I don't doubt it. Never grown weeds before but quite enjoying it. I come home from work, head out to the plant to water it, trim it and admire it's growth. Relaxing and fun.
I wasn’t going to do more until spring, but earlier this week I cleared more brush so I figured may as well transplant more milkweed from down the road. I texted the landowner to let him know and while I was at it told him my plans for next year, with his permission of course. That includes mowing after first frost and then dragging two small sections to plant wildflowers. He was happy to hear Monarchs are there and said it was fine. I’m not sure if it’s stupid to spend the money on someone else’s property like that, but like my wife said, if it makes me happy doing it… This was a shitty year for gardening. In addition to lackluster results on the second wildflower plot I feel like a lot of the vegetable gardening was a bust. Cantaloupes produced fruit that was no good, watermelon didn’t blossom, and the potato yield was just okay. I think the drought cooked a couple blueberry plants, despite them being planted two years ago. That said we did get some nice big pumpkins, and the herbs grew really well. I’ll focus on those even more next year I think. How did everyone else gardens do?
You're like a god damn Pablo Escobar! Next year I'm going to put some in an area with more sun and much larger containers. Might try topping a plant and see how that goes.
This our first go at it, too. I couldn't say why these plants were successful, because I honestly do not know. They were in full sun, but we shaded the pots/roots most of the time. We used the same really good soil that I put in the flower beds. We only watered after the sun went down, which these plants and our flower beds seemed to like.
I don't really garden so much as dabble, but it was hit and miss. Tomatoes were weird, every time I picked a tomato that wasn't quite ripe, they would start molding within a day of picking them. I have some ripening late, and those have been fine. I've never seen anything like it. Cucumbers did great. I had 3 vines of all female variety that doesn't require pollination. They produced like crazy and for a pretty long period. There is apparently a disease attacking watermelons that I haven't seen before. I had a few melons set, but I would have had more if not for about 6 weeks of high temps. When the heat wave broke, I had several more set. And then after a decent amount of rain, the vines promptly died over a period of 7-10 days. Potatoes were meh, but mainly because I planted them too late.
This year was a write-off due to a cold wet Spring. Just focused on herbs this year, which did ok, but not great.
My beans and cherry tomatoes did great this year. The regular tomatoes started out great but took a nosedive, so I’m going to have to figure that out next year. I got enough to make homemade sauce, so I’m happy. The cherry peppers also did really well, so I’ll be planting them again next year. The eggplant was a complete waste of time and the bell peppers only started producing a couple of weeks ago. So, my success varied but overall I’m happy with how the garden turned out.
I have had this Christmas cactus for over 10 years. We are in an abusive relationship together. I have absolutely butchered the pissshit out of it this time, and it's coming back in delightfully odd ways. There is growth coming from places I don't typically consider a growth node. It got so damaged last year when I forgot about it outside in the full sun of the weat side of my house all summer. Bugs got to it, too. I chopped it way back, and then did it again recently when I started seeing good new growth. It will probably get one more chop. The old leaves really got fucked up but I wasn't sure it would come back if I took it down to the corkes stems only.
It’s kinda crazy, but some plants see to enjoy being chopped way back like that don’t they. I have my grandmother’s Christmas cactus and to be honest, don’t even bother looking for growth nodes when pruning it. Rhododendrons are another plant that are like that.
I didn't realize it would grow outside the nodes like this. It's amazing. I think I'm going to lean into the bonzai look and see where I can go with it.
I'm constantly amazed at how little I know about plants. The more I learn, the more I realize I don't know. Always interesting to see other people's experiences like this. Thanks for posting, Wildered!
Another -10F this morning although it's finally warming up ( 13 degrees... yay! ) and we're supposed to have a warm stretch this week in the high 30's. All of this has me itching to be outside doing something, anything, besides looking out the window. I'll likely start pruning my apple and peach trees this week just for something to do and to give the rabbits something to nibble on. I've been looking at the seed and gardening supply catalogs quite a bit and making grand plans for moving the blueberry bushes and planting more, planting more grapes, etc. I also boght another 5# of wildflower mix along with a 1/4 pound of purple coneflower seeds. Why I ordered so much of the latter is beyond me but I'll find a place for it. I'm going to dig up and replant the patch I did last year that the weather screwed me over on and then what's left may go to the piece of neighbor's property I fiddle with down the road. I just bought a metal seed saver container, I've got a tab open for a tree nursery and have a nice, thick seed catalog here as well. I already warned the wife this could get dangerous. More and more it's looking like I'm going all in on more gardening this year.
Gardening Season 2026 is just around the corner. In anticipation I've been pruning the fruit trees and still trying to figure out where to transplant my blueberry bushes to, or if I'll even be able to. They're about twenty years old and still producing so I hate to cut them down and start over, but it's an option. I planted them as a border to an aviary that is no longer there and I'm tired of mowing between and around them there. I've also been looking through the Burpee's catalog and picking out some seeds for the garden. I'm going to try my hand at growing carrots again. I'm not going to bother with squash because it takes up a lot of room and it's easier to just go to the local garden center and buy it by the bushel. Not to mention that the stuff we bought in early October is still downstairs in the basement. I'm also anxious to see if the shitload of milkweed that I planted around the property comes up. What's everyone else doing, if anything?
i have a major rebuild lined up for the Spring. My raised garden beds have rotted out a lot, so I have to rebuild them with bigger, pressure treated beams. I also have to redo the water distribution in my back yard because the dog ate what was in there before. I stopped spraying her with the hose so she went and dug up and ate through my buried waterlines that feed my raised beds. I've already planted a bunch of seeds to kick stuff off, and they're in the grow lights in the laundry room. Keeping it simple this year with the stuff we miss... lots of tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, swiss chard, and herbs like basil, coriander, etc. I have a couple of huge herb bushes from last year that are growing great; bay and rosemary. Been using them all winter.
I've got a major redo happening now, too. I'm so fortunate to have an excessively mild winter this year. We have done a few outside projects that normally would have waited until April or later. I successfully weeded the garden of excess mint and cleaned out the straw from the coop into the run and garden. I have modified the end of the run so that it is more open and accessible for a wheelbarrow to pull directly in but am still working on laying all the cinder blocks flat and even at the entrance. I also need to reposition other cinder blocks that will act as a line of separation and a path for my kid. We successfully got the new cattle panel arches installed. We planted sugar snaps last weekend. The overall goal is to make spacing easy in the garden so my kid can participate fully this year. Things need to be orderly with obvious walk areas. I am queen of trying to plant all the things I sprouted, but by the end of the year it's a jungle and impossible to navigate. I have 2 more cattle panels and am going to use them some way for a new patch of watermelons and cantaloupe. Those are new plants for me and I'm a little intimidated.
I haven’t had much luck with cantaloupe and watermelon but hopefully you will. All of my raised beds were rebuilt over the past year or two. I wanted to build them bigger with 4x4 or 6x6’s but just couldn’t justify the cost. The next time they need replacement I’ll look at my options. My dad is building a bed with galvanized metal this year so that’ll be something to consider.
My only melon advice is grow them closer to the house, rather than out farther from people. It really cuts down on how many melons get jacked up by the local wildlife. Have fun!
My yard looks much like it did in the before photo here. It went entirely off the rails end of the year. I'm guessing the shade tolerant seed I used simply could not handle the lack of rain we experienced most of last year. I couldn't continue to water because many of neighbors have shallow wells. They run out of water quickly, particularly on weekends when everyone is here. I'm sure the shade seed will come back when I start watering this spring, from what I read. I'm also thinking of plugging the yard and mixing in something more drought tolerant. I had some lower limbs taken off of most of the trees in the front, so it gets a lot more morning sun than before, but still shaded most of the day. Our rainfall totals. Even with above average rainfall for February, we're still at 54% of normal in the last 180 days, and 68% for the last 90. I did all that work, I'm tired of my yard being barren in the winter. I'll sow the yard with weeds if they'll stay green in the summer and don't disappear if we get a bad year for rain.
Unfortunately (or not, it limits how much trouble I can get myself into) our yard ain't that big. We have a double driveway with an extra width on the pad for a camper or trailer or something. Beside that there is a long, narrow bed with a privacy fence. I plan to plant in that bed and trellis them just to keep the fruit lff the ground, which can cause them to cook. Melons love heat and that driveway faces West and gets absolutely baked in the summer.