What do you Grow?? The Garden Thread

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‘‘Madame Isaac Pereire’‘ is a shrub rose bred by Garcon in 1881 and named after the wife of a Parisian banker"

I had a feeling that was a rose. I love roses but have never been able to grow them. I love the wild sweet smelling roses.

I grow mostly edibles and most fruits. Except also orchids. Lately I've been trying to grow more vegetables and more pollinator and bird and butterfly friendly. Actually, I probably try to grow too much as I cannot take care of it all.

Thanks for the suggestion on the squash seeds.

What kinds of flowers do you have?

Let’s see...

we have daffs, snowdrops and tulips. Various alpines around the fronts of the beds, several geums and a lungwort in the same position. The three most delicately formed geraniums we’re aware of (one has black leaves and washed out violet flowers )
Monkshood & a dark blue delphinium under an arched over bright yellow clematis.
Another clematis, a delicate evergreen one that flowers white in spring.
Three more roses: “temptress”, “desdomona” & “lady of shallot”.
One of my favourites is our bearded irises: a purple so dark that light seems to fall into them and then glow back from within...
They came from my late grandmothers garden and I don’t know the variety though!

Various other lovely specimens, but I feel I’ve written quite a list already!

Madame Isaac... is bright pink and has a crisp, clean citrusy scent: no muskiness at all.
We’re training her as a climber near the back door so that the perfume will invade the living room in season.

Yes! I fail to keep up with anything that needs regular checking for harvesting... lettuce & petits pois are repeat failures on my part. (my wife is taking control of the veg plot this year and leaving me to tend the pretties, on the grounds that it’s become blatant that’s the best division of labour)

We have a dark red scabiosa that the bees love, and thyme always attracts them in droves I’ve found. Most of my dahlias are singles for the bees sake as well.
I like sitting out on a summer evening and watching them flirting and cavorting with the flowers.

a lovely arrangement and I love delphiniums. I am partial to the sky blue delphiniums. I've never seen dark blue ones.



I love clematis, but again too hot here. We do have some native flowering vines. Key West morning glory is sky blue. Scarlet morning glory is actually bright orange (think hazard signs) and flowers all year. Both have very small blossoms.

We have a native canna lily with yellow blooms. A native or naturalized oxalis with bright pink blooms.

Do you have planting zones where you live?

What fruit/nut trees do you have?

I grow common fruiting vegetables such as beans, peas, cucumbers, peppers, eggplant, squash, etc...

I would grow leaf vegetables if I could but the pests destroy them completely around here, and I want to grow organically.

We don’t really have planting zones in the UK: it’s so small that we can make do without, occasionally you’ll hear something like “only hardy in the south and wales” but other than that we more think in terms of proximity to coast/mountains, soil type & rainfall patterns.

We have a fig tree, a morello cherry tree, a blueberry bush and a tayberry.
I work as a gardener though, so tend fruit trees for customers: mostly apples and pears (it’s cider country, so almost everyone has one of those in their gardens)

Thank you dracblau!! !

Since you grow squash, do you save the seeds to eat? If so, how do you prepare them?

I have not had much luck growing the common veggies in south Florida. Too hot and high humidity and way too many voracious pests. I am trying a new variety of pepper. One year I had a great crop of tomatillos, but have not been able to reproduce that success.

There are tropical leafy veggies that you could grow as long as you can water (I understand that is a problem in Southern California) and don't have frosts. I have seen no bugs or molds on these. It takes some getting used to, because they are different textures and favors from what North Americans are used to. They are all I grow now for leafies. You might want to try: longevity spinach, cranberry hibiscus, edible hibiscus, malabar spinach. That's just for starters.

How do you water your garden? What is your growing season?

What type of growing climate do you have? Do you get frosts and freezes? Do you have a lot of rain or humidity? Or is it dry?

I was always told you need two blueberry plants of different varieties. Do you get lots of fruit from a single plant? Do you know what variety it is? What is a tayberry? I have not been that successful with figs, but I was trying to grow them in a pot. We can't grow cherries here I miss sour cherry pie! We do have some tropical fruits that resemble cherries.

It’s cool temperate generally, temperature tend to range from -10 Celsius on a winters night to over 30 Celsius on a summers day: both of those extremes make the national news though, average range is usually between 5C - 25C. Frost and freezes are normal in winter, although snowfall is rarer: tends to average out at 18” deep when we get it.
The climate is also classed as oceanic, and we’re adjacent to the top of the Gulf Stream that loops up from the Caribbean: so we’re warmer than adjacent areas of the continent, and weather can change from pouring rain to bright sun in the space of ten minutes. It is generally wet though: not having rain for over a week is newsworthy.
And humid/damp: an Arab guy I knew at uni said he sweated more in the UK than in Dubai due to the damp weight of the air!



We’ve only the one blueberry, a bluecrop: planted last year in a big pot of ericaceous compost, fruited fairly well for a young plant... but the birds stole most of the berries
A tayberry is a hybrid of the wild blackberry and common red raspberry: looks like a blackberry with large red fruits, superior taste to either of the parent varieties (and easier to control).
Figs like it warm, dry and arid ideally: we’ve got ours in the ground against a south-facing wall in a pocket of famished silt surrounded by builders hardcore, and we hardly ever water it: it’s a triffid! Have to lop at least 5’ off the top every year!
First two fruits are on the way after four years in.
The cherry, although a self-pollinating variety is kept small in a pot (think bonsai, but ten times larger) so it doesn’t fruit much, but the white blossom in spring and the orange leaves in autumn are a delight. (Plus I grew it from a stone out of cherry I ate, so sentimental)

New York City is in Zone 7B.

I believe London is in Zone 8, and places like Jersey in Zone 9.

I haven't had a stable place to live in almost a decade, so roots dont get put down too often so to speak, a few potted Roses and herbs, that come with me if I'm fortunate enough to get somewhere with an outside space.

In a previous life, I used to grow a variety of pollinator friendly flowers and herbs, sunflowers for the birds, salad foods... at my homeplace I've redesigned the gardens though, I'm fond of flowering shrubs, I'm not there regularly, so shrubs are a good choice.
I replaced the flowers that offered no benefit to a native ecosystem, done companion planting and grew from seed or cuttings, occasionally I splurged and rescued garden centre plants that were failing to thrive...

I'm struggling with mop head hydrangeas though, cant get them to thrive, they develop spots on the leaves and also with peris forest flame, it goes discoloured, both are in the same bed.
They grow, but too slowly and flower too late in the season.
Normally I can relatively ignore those shrubs and they grow quite happily with minimal fuss.
I'm wondering if the powdery mildew the forget me nots develop when wilting each year is related to this.

You're in Zone 9, Amity! Almost as warm as Florida in that sense...

lol Kraftie, if only the hardiness zones meant Ireland was warmer... Woke up this morning to a blanket of snow, power outages, traffic mahem and school closures... If I close my eyes and concentrate I can remember what it feels like to have the sun on my face

That's pretty bad for your part of Ireland. I'll have to read up on that!

We have planted a large garden each year for the past 40 years. Over the years we have grown a variety of vegetables. I have found some items grow well and others poorly. So in my old age I tend to plant vegetables that grow well. The two main crops are cucumbers and cherry tomatoes. Most of the cucumbers are for canning as pickles but we also have crisp eating cucumbers. We grow the latter on trellises. At one time we grew luffa sponges. But they are hard on my hands to peal off the outer skins. Cherry tomatoes, the sweet yellow ones, grow well and I set out around 30 tomato stands each year. For some reason the bugs avoid them. I use these whenever I make a pot of chili, which is quite often. I like to experiment with exotic seeds. So sometimes I will order Heirloom Seeds from Baker Creek and try and grow them. I found that Japanese Shishigatani and Kogigu Squash grows well in our garden.

Shishigatani or toonas makino pumpkin is a unique Japanese pumpkin developed in the Bunka era of the Edo period (1804-1818). This is one of our rarest and most historic varieties! The fruit is uniquely shaped, like a bottle gourd, and is ribbed and very warty. It is dark green, turning to tan at full maturity. The fine-grained flesh has a delicious, nutty flavor. Traditionally believed to keep people from getting paralysis if eaten in the hottest part of summer. Shishigatani pumpkin is a famous vegetable in Kyoto cuisine. Very rare and hard to find even in its native Japan. It is perhaps one of the best squashes I have ever tasted. Here is a photograph of one we grew.



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The yellow cherry tomatoes grow well here too, and we’ve had success with edamame beans.
Pumpkins and courgettes do well
(Last years courgette grew two main stems each 4’ long and looked like enormous green antlers covered in yellow coral)
That squash looks impressive and sounds delicious.

Spending most of our time in the apartment now, so mostly herbs and I always have some Aloe Vera around. I'm looking around for some potted plants I might like. I used to have a potted orchid that only bloomed in winter, we jokingly called it the Siberian orchid.

At the house, I have a small vegetable garden and some flowers, nothing complicated. I have a few bushes of something called Nicotiana alata that blooms at night and has a wonderful smell, very similar to jasmine - it looks like this



One of my happiest memories is planting a magnolia tree in our garden when my first child was born, 16 years ago.