Raspberries

I am just about finished picking, though I may get a pint or two more in the next few days. I thought it might be interesting to keep track of my amounts from year to year. I know that I picked just over 10 quarts last year, but didn't keep track of the days. Here are this year's quantities:
7/15/09 43 berries (most of them straight into my mouth!)
7/16/09 1 cup
7/17/09 1.5 cups
7/18/09 1.5 cups
7/19/09 3 cups
7/20/09 2.5 cups
7/21/09 2 cups
7/23/09 2 quarts
7/24/09 1.5 quarts
7/26/09 1 quart
7/27/09 1 quart
7/28/09 3 cups
7/30/09 2 cups
8/1/09 2 cups
8/4/09 1.5 cups

So if my math is correct, we got just over 10.5 quarts this year. Considering all the rain we had, I think that's pretty good. (Wondering if the rain was actually good for them? Anyone experience this?)

Borage Blossoms

I planted borage all around my garden this year because I heard that it was a good companion for the tomatoes. I have four tomato plants, and about 10 borage plants. I love them. Their blossoms are true blue, which is so rare in flowers. They are edible, and supposedly taste like cucumbers. So when my Bonsai cucumbers aren't actually large enough to eat, I can eat the borage blossoms. Borage is one of the ingredients in Pimm's No. 1, too. Which should be all anyone needs to know about borage.

I think I may make some juice cocktails this week with borage garnishes. I do need to try them to see if they really do taste like cukes.

Potato Bouquet and Bonsai Garden

The potatoes are blossoming. I'm always impressed by these nightshade plants, like tomatoes and eggplant. They make the prettiest little blossoms (especially eggplant, with their tiny purple buds). I love these little potato blossoms.

This little cucumber is about an inch long. The cucumber plants are only about eight inches tall. I've decided to pretend that this is intentional. No, they aren't small because of the weather! No, of course I meant for them to be this way! I'm growing a Bonsai Garden! All of the vegetables are doll-sized. They're adorable, but come on, can I really expect to be able to eat any of these? It's kinda crazy.

Perfect Pansy

Once upon a time, I bought a potted pansy at a nursery. I enjoyed it, and then planted it in one of the front gardens. And every year since then, it has reseeded itself and blossomed. It likes my yard, and it's here to stay.

I have a good friend who comes to visit every so often, and she stays, too. She always says she has somewhere she needs to go and something she needs to do, but we chat and drink Cokes and she lingers. She tells me that she likes it here, but she doesn't need to tell me that. Just staying tells me that. I can't think of a nicer compliment.

Here's to happy plants and friends who stay.

Daylily Day

So I'm thinking maybe if I don't want to start spraying chemicals all over my stargazer lilies, I'll replace them with daylilies instead. I only have one small garden with daylilies but they have filled in over the past few years and I'm planning to separate them soon. And of course I need more of them, because there are so many different cultivars. I have this one, several yellow and several pink. I think these would look nice in the beds next to the house, which are looking pretty sad this year.

Clematis Climbing All Over

Every year this plant gets bigger. I forgot to cut it back last fall, so I ended up doing it this spring and even cut off some of the new growth. Didn't matter--it would still grow right up the side of the house if it could. I kinda want to make a bigger trellis that goes up to the roof. Wouldn't that be awesome?

Lily Land

Even with the lily beetles going to town, the Asiatic lilies have been blooming for the past few days. I am pretty sure I'll spray with something stronger next year. Last year I used Neem oil, but this year it's been raining too much to keep up with it. I pick the beetles off, and remove the eggs and any of the grubs I see, but I can't seem to get rid of all of them before they damage the plants. And it's hard to take pictures of moth-eaten plants.

Potatoes! Potatoes! Boil 'em, Mash 'em...

This is the first time I've ever tried to grow potatoes, and they are going nuts. My personal theory is that they don't have any pests yet because they're "new". I'll never be able to grow them again because next year the bugs will find them. So let's hope for a good potato year.

I started them in the raised beds, which wasn't very smart...it makes them hard to hill up. I'll have to add a lot more soil to the beds. I have 8 plants in two of the raised beds, and a short row with about 5 more plants. Then I put in a few more next to the raspberries. We'll see what happens!

Late Blight in Tomatoes

Boy am I glad I only planted tomato seedlings from Mom. Seeing a lot of late blight in tomatoes on the East Coast this year, and they're asking people to destroy plants if they see it in their gardens. I haven't noticed any...but of course, haven't spent much time out there in the rain in recent weeks.

Wordless Wednesday is Clematis

Rain, Rain, Go Away!

For weeks, it has done nothing but rain. Just about the only thing that seems to like this is the greens...lettuces are doing well, though the spinach has bolted and I've had to pull some of the mesclun because it, too, had gone to seed. The Swiss chard is also doing pretty well, though I'm hoping with a little sun it may get bigger. Too small to pick at the moment.

This is the sad state of the garden. Finally weeded today, even though it was still drizzly. Beans are tiny, flowers aren't doing much (except for the marigolds and calendula, which are fine but tiny). When I hear about folks in Virginia picking tomatoes and zucchini in their gardens, I could cry. It will be at least a month before there is anything besides greens to eat.


And the raspberries...well, I know I started picking them around July 14th last year. A lot will have to happen in this next two weeks for a bumper crop of raspberries. There are berries, but I am a little afraid that they will rot instead of ripening. Hoping for weeks of sunshine to come. This is getting old and moldy.

Weeds

After what feels like weeks of rain (and is, indeed, intermittent weeks of rain), I finally got a chance to weed today. For a whole 30 minutes before it started to rain. Again. So not much to report, except that the new beans are coming up and as soon as the leaves come out they are being eaten. I think the milky spore that we used in the fall will not soon control all of the beetles we have. It is a major problem. They are not only the Japanese beetles, either, but I think Asian beetles (that look like coffee beans). I've read that these are not susceptible to the milky spore, so I'll have to do something different if I want to eat a single green bean this summer.

Planted a few more marigolds around to help with pests, and added more zinnias to the garden. We need the sun! Please!

Iris in the Tulip Bed

Oh, this is so exciting! I have been moving plants around this spring, and I love to see things take hold and be happy!

The irises just LOVE the tulip bed. It's one of the only flowerbeds that has full sun, and they are thriving. I think I may move the rest of them down there, too.

I also moved the rose campion, and the phlox, which has had major powder mildew in previous years. I hoped that moving it away from the house would help control the mildew, but it's already getting a few spots at the bottom, so probably time for the fungicide! What joy!

Also noticed the phlox is doing well next to the peony, and the liatris that I planted several years ago has finally reappeared. Don't you love when plants do that? I didn't think they had survived. The lupine also made it through the winter in that garden. And the daylilies are getting monstrous. Probably that means it's time for another flowerbed!

Tomatoes in!

Can we believe I've finally planted my tomatoes? This is crazy. I don't think I've ever planted them this late. It's been so cold and wet, I couldn't think of putting them in. Seems like I'll have to start spraying BT (Bacillus thuringiensis) right away to keep the hornworms off. I know I had problems in late July and August last year, and by the time you notice them, it's too late. At least now I even know what the eggs look like.

Swab the Deck

This was the deck day. Finally got out the furniture and planters and tried to clean everything up. I don't think I'll have anywhere near as many flowers as I've had in previous years, but there are lots of nasturtiums! I'll have to go back to the garden store to pick up more plants to pot. I did the planter down by the mailbox, and others by the doors and on the railing. The deck is my favorite place to sit in the summer. I'll get it just right one of these years.

The Rest of the Garden

So most of the rest of the garden went in today. Beans, carrots, beets, and lots of flowers went in rows that I hand-tilled. The front garden is full now, with some seedlings coming up and even some baby lettuces to eat.

Still haven't planted the tomatoes. I didn't start any seeds this year, but Mom has dozens of plants to share, so I'll pick some up in the next week or so. I don't want as many this year, though. I've planted borage in around where the tomatoes will go because I've heard it's a good companion plant to deal with the hornworms.

Scarlet Lily Beetles

I have been trying for years to pay my kids to squish these beetles, but they are still too squeamish. If I didn't love my lilies so much, I wouldn't think they were worth the agony.

I planted my first lilies the year Bronwyn was born, and the stargazers (my favorites) always blossom around her birthday in late July. The other Asiatic lilies bloom all through July, taking turns lighting up the garden in brilliant yellows, oranges, pinks and white.

It might have been only five years ago that I first noticed these beetles. I thought they were a lovely shade of red and didn't consider them a pest. They laid their little red and orange eggs stealthily on the undersides of the lily leaves and I was none the wiser. But I surely noticed when their little grubs started eating up my lilies.

These are easily some of the grossest pests in the garden. You'll notice the leaves disappearing, and when you flip them over, what appears to be a brown bird dropping. If you scrape it off, you'll find the little grub underneath, covered in its own poop! Yucka!

Neem oil can be added to dish soap and water and sprayed on the leaves to deter the beetles and grubs, and I've found that picking and squishing the beetles by hand, then rubbing off all of the eggs that they lay, is sometimes the easiest. But throw a few rainy days into the mix and all bets are off. The end result is lilies with pockmarked and Swiss cheese leaves, not so pretty to take pictures of.

Anyone have any techniques for getting rid of these guys? I don't want to use poisons, but it's hard to watch your favorites get shredded by pests!

Forget-me-not

My great-grandmother used to recite poems that she'd memorized as a girl (this would have been the early 1900s, as she was born in 1892), and this is one I remember:

"Down in the pasture,
Carved on a rock,
Are these three words:
Forget Me Not."

Have no idea who wrote that or if I even have the words right, but I always think of it when I see these flowers. So unusual to find a truly blue flower, and when they grow in great patches as they do at my mom's house, they are striking. She was kind enough to give me another group of plants this year so I can attempt, AGAIN, to start my own shade garden of forget-me-nots. They seed themselves and then spread all over, so I'm hoping with these two years of plants going to seed under the deck steps, I should have my very own forget-me-nots going next year!

Tulip Bed

The tulip bed is gorgeous again this year, but the reds have some kind of blight. Something isn't right--the outer petals are strangely textured and discolored, very unattractive. This is the second year they've bloomed, and I was hoping to have picture-perfect blossoms a little longer than that! Of course I planted more red than anything else. I'll have to look up the variety I planted here so I can make sure NOT to order them again when I fill in the bed in the fall.

Raspberry Canes

The leaves are starting to come out on the raspberries! I've had some help putting in more permanent supports for the canes this spring. We are trying to bring some order to these wild and crazy berries that want to take over the garden. Two rows this year, maybe another next, but we're training them along the wires and I'm transplanting or pulling everything that strays out of those rows. We may not get as many berries this year, but I hope in the future we'll get more, as it's much easier to tend them when they are not clumped together as closely.

Hard to look at these and imagine that a little over two months they will be heavy with fruit. Can't wait!

Seedlings

So it might be a little early, but the snow is off the deck and that means it's time to start the seeds. I started some cosmos, marigolds, asters, zinnias, petunias, cilantro, basil, two varieties of cukes, zucchini, and musk melons. I also am trying some of the edelweiss seeds Ossian brought home from Switzerland last summer. We'll see how that goes! I'd love to have a little rock garden for them, if I can get them started successfully.

I also started some spinach, chard, and lettuces in the garden itself. It's really cold, so I'm not sure if this is too early--but I think these are cold tolerant plants, and I know that they tend to bolt when it gets hot, so hopefully they'll be okay.

Beginning

I have been an enthusiastic if not overly successful gardener for several years now, and recognized last summer that having some sort of gardening journal would be very helpful. I have taken notes on scraps of paper and notebooks which are never handy when I need them and are not in any kind of chronological order. When I'm trying to figure out when to plant certain seeds, or when I put my tomatoes in last year, the chronology really helps. And since I'm always online, an online gardening journal makes the most sense.

So here I am a year later. I'm not sure if anyone else will find these things interesting, but by way of introduction, let me say that I am gardening in Midcoast Maine, just north of Portland. We have a very short growing season here, with light frosts dragging into June sometimes and starting up again in late September. This makes gardening a real challenge, but having no green and bright colors for more than six months of the year makes me an eager gardener. You might even call me a "gaga gardener"...and these are my garden stories.