Let's Talk about Gardens

You can't buy tomatoes that come close to the deliciousness of freshly picked. I don't like mayonnaise, so I use butter, and it's become hard for me to swallow bread. We had bst sandwiches for lunch today. S is for spinach. I've always planted the vegetables the first of June because I don't want to have to go but more plants. Even so, my tomatoes were frost nipped last year. I just cut the nipped ends off and it worked!

Onions are poking out of the dirt. I usually have volunteer potatoes but I haven't seen any yet. I need to turn my phone off because I just remembered that I need to harvest asparagus. I have a walk behind trimmer, and spent several hours today trimming the edges the mower can't reach, so my feet are hurting now. On the way out to the garden I'm going to take the midday morphine that I don't often take.

Jim

I love asparagus! There is a nice man who farms asparagus not far from me. You sound like quite the farmer.

My wife buys asparagus when it's in season until ours start producing. I ordered more starts to get more pickings, and to fill in the gaps where some of the plants have disappeared for some reason. I've had problems with gophers and/or moles, and I think that I had some rabbits one year who nibbled away at the snow peas.

I don't pretend to be a farmer. That was my father-in-law. I've just put in the ground whatever I see at nurseries. If I buy a plant I find a place to put it. There's always room for one more. When we bought our place, we rented it to a local vet until I retired and needed it for ourselves. The previous owner had done very little landscaping, and our renter totally ignored what was there, so I had a blank slate. The lawn was more weeds than grass and I've been trying to get rid of the worst of them for 12 years, and the work will be an ongoing battle. I seem to be better at raising a bumper crop of weeds than flowers or vegetables

Jim

Jim - Weeds get a bad rap. Some of my best-looking plants are weeds!

@jimhd and @zep They're not weeds, they are ground cover. And if they flower, they're pollinator plants. We just need to adjust,our point of view.
Sue

Sue - Yes! That's the point I was trying to get across. You said it so well. Our point of view is askew.

Dandelions are very good for detoxing the body. I've seen people pulling dandelions from the ground while I was walking and I don't think they are weeding either.

@mayofeb2020 My husband loved Dandelion He'd have 5hem wilted on mash potatoes His Dad use to make Dandelion wine

Some of the things I call weeds in my yard are wildflowers on someone else's property. Bachelor's Buttons could become weeds because they are such fertile reproducers. I have mounds of them that two years ago were a dozen spindly looking plants. There's another plant, I think called the money tree, that falls into that same group. The purple flowers are so pretty in early summer, then they produce round pods that resemble silver dollars. I have to work to limit the space they think belongs to them. They and the buttons, along with feverfew seem to be duking it out, choking out other perennials. I'd like to get them started in an untended area, without supplementing its water needs. Alfalfa and bitterbrush, rabbitbrush, orange mallow along with a few flowers that I'd have to get up and go to the reference section of our home library to look up their names. I decided a few years ago that I'd leave that space untended rather than keeping it mowed. It's around a quarter acre. I've been planting evergreen trees out there. Blue spruce, Austrian Pine, and another pine whose name I can't remember. Oregon grape is pushing its way through the fence that separates the yard from the untended area. I'd plant some juniper trees, but they can become invasive, and they rob all of the water from anything else close by. There's one at the edge of the backyard that the neighbor's cows like to use as shade.

Somehow, choke cherry planted itself in the fenced garden, and this year killed two evergreen shrubs and is encroaching on everythin within reach. It sends out roots from which more chokers keep coming up. It's a challenge to keep it confined to its space, and I don't water it because I don't want to encourage it. I suppose I should borrow a backhoe and pull it out, but if I didn't get every piece of root, it would continue in its quest to take over the world.

We had a little rain today, so I didn't get as much time in the yard as I'd planned. Oh well, tomorrow's another day. I appreciate the rain.

Jim

@jimhd I need to get a book to help me identify the plants/weeds/groundcover in our yard! Like @zep said, we can grow weeds really well! The lawn is mostly weeds, big healthy ones. The other night we had a covey of mountain quail picking through the grass. This was different, as we regularly see the California quail here. The big rain storm we had today will bring more growth, no doubt. My mother would always say that weeding relaxed her, and she had a green thumb [that gene missed me!]. Well, I should be well-relaxed in a few weeks.

Dang it! I spent a lot of time cutting down the japanese burberry bush right in front of the house, and there are new shoots already starting. grrr! There are two more to severely trim back. Sounds like a trip to the dump coming up soon.
Ginger