How is your garden looking today?

Hwy, eoe, a lot of us are using either photobucket or imageshack and imageshack seems to have the greater plus signs. It is fairly easy to use them, even I can.

eoe - I have my photo website listed in my profile. You'll have to join, but it's free. Otherwise, you can use one of the sites Osso named above.

I am from the land of frowning on fertilizer use (grrrrr to business partner. Given good soil, pwwwahhh. What is the deal about the very biggest roses?) Too damn much fertilizer going to creeks...

But moving out of my own territory, I am ignernt. Although...
I'd start with a less is more point of view.

Am more interested in specificity of need in certain circumstances.

Soz, I would have no prob using M-gro on your new seeded lawn but not after hot weather sets in.(over 90)

I'm with you, Osso, on the fertilizer issue. I use it sparingly.

This spring, Dys covered the lawn with at least an inch of steer manure. The smell isn't too bad and only lasts a couple of days. The grass looooves it and looked beautiful just a few days later. Our soil is very sandy, so manure is far better than chemical fertilizer as it adds bacteria to the soil, enriching it each year. Chemicals help green it up, but do nothing to help develop better soil.

Diane, A little plastic surgery on the grass makes the neighbors think you've worked on your lawn. LOL

You two are growing a delight garden there, and I'll be quiet re its non nativeness. I might do a non native garden in the furture in your climate myself. Still, it is a game you take on...
y'r pal.

hmmmm...interesting about the miracle-gro. I usually use it on everything, annuals, perennials and veggies but haven't started using it this year. Maybe I won't use it at all and see if there's any difference.

Thanks for all of the info on showing pix. I'll try one of them out.

You fertilize your lawns??? I was going to once and Mr.P begged me not to, "Don't make it grow any faster." We're not particularly fussy about lawns....those green places with loads of different kinds of plants which are just the places where we mow and/or turn out the horse.

I like Miracle-Gro (the stuff that mixes with hose water) and give all the flowering critters some twice. When I'm potting up stuff they get the timed-release Osmocote mixed in with the potting soil. Anything in a pot also gets watered every couple of days with a half-strength shot of Shultz's.

Everything gets an annual mulch of what we call mushroom compost. It is beautiful and dark and seems to be a great soil amendment.

Yeah, mulch is my next frontier. The garden is used to being doted on by professional gardeners, they used this special mulch they created themselves that's really very cool, all sorts of nutrients to it. Only available through them.

I'm gonna look them up online, see if they sell it -- worth a try. Only thing is that I bet it's way pricey (they're way pricey in general.)

Any mulch suggestions?

Oh and fertilizer stuff is all about containers -- hopefully it would be contained.

Piffka, Our soil around here is hard clay, and mulching seems to disappear as soon as you mix the mulch with the clay. LOL We have to find plants that can survive in this clay-matter, and surprisingly, there are many. Some of the flowers I plant in pots even come back year after year.

c.i. go to your fishing bait store and buy a bunch of earthworms, will turn your clay into loam. splurge and get maybe 5$ worth.

Soz, I loved your statement, "Mulch is my next frontier." Gardeners develop their own universe terms, taking it very seriously. The world of muclch, to fertilize or not to fertilize, steer manure or will the neighbors object, when to prune and when to pinch, which plants are addicted to water, do they get the DT's if you cut back, who gets along with whom, namely peonies and trees, and the list goes on with numerous question marks.

We have a bell pepper getting ready for picking and a jalapeno that is almost there. A few more and we will be having chiles rellenos for dinner.

Oy yay, I'm starting to be a real gardener then!

I've wanted to be for a long time.

I bought the osmocote, then went to Home Depot and bought a sack of potting soil and two trays of mums. Stopped at another nursery, and bought a hanging plant that was too pretty to resist. Planted one tray of the mums, then had to stop, cause I was sweating like a horse. phew! Getting old stinks. LOL

I know what you mean, ci. The house reeks of Ben-Gay.

Over the past number of years I've been trying to establish a lilac hedge. But because of its characteristic upright growth habit, getting it to bush out through pruning and shearing makes for painfully slow progress. The small bushes in the background inthe photo (click the thumbnail) is how my "hedge" looks after six or seven years. I started out with rooted suckers from a bush elsewhere in the yard.
One of these days I should have a nice lilac hedge.

Looks lovely, neko. I hope I can get mine to fill out -- right now it's rather freakish. Bare bare bare bare bare and then poof at the very end. Kind of Seussian.

have made several trips to the farm co-op over the last few days : cow manure, peat moss, black earth, granulated limestone and cedar mulch were 'schlepped' home. some tulips - on the north-side of spruce trees - still blooming, skunk keeps digging for grubs in the flowerbed ... what a glorious time ! hbg

I got pix in my email today!

Here's the bed I just installed - well, I installed all the smaller plants (not trees) to the left of the rhoddie and lily-of-the-vally plants.



And here's a view from the front door