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Flowers And Bushes And Trees: How Does Your Garden Grow?


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Lilacs bloom on old wood so if you cut everything way back this year you may not have blooms next year. (I'm not sure how quickly lilacs set new buds after blooming.) We have a very old lilac that was straggly and struggling and did as @peacheslatour said - cut a third of the old growth back to the ground one year and the rest of the old limbs the following year. There were still thinner limbs/trunks/whatever that weren't cut back, so it continued to bloom in the years following both prune jobs. It still isn't as lush as we'd hoped, though. There is a maple tree nearby as well as a hedge of arbs, so it probably needs even more irrigation than it's been getting.

Good luck with your lilac. They are such pretty shrubs.

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3 hours ago, emma675 said:

I've tried to grow tomatoes for the last two years and I seem to be completely incapable. 

I can only seem to grow aphids, and prolifically.  Our local grocer will never need to scale back their produce buying on my account.

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10 hours ago, SuprSuprElevated said:

I can only seem to grow aphids, and prolifically.  Our local grocer will never need to scale back their produce buying on my account.

I really good at growing mosquitoes, if that makes you feel any better. 

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(edited)
7 minutes ago, emma675 said:

I really good at growing mosquitoes, if that makes you feel any better. 

Put up a bat house! They're relatively simple to make or you can buy them. Bats eat millions of mosquitoes a day.

 

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Edited by peacheslatour
forgot pic
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6 minutes ago, peacheslatour said:

Put up a bat house! They're relatively simple to make or you can buy them. Bats eat millions of mosquitoes a day.

I would but we have owls that live in my pecan trees and apparently some owls eat bats. I live near a lake so mosquitoes area constant problem about 8 months a year. 

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15 minutes ago, emma675 said:

I would but we have owls that live in my pecan trees and apparently some owls eat bats. I live near a lake so mosquitoes area constant problem about 8 months a year. 

If you live near a lake, you probably already have bats. I grew up on a lake and we were always finding dead bats in the marina. Some day, I will tell y'all my bat story.

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9 minutes ago, peacheslatour said:

If you live near a lake, you probably already have bats. I grew up on a lake and we were always finding dead bats in the marina. Some day, I will tell y'all my bat story.

We do! My neighbors had a bat house that had a very unfortunate ending (along with their chickens). A story for another day. 

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15 minutes ago, emma675 said:

We do! My neighbors had a bat house that had a very unfortunate ending (along with their chickens). A story for another day. 

I love owls but I'm sorry about that. Predators are gonna prey. Cats are just as bad. That's why I never, ever let mine out.

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We've reached that time, when we're suddenly zooming towards Spring, and I need to prepare if I want to grow anything this year. I received my Berlin Seeds catalogue, a month ago, and meant to make a list, but then we had freezing weather, and I stopped thinking about being outside. In a couple of weeks, I need to buy things like tomato seeds, and the kind woman at the store will be shocked that I'm buying them so late, as she usually is. She'll say that I need to get them started soon. 

Last year, I started seeds, even though I wasn't feeling up to it, and then they died when I put them outside for air and sunshine, and forgot about them (right around my birthday). But a few things I tried to start again, suddenly started to grow in June, and Bitter Melon (my "fun new thing to try growing" took over part of my garden - it has spines, and I was stung a lot, trying to harvest it, so I never used it). 

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3 minutes ago, Anela said:

We've reached that time, when we're suddenly zooming towards Spring, and I need to prepare if I want to grow anything this year. I received my Berlin Seeds catalogue, a month ago, and meant to make a list, but then we had freezing weather, and I stopped thinking about being outside. In a couple of weeks, I need to buy things like tomato seeds, and the kind woman at the store will be shocked that I'm buying them so late, as she usually is. She'll say that I need to get them started soon. 

Last year, I started seeds, even though I wasn't feeling up to it, and then they died when I put them outside for air and sunshine, and forgot about them (right around my birthday). But a few things I tried to start again, suddenly started to grow in June, and Bitter Melon (my "fun new thing to try growing" took over part of my garden - it has spines, and I was stung a lot, trying to harvest it, so I never used it). 

We had a hard frost a couple of weeks ago and I think my hellebores are goners.

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(edited)

When I lived in Calaveras County, CA (Home of Mark Twain's Jumping Frog) we had a saying "Nothing in the ground before The Frog Jump (State Fair), which was mid May.

Here in Montana, it is about the same time of year before you can put anything in the ground outdoors. Just no neat saying to go with it! LOL!

Edited by Gramto6
typo
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Yeah, when I lived in the extreme northern California mountains and wanted to grow my own tomato plants I quickly learned there was no point buying seeds and doing seedlings (unless I wanted to fill my kitchen with seedling plants for months at a time), so I would wait until May, get some thriving plants that were already flowering and then they went into the ground mid- to late-May and the entire garden was done by early September (we had snow nine months out of the year back in the day - now with climate change, its much warmer there so I assume the growing season has expanded by a month or two as well). Nothing like your own grown tomatoes, though!

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4 minutes ago, isalicat said:

Yeah, when I lived in the extreme northern California mountains and wanted to grow my own tomato plants I quickly learned there was no point buying seeds and doing seedlings (unless I wanted to fill my kitchen with seedling plants for months at a time), so I would wait until May, get some thriving plants that were already flowering and then they went into the ground mid- to late-May and the entire garden was done by early September (we had snow nine months out of the year back in the day - now with climate change, its much warmer there so I assume the growing season has expanded by a month or two as well). Nothing like your own grown tomatoes, though!

This is the way.

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I will put my cherry tomato plants in pots next to the house as early as May 10th if the forecast says we're going to have warm days and no threat of 30's at night in the 10 day forecast. I can protect potted plant from a cold spell, and I kind of want to start harvesting the cherry tomatoes for a good month before I start to ignore them because the big ones are ready.

But I will not put the tomatoes or peppers in my garden until Memorial Day.  Last frost date AVERAGES Mid-May here. I have seen it anywhere from late April to May 28th. 

Which means I start the big ones inside end of March. I found that the garden club people grow the cherry varieties I want so I just buy those two plants from them rather than have staggered starting times.

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