Your 2017 Garden- what are you doing?

Planting time is here or just around the corner so I'm curious what everyone is doing. Expanding your garden, shrinking your garden, new plants, also I'm curious for a post season report from last year. Is anyone planting seeds they collected from last years crop?

This year I will only be planting in pots due to space but I will make it a learning experience. Currently my pots of potatoes and chard are under snow, lots of snow. If they were in the ground, I would feel more confident about survival but we will see. I plan to add herbs to the pots and make them lush plus considering adding some beans. I have been looking at the companion planting chart and gathering ideas.

I look forward to hearing about what all you are doing for your gardens.

 

This year was a total revamp...physically. Only blueberry plants went directly in the ground, while tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, lettuce....are in raised beds. Strawberries are growing well, but not producing enough to validate keeping them unless they really pick up. Just ready to put sweet potatoes in tomorrow.

So far, no vermin have attacked the raised beds and there are cages around the blueberries. The tomatoes are producing well, which goes quite nicely with the lettuce. Fresh salad is a big improvement!

Only have some basil and parsley going in the herb category, but they are growing like gang busters, too.

Additional plans are to run a water line and lay out some soaker hose to help keep things happy.

Unfortunately, no saved seeds from last years fiasco (extreme heat, dryness and armadillos). We shall see how things go this time.

ETA: By raised beds, these are not in contact with the ground...cedar boxes supported about 30 inches above ground level. An additional benefit is they allow heavy rains to drain off rather than drown the roots.

 

Potatoes about ready to dig, Both white and red, Tomatoes coming along nicely, Bell peppers have small ones coming out.
Onions doing well, Wifey has her herb garden coming along.
I'm almost ready for a summer garden of Potatoes,Tomatoes
Oh, Hablineros and chili pepionos coming along well

 

Nicely timed thread, motomom.

Sweetie and I braved the elements today (55 degrees, slight rain, nice bit of wind.....for us here in SE NM this time of year the weather is absolutely horrible! LOL) and went out seeking a few herbs to finish off my indoor, under lights garden for this year. We went out herb plant shopping. I've never had luck with French tarragon, so we got a pot of Mexican tarragon, a nice 4" start of Greek oregano and a nice thyme plant. I was wanting a rosemary plant, but there weren't any. My Aerogarden has a bumper crop of basil and parsley, a scrawny green onion or 2 and tomorrow I'll go ahead and add a few rosemary seeds.

So far, I've got a nice bunch of uber hot pepper plants going (13 small pots, 6 different varieties) and 6 little pots of heirloom tomatoes coming along. I managed to keep a Carolina Reaper pepper plant alive and thriving from last year, also which I hope will produce peppers this year. These will stay inside under lights, except for the tomatoes which will go outside, some in containers, some in the ground. The heirloom tomatoes are all indeterminates and make looonnggg stems!

The peach tree, apricot tree and plum tree are loaded. It's going to be hard to thin down to about 1/3 or 1/4 of what's there, but otherwise I'll have a bazillion teeny tiny fruits. Our fig trees didn't freeze this year and are looking pretty good. Gotta figure out a way to keep the sparrows away, though. Our blackberry canes have flowered and are starting to put on little berries. Finally, the pomegranate bush is looking good and has quite a few young poms coming along. All in all, a good start.

Lest ya'll get the wrong impression that I've got land, I do this on a nice sized corner lot in our small town and inside my "manly room" under lights. I decided several years ago that I'm too old and don't want to be out in 100+ degree weather weeding, hoeing, etc. I like to think of it as gardening smarter, not gardening lazier.

Kajun

 

It never stops raining for more than a day here.
Potatoes are in already, spinnach has been beaten up twice by out of the blue hail.

 

Wife just returned from visiting her mother so we won't have a full garden this year but she wasn't off the plane an hour before she was in the garden. LOL! She planted some new types of Raspberries yesterday and some pie cherries that she brought back and today we're planting potatoes. The strawberries, for some unknown reason, weathered this past horrid winter marvelously (don't asked me because I'm just the slave labor) but my goodness we got so many that we need a field just for them!...which the wife strongly hinting about... They are smaller than what you normally see here in the states but far sweeter and much more taste. Wife brought them from Central Asia and they are thriving. Carrots, green beans, green onions, beets (yeck!), a few cabbages... She is planting cucumbers inside the house, while I type this, and they will be moved to a Green House, which I have been directed to build, probably next month. No tomatoes this year, not until we can get a good green house up and operational where they will reside constantly as Northern Idaho just isn't too great for tomatoes.

 

ATM I'm watching it die under an increasingly thick blanket of snow.

 

That's not good to hear, ditch witch...perhaps a green house is in your future?

 

My stawberries have come back quite well this year aswell - though no actual berries yet.
They stand up quite tall in the whiskey barrel when the sun comes out - even if just briefly.
We have a few varieties on the go and i'm quite partial to the smaller alpine ones over the golfball+ sized local ones. Wish my grapes would do something...trimmed them WAY back last year and so far they're showing very little spring life.

 

Well, I had a great 3-day weekend planned, to get much accomplished.....and then, of course, life (and Mother Nature) interfered!

Been plagued with gnats this year, worse than I have EVER seen, in my yard. Of course, I could pull out the insecticide equivalent of a nuke-you-ler bomb.....but those tend to be indiscriminate, and kill off EVERYTHING....good bugs, as well as bad!

So, Friday, I was trying to deal with them, as best I could, while also protecting myself from an excess of Vitamin D (us old fair skinned redheads burn as badly, if not worse, when we get older), and had put on some new SPF 50 sunblock, that I'd picked up from my friendly neighborhood Walmart. Damn gnats must have LOVED the smell of that stuff, because it's like they were making me the love of their lives! Went back inside, and put a little bit of Repel insect repellent on, in the hopes it would at least keep them from doing the kamikaze flights up my nose, and into my eyes and ears. Seemed to work, a little bit, so I was happy....

Until about 10 minutes later, when I went to take a swig of water, and suddenly wondered where my fat lip had come from? Had I gotten into a fist fight, and already forgotten about it? I finished what I was doing, and went inside to investigate....and holy cow! My upper lip was swollen up on the right side, and I was quickly developing a swelling under my left eye!!

Now, since I had used that Repel insect repellent before, with ZERO ill effects, I figured it had to be the sunblock, or something in there mixed with something in the insect repellent. Guess what got returned to the store, this morning? Spent a couple bucks more, and picked up some Banana Boat SPF 50, which I have never had any issues with, and thanked my lucky stars that I had only suffered a "minor" reaction.

Yesterday was rainy half the day, but I used the time to do some inside things, and jumped outside to do a few things after the rain quit (which lasted a lot longer than the weather guessers predicted), and today....well, today, it seems that all of west Texas wants to blow over to east Texas! Ended up on the roof, doing a quickie repair job (shingles lifting off, without permission, dammit!), and just too crazy outside to do anything else. Can't transplant anything, for fear the wind would snap the stem right off, in my hands. And tomorrow, it seems, I'll be trimming back some trees around the house, that I'd been putting off doing (yeah...dumb!).

But I did get some transplanting done on Friday (before I turned into Balloon Boy), and planted some pumpkin seeds in my first box, as it seems the onion seeds I'd put down were probably too old to be viable any longer. The other box will have tomatoes, peppers, carrots and cukes, once I finally get around to getting everything going. And if this damn wind ever stops!

Oh, and I did pick up a "no see um" hat net today, at Wally World, while I was there. Might still have the occasional gnat find his way inside, and might sweat a little more wearing it.....but should be able to retain my sanity a little bit better. Or, at least, what's left of it!

 

I put out 25 tomato plants in February and some cucumbers and peppers. Already harvesting. Have black eyed peas, purple hull crowder peas and butter beans. Of course, green onions and herbs, a bit of clery, a few cabbages. I also have a small aquaponics bed that is growing squashes and melons. Plum trees are bearing, blackberrys, and blue berries too.

 

Already learning regarding growing in pots. I wanted a crop in plain site but also stuff I could eat in case of emergency. I was speaking with an old farmer, explaining what I was doing and he said, "why are you growing potatoes? You can't eat the tops". He went on to explain had I chose to grow beets, I could eat the greens and beets. Same with onions. Makes sense. I can snip the beet greens and it will not hurt the beet below as long as I do not butcher all the greens off.

 

Except...beets is nasty nasty nasty foul rank disgusting nasty yuck. So, like for me, that's why?

 

A major part of my gardening has turned into growing fruit and berries. I put in a few carrot seed, they're up, a few onions, up and eating some green, potatoes are up, hilled once, soon need it again, apples, pears, peaches, cherries, blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries all set on this year. Frost hasn't gotten to them, keeping our fingers crossed. Wife has some peas, corn and other stuff, like yuck beets up. Spinach and beans don't look so good that she put in, not sure what else is out there, wife leaves it up to me to guess when it comes up, what she plants. Whatever she plants, I usually do my part of trying to keep the weeds from taking over.

Honeybees swarmed on me, I caught the swarm, hived 'em, looked in on them today, they seem to be working the frames, so assume the queen is good. Need to pull some honey off the other hive, put on another super.

 

I agree...except if they are pickled...then that's a totally different story!

 

You still have a garden after today's weather?

 

That's why I went with raised beds...no problems at all!

 

Harvard Beets yum Beets are a great food, like anything else its all in how you prepare it

 

My garden is facing North so I only get about 3-5 hours of good sunlight a day tops. I am growing Snow Peas, tons of salad, carrots, bush beans, green onions, and leeks. Any suggestions for good partial-shade plants? I am using above-ground planters and pots because my strata won't let me dig