Garden Journal

So, I tried something new, growing broccoli rabe, and I basically threw the seeds in the soil and ignored them, occasionally watering when it was really hot and dry. I vaguely meant to go thin them at some point, but I did not actually do so. So at this point, advice? Should I thin these, […]

So, here are two beautiful peaches off our tree. Nice, right? But here’s the thing — there’s only 1 left on the tree. Last year this time, the same tree gave us about a 100 peaches. This year, 3. Oh, wait, 4 — there was one that a cheeky squirrel got. I have no idea

Slowly building out another bed — this morning was mostly pulling out some more of the weeds and watering, but with a little rearrangement too. I realized this morning that I could move my brightly-flowering tropicals (like that purple duranta) from the overcrowded bit of back deck into the bare spots in the new bed,

I’ve never been a summer gardener before — I’ve focused on the spring (especially early spring) garden, and I admit that July / August has tended to be pretty neglected in my garden, which is funny, because that’s when most gardens are flourishing. But I’m often traveling, and I don’t water enough, and everything struggles

First strawberries. I just planted a few of them straight in the ground, and they’ve spread quietly over the last few years — they end up pretty much working as a groundcover. I think if you wanted to make it easy to harvest, you’d probably want a different approach, but I just have fun, turning

Finally put together another pandemic purchase — there was a lot of comfort-buying in 2020, followed by complete lack of energy to actually do anything — a flower trellis. It’s meant to be a lotus bud, so it fits in the vaguely S. Asian decor I have spotted around the garden — I think I

So, it’s been a perpetual struggle in my garden between my theoretical desire to grow vegetables, and my very real love for flowers. The battle is primarily over sun — everywhere with full sun, I tend to give over to flowers, and then my poor tomatoes unhappily struggle in part-sun. I do get some veggies

New tool — a extensible tree pruner / saw. It’s a bit of an investment buying tools like this, but you can use them for years, and when you consider the cost of having professionals prune your trees, it’s a bargain. I wish I’d bought this one a decade ago! It’s perfect for trimming my

Little task for yesterday — try planting ranunculus bulbs. I usually buy ranunculus in the spring for my planters, and I’m not sure it really makes sense to plant bulbs this late; ranunculus fades in the heat, so it’s really only good for the cool season. But it’s SO much cheaper, I thought it was

I’ve been trying to incorporate more natives in my garden for a while, but it’s not as easy as you might think. For one, a lot of them aren’t carried by local nurseries, and even when you do find them, they’re often a) expensive, b) slow-growing, or c) both. I suppose that’s not surprising, given