Gardening and Lawn Maintenance

[bill_g]

Unknown no 1 Aug 28 2021.jpg

Am I the only one doing any gardening this year?

This is a Miniature Ball dahlia, 'Fifi'.

You are not.
Love the symmetry of that bloom.
My garden is on auto-pilot right now. Very low maintenance except to pick vegetables.
I let the lawn go dormant. So, it's all well groomed golden brown for the time being. It will bounce back in October.
Soon the flower beds will need to be knocked down and made ready for winter.
The ivy will need a haircut.
The green beans are producing their third crop.
The cucumbers and tomatoes coincided brilliantly this year so we could have cukes and maters together in the same bowl at meal time. Kinda unusual, but much appreciated.
I have new parsley oregano coming up everywhere. Gotta pick winners and losers soon.
The mole raised hell in the tater bed. Time to corral the taters with their own buried fence.

[bill_g]

I forgot to mention the BSF (black soldier flies)(aka The Babies) are in full bloom right now. They devour anything and everything that goes in the compost pile. Perfect for clearing out the freezer of all things that have been forgotten. Nothing will last long enough to attract vermin.

[MsDaisy]

Inside the pool fence is about the only place we can grow flowers...

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Outside the pool fence most of what you grow gets eaten

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We did have a few daylilies bloom along the driveway this year because we sprayed them a mix of Daves Insanity hot sauce and hot chilly powder. But they use to line the entire driveway until the deer decided they were some kind of special treat!

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[Uninformed]

Never seen a Purple Passion flower before (Googled it). Almost surrealist, More Dali than Dahlia

[RTH10260]

Did someone call ?

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

So, Ms. Daisy, it looks like you have plenty of room for a Fogbow campout!

[Foggy]

I've been to MsDaisy's house. It's awesome. I keep meaning to stop by again on one of my trips to see my dad, but I haven't gotten my act together yet.

[Phoenix520]

How far is Daisy from Maybelot? Mebbe we cAn have a field trip from the meetup?

[MsDaisy]

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[RVInit]

Fifi is a cutie!

Gardening is out for now. I’m currently supervising the murder of the ice plant on the front slopes in preparation for ripping it out and planting citrus trees and some natives. With a river rock swale.

We’re going to be in drought for some time. The last couple of years are the hottest I can remember in at least 20 years. From June thru now our daily high has rarely been under 90. Last year, seriously, we only had 5 inches of rain. Our annual average is something like 12. We’ve let the lawns die. Most of what I’ll be doing for the next two years is hardscaping, not gardening.

Native is definitely the way to go. One of the first things I do when I move to a new house is rip out anything non-native and replace it with native. I once had a neighbor call me over the fence and ask me if I ever wondered why she and her husband sit outside on their porch every morning and afternoon. I was hesitant to respond because I had no idea what she was about to unleash. Then she told me they sit out on their back porch so they enjoy watching all the wildlife - mainly birds and butterflies - that use my garden as food and nesting grounds. She said she never knew a backyard in a city could attract that much wildlife, especially all the butterflies.

Don't get discouraged, many groundcoverings flower, attract pollinators, look lovely, and do well on little water (once established). I'm sure that must be true in many states other than Florida. I'm probably not telling you anything you don't already know, but sometimes it's good to be reminded. Especially in these times, it can be so easy to get down about what is happening with climate change and other things.

[bill_g]

We had a good year for the Roma (San Marzanno var) tomatoes. We put up eight quart jars of marinara, another dozen frozen pint jars of sauced tomatoes, and an equal number of frozen pints of diced. And I'm still giving away a couple pounds each week to neighbors.

I musta finally figured out how to grow cucumbers because for the first time in 20 years we have cucumbers AND salad tomatoes at the same time. Usually the cukes are done just as the maters are ripening. It's been a good year for Greek salads here. If you noticed a bump in prices of Feta cheese futures, it was us. Sorry.

The Siletz toms were early ripening with sizes ranging from small (2 inches) to large (4 inches). The Genovese toms are finally ripening, and they are huge. The heaviest so far has been 17oz, and the average has been 10oz. These have been great gifts to hand out with spectacular flavor.

It's been a banner year for the green beans too. I've gotten four full pickings off two six foot rows yielding about three pounds each time. We've canned a dozen quarts, eaten scads, given away scads, and they keep coming on. The trick is to pick them clean every three weeks or so. Then water well. That forces them to produce more blooms, and a couple weeks later they are ready to pick again. So, about 50 days from germination to the first picking, and once the plants are mature, you get multiple pickings if you can force new growth.

[MsDaisy]

I found this little weed, or whatever it is growing in one of the gardens and thought I try to find out what it was before I threw it out, but I can find nothing that resembles this little thing anywhere. Anyone have any ideas?

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[Estiveo]

Some kind of conifer. What sort of fir/pine trees ya got near by?

[Azastan]

Some kind of conifer. What sort of fir/pine trees ya got near by?

Yes, it's a monocot, and definitely something in the fir/pine/spruce/conifer spectrum.

[bill_g]

Agreed. Appears to be a conifer. Give it time. Exact species to be revealed as it matures. If it's a wild start, you may be able to figure it out by looking around.

[Azastan]

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Dazzling Magic. This was supposed to be Mary's Jomanda, but this is what I got instead. I wouldn't have minded the mislabel so much except that I'd bought a tuber of Dazzling Magic for this year. Oh well, it's pretty!

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

BEAUTIFUL DAHLIA!!!!!!!

[Phoenix520]

Now that’s a dahlia!
Beauty. I’d take two of that one.

[MsDaisy]

Agreed. Appears to be a conifer. Give it time. Exact species to be revealed as it matures. If it's a wild start, you may be able to figure it out by looking around.

We have more cedar trees around here than we do pine but we're on a 30 acre patch in the middle of thousands of wooded acres. I found this little guy growing between the house and the pool and in that vicinity there's a a mighty old hackberry, a catalpa, a tulip, a cedar and a pine tree. I'm very curious about it because I don't remember ever seeing anything like it. It may not even be a tree, who knows? But I am going to take care of it and let it grow and see what it becomes. It very well could just be some kind of weed, we certianly have lots of those around here. But if it is a tree I'm going to find a nice place for it to live when it gets big enough.

We have this wild peach tree growing just inside the edge of the woods on the other side of the house, in the spring it's covered with the most beautiful pink blossoms. It doesn't produce any eatable fruit but for years I scouted around out there in the spring digging up babies but every single one died. Finally last year I got one to grow and this spring put it out front and it's taken off like a rocket! Maybe next spring it will even bloom!

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[AndyinPA]

That dahlia is gorgeous!

[humblescribe]

Some kind of conifer. What sort of fir/pine trees ya got near by?

Yes, it's a monocot, and definitely something in the fir/pine/spruce/conifer spectrum.

Conifers are gymnosperms, Greek for naked seed. The seeds are exposed. They are not monocots.

Angiosperms, or "flowering plants" contain their seeds in mature fruits, whether fleshy like an apple or desiccated like a kernel of wheat. Angiosperms are further divided into whether the seeds contain one seed leaf (monocotyledon) or two (dicotyledon).

As I type this, my onion seeds (monocots) and broccoli seeds (dicots) have sprouted and are growing beneath my grow light for planting at the end of October.

But the picture resembles some sort of coniferous sprout. My botany education was too long ago to remember whether the seed leaves from gymnosperms are correctly called cotyledons or not.

Finally, the vascular systems among dicots, monocots, and gymnosperms are vastly different. Dicots can branch out as there are nodes at every leaf position. Monocots generally do not have branching above ground; any nodes are beneath the soil surface if there are nodes at all. (Compare your beautiful dahlia tubers to your beautiful daffodil bulbs. Tubers tend to be modified stems while bulbs like daffodils and onions are modified leaves.)

[Azastan]

Some kind of conifer. What sort of fir/pine trees ya got near by?

Yes, it's a monocot, and definitely something in the fir/pine/spruce/conifer spectrum.

Conifers are gymnosperms, Greek for naked seed. The seeds are exposed. They are not monocots.

Yeah, sorry about that. I'd been looking at Lilium seeds just before that .

That mistake calls for more dahlias.

'Jennifers Wedding left 'Brittany Rey' right Sept 22 2021.jpg (114.7 KiB) Viewed 1626 times

Bit of a complicated story here. The flower on the left was sent to me as 'Jennifer's Wedding' (it's not Jennifer's Wedding). The flower on the right was sent to me as 'Brittany Rey' (which it's not).

I believe the flower on the left IS actually Brittany Rey, but haven't the foggiest as to the identity of the flower on the right.

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And this is an older flower of the flower on the right, which was sent to me as 'Brittany Rey', but it's not Brittany Rey!

[AndyinPA]

Whatever their names, the colors are all beautiful.

[MsDaisy]

Whatever their names, the colors are all beautiful.

They are that!

[Patagoniagirl]

I had a pitiful harvest of tomatillo this year. That made me a bit sad because I had wanted to make tomatillo salsa. But now, end of season, I have a bushel of nice green tomatoes and found some recipes for green tomato salsa. Anyone done that?