Gardening Questions and Pictures

[paula 4]

what is a gardinia lacking when the leave's fall off and it hardly flower's

jenny, I wish I knew! Im sure you Water it regularly? Have you tried a fertilizer with it? ALL flowering shrubs and bushes have never lasted more then a month at my house.

Wish I could help.

Kare, can I get Penni to post your garden pics as side by sides?

I must say - my mouth dropped open when I saw them. Ever thought about having a retreat in your FRONT yard? My goodness - that is beautiful!

[DevilMayKare 1]

Kare, can I get Penni to post your garden pics as side by sides?

I must say - my mouth dropped open when I saw them. Ever thought about having a retreat in your FRONT yard? My goodness - that is beautiful!

Yes on posting the pics side by! I never could figure out why sometimes a pic posts in the message automatically and why sometimes just a link appears. I made these pretty small because I thought it was a matter of size, but they still just appear in a link.

Guess I should do a search on posting photos, uh? (smile)

I've been in this house 22 years now (how did THAT happen?) so I've had a lot of time to experiment and see what works with the soil and light. I wish I'd taken more pics over the years as things have changed pretty dramatically season to season. Believe it or not this is about the LEAST time-intensive look I've come up with. I'm about 90% organic.

I belonged to an organic gardening club for years and the master gardeners were just an incredible source of information as were the speakers. I think it was a speaker on lasagna gardening where I found out about it as it was a speaker on wormbeds where I learned about that. (I'll tell you more about my worms when I photo the backyard.)

You can google and learn as much as you need to know about lasagna gardening. THe most important advice I could give you on that is: Plan ahead! You'll have to save bunches of newspaper, leaves, grassclippings, etc to have enough to make a thick pile. I went around to the guys cutting lawns and brought home trashbags of grass clippings. It works best if you cover everything w/ black plastic and let it "cook" for 3-6 weeks (NOT in winter) so there will be a period of time where your yard won't look so hot.

Thank you for the compliments. I really do plant as a performance art. In my youth I was hell-bent on saving the world, but well... I'm sure many of you know how time and experience takes a lot of that wide-eyed idealism out of you. I finally came to the wisdom of Candide where all the energy of raging against the machine and my own search for "The Meaning of Life" was channeled into the prosaic pursuit of an interesting garden.

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[3loves 0]

Oh my goodness....I love this thread. I will attach a few pics of our house. I have more to do than I can handle. The people we bought this house from spent all their time outside. We spend a good bit and I'm trying to teach the boys about gardening. I grew up gardening and thought I was being tortured. Now I'm going to teach my children.

Here's a few pics. The flower gardens goes completely around the house. If the front we have 2 hydrangeas. They bloom in light blue most of the time.

Front Yard

Back Yard

Tree - Does anyone know the name of this tree? It's the same one if the front yard pic taken in the fall. This pic was taken today.

I LOVE Jerry Baker. Has anyone NOT heard of him? If not, he is awesome. You can go to www.jerrybaker.com. I have a couple of his books and get his online monthly newsletter. He is a lifesaver when it comes to the outdoors.

[Kim_8 2]

Pretty yards guys! I googled the lasagna garden. Now I'm going to leave here and start collecting the neighbor's grass bags - they already think I'm a little strange - so I'll just confirm it by driving around in my car picking up their garbage! LOL

I've got one pain in the butt area in the back yard behind the driveway that is always a weed pit. This would be perfect and I don't have to go and dig out the grass! Off to make a lasagna garden!

[DevilMayKare 1]

Wow 3Loves--look at all the LAND you have! It makes me want to go break out the bacci balls. Where do you live?

That's a lotta mowin!

Kim--how big an area do you have behind the driveway? Be sure to have PLENTY of newspaper saved up for the "pasta" layers. You don't HAVE to do it all at once (you can come back & add layers), but it's easier that way if you have enough stuffin. I was a little surprised at how much it took. I'm not sure what the site says, but from my experience it's good to build up to 18" since it will compact down about 30%.

Oh--also take some buckets to the Starbucks (or whatever coffee shop) and get as many coffee grounds as you can. When it comes to gardening you really can't have too many coffee grounds!

[Kim_8 2]

Hey Kare - It's probably an 18X8 or 9 foot area. I'll start collecting now. coffee grounds huh? Okey dokey - will do. The site did say to use at least 5 sheets of newspaper stacked - think that's enough?

[DevilMayKare 1]

Five sheets per layer? Yeah, that might be about right (could be more, it's not exact)--but you'll need at least 4 layers (just like the lasagna noodles). If it's hard to save that much newspaper you can use cardboard for the two bottom layers. The bottom layers will decompose more and faster than the top layers so cardboard will do. 18x8 is a pretty large area. I think the lecturer said you can also use hay for some of the "stuffing" but I didn't end up needing it. You might get a bale of (green) hay tho, if there are hourses nearby. I would also recommend putting that near the bottom.

If you have any mushroom farms nearby they have great compost. Just don't put in manure. That adds too much salt for a lot of plants.

[paula 4]

Now I'm going to leave here and start collecting the neighbor's grass bags - they already think I'm a little strange - so I'll just confirm it by driving around in my car picking up their garbage!

Kim, you made me laugh out loud. Too funny!

[Kim_8 2]

Hey Paula - whatever it takes to not have to dig up grass I guess. Shovel's and I don't work well together. :-) I have two kiddos - one who dresses like a gothic princess (I think she really wants to be a vampire - ugggghhh) and one who has more holes in her jeans than swiss cheese and refuses to wear anything else. I know my neighbors think my kids look like the Munster's kids... picking up their garbage will just keep them wondering :-).

Kare - My daughter has a friend who works at a horse training place - maybe I'll try and get some hay from there. I absolutely love your yard. You should be very proud of yourself. That takes real talent.

[DevilMayKare 1]

Kare - My daughter has a friend who works at a horse training place - maybe I'll try and get some hay from there. I absolutely love your yard. You should be very proud of yourself. That takes real talent.

Thank you Kim, but really--it's just a combination of time, experimentation, brokeness with a little procrastination thrown in. I was so, sooooo broke for quite a few years I had to do everything on the cheap, thus the recycled cement and big use of seeds. If I'd had the money I would have probably just had everything landscaped by professionals like a lot of people do. (The interlocking paver driveway was just put in this February, before that it was a 60's combination of quarry tile, rock in cement and cracked cement driveway.)

About the second year I had larkspur I got too busy to pull the dead plants out and my yard looked like a fire had struck it for about a month--but the NEXT year OH LA LA! All the self-sown larkspur seeds looked great. That's how I learned to let some things die and sew themselves. Another trick I learned from having a birdfeeder that dropped seed is to sew lots of sunflower seeds thruout the yard. These are about the only things blooming in August but just a few sunflowers create such a focal point that people don't notice how crummy everyhting else looks. And I also always plant some squash & watermelon seeds, just to have green during the hot time of year.

[leatha_g 4]

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[Dragonwillow 0]

This is our pond, it doesn't look as good at the moment because I haven't put any new bedding plants, and only have a few coming back from last year. I do have a question for all you gardners. How do I get rid of ground cover...it's rather pretty when it blooms but its taking over the whole back yard. I tried pulling it up and puting a rock border around it to contain it, but it still spreads.

[leatha_g 4]

Love your pond, Melissa! Love mine too, just wished I knew how to maintain it better.. it could be a full time job..

[3loves 0]

DevilMayKare ~ You have such a gift!! It's not easy planting some things from seeds. I've always loved larkspur and liatris and don't have either one. I did get a butterfly bush in the ground last year so I'm hoping it will do something this year. Do you have any experience with clematis? I have a double clematis that was already here and it's done well, but I can't seem to get it to start by my mailbox. Any suggestions on growing it from a small plant? BTW, we have approx 1.5 acres in NE IN. It takes my husband over 4 hrs to mow & trim. I do most of the flower beds and he does the yard. You should have seen me squeezing 30 bags of mulch in the van last year with 2 toddlers. :party:

Dragonwillow ~ How beautiful!! You did a super job!! I've always wanted one of those, but haven't had the time or resources. Good luck on the ground cover. I don't have any experience in that....maybe someone on here can offer some advice. Sounds like DevilMayKare is pretty savvy.

[leatha_g 4]

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