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Where are my gardening gloves – time to get my hands in some dirt

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I’ve got my work cut out for me this weekend! Yesterday evening my husband and I went to a new garden center that opened up near us – it’s called Reeves Nursery.

We’d driven past the site a few times in the last couple of weeks and when I took a look at their website I discovered that they have a “no tax” Wednesday every week … so we figured we might save some money if we went shopping for our plants last night.

It turned out that they were having a 20% off sale … so we got that instead of the “no tax” as that saved us an extra 7%. They had a great selection of plants in a variety of sizes and the prices were ok … I’d be happy if the prices were the lowest I could find, but the discount and the quality of the plants made me a happy gardener.

We ended up spending more than I thought we would. You see we have several hanging planters, window planters and 7 balcony boxes (those large low rectangular planters) to fill with annuals.

I did grow some of my own annuals this year, but not nearly as many as I need.

So … what did we end up getting?

A flat of Impatiens, 2 nice double flowering Begonia, 2 small Fuchsia, 6 dwarf Dahlia’s, 6 Gerber Daisies, a few Coleus, several Lobelia and Petunia plants, dwarf white night scent Nicotina, several Marigolds in vibrant orange and yellow and I’m sure a few other plants that I can’t think of right now.

I also picked up some early Girl tomato plants, Sweet cherry 100, English cucumbers a few types of lettuce and Swiss Chard.

The only plants I couldn’t find, but ones that I usually use in my garden or planters were annual Geraniums and Cleomes. When I found the dwarf Dahlia’s I thought I’d use them instead of the Geraniums but if I can find some Geraniums this weekend I might use both.

As for the Cleomes I did find some at Reeves but they were single plants in 4 inch pots at 2.99 each … and I need about 20 of them to border the back of my garden beds so I’ll have to find cheaper ones. Oh and I did take some seeds off the plants last year so I’ll be planting some of last years seeds in the back of the garden beds this weekend too.

Earlier in the week we’d been to another garden center. I wanted to find a replacement for one of my roses – Chicago Peace – as it didn’t seem to come back this year. With the great weather we’ve had all year I’d think it would show signs of life by now, especially considering that all the rest of my roses are 3 to 7 feet high, full of leaves and rose buds … but no luck.

So … I thought I’d replace that rose with perhaps a Weigela or another type of flowering hardy shrub since I’ve now lost two roses in the same spot in the garden. I did pick out a purple Weigela that I love, but then I found yet another Chicago Peace … so I guess the Weigela will go in another place in the garden and I’ll try the rose for the third and final time in my small oval patio garden bed.

All in all I think I picked up 75 or more plants! You know what I’m going to be doing this weekend … planting, planting, planting. I’ll also be pulling out all my seeds and get some veggies and a few other annuals started by seed.

Hows the weather in your area? Are you going to be planting this weekend too?






Happy New Year Gardeners

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Happy New Year!

I’m hoping that all of my fellow gardeners and gardener wannabees are happy and healthy as we start this new year.

I know for many of you your gardens are now dormant since it’s winter and it’s too cold for leaves on our plants let alone flowers! However I’m sure many of you are making plans for Spring.

I haven’t done this for a few years, but this year, come February or so I’m going to set up my seedling trays and start planting seeds. If I remember correctly you have to start Asters, Impatiens and a few other plants quite early in order to have big enough plants for the end of May or early June planting. Of course, the majority of plants that I’ll start indoors don’t need to be planted until March ie Tomatoes.

Luckily I have a good stock of seeds in my cool basement storage. I hope that most of them are still viable! I also collected seeds off a number of my plants this year ie Cosmo, Cleome, Liatris etc so I’ll be planting some of those in little pots and others right in the garden beds ones the soil is thawed in the Spring.

I know that growing some of my own plants will cut our costs greatly. As I said I haven’t grown my own seedlings for a few years now … instead I’ve purchased annual flowers and some veggies at a nursery in late spring or early summer … but enough of spending money on things i can grow on my own! I just have to get started early enough.

Do you grow some of your own seedlings? If so – what types of plants do you start indoors during the winter?

It’s been a lackluster gardening season – except for the tomatoes!

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It’s been a strange gardening year.

On one hand I think I did more work in the garden this year than I have in the last two or three – in other words I was feeling a bit better and was more into getting my hands dirty and my arms scratched up by the roses, but then the weather was well … blah … more like a warm spring than summer, so the plants didn’t grow as well as I’d hoped earlier in the year and that put a damper on my garden enthusiasm.

It’s a stunted garden in some ways because of the cold July we had. My Cleomes are only just now starting to grow … they’ve reached maybe 3.5 to 4 feet in height where they should be about 6 feet tall by now.

My Tomatoes are possibly my best garden crop this year. In the past few years I’ve planted my tomatoes late, and well last summer was rainy and cold too so my tomatoes never really turned red. This year I planted them early enough that they grew well in June, stagnated in July with green fruit on the vine that wasn’t really growing and then come August the tomatoes really took off (as they should!).

We’ve been eating Tomatoes since maybe the first week of August (second at the latest) and it’s been great. There’s nothing better than a fresh tasty tomato right off the vine.

I’ve been eating tomato sandwiches, adding tomatoes to our salads and other foods and pretty soon I think I might try grilling some tomatoes or well maybe sauteing them as my sisters recipe calls for putting them in a frying pan (saute garlic in oil then cut a tomato in half and cook – apparently the garlic oil just goes right up into the tomato – delicious!).

I think I’ll also have enough tomatoes that I’ll be able to freeze some for tomato sauce.

I discovered a very easy way to freeze tomatoes a few years ago. Forget dropping them in boiling water to get the skin off before freezing. Just place whole tomatoes on a baking pan and place in the freezer. Let them freeze (while not touching other tomatoes) and then place them in a freezer bag. Later on when you thaw them the skins just slip off as they thaw and once thawed you can put them in a pot and start making a nice tomato sauce from scratch.

One thing that I must do soon is take some pictures of the garden and all the plants in bloom. For some reason I haven’t taken as many pictures this year as I usually do. I could be short on pictures for Green Thumb Sundays in the winter if I don’t start snapping away now!

How is your garden doing this week? What late summer/ fall flowers are blooming?

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