Summer 2024
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Felt something crawling on my back on the inside of my shirt this morning. Japanese beetle. They like the raspberries, which are in the rose family. I I also have roses for the first time this year, but didn't see any there. Yet.
I have a small jar with water and a squirt of dishwashing soap. I just hold the jar under a leaf with a beetle, tap the leaf and most of the time the beetle drops in and can't get out of the soapy water.
Whatever you do, don't get a Japanese beetle trap. They put an attractant in it to catch the beetles. Problem is that it attracts beetles, and only a small number actually get caught. The entomologist who taught that segment of the Master Gardener class said that the trick is to get someone about a quarter mile away to put a trap in their yard.
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Also planted this little fellow. It’s a Bay Laurel tree - source of bay leaves. With any luck I’ll be able to keep it alive over winter.
The leaves are delicious. Much more flavor than the dried kind.
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Also planted this little fellow. It’s a Bay Laurel tree - source of bay leaves. With any luck I’ll be able to keep it alive over winter.
The leaves are delicious. Much more flavor than the dried kind.
@Steve-Miller we have a bay laurel tree and have kept it alive for two winters! It is growing INCREDIBLY slowly but does provide enough leaves for us to cook with and is hanging in there!
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Is this thread just for gardening talk? Hope not - I’d like to post summer activities too.
First a gardening picture. This is my neighbor’s yard across the street. He had a landscape architect lay out this flower garden a few years back and this year it’s really filled in!
If you embiggen it you can see all of the flowers! I’m really happy the garden is doing so well. Not just because it’s cool but my neighbor is a really nice guy, he works hard on it and I’m glad it’s finally working out.
I think I posted last year about getting a new RV for our retirement travels. We didn’t get to use it a lot last year before the cold hit but this year we’ve used it 3 times already.
Grandson Jack has a school friend Colton, and Colton's family keeps an RV at a nice little low-key RV park about 45 minutes from our house. Here are the two boys at a balloon thing this weekend:
Park features this pond where I enjoyed watching any number of kids pulling out fish - and releasing them - at a furious pace. You’d think the fish would have figured it out by now but there must be 1000s of them in this pond and at least some of them have not.
Sam was very interested in the pond but the edge is all mud and after the first time I wouldn’t let him near it.
According to Jack I’m ”Grampy”. I’ve been called worse.
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My Japanese garden project starts Friday and I’m stoked! I think I’ll start a new thread for it. I’ve never been part of anything like it before.
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Is this thread just for gardening talk? Hope not - I’d like to post summer activities too.
First a gardening picture. This is my neighbor’s yard across the street. He had a landscape architect lay out this flower garden a few years back and this year it’s really filled in!
If you embiggen it you can see all of the flowers! I’m really happy the garden is doing so well. Not just because it’s cool but my neighbor is a really nice guy, he works hard on it and I’m glad it’s finally working out.
I think I posted last year about getting a new RV for our retirement travels. We didn’t get to use it a lot last year before the cold hit but this year we’ve used it 3 times already.
Grandson Jack has a school friend Colton, and Colton's family keeps an RV at a nice little low-key RV park about 45 minutes from our house. Here are the two boys at a balloon thing this weekend:
Park features this pond where I enjoyed watching any number of kids pulling out fish - and releasing them - at a furious pace. You’d think the fish would have figured it out by now but there must be 1000s of them in this pond and at least some of them have not.
Sam was very interested in the pond but the edge is all mud and after the first time I wouldn’t let him near it.
According to Jack I’m ”Grampy”. I’ve been called worse.
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Not a good year in my garden for a lot of the veggies despite decent weather. Lots of squirrels, rabbits and chipmunks are hanging out in my yard wreaking their special brand of havoc.
A July recap:
Ended up having a decent crop of peas. Actually two crops, the second being a surprise in the heat of summer.
The cukes are blooming, getting pollinated, and forming baby pickles. They aren't growing, but neither are they dying and turning yellow. They sit there in suspended animation. I don't know what's going on.
Squirrels are eating the eggplant and tomatoes. And digging in the onion bed. They don't eat the onions, they just unearth them.
Beans I have in planters on the deck are getting chewed off at the base by rabbits that jump up on the deck in the middle of the night. The surviving plants are just starting to flower and we found our first one inch long Roma bean today.
OTOH, the potato plants seem to be doing well. I grow them in pots and noticed that all the plants in one pot had pretty much died back while the others are growing gangbusters. Seemed kinda early and I thought that when I dumped out the pot to see what's there that I would find a bunch of rotting spuds.
But no!
Harvest from the first bucket of Red Norland spuds:
What's up in your garden?
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Since the hydrangeas portion of this thread was posted, I have moved into a house with two big hydrangea bushes. They're both bigleaf, I believe, and they're both blue. (At the moment.)
The one in front of the house is a lacecap, and our soil pH must be right at 7, because a few of the flowers are purple, and I've seen an old photo of the house where that bush was blooming pink.
The one in back of the house, but on the side and visible from the street, is what I think you call a mophead. The flowers are a deep purplish blue.
They're both starting to fade to a pinkish brown, but I like the look of the dried brown heads and plan to leave them. This town seems to be really well-suited to hydrangeas, because lots of people have yards full of them, and I've seen all the varieties I know and some I don't--mophead, lacecap, Annabelle, peewee, climbing, oakleaf, and probably more--and in all the colors hydrangeas come in. The old, established yards of some of the houses near us are really remarkable.
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I doubt I will do much gardening here. The yard is small and I wouldn't do vegetables here, just maybe a few flowers. This house would be good for hanging baskets, part-shade in the front and mostly sun in the back. Our neighbor has pretty hanging flower baskets and I may copy her in front. I could see herbs or a miniature tomato in baskets out back.
There's a rhododendron that's too big for its spot and it's reaching out to scratch our cars and us in the driveway. I'd like to move it to the side or back yard. I think it's pink.
If I decide I miss vegetable gardening too much, there's a wonderful community garden a short walk from the house. If I have a summer when I know I won't be traveling too much, I may get a plot.
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Since the hydrangeas portion of this thread was posted, I have moved into a house with two big hydrangea bushes. They're both bigleaf, I believe, and they're both blue. (At the moment.)
The one in front of the house is a lacecap, and our soil pH must be right at 7, because a few of the flowers are purple, and I've seen an old photo of the house where that bush was blooming pink.
The one in back of the house, but on the side and visible from the street, is what I think you call a mophead. The flowers are a deep purplish blue.
They're both starting to fade to a pinkish brown, but I like the look of the dried brown heads and plan to leave them. This town seems to be really well-suited to hydrangeas, because lots of people have yards full of them, and I've seen all the varieties I know and some I don't--mophead, lacecap, Annabelle, peewee, climbing, oakleaf, and probably more--and in all the colors hydrangeas come in. The old, established yards of some of the houses near us are really remarkable.
Love hydrangeas and have a crazy number of them. They’re one of the few bushes that bloom all summer long here.
They’re drama queens though - maybe not your established ones but certainly my younger ones. Miss one watering and they droop spectacularly. Miss two and leaves turn brown and the flowers fall off. Water them and they come right back!
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Our oakleaf (IIRC that’s what @wtg said it was) hydrangea is blooming nicely. I would still prefer it were a different kind, but it looks ok.
We have a pretty flowering bush covered with flowers that look like white daisies and then a smaller one that looks like yellow daisies, they make me happy every time I go outside!
There’s also a grass thing with round lavender flowers that’s charming.
Yay for summer flowers!
ETA I really need to figure out the names of these things…
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Post pictures and we’ll tell you!
(We may not be right but that never stopped us before)
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