motherfucker grew into a tree! This is the first season that might produce fruit. Oh and I do have San Pedro cactus (a hallucinogen) growing, as well. You grow any medicinals lil penny?
Not yet on the medicinals! But you got me curious with the peach tree. What region of the country are you in? Please give my Michigan-based heart some hope!
We are in Madison, WI — feel your heart grow like the Grinch’s, my friend.
But we had one in our yard in DC, and the fruit never really got big, soft, or sweet. Basically non-edible unless you were a squirrel. I wouldn’t be surprised if something like that happens here.
I live in the greater Madison, WI metro area and received a bare root peach tree from a neighbor about 10 years ago. After growing nicely for 2-3 years and producing a decent amount of fruit, it died off after a particularly brutal winter. Or so I thought it had died off. I cut it back to the ground and watched it grow as quickly as a 1990's MSU o-lineman's biceps after 3 months on the juice. Last year yielded a bumper crop. I do nothing to maintain it. I've been pleasantly surprised over the years by its yield.
This gives me hope!
Working on my herbals to infuse genepy-ish liqueur at the end of the season— horehound, artemisias, anise, etc.
You going to make enough to share? 😊
It’s a short growing season at 7500’, so herbs and potted decorative plants and flowers.
Yep... I start the toms and peppers in December to be ready for this time of year.
The Wife handles the flowers.
I do the usual tomato's and peppers. The last two years a little bit of squash. I am limited by space. My biggest problem is clay/poor soil. I have hauled in compost, manure and top soil, but it is still poor.
I have three pear trees. They take very little care. I highly recommend them. Squirrels are the biggest problem with them. I highly recommend seckel pears. The pear tree magic is you do not have to spray them.
keep composting/fertilizing. you should be able to turn around the soil in 2-3 years. remember that the roots of most tomato and pepper plants aren't very deep, so you're mostly worried about the soil they touch and not much beneath that. if you're putting in top soil, then you can control it.
If the clay is not allowing water to drain try some sand.
Squirrels are the biggest problem with them.
I have a huge squirrel problem here. The neighbor feeds them... throws peanuts all over the ground for them. They've destroyed my backyard and killed a tree digging holes in the ground to burry em.
Coyotes come around now too looking for eat all the feed on the ground.
I bought one of these last year and stopped counting after catching 50 of them.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BQPGQQ/
First full summer in our new house so I just got my garden planted about 10 days ago. I've planted tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, zucchini, cucumber, broccoli, brussel sprouts, onions, a watermelon, 6 different peppers.
I've done a little gardening before but not a ton. I'm curious about how much space the watermelon plant is going to take up. I've heard they need a lot of room. We gave it about a 6x6 area. My son really wanted to do the watermelon so I told him we'd try it this year.
So far everything is coming in good. We have a couple small peppers coming in and one cherry tomato.
We also have a pretty large strawberry patch in the landscaping that has yielded about 5-10 strawberry's daily for the last week or so.
Pro tip on the watermelon-- put a screen of transparent cloth or screen door material over the top of your watermelon bed.. otherwise squirrels and rabbits will get more watermelon than you do this summer.
Moved last year from my custom built home in Saline.. biggest thing I miss is my terraced garden I had built...
Mostly maters, but each year I sprinkle in some cucumbers, zucchini, squash, and peas. I have two 4'x12' beds along my garage. This year I let my wife use one for flowers so she can make cut flower bouquets all summer long, so just maters in the other bed this year.
40' X 60' garden: lettuce, spinach, carrots, red beets, onions, cabbage, broccoli, zucchini, cucumbers, cantaloupe, butternut squash, watermelon, potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, dry/soup beans...probably missing something.
15 fruit trees: apple, peach, cherry, pear, plum and apricot.
7 laying hens and one angus calf.
lots of good food.
retired.
That's not a garden, that's a farm! And an orchard!
Envious...😊
Well, we do have 55 acres with a creek and a pond.
Two freezers with all kinds of produce-meat, fruit and vegetables.
Can about 100 quarts of food stuffs.
Not much of a grocery bill :)
My mother was raised Amish.
An advantage to living in Chicagoland is that I can drive 5 minutes to Caputo's or Valli and get really, really good produce pretty cheap. So I gave up early on growing tomatoes and peppers and went full on with flowers. Some beds are more manicured, but my favorite one is where I put in coneflower and foxglove and let them battle it out. It's spectacular. I also sometimes let weird shit that just shows up grow to see how it looks. One thing I let go turned out to be a hibiscus with flowers that size of saucers. I recently got a plant identifier app so the "wait for the surprise" stuff is history.
Gardening is a low risk hobby. If something looks like crap, you pull it and put in something else.
Chicagoan here. I dig Valli, which we have in Evanston and it's my favorite place to shop here. The wall of dried fruit, nuts, and seeds is a sight to behold. I also like Cermak Market, which is on Ridge just north of Devon, not just for great produce but they are the United Nations of foodstuffs. I've never seen such a huge selection from across the globe. Great meat, too.
I’m farther west, which is the heart of Caputo’s turf. There was a really good piece on WTTW Curious City on how the produce markets in Chicago get their stuff (they hit up wholesalers at 3 a.m. and abuse each other until they get a fair price then talk about their families). The selection at these markets is hard for someone from elsewhere to really visualize.
Another good one is Jerry's Fruit & Garden on Milwaukee. You're right, though - they're all over. I love that each one has its own ethnic focus depending on the neighborhood it's in. There's one called City Market on Devon and Kedzie, right off McCormick, that's Eastern European/Bulgarian. It has an amazing selection of Bulgarian cheeses and Russian vodka.
Heinen's, with 4 stores in the northern suburbs, have great produce departments.
If you all want to really hit the produce jackpot just take a little day-trip to Elkhart County Indiana-where I was born and raised. Lots and lots of family produce businesses with most wonderful goods at prices that can't be beat. Beech Road Blueberry Farm, west of Wakarusa is a great U-pick place. And drive on over the Shipshewana and shop E & S Produce. Treat yourself to the Essenhaus in Middlebury or the Blue Gate in Shipshee. It is a different world.
We moved in Aug 2020 to a place on a hill overlooking a creek. Because of the hills and large oak trees, there’s very little ground suitable for gardening. I had a couple of terraced areas that got a few hours of sunlight where I planted tomatoes last year. They did OK despite the woodchucks visiting often. The best flat, open area I have is where the septic drain field is, so that’s a no go. This year I took out ornamental grasses along the garage and have planted cukes and peas, fenced them off then threw in tomatoes in front of them. There’s also a bush zucchini that is supposed to work well in pots. Then I’ll start a potato tower this week. The last one I planted did well except that the indeterminate potatoes I got were actually determinate. So I ended up with lots of stem and only one layer of tomatoes. I also turned a brick flower planter into an herb garden. It currently holds oregano (a perennial) and basil (an annual). The lavender didn’t survive the winter. I’ll probably take the green onions that my wife has in the fridge and replant the bulbs when she’s done. I’ve actually had green onions last me 3 years doing this.
The thing I’m most excited about is the fruit orchard I’m trying to start. In Oct 2020, I found a grove of Paw Paws that was just ripening. That’s some of the tastiest fruit I’ve ever eaten. I started some from seed indoors last year and also direct sowed quite a number. Last year only 3 of the direct sown came up and I can’t find them this spring. So I planted another 30 or so. The ones that I started indoors are just starting to leaf out. They need another year in pots and I’ll transplant them. They’ll grow well in the semi-shady environment on the hills and down by the creek.
I potted my two 2-in-1 apple trees this year on my deck in large planters. Will probably transfer to yard in 1-2 years if they go big. I had limited success with some columnar apple trees I had in my old house-- damn deer kept tearing up the chicken wire fence I had around them and ate every single blossom / leaf / fruit bud. Damn deer.
corn is almost $8/bushel and not likely to go down any time soon. corn is the main crop this year.
hay.
fruit trees.
kids will do their traditional raised bed gardens with the usual stuff. we have had so many cold years in a row though (this year, the most) that they are gun-shy about starting it. below freezing last week. last year we had 4 straight days of snow in may and 3 days of below freezing in june that wiped out a substantial amount of the garden and lots of our fruit tree production.
and OP, if you can and are comfortable doing so, can you post some of those flower/rose beds? not up our alley but sounds dynamite.
Those unexpected cold snaps suck. I remember my parents sending me out to cover the garden with plastic sheets when I was a kid. But my favorite were the fruit trees: peaches, apples, sour cherries... Can't grow those down here unfortunately.
Good luck with the crops!
Here are a couple of before (when I bought the house in 2017)) and after (this year) pictures of the front yard. I did a pretty hard prune this year, so some roses were in bloom while others hadn't started yet.
And a closeup of one of my favorite roses:
Blue@LSU Botanical Gardens. $5 admission.
Your yard looks amazing.
ditto. when is the blue@lsu gardening podcast dropping? took a neat, plain yard and made it into a masterpiece.
blue, did you take out those 3 conifers outside the fence line, or did a hurricane do that for you?
Thanks XM and Naked Bootlegger.
No charge for admission, just enjoy the sights and scents. But I am thinking about starting a small rose sale. I began propagating them and now have more rooted cuttings than I know what to do with. I would bring them up to Michigan and give them to friends and family, but most of them wouldn't survive the Michigan winters (mainly teas, chinas, noisettes, bourbons, etc.).
XM, those were Cypress trees that I actually, and very unfortunately, had to take down. The roots got under the house and were starting to wreak havoc with my foundation and my sewer line (had to get that repaired two years ago). And yeah, watching them sway during a hurricane was pretty scary!
I was able to get some slices from them before they hauled them off, though. Going to make a table, cutting board, something else with them.
Is that a David Austin Olivia Rose?
Great eye! And so so so very close. It's a different Austin, Abraham Darby.
Unfortunately, Austins don't do well down here. The heat and humidity is just too much. But I love them and keep trying. I've grown Graham Thomas (didn't make it) and Abraham Darby (struggling). My Munstead Wood seems to be doing ok. If you haven't seen or smelled this rose, it is amazing. I have a Falstaff that I'm going to give a shot as well, but after that I think I'll probably stop with the Austins. So many other groups do well down here (teas, chinas, noisettes, bourbons) and I'm also going try some damasks now.
But I better stop here. I could bore the hell out of people talking about roses and especially Old Garden roses.
Good luck with the landscape business.
Appreciate it.
The Olivia Rose is actually a special one for my garden because my daughter that I've posted about before was named Olivia Rose. David Austin roses are absolutely outstanding. That's too bad they struggle in the heat.