What do you Grow?? The Garden Thread

Post Reply New Topic

Lots of veggies,herbs,houseplants and tons of outdoor stuff.I really enjoy plants with fragrance and heirlooms.Rose,lilacs,and iris are some of my favorites.
Blooming right now are crocus,Pansy,daffodils,snowdrops,witch hazel, and winter honeysuckle,affectionately known as “Sweet Breath of Spring.”
I’m fixing to plant onions and other early stuff.I have some cilantro, cabbage and kale started off to go out.Need to get a trellis up for the peas.Also starting off some hardy American Lotus for the water garden.I have one yellow water lily that’s amazing.The name is Inner Light and it blooms all summer.

Watermelons are something I struggle with.Last year I had huge vines covered in blooms but they didn’t set fruit.I’ve managed to grow a few ice box sized ones in the past,but last year was a bomb.
Nothing to do but try again.
I’m planting onions, greens and other early stuff right now.Its fixing to get busy.

Our magnolia stellata started opening it’s buds today.
And the bleeding heart dicentra has its first flowers fully out
Currently on tea break having spent the last hour digging nettles out of a customers orchard: she’s got lots of white crocuses out

Also: first day this year I’ve heard the bumble bees awake and about

Nettles are good cooked.No sting and very nutritious.A few honeybees are out on the witch hazel and winter honeysuckle.Hellebores and hyacinths are looking good.
I need to transplant some triple crown blackberries to the orchard and do some tree maintenance.There is a horrible pest called an apple tree borer that gets into the base of the trunk and started borrowing.It can kill young trees ,so I need to paint the trunks,wrap the base with screen wire and also look for signs they are present.You will see frass , looks like sawdust at the entrance of the burrow.You have to run a small wire up the burrow to try and gouge the borer.Older trees seem to be resistant,maybe the denser bark.

Hurray for the bumble bees! Spring can't be far!

I went to the store last week and found this pepper for sale. It was delightfully packaged, with four perfect peppers. They were so attractive, I could not resist purchasing them. And they were so very, very sweet. Roasted they were MMMmmm good. Package said they were grown in an agricultural area near my home.

[url][/url]

This picture does not do it justice, but you get an idea of the size. Minimal seeds inside. Flesh was thin, but oh, so sweet.

Wonder what variety?I grow bullhorn peppers but they never look that nice.

They’ve had those on sale in British supermarkets for a while now (can’t remember the name though): if they’re in stock and peppers are on the list I always get them.
(Mrs K likes a sweet pepper or twelve, I don’t like dealing with all the seeds)
There are also mini/dwarf ones which are just over 2” long with pointed ends: also quite sweet and very few seeds.

Anyone ever tried growing a seed from a bought pepper?

I don't know what the variety is, but wish I did. I doubt Oakes Farms will let me know. The closest thing I could find was

SWEET PEPPER DOUBLE DELIGHT HYBRID

from Gurney's. I don't much like Gurney's but this was the closest pepper I could find.

There are few seeds in this pepper and 95% of them are right up close to the stem end and are easily removed. This was the ugliest of the four. I ate the first three before I thought to take a picture.

BTW, planted the Sea Foam rose yesterday!

And the deer have eaten down most of my chaya vine. I'll try to figure out a way to protect the vine. This time of year, the deer come in looking for food and they eat lots of things they don't usually eat. They are eating my tomato plants, which is really weird. They have also twice eaten down my culantro. Luckily it has a strong root system and is coming back up, in the protection of my porch.