Great weekend for gardening
What a great weekend for gardening! A beautiful day Friday for plant shopping, a little rain on Saturday to make weeding easy, and a gorgeous Sunday for planting. Plus the annual plant sale held by the Virginia Tech Horticultural Club. What more can a gardener ask for?
Our garden is getting an addition of 6 new raised beds, built by my husband – thank you honey!
There’s six of them, all about 3-1/2′ x 6′. Lots of additional planting space to fill!
We installed the irrigation yesterday and added compost, so they are ready to plant. They’re located where our pumpkin patch used to be, so one, at least, will still be filled with pumpkins. The vines will be able to snake out of the box and through our adjacent asparagus patch.
I hit Crow’s Nest in Blacksburg Friday and picked up some annuals. Everything looks so beautiful, it’s always hard to keep purchases to some reasonable level, but I rationalize what I buy by telling myself I’m supporting a local business.
I can’t go there without at least one impulse purchase and this time it was an osteospermum called Melon Symphony. Pale peach flowers with a purple center. I’m thinking we may need more of those….
I also bought a great chocolate mint, a pineapple mint and a citron scented thyme. Herbs have become my favorite plants for adding to the pots around our patio, because they provide great insect control. Although they smell wonderful to me, apparently they don’t smell so wonderful to the bugs!
April 30, 2012 - 11:41 AM
I just came over from Kevin’s column…the paper needs to promote you! No mention in the blog list or the latest entries list…
Looking forward to reading and commenting here!
So glad to see that the Roanoke Times has now added a Gardening Blog. I know that some of us weather bloggers will be commenting. This will free up some of Kevin’s space for just weather comments.
My husband and I are organic farmers and try to grow our own food for our family. If we have any extra we share and sell with the community. We try to be “loco-vores” with most of our food.
The joke around our house is the one my husband pulled on me last year. He got me all excited last year when I asked him what he wanted for supper. He said he wanted to eat out. I started getting excited and thinking of all of the good restaurants that I wanted to visit. Then he told me he wanted to eat out – out of the garden! Now when he says he wants to eat out – I ask him where before I get excited.
Thanks. Looking forward to it!!!!
I didn’t realize that having Herbs around would help with bug problems. What about mosquitoes? What herb would work best for that?
My mint and thyme are great for repelling mosquitos. The citron thyme is a lot like citronella would be. Anything with a strong scent will help.
One of my other favorites is lavender. I learned this trick several years ago and now keep lavender handy to my vegetable garden. Rub your hands on a lavender plant, then rub them over your arms and other exposed areas. Makes for great personal insect control and smells way better than spraying bug repellent.
Oh what a wonderful idea with lavender! I love lavender and my children have such contact allergies that it is hard to find something to use on them and keep them from breaking out too. I’ll have to give the lavender a try.
I haven’t tried raising herbs before, but will give it a try if I can keep the mosquitoes at bay!
Hi Nurse in VA,
If you’d like more info on growing herbs, I wrote a column on herbs recently. You can read it at http://www.roanoke.com/extra/wb/305373. Give them a try. Most are very easy to grow.
We have successfully grown herbs in containers on our deck, it works pretty well. I’ve got to transplant some sage to a new location in the yard, because our St. John’s Wort has taken over where we had them both planted. We’ve also got a nice raised bed for vegetables, and I’m hoping to do some finish-up work on it today to get it ready for planting this week…several of our seedlings are big enough to get in the ground now…and it doesn’t appear likely for a frost or freeze going forward…hopefully!
You can see where your posters are coming from right now. Probably because they asked for this blog from over on KM’s board. 6 out of the first 8 are weather transplants.
Karen, I am also a transplant from Kevins blog. I have had some variable success with my favorite plant, pumpkins, but have not found a good solution to my biggest problem yet. Where the vines run, all the grass and weeds continue to grow and swamp the pumpkin plant. I do still have pretty good success, but I think this is contributing to the mold problem I frequently have with them. Short of plowing my entire yard and putting down weed barrier, I am not sure what else to do. One year I did do better with making sure the vines were far enough apart to get the mower between them, but still had to be quite careful around the plants. Last year I planted the miniature variety, and they did well but I had to search for the pumpkins in all the grass. This year I will plant them along a fence and let them run up the fence. That won’t work with the jack-o-lantern variety. Thanks for the blog.
My trellis has netting on it rated to hold 60 pounds of weight. I’ve grown small pie pumpkins up it with no problem, along with a lot of other stuff. You probably could grow your pumpkins up a very sturdy fence, but you might have to remove some and only grow a couple to keep the weight down. I have mine in my vegetable garden and let the vines roam through my asparagus patch.
If you keep them in your grass and want to combat the mold, try placing the pumpkin on several layers of newspaper. That should help.
Another dumb question, how do I find this blog if not navigating from Kevins link?
The direct link is http://blogs.roanoke.com/downtoearth/.
So good to hear about the lavender idea. I have loads of lavender but have been using it to make little sachets. Even made some peach lavender jam last summer. But looking forward to using the lavender for mosquito repellant.
Hey, Doppler Carol, nice to see you commenting here. You got some rain tonight …. as a fellow weather blogger described once a long time ago, “Rain good for the gah-den.” (Told with a Maine accent)
HELLO KAREN, BACK IN JULY 30,2011 YOU HAD A ARTICLE IN ROANOKE TIMES ABOUT COMPANION PLANTING.I LOVED THE IDEA AND PLAN ON STARTING IT IN 3 OF MY RAISED BEDS THIS THURSDAY OR FRIDAY.THE BEDS ARE 3X3′S(2) AND (1) 4X4.WOULD YOU PLEASE TELL ME WHERE TO PLANT WHAT. I NEED AN IDEA TO GO BY. THIS WOULD MEAN SO MUCH TO ME. I HAVE PLENTY OF VEGGIE PLANTS AND ALL KINDS OF HERBS READY. PLUS MARIGOLDS AND NASTURTIUMS.THIS IS NEW AND VERY EXCITING TO ME.PLEASE TELL ME WHERE TO PLACE THINGS IN EACH BED.I LOVE GARDENING AND EAGER TO SHOW MY FAMILY AND FRIENDS HOW THIS WORKS.
There are good and bad companions for pretty much every plant, so it depends on what you’re planting. Some of my favorite combinations are tomatoes, basil and marigolds; potatoes and bush beans; and pumpkins/squash, onions, and nasturiums. Basically, you just plant them all together in the same bed, or adjacent beds. For example, I plant my tomatoes, allowing each plant about a 2′ x 2′ space. I put a basil plant in between and plant marigolds around the perimeter. If you plant the basil that close to your other plants, you need to know that your basil won’t grow very big until the tomato plants come out, because the tomatoes will shade the basil. I plant a lot of basil for insect control, so that’s OK with me. But, if you want that basil plant to grow big, too, allow more space between the tomatoes and basil. Give the basil a square foot of it’s own to grow.
Our potatoes and bush beans grow in adjacent beds to provide pest protection for each other. Our pumpkins have previously been grown on hills, with a nasturium in the middle of the hill and onions between the pumpkin plants.
To read up more on companion planting, my favorite book is The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible by Edward C. Smith. Under each vegetable, he gives a one line note on good companions and bad companions, so it’s a very quick reference on good pairings.Sally Jean Cunningham wrote another book, Great Garden Companions, that goes into extensive detail.
You mentioned compost. Bought or homemade?
Either. We compost at home and I’d recommend it for anyone willing. Very easy, cost effective and good for the environment. I’ll be writing an article on composting in the near future.
Look forward to that. Have read everything on composting, but none is feasible or what I intend. I want to use 6″ x 6″ concrete re-inforcing wire. Comes in a 5′ x 10′ sheet[or 5' x 150' rolls]. Will make a cage 4′ x 6′ with one end being a gate type deal so I can access it to turn. Opinion???
wdbrand – I am guessing you probably have thought of using 3 wood pallets to make a bin? Ground is still not warm enough for me to plant too many things – hoping to get stuff in the garden later in the month. How is your garden?5
Yes Mam, I have, but they rot. As far as the garden, not much in and some haven’t come up that should. I pushed it before the ground warmed up and of all people, I know better. Cukes and squash seed don’t take 2 weeks to poke thru. I’ll dig them up and start again. First crop of spring onions are about gone and second crop has been in for a week. Lettuce has been dismal. Seeds started indoors are rite poor looking. Only planted them to see if the seed I saved was good. All told, you isa askin a rank beginner something that would be better to ask a good gardener.
A lot of the plants we started from seed have looked rather pitiful this year…we got them in a seed exchange with friends, so there’s a good chance they were old seeds. I’ll try again, but sow them directly in the ground this time. The zuchinni plants though, they did very well and are ready for planting…along with tomato and pepper plants we bought.
Also looking forward to the composting article. We’ve been keeping a pile of leaves, grass clippings, ash from the fireplace, and other compostable materials for a couple years, turning it from time to time…but not really making much effort with it. It has, however, yielded some reasonably good compost, but I’m interested in making it a more refined process, since we’re expanding our gardening efforts as we get more experience to make it more effective.