Autumn Garden: A Season of Review

I just finished watering my front and back yards. The front looks fine, lawn is still green and my various bushes and plants are thriving. That’s the good news.
The bad news? My back yard had a combination of hits and misses.
The hits:  Most of my roses (primarily hybrid tea) are standing strong (a few perished), [...]

Japanese Aucuba Cutting, Transplanted

After months of growing in a round water-filled bottle, the Japanese aucuba cutting that I transplanted into its own container appears to be taking to its new home.
I’d let this cutting’s roots grow a bit longer so they were actually conforming to the shape of the bottle. But I’m confident that the long, strong roots will [...]

Succulent Garden Planted!

At long last, I planted my succulent garden this weekend. All of the plants that are in this succulent garden started their lives in containers, living there for a few years. They have now outgrown their containers and rather than getting even larger containers and repotting them, I opted to plant them directly into the [...]

Slow Summer Crops This Year

It’s been a very odd year for my container garden. I finished tending to my garden chores for the day about an hour ago. Though I started planting my tomatoes, bell peppers, and jalapeno pepper early in the summer, most plants, especially the tomato plants, have been as slow as molasses to grow bigger or [...]

Green Zebra Tomato Plant, Fruiting!

Ah, I remember the day I planted the seeds for this plant just mere months ago, and now one of my Green Zebra tomato plants is fruiting. This is the first in my large collection of 5-gallon containers that will all (hopefully) produce tomatoes.  I’ve not seen this particular type of heirloom tomato in my [...]

Lantana Replaced with Wildflowers

That’s what I hope will be the result! Sadly, my lantana plants looked like they were stricken by some type of disease. To prevent potential risk for spread to surrounding plants, I removed the lantana. It’s a necessary part of routine garden maintenance.
In their place, I sprinkled wildflower seeds. I purchased a plastic bucket of seeds [...]

Tomato Seedlings in Different Stages of Development

My Black Krim tomato seedlings are plugging along nicely in their containers. Started from seed, these are the tomatoes that have been most successful in my garden in growing into seedlings, compared to other seed varieties.
In each container, I’d sprinkled multiple seeds, in hopes that at least one seedling would emerge. As shown in the photo [...]

Tomato Seedling Transplantation

I transplanted several tomato seedlings today. I had 21 5-gallon containers to begin with. Although all were sprinkled with various heirloom tomato seeds, not all of the containers had seedlings. Some had multiple seedlings in their containers, others with only one, still others with none at all.
With a trowel, I carefully removed several seedlings and transplanted [...]

Tomato Container Garden: Seedling Update

I’m happy to report on the progress of my tomato container garden started last month.  Although it took a little bit longer than expected, a healthy 10 out of 21 containers show seedlings! Just another 11 to go!
HOW TO: What I’ve been doing is watering the containers 3 times per week, on the “flat” setting [...]

My Backyard Spring Garden

Oh, this is the reason I enjoy gardening so much! This section of my backyard consists primarily of roses, but also features alstromeria (Peruvian lily), lantana, and French lavender. A bit of maintenance and patience pays off during these days!
CONSUMER ALERT UPDATE: There have been reports that alstromeria or Peruvian lily plant is poisonous if it is [...]