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Prolific garden

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How’s your garden doing?

My garden is quite prolific at the moment. I have 4 cherry tomato plants producing little red gems daily, and then there’s the cucumbers, I must have 4 that are just about ready to pick. My green beans are doing well too. Yummy fresh picked beans.

My tomato plants have still not produced any tomatoes, not even green ones. I started them late and I will never do that again. I’m pretty sure that I won’t get any tomatoes from them this year because they probably be green and just old enough to start ripening when it begins to get too cool for them.

The strawberries have continuously been pushing out crop after crop of berries, and the raspberries are producing their second round. I think I might make some pies and jams.

Almost all of the flowers are blooming. It would probably be easier to tell you what’s not blooming rather than what is. My four o clocks are finally blooming. They were slow to start up this year. I’ll have to make sure I collect some seeds from them this year so that I have fresh seeds for next year. I think the seeds I used this year were too old. I really love my white four o’clocks because they put out a scent very similar to jasmine. The garden is intoxicating when they are blooming in the evening. I’ve missed that most of this summer.

We did finally get some rain but there hasn’t been much so far. I’m hoping that we’ll get a few good showers soon.

Now tell me about your garden? What’s doing well and what’s doing poorly?






Rose of Sharon

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This is a picture of our 4 year old Rose of Sharon tree. It’s absolutely packed with flower buds this year. It has more flowers this year than it ever has. It started blooming on Wednesday or Thursday of last week, and I expect that it will continue blooming for another three or four weeks.

The Rose of Sharon shrub is a member of the Hibiscus family. You might find it listed as Shrub althaea or Hibiscus syriacus.

The shrub can be trained into tree form by careful pruning. I prune mine in early spring. Rose of sharon can reach heights of between 6 – 10 feet or more. Mine is approximately 6 feet tall right now. It’s mother tree is in my neighbors yard and that tree is at least 10 feet tall.

The flowers are two to four inches in diameter, and they can be single, double, or semi-double. Rose of Sharon tend to bloom in late summer. Mine and my neighbors have bloomed as late as the beginning of August and as early as the second week of July. I assume that the gardening zone, harshness of the past winter, seasonal care, and the summer temperatures are all factors in when exactly this lovely tree blooms. Flower colors include white, pink, red, blue and violet bicolors.

The foliage can range from light to medium green in color. Some varieties have variegated leaves.

This shrub does well in Zone 6 and higher, but gardeners in Zone 5 areas might have success if they are willing to give the tree good winter protection. This tree seems to prefer full sun, but listings state that it will also tolerate partial shade. Mine is in full sun and you can see the beautiful results in the photo above. Well draining soil is a must.

As stated above this shrub can be trained to tree form with careful pruning. It can be used in hard to plant, narrow areas, plant in hedges, as screens, or as specimen plants. Young plants will need winter protection in cool areas.

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Finally

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All of my annuals are planted!

I can’t believe that it took me so long to get it all done. I bought the majority of the plants at the beginning of May. It’s never taken me this long to get them in the ground or in their planters before. Tsk tsk.

The good news is that the majority of the plants somehow survived in their tiny little cells of earth or peat moss – whatever that stuff is that dries out so very quickly. They even managed to grow and bloom. I think they will take off now that they are in the ground or their new containers. Their roots can spread out and they’ll finally be happy for the rest of their short lives.

I even managed to divide my Cannas that I had growing in pots. Two large and over grown cannas became 5 plants.

I did buy one more plant today. It’s a Star Jasmine. Well at least I think it’s a Star Jasmine. I purchased it at Home Depot and if you are a gardener or home owner, and you’ve ever purchased plants there, you know their labels aren’t very specific as to species or even care guidelines. The tag said jasmine and it definitely is a Jasmine. It’s viney so I’m assuming that it is a star Jasmine. When it blooms I will find out.

Now my garden will be really smelly. But in a good way. Roses, two jasmine, fragrant Nicotina, and white four o’clocks that also smell a bit like jasmine. Mmmm I can’t wait for all of them to start blooming and giving off those luscious scents. Well my roses are blooming … but I’m dying to smell those jasmine and jasmine like scents. That fragrance makes it so enticing to sit in the garden in the evening and relax.

I hurt my right knee very badly on Saturday and my leg is wrapped with two tensor bandages from just above my knee to my ankle. So it was quite a feat to accomplish the task of getting about 300 plants installed into 16 plus planters and into the ground – considering I can barely walk. My husband helped … if he hadn’t the job would still be waiting and I fear the plants would soon die. We are going to have a heat wave in the next few days and the job just had to be done.

Now all I have to do for the rest of the summer is feed, water, occasionally trim and most importantly enjoy the garden.

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