I’ve grown a bunch of stuff, but I never thought of olives! Is that tree eventually going to have to go into the ground, or can it stay potted?
2 Likes
Eventually we’ll plant it into the garden, but as we only got it a year ago it has a few more years before it needs to be planted into the soil. Still learning about how our garden grows, so don’t want to plant it and move it again to make sure she has the best roots she can.
When I say move it, I mean me. My wife has green fingers, I just dig the holes and move the heavy stuff haha
3 Likes
It’s mirabelle season here, so time for a bit of scrumping from my father-in-law!
I don’t expect that bowl to last the night so back tomorrow for round two.
Fight!
8 Likes
I’ve been “going through some shit” and didn’t feel mentally up to growing anything this year, so I made the excuse that I would be too busy to commit to it this Summer. But Exodus made a good point that watering didn’t really take a ton of time per day, so I decided to push myself to get some plants going. I’m glad I did! The 15-20 minutes I spend with the plants every day is a welcome break from life. :)
So, my summer garden set up. I set up 4 planters a couple years ago (2x2). As you can see I am only using one side. The other is embarrassingly full of dead plants/weeds. 
First up is … I think these are steak tomatoes? It’s hard to see because it’s surrounded by small weeds (plucked after this pic), and it’s being bullied by …
… a cherry tomato plant. Cherry tomato plants are consistently absolute menaces. I think this is the last year I put them in the planters, and willl grow them in their own deep pot instead.
Long story short, on the other side of the cherry tomatoes I had Japanese Zucchini (or Cucumber?), but the heat wave absolutely devastated it. A couple days ago this popped out of the ground near where that plant died and I am not sure what it is. It doesn’t look like the other weeds that have invaded this planter so … I’ll let it grow and see what happens!
My absolute favorite things to grow are hot peppers. Here’s my two habanero plants.
A serrano plant.
And my Carolina Reaper. I had two, but one of them didn’t survive the heat wave. 
Phew! That’s it for now. :)
9 Likes
Nice! I hope it winds up being a net positive for you overall. Spending a few minutes outside with the tomatoes and peppers has certainly been helping my brain a bit.
4 Likes
Now that’s a garden and then some! Hope she yields many goodies and you enjoy whatever time you spend out there =)
4 Likes
I’m beginning to understand palm care. I tweaked myself in being so concerned with how it looked, but it seems as if this is simply what palms do. Shed leaves, grow thicker, grow upwards. In a few months all the damaged leaves should be gone, and I’ll have a happy, healthy plant.
5 Likes
We got our first dragonfruit flower last month. Turns out dragonfruit isn’t a cactus, it’s closer to an orchid, so I had basically been watering it wrong for the last two years or so. Now it’s happy.
I can’t remember whether I shared this banana plant. We bought it with three leaves. A month later we had to repot it and it looked like this.
Now it looks like this. About to get repotted again. It’s a very happy plant.
Also here’s our palm. It had two fronds but just grew a new one 2 months ago. Now it’s working on a 4th!
Another new addition is this thing! Look at it. It’s weird!
12 Likes
I have transplanted (nearly) all of my seedlings into terra cotta. The mango (not pictured) is still working its way up out of the soil, but it has strong roots upon a quick inspection. Once it sprouts, I’ll move it inside. It should be exactly when Fall arrives. I am also germinating apple seeds.
These are my little patio peppers.
I also have plans to get even more palms before the season is over. My studio is now a forest.
8 Likes
Just a word to the wise - I’m sure you all know this but don’t use tarps to kill weeds. Sometimes folks want to kill all the weeds in their yard and put plastic down for it. That’s already not great, but when you use tarps they disintegrate and now you’ve got microplastics forever.
Unfortunately the last people who lived here did this and I don’t think we will ever be able to grow edible food in this area. This is a photo of AFTER I’ve taken a bunch of tiny blue plastic squares and shreds away.
7 Likes
Sorry to hear you have some garden which isn’t able to grow anything well. Maybe a raised bed or something similar so at least you can use the space.
I am only liking your post because of the information it is sharing. People who put plastic in the soil suck!
3 Likes
just curious - does your city have any kind of native planting incentive program? It’s something that’s gaining some traction here. Looks good, good for the insects and animals, and the major selling point is they’re good at mitigating flooded basements
6 Likes
Yeah so many people talk about tarps but using like some cardboard or something like that is better. My neighbor used a bunch of coffee bean burlap sacks it looks like. Whatever tarp was there must have really baked in the sun cause it degraded a lot!
I wonder if there is some good guidelines for restoring an area like that. Whenever I’ve gardened I always dig up random trash and it looks like just the construction of a house creates a lot of garbage in the lot that just gets buried under the grass or whatever they put down. There’s a house that got rebuilt just a few doors down and I can confirm the front yard is full of trash that will probably just get sorta plowed over with a truckload of dirt (that also has junk in it) Not that all this junk is necessarily the worst. I’ve dug up like spoons and faucets and stuff, but still its a bit of a bummer :/
5 Likes
I dunno if there are incentives but I do live a few blocks from a native plant nursery, and we always check to make sure whatever we plant in the ground is native (though we have some non-natives in planters). I’ll check about the incentives! but we’re gonna do it anyway.
@DaveedNoo I’ve read a lot of things about it but if you want the plastic totally gone, you just have to wait 1000 years or whatever. Here’s what I am doing:
- get all the plastic I can see (that’s the next couple weeks)
- dig up the first couple inches of soil everywhere and toss it
- start layering good stuff on top. leaves, compost, even cardboard, just things that will decompose. over some months the soil will improve. (it’s also clay so is already not great)
it’ll probably never be a place to grow food. but that’s okay! there’s other things to grow.
5 Likes
I hope to be able to take on a native plant project before too long. Just seems like a interesting thing to work on, get that kind of ecosystem going and watch it grow
6 Likes
I can’t have a garden at my house because I’m right on a train track and they shed heavy metals that never leave the soil. It’s a train that goes to the Kraft foods factory once a day. I should get mac and cheese for life.
9 Likes
That’s unfortunate - you could do peppersor tomatoes in pots or buckets or whatever if you wanted? As long as those heavy metals aren’t being shed into the air…?
(and I suppose if they are you’ve got bigger problems than plants)
5 Likes