How Green is Your Thumb? - A Gardener's Thread.

[Barbaraann]

Do you have a green thumb? How good are you at growing flowers? Do you have a beautiful lawn? All of these questions came into my mind, as I just walked home from the grocery store, past the local Garden Center. Pretty soon the homes in Chicago, will begin to showcase newly planted annuals in their front yards and containers. I use to plant annuals early, until I learned that it is better to wait until the helicopters stop falling off my Maple Tree in the front yard.

My yard is full of dandelions. I also have a beautiful Forsythia in full bloom. The daffodils, and some early tulips are blooming, along with some grape hyacinths, and I have the colors of yellow, red, and blue spprinkled around the backyard. Spring has sprung.

So are you a gardener? I am starting this thread as a place to talk about your garden. You can brag about yours. Ask a question, if you like, maybe a fellow MiceChatter can help you out. All things about gardening are welcome here.

Just how "Green" is your thumb?

[SCUBAbe]

I do ok....I plant a veggie gharden every spring and it does really well until about August when the temps here soar to 105++. Just about everything dies then. I ahve a HUGE artichoke plant. It will get wilty during the summer, but it always makes it through. Zuccini does well, tomatos to. Once I grew sugar snap peas during the fallw inter months. Thise were amazing. I can't eat store bought anymore. they don't taste right.

Other than the veggie garden we have fruit trees that do really well. We have a macintosh apple tree, apricot, two peach trees and two cherry trees (one bing and one black cherry). We have a necatarine tree also, but it had a mishap. It was growing crooked...really bad...so my BF pulled it up straight, but in the process I think the roots were damaged. half the tree has died off, but half is still doing well.

flowers...we mainly have bulbs that come up every year. daffs, baby daff, grape piasin(sp?) japanese iris, regualr iris. We have alot of rose bushes and wisteria...and it has one bloom this year....yeah.....

the grass does ok...the BF is in charge of that....and we have a mulitude of weeds...they are so hard to keep down. When the summer sun kills everythign else the weeds are still going strong...

[Barbaraann]

I am going to bump up this thread and see if any gardeners surface.

I mowed my grass again today, and used the weed whacker. I love the smell of new mowed grass. I am so glad that I purchased an electric lawn mower a few years back. It is a mulching mower, and it is very easy to push, and I do not have to rake.

I have some early tulips that are now blooming. I love the little Tarda variety. They are yellow and not very tall. Every year I lose one or two of my rose bushes. I also have many, what they call carpet roses, and they are growing very well.

I love Spring.

[Hakuna Makarla]

I am going to bump up this thread and see if any gardeners surface.

I mowed my grass again today, and used the weed whacker. I love the smell of new mowed grass. I am so glad that I purchased an electric lawn mower a few years back. It is a mulching mower, and it is very easy to push, and I do not have to rake.

I have some early tulips that are now blooming. I love the little Tarda variety. They are yellow and not very tall. Every year I lose one or two of my rose bushes. I also have many, what they call carpet roses, and they are growing very well.

I love Spring.

well I am not a gardener, and here where I live things can not get planted for a few months yet. But I love my flower pots, and I do have bulbs come up and my ornamental tree out front is huge and so awsome when in bloom. I love all things flowers but with the short growing season here I have to buy store bought if I want to see them sooner.
I am mowing my yard here next week, and I am so glad I bougt a gas powered self propelled lawn mower

[Radiobarry]

I have not spent very much time gardening...but at one point in my life I took a section of my backyard to grow some vegetables. And some how those tomators and snap peas and a few other things managed to spring up in spite of me!!!
I was proud. Those were the best-tasting veggies I've ever eaten.
I have tremendous respect for those with the proverbial "green thumb"...whether they be in window boxes, residential yards, or Disneyland.

--Barry

[NeverNeverland]

One thing I did nt inherit from my dad! He can spend hours in his garden! Even though it's now so tiny.

I planted tulips once and they actually bloomed! I was estatic! Of course, I only lived in that house for a year so...

Where i live now has all kinds of bushes and flowers, just love it.

But as for taking care of plants, well, I got two beautiful potted daisies (I think?) for my birthday and I put them in the window to get sun... Last night I realized they were still up there, totally dry and crunchy and bent over. I'm hoping I can repair them!!!

[baileykat]

We're working like mad people on our yard lately!!!
(Getting it ready to sale!)

I have window boxes under my two front windows. I let the kids each take one and pick out and plant their own flowers. Saldly, Bailey's box is thriving...Kat's not so much.

Bailey did all pansies with one begonia. The pansies are doing pretty well..the begonia..really well. Kat did pansies and petunias. I think her box gets less sun than his. So we're going to pick out something different tomorrow and re-plant.

I did a big whisky barrel full of Gerber Daisies and marigolds...it's really pretty. And I haven't killed them in the two weeks I've had them! I'm impressed by that!

Re-doing the backyard flower beds...I'm trying to decide what to put there. I want something that's kinda big and showy...not something that will have to bloom later. Also something that sturdy as this bed gets almost all sun during the day.

Any suggestions???

[Barbaraann]

I am partial to any type of daisy type flower. I also have a lot of Coreopsis in my yard. It is an easy plant to take care of. You don't say where you live, and I suppose different plants do differently in different parts of the country. I also have Cone Flowers. The last few years I have planted a lot of herbs. Plants like Mint, and Thyme, are sturdy. I also really love the smell of lavender. Most herbs are easy to grow, if you give them a lot of room. I also have sage. The nice thing about the herbs are they have some beautifully textured leaves. I love the grayish greenish plants. I am drawing a blank on the names at the moment. Artemesia is a very soft, low grower, that is just beautiful. I also have carpet roses, which bloom pretty much all summer.

My mom's yard is full of hostas and daylilies, and when I have time to divide them, I bring them home, and I now have them all over my property. The good thing about Hostas, and daylilies is that they require very little maintenance, once they are established. They may only bloom once, but they fill in very easily.

I have, what I guess you would call a cottage garden there is a little bit of everything out there. I just pop plants in where there's room. If it grows, great, if not well then I try something new.

[baileykat]

I hadn't thought of herbs...My grandmother used to have mint and lavender. I loved the smell!

And I'm in Kansas! Our winter is officially over..no more cold days. Thank goodness.

[Dustysage]

I was born a gardener. My grandparents were twice featured in Better Homes and Gardens for their lovely planted gardens.

While I enjoy planting flower beds, I've grown more fond of natural style gardens as I've grown older. Gardens that use plants that are native (or could have been native) to the local climate. I like to use the color wheel style of planting; IE. pick colors that either match each other or contrast each other. Blue and green are complimentary colors while blue and red are contrasting colors.

This year we are planting a Haunted Mansion inspired garden. Tall red flax in the back, red and green coleus, purple violets, purple/blue lobelia, purple petunia, red/purple fuschia. We have purchased pedestals and urns for some of the prised plants and to give the garden a bit of drama. We have thrown purple sweet alyssum seeds all over the exposed dirt, so there won't be any dead spots (so to speak).

Next week, we are going to pull up all the grass in the back yard and replace it with dycondra, a sort of low growing cloveresque type of ground cover. I'm making stepping stones. I'll post the instructions for making your own stepping stones as soon as mine are done and I know they turned out ok.

Great thread and good time of the year to start it.

[Hakuna Makarla]

I was born a gardener. My grandparents were twice featured in Better Homes and Gardens for their lovely planted gardens.

While I enjoy planting flower beds, I've grown more fond of natural style gardens as I've grown older. Gardens that use plants that are native (or could have been native) to the local climate. I like to use the color wheel style of planting; IE. pick colors that either match each other or contrast each other. Blue and green are complimentary colors while blue and red are contrasting colors.

This year we are planting a Haunted Mansion inspired garden. Tall red flax in the back, red and green coleus, purple violets, purple/blue lobelia, purple petunia, red/purple fuschia. We have purchased pedestals and urns for some of the prised plants and to give the garden a bit of drama. We have thrown purple sweet alyssum seeds all over the exposed dirt, so there won't be any dead spots (so to speak).

Next week, we are going to pull up all the grass in the back yard and replace it with dycondra, a sort of low growing cloveresque type of ground cover. I'm making stepping stones. I'll post the instructions for making your own stepping stones as soon as mine are done and I know they turned out ok.

Great thread and good time of the year to start it.

Wow sounds like a lot of work and so pretty. I would love to see a pic when you are thru. I want stepping stones to, mom has a recipe caller hypertufa, makes easy stones and even benches. I am just hoping it quits snowing here in the next month or so so I can plant something !

[Dustysage]

mom has a recipe caller hypertufa, makes easy stones and even benches.

That is more or less what I am doing. I mix quickcrete, perlite, sphagnum moss and some stones together. Then I place pretty rocks in the bottom or a pie plate or any other form. I pour the concrete mix on top and wait for it to harden (a day or two). It usually comes out quite nice.

Here is a favorite tip to make new garden items look old. Find a spot of moss and dig it up. Take the moss and mix in in a blender with some plain yogurt. Then paint the yogurt/moss mixture onto any porous surface (pots, wood, concrete, etc). If you keep it moist, moss will begin to grow on it, giving the item a weathered look.

[Barbaraann]

When we moved into our first house, all the way back in the 1970's my husband dug up a portion of the back yard, and was going to plant a vegetable garden. Well he "bit off more than he could chew", and he left the area 1/2 dug and a mess. I finished the removing of the sod, and planted my first vegetable garden. I have been gardening ever since. The most my husband ever does, is water the flowers. He kept my flowers watered last year, during our terrible drought.

We have since moved into a different house, with a smaller yard, and I don't plant vegetables anymore, not even tomatoes. I concentrate mostly on perennials, roses, herbs and pots of annuals. I have color somewhere in the yard, most of the time.

[NeverNeverland]

I live in L.A. I think the sun just fried them, as two leaves are brown and dead and the other leaves are green and OK. both flowers are all slumped over

Will you post pics of the garden as well, when it's done, Dusty? That sounds really really neat!