Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Garden Times

So its been about a month since Ive updated Garden Times. If you remember right, it was not looking like what I wanted it to look like. With all our Oregon rain and cold days, my seeds rotted away and the slugs were infesting my beautiful plants.  Well I decided to throw a party and get some beer for the slugs and guess what? It worked! My plants are starting to flourish!  I saved my lovely beans and now i'm a happy camper.
Just look at them! To the left is my last 2 lettuce plants that need to be picked and eaten. In the middle are some very small lettuce starts that my neighbor Christy gave me yesterday. Thanks Christy! Ive also added some small flowers that I bought on clearance and some "finger" potato starts that have not come up yet. Ive been running out of room and started putting things anywhere I can.
Can you guess what these are? Rhubarb starts! Thanks Christy! I am so excited to have my own rhubarb plants. Next year I can see lots of rhubarb jelly, bars, and even more syrup. Ive had to ask my friend Kim for rhubarb because i'm too cheap to go buy the stuff. Rhubarb can cost you anywhere from $2.99-$5.99 a pound depending on where you find it. Crazy.

Anyone know what flower this is? Its finally starting to climb my arbor which is above my garden gate. I'm pretty sure its not clematis because I do not like them. Spiders love them and I don't do spiders. And yes I am one of those people who you hear screech at the top of their lungs and want to crawl out of their own skin. My anxiety is kicking in just talking about it. Whatever it is its beautiful. Just look at the amazing color on these. Nature is so beautiful.
This is the first year I have bought annuals. I know, i'm selfish. I see no point in them since they die eventually and need to be replaced. Honestly after my garden turned for the worst I just decided something is better than nothing. I'm glad I did this because now I am loving flowers in my garden. This yellow flower in particular smells like cotton candy. I love the bright colors and have planted some potato in between these flowers.  These flowers main purpose is to keep the area pretty until my taters decide to come up.
I have taken out chemical filled flower beds and turned the area into a beautiful pumpkin patch. How cool is this! I have 6 rows of pumpkins and all but 2 that I planted have grew. I know I can pinch flowers and let the pumpkins who have started growing get bigger but i'm not. The more the pumpkins the better! What my kids do not use this year will be cooked, pureed and froze for later use. Those ugly green plants in the background will be dug up and throw out. I have no idea what they are because they will not flower. I think these are shade plants and the previous owner put them in the wrong spot. Another reason I dislike them is that they double in space each year. So they gotta go!
This pumpkin is my favorite. Its a Cinderella pumpkin. Remember in Disney's Cinderella the pumpkin that the fairy god mother turned into a coach? This pumpkin should look just like that. A very wide beautiful pumpkin. Even if my pumpkins decide to keel over, I would be happy if just this one would survive.
So as you can see my garden is turning out to be okay this year. Not the most productive year but hey at least something is growing. Not pictured is my two carrots and my 2 onion plants that survived.  I wish I had zucchini or yellow squash because I love them so but no. But I do have some new types of tomato to keep me busy.
What about you? How did your garden do? Did you plant stuff that didn't come up? What are your thoughts on flowers in the garden? Is your green thumb a slight shade of brown like mine this year?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

The flower you asked about looks like morning glory to me. Think it is a weed. I lived one place where it covered the fence. Did look nice though.

Surviving and thriving on pennies said...

Great, I planted a weed. Well at least its pretty. lol. Hopefully it won't attract spiders....it will be a quick magician trick to make it vanish as fast as I can.

Diane said...

Morning glory isn't really a weed although it can self-seed. It's closely related to bindweed which is white and pretty evil but it's not nearly as invasive. Moon flower is another relative which has fragrant blossoms at night. I don't go overboard with annuals but they are useful if you need to fill a spot and pretty cheap if you start them yourself.

Surviving and thriving on pennies said...

Diane-Well thats good to know. I don't mind it taking over my arbor because the arbor is old and ugly. I needs some plant life.
I would have to agree with you about starting them yourself. Last year I bought a ton of seed packets for only 5 cents each from Walgreens. I bought way more than I needed so that even if some didn't grow, I would still have more to plant. Gotta love garden sales!

Patty said...

I was going to say morning glory too. I love snap dragons! You're pumpkin patch is awesome and the gardens look so organized. My garden was fun while it lasted. We had a good harvest of cherry tomatoes, the plant was up to my garage roof! The rest though is history between the summer sun, a few horn worms (although far less than last year), a mouse and two beagles that wanted to chase the mouse scent.

Anonymous said...

Those flowers are morning glories. You can tell by the heart shaped leaves. They will bloom only in the cool of the day. Mine are usually closed by noon. They are very pretty, especially on a trellis. They do self seed so you can end up with a lot of them the following year.