Blooming Potatoes

This week the potatoes started blooming.

I'm only growing 1 pot this year. I love potatoes but I try not to eat to many, so they'll be a nice little treat when they're ready.

Painting the Garage

Part of my Spring to do list included a number of non-gardening chores.  One of which was to paint the garage.
Last summer we built a shed onto the back of the garage so I could turn the garage into a art studio.
This is what the garage looked like when we moved into the house:

Last spring I installed 2 windows and an electrician put in an electrical panel.

In the late spring J.R. and I built the shed addition.

Over the winter I insulated the garage and added plywood panels to the interior walls.

This weekend I painted the exterior of the garage to match the shed.

I really like how it turned out, one more item checked off the list!

I'm planning to add shutters and window boxes later.

Front Flower Bed Border

I had a very nice birthday yesterday: sushi for lunch with my mother and then I went into Philly for dinner at Tinto with J.R. This was the second time we've been there, the food is excellent (Tapas and awesome wine selection).

Today I worked on reshaping and creating a stone border for the front flower bed.

Last year we had some really ugly overgrown juniper bushes removed. I built the lattice that you see, there was nothing there before and I planted annuals. The stone matches a border that is along the fence by the roses.

I still need to remove the grass in the bed, but that will wait until tomorrow.
The plants that you see toward the back are Cleome or "Spider Flower" that self seeded from last years garden. They've already been thinned out twice but keep sprouting! I'm going to reduce them down to a handful of plants. They get really big and topple over by the end of the summer if I don't stake them.

And lookie here, my pansies in the flower box (grown from seed) finally decided to bloom:

May Plot Progress

I spent the day at the community garden plot. It was supposed to rain all day but I lucked out and it even got a little sunny this afternoon.

Most of my time was spend weeding. Some of the weeds and grass are easy to pull, but because the area was tilled I'm having to dig up thistle everywhere. Thistle can create multiple plants when the root is cut up. If you don't dig out all of the root you will never get rid of the thistle. I've had to pull up sections of the red mulch to weed under it. Some light gets through and causes the weeds to grow under it. I'm trying to decide if I should pull up the plastic and mulch with straw or keep it down and keep weeding underneath. 

The picture above is of the Roma row.

Here are the other tomatoes. I'm trying the Florida Weave type trellis on them instead of staking.

The first tomato is forming!

One of the red amaranth was planted here at the plot, the other was planted at the home garden. Something is eating the leaves. I think maybe slugs. I've found them all over the plot.

I had big plans to use an old wooden ladder for my beans, then I went to look for it and remembered I thew it out when I moved (grrr!). So I used some branches that fell from our oak tree over the winter to build a tee pee. To the right of it is a butternut squash plant.

I found flea beetles on my eggplant tonight. I'm going to bring a row cover over there tomorrow to cover the plants until they have flowers.

Here are the tomatillos.

The first lantern is forming on one of the ground cherry plants!

I planted the watermelon and pumpkin yesterday.

The peppers are really taking off. I'm so happy all of the plants survived.

Towards the end of the day as it was getting dark I planted some cucumber and bean seeds. I still have one 4X4" bed to plant and a trellis to put up, after that all of my planting at the plot will be done (for now anyways)!

Late May at the Morris Arboretum

Yesterday was a day to take it easy and enjoy the nice weather. I took a short drive to the Morris Arboretum to see what was growing and blooming.

I'm very lucky to have several gardens in the area that I like to go visit, enjoy the scenery and get gardening ideas.

Even the professional gardens have to deal with groundhogs. This one was protecting her baby who was not far away. 

What a beautiful day!

The Beginning of My Stay-cation

It's been a busy couple of weeks at work but as of today I'm on vacation for 10 days. It's my birthday next Thursday so I decided to take the week off to catch up on some projects and gardening.

I've been eating fresh sugar snap peas almost every night this week. I've been able to harvest about a handful at a time. Just enough to dip in some cilantro & chive yogurt dip as a snack with a glass of wine before dinner.

No pictures today, but I'm sure there will be lots of posting this week!

Well Hello Mr. Stripey, Welcome to My Garden

I have no willpower.

I planted 17 Romas, 1 Black Krim and 4 Principle Borghese tomato plants in my community garden plot last week. These were all plants that I had grown from seed. I still have 2 bush tomatoes that will go in containers or the home garden. I had no reason to buy another plant, but this variety had been calling out to me ever since I saw the heirloom plants arrive in the store.

You see, one of my Black Krim plants stem broke during transport to the community garden...so....well...it gave me an excuse to buy it! Also, because it's an heirloom I'll be able to save the seeds for future years. So you see, it's also an investment.