under my umbrella...

It has seriously rained the last 10 days.. so today we had a FEW hours of sun inbetween storms and I ran out and took pictures. You can tell the things like like cool, wet conditions and the ones that don't. :)

here are the new dahlias.

Far shot of the potatoes, Dill, Dwarf sunflowers, Birdseed Sunflowers & Herb basket

3rd Box. Top row L to R is Peas, celery & peas again.
Middle row is Iceberg lettuce and mesclun and Bottom row is all carrots.

pots. Top is Patio pickles, lower is Marketplace & Burpless in the purple container. Rosemary and onions.middle box is exactly the same as 3rd box exept the middle square has radishes. Which are very happy!

marigolds at top. 3 tomato plants & impatiens at the bottom.

1st box. Exactly the same as the 3rd box.

Here is the celery. Didn't notice how much it grew until compairing the pictures.

Dill is recovering. Starting to get its weird little seed flower things.

Don't know if you can see it.. but there is 2 small green leaves coming from the thyme section of my herb basket.

Dwarf Sunflowers

close-up of 2 cucumbers. The leaves are a little ticked because they were in the muddy soil - they will soon be getting staked/ trellised.

Radishes and celery. Happiest vegi's ever!

oregon spring tomato
Beefstake.

and the patio tomato.

closeup of snap peas.

igloo lettuce.
carrots.

this mesclun mix is even getting different colors already.

Additions!

So I killed my cucumber plants. They were SO tiny.. I'm sure they were only a few weeks old & I should have known they weren't ready to be outside .. anywho, Their leaves got burnt and then they died. So I Bought new ones! Burpee brand ( which is my favorite brand )

This is a "pickalot hybrid" pickle type
I still have 2 little marketmore cuc's that might make it.. beside them is a sweet burpless cucumber (3x bigger one )

So I felt soo bad I wasn't growing a beefsteak... when I saw this healthy guy I just had to get him.

This is my rescue dill. I'm trying to Revive it.

and THIS IS A RADISH seedling!!! So exciting!

Wow, Long time nooooo news. Well I did ALL my gardening this weekend. This year I did part container gardening and part Square foot gardening. Big needy plants like Cucumbers & tomatoes just didn't do so well in my SFG last year so I choose to go back to "patio" gardening for them. But the lettuce, carrots & peas did so well having a raised bed.. I choose to keep them in there this year. I hope this year I will get the best of both worlds. :)


These are my "Birdseed sunflowers" that I rescued from underneath my birdfeeder.
Before

Seedlings and empy SFG.
Box #1
Top row is Snap peas, Celery (bought seedling) & snap peas again

Middle row is Igloo (iceberg) lettuce, Mesclun lettuce & igloo again.

Bottom row is all Little finger carrots.

Top pot is Marketmore cucumber.

Then onions and rosemary

All bought seedlings.

This second box is the same as the first exept The mesclun mix lettuce is replaced with radish seeds!

Top 2 pots are oregon spring tomato & patio tomato.

bottom is marketmore cucumber.

Box #3 is the exact same as #1.

Yukon gold potatoes in potato bin.

Dwarf sunflower in small green pot

MY herb pot in the front with Sage, Thyme & Lemon basil. ( may I add these are 29.99 at my local home improvement store )

Hanging baskets. & birdfeeder

potted plants in the front. Pansies & other container flowers.

Gardening season is closer...

I've tried so hard to put the whole gardening thing on the backburner because of how long it takes spring to show up in my area. WELL now it's all over the stores! seeds, plants, gardening tools etc etc

So now I just have to pay attention and plan my whole gardening LIFE.

To start off my planning. MARTHA STEWART SEEDS.

Yup, I said right. Martha stewart seeds. There isn't a huge selection like with Burpee or Jiffy/Mckenzie but they are organic..And they are Martha Stewart so. I'm in. Ps they are only available at home depot.

Thats about all I got right now. I do plan on purchasing a few things this weekend so I will do updates then.

:)

RESCUED ROSE PLANT

Well I am not sure if it is rescued yet.

I bought a cute rose plant that was in this cute pot shapped like a lady bug. The rose was in ok shape when I bought it. The pot was 1.5 inches wide and 2 deep, which I knew was way too small I waited until the weekend to transplant but within 2 days of having the plant it nearly was dead. I transplanted immediately. It still got sick looking. So I transplanted it again... and took off all dead leaves and gave it water, transplant fertilizer & a misting ( as per internet )

So we shall see... :)

Summary. Failed Garden.

Well. This year was a total bust. Between it being my very 1st year growing in the ground / sfg'ing.. and the horrible summer we had. I barely had a harvest. My garden looked like a "wild jungle" vs any form a garden. We only had a handful of sunny days and only got to +30 a few times all summer long. I harvested a small bowl full off golfball sized tomatoes, a few cuc's and some carrots that were the size of my pinky finger.

Some things I learned from this year of gardening is...

- Tomatoes take over - grow them in pots. My tomato plants were over 6 feet high, exept I couldn't stake them so the were flopped over covering EVERYTHING else.

-Carrots must be in front. Other plants will shadow them.. no matter what they are.

-1-2 lettuce per square. Not 4.

-Too many kinds of lettuce. Just grow what you will use often.

-1 cucumber plant per square. takes over. Best in a pot as it vines.

- Keep peas away from cuc's and tomatoes. Again get all caught up in eachother

- No spinach. Unless baby small bush type spinach exists.

- Don't grow things you won't use. Waste of money & time & space.

Also, I will not be growing from seed this year ( well only ground things like peas,carrots, lettuce ) Tomatoes, onions, cuc's are all such a pain to grow from seed in my house and cost so much more money.

Ie. 1 5 inch plant at beggining of june ~3$ at local supermarket/box store. Already is grown, is past delicate seedinling stage & can be revived if a little sick looking. Total cost of plant = 3$.
OR seed = 3.99$ a package. 20$ for seedling house. 10$ seedling fertilizer. 10$ for electricity for light being on 20h a day. Time and energy watching seedlings. Trying to time when to start seedlings and time they can be planted. And then they end up dying as soon as transplanted because they were too tiny.

Anyways. Thats my summary. I have no pictures because it was a total mess from july on anyways. All you can do is learn from your mistakes.

I DID LOVE rescuing things. Rescuing vegi plants and flower plants from the evil boxed stores. Will do more of that this year.

horrible weather

Everything is kind of growing. My camera isn't charged. Sorry.
The weather has been so BAD. It's been mostly cool and cloudy with storms at night. Lots of my friend and coworkers have lost ALL of their gardens to hail. I even listened to the local garden radio show and they were talking about how horrible the weather has been for gardening. Can't really explain why.

My tomatoes are insane! they re really tall, and i needed lots of sticks to keep them up.

Lettuce is taking over!! I'm looking up recipes for different types of salads and things to do with all of it ! Same goes for spinach!

Peas just started to flower and make little pods :)

Little tomatoes and cucumbers are around.

All the flowers are alive and well. All my rescues are happy.Only the ice geraniums haven't flowered yet. They needed some major rescuing, but are almost there.

My rosemary isn't a rosemary. I'm sure it's some kind of a weed. But i'm afraid to kill it. I mean it can "think" it's a real plant too. It's contained in a pot.. And I don't have the heart to kill it. So it's the happiest little weed ever.