Any members blessed with a green thumb? Not trying to limit this thread to users with lawns either - if you grow plants indoors, post 'em too! It's been a rough spring for me and I lost a lot of plants due to flooding in the past month. I've got a few going strong though and will take some pictures tomorrow for posting. I have cayenne peppers, habanero peppers, green peppers, cherry tomatoes, eggplant, cucumbers, and crookneck squash growing right now. For the time being, here are some pictures of what my plants and seedlings looked like a few weeks ago. from left to right: mini eggplant, green bell peppers, squash, green bell peppers, and more squash
Last summer, sitting beneath my kitchen window (This was made into an Ambience for my phone, hence the looong format). As you can see, the cardboard boxes came out rather nice last year... this season they had too much rain and came up all soggy and useless
I don't have a garden. We have a patch of grass in the back, which we do nothing with. We have shrubs and trees in the front and one lantana in a pot. That's it. I would like to have a garden but I do not have much of a green thumb. Hubby refuses to buy more plants, as he says it's an unnecessary expense. I can't really argue with that, since we don't use our backyard at all.
What about buying some seed packets? They're pretty cheap and if you use the paper towel method, it's not too difficult to germinate them. Even then, if you're not too successful, usually you get about a hundred seeds per packet so there's plenty of room for starting over. I've killed... I don't know how many plants in the past two months because of my own mistakes plus the torrential rain. What is everyone else growing? I was proud of my squash and wanted to take a picture of the one I had growing in. I went to check on it last night and found a bunch of slugs devouring the damn thing. This morning it had fallen off the plant.
Be the star of the newest horror movie: Salt Shakers of Doom. Tired. Of mowing. I wish there was such a thing as an AstroTurf lawn...
Right now our yard looks like crap. We have four patches of lawn, two in the front and two in the back. We've torn them all up. The main front lawn we have seeded with a low-water breed of grass, and installed low-flow sprinkler heads. It's about 3/4 filled in. The other front lawn area is going to be river rocks and drought-tolerant plants with a drip line. As for the former lawns in the back yard we are thinking we'll re-landscape the whole thing. Maybe a rock garden, pavers, stuff like that. Right now they're both just piles of dirt.
My gardens are full of grass and weeds that are taller than me. I need to get out there and pull that garbage out, as we've got all sorts of actual flowers that would be beautiful if you could see them (some kind of orange lilies right now, and assorted roses). If it storms today, that'll soften up the ground and I can do some really good weeding. I'd love to have a veggie garden someday, maybe when the baby is old enough to "help" and learn about how plants grow. We might try herbs in pots first, see if we can keep them alive. You and my husband with the AstroTurf. And he doesn't even mow, we rent from my parents and my father takes care of it. Also, slugs love beer. They don't drink much, but once they're drunk they pretty much drown themselves. Problem solved! This is a wonderful idea and more people ought to have gardens like that. I have friends in west Texas that have completely xeriscaped their yard - looks weird next to all the neighbors with their water-sucking lawns, but gorgeous on its own merits. When we eventually buy a house, I plan on making my yard drought-friendly. (And with minimal mowing!)
About an hour to midnight on this midsimmer eve, my little yard looks good from where I am lying... (Sorry about the tacky lights, but this place is a dark an dismal place without just a bit of light.)
Hey I think those lights are neat! And I feel everyone with weed problems. This house came complete with a lawn full of Bermuda grass. It grows along a vine and takes over every area it can. I had to dig 6 inches deep to clear it all out for a garden space, and even now it's grown back in. All the flooding has done wonders for the stuff and kept me from having a chance to get rid of it. Now it's back to being hot and I'm struggling to take care of my plants let alone rip that crap up. In other news though, I've got about 7 cayenne peppers growing in, as well as 14 cherry tomatoes!!
Well, it has to be done. We've taken a lot of steps to adjust to the drought, and lawns (while a bit expensive to replace) are hard to justify. A lot of cities are helping homeowners with incentives to get rid of lawns and re-landscape. And I heard there is legislation brewing to limit lawn installation in new home construction, but I don't know where that is in the process.
This year I am most excited about my raspberry "patch," which started from five little potted plants last year. At the bottom of the first pic is rhubarb, which is usually sprawling but is thin right now because my wife has been on a rhubarb dessert kick. Not much to see in the veg garden right now. The seedlings in the foreground rows were wiped out by snails. After much snail killing, I have started over. They also got my English cucumbers, killed one and stunted the other two, hopefully they will recover. I don't want to go a summer without cucumbers. In the background are the peppers, tomatoes, tomatillos and of course the zucchini, which are thriving. Chives and some potted herbs on the left, marjoram on the right. Grapes on the fence. I ripped out much of my front lawn two years ago, hope to do the same in the back within a year or two. I like mowing, actually, but it just doesn't make sense to carry on a lawn tradition that originated in England in a desert state.
Mmm rhubarb. Only had it once while I was living in Michigan, and it was amazing. I really need to look into whether I can successfully grow it here. Btw, re: drought, it's completely messed up that California is experiencing one right now while we've been having torrential thunderstorms for the past month or two. I really wish there were a way to send the rain to the west. In Oklahoma, we've had a drought for several years, and everyone was excited when it started raining. ~2 months later and multiple historical bridges have been swept away in the water or had entire sections of them collapse. An entire park was turned into a giant pond to the point that houses bordering the park were partially under water.
^ In my experience, rhubarb is a survivor and will grow in almost any decent draining soil with mostly direct sun. When I was a kid a neighbor moved and the house was vacant for a few years. Their garden was all gone to weeds, of course, except the rhubarb. Unattended and un-irrigated, it got to be about six feet across. I moved mine a few feet last year to make room for the raspberries; it slowed down and stayed small for about a month but by the end of the summer it was as big as ever. As for rhubarb itself, people seem to love it or hate it. Also the leaves can make you very sick, so stay away from the green parts!
I'm glad I don't have a garden. Any plants in or around my house would be dead within a week. Whatever the opposite of a green thumb is, I have it. I can barely keep my damn LAWN alive, let alone any plant life.
Mr. Laser Beam, you'd be surprised where persistence can get you! These pictures are from a few days ago: My squash overtaking the tomato plant. The rain has done good for it and the weeds. Said tomato plant. It has about 14 green cherry tomatoes growing on it right now, although they're hard to see in this picture. Eggplant struggling along. Habanero is also struggling after the floods. Tomato plant that got ripped up from the soil and tossed to the side of the garden but continued to grow along the ground lol. Cucumber plants that need to either be potted up very soon or transplanted to the ground Cayenne pepper plants that are doing well. I need to take a close up of the actual peppers - I have about seven growing at the moment.