OMG, I am *green* with envy. Yours is so lovely and verdant. How long have you been gardening? Makes my little patches of edibles look rather sad.

"Well, since everyone else was doing, and I'm nothing if not a sucker for peer pressure, I figured I'd post some pics of my garden. :)"...
that is funny!

peaches, grapes, and strawberries...mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!! And look at the lettuce...beautiful vibrant color! I know who's garden i'm sneaking into lol.

Very nice indeed!

Good pics, but I chuckled when reading you comment about "eggplant devouring pests" in another post I had the same thought -- what a wonderful thing for eggplant to do!!! For want of a hyphen, the chuckles begin.

looks like a great garden...

Thanks, everyone :)

lilacs_of_may: 4 years on my own, although when I was young, every summer I used to help my grandfather with his (that's where I got my start). When I finally got a house of my own, I just restarted the tradition. And hey, I don't have to worry about deer around here like we did there -- just those darned rabbits that made me turn the perimeter into Fort Knox ;)

Karen - great gardens. I hope my thumb is as green as yours.
I have some kind of critter problem right now. so I am going to double shore up the fence and buy a have-a-heart and see what happens......

Around here, only 1" chickenwire will keep them out (and I've seen a particularly tiny one fit through that once -- don't ask me how). They can go right through the 1" bars on rabbit fencing. The big ones can hop 3-4' up, and they're willing to dig half a foot, perhaps even a foot down (the rocks that I line it with help discourage digging).

Looks fabulous -- I am green with envy at how lush... Those grape vines look amazing -- we just planted some this year, and I can hardly imagine they'll ever get that big! But with those peaches growing, surely you're not in zone 4b anymore??

Emily

No, I really am. :) I'm near the 4b/5a border -- Iowa City, IA:

http://www.yardlover.com/v.php?pg=135

Those pictures don't even show the half of it; I've pruned off dozens of immature fruit and animals have taken more, but the tree is still very overloaded. I think that it's trying to kiss up to me ;) Thankfully, the main branches rise at such a sharp angle to help support the weight; I'd have to reinforce them if they didn't.

Too bad my cherry decided to bloom this year while it was still too cold out for pollinators. No cherries this year :P But everything else is doing very nicely. The grapes have more bunches on them than I can count. Last year the vine gave about 3 gallons of juice after the grapes were cooked (mostly made into jelly). This year, I think I'm looking at 5 gallons or so.

Strawberries are still producing, but it's getting a bit late in the season. But my, did we ever have some yummy cake ;) A yellow poundcake made with almond extract, some homemade whipped cream flavored with Peruvian vanilla (incredible stuff -- nothing like what you get here; you can smell it across the room), and heaps of fresh berries on top. Our parrot was in heaven, too ;)

{{gwi:81222}}

{{gwi:81224}}

things are at that great time of year when a lot is coming in but it's not too overwhelming

Mine is just starting to come up, I envious too.

Magnificient. I adore it.

Clock

Delicious looking! :)

V.

Great pics. I find your companion planting interesting. Everything I've found on poppies and fennel say not to plant with veggies or that tomatoes hate fennel. One site even said poppies "suppress weeds (and every other plant)" and others said to plant fennel away from other herbs & vegetables. Just how close are those 3 and is this the first time in the same vicinity or have you done it that way in the past?

Quite, actually. I've never found any "suppression" to actually work (although I never heard that poppies suppress; I've read that they keep away aphids, which I've never gotten). In fact, you may notice that the densest growth in the garden is that cluster with the poppies and fennel right next to each other in the middle! :) You really can't rely on the guides too much; it all comes down to what works in your situation, plus the general strategies of "diversity" and "density without letting your plants get too shaded". I should have gotten some pictures of all of the little spiderwebs I have in the undergrowth :)

Poppies are always scattered all over the garden; I've got them established as feral by weeding around them and occasionally helping scatter their seeds. Fennel varies in location (although it was in roughly the same place last year, since these were volunteers; I think I've got it established, but it'll take another year or two to be sure)

For me, companion planting is mostly about keeping pests away. Often, its not so much companion "planting" as companion volunteering -- I decide what to weed based on what I'm planting where. For example, you'll notice that the lettuce hardly has a bite in it because I left volunteer mustard greens nearby, which the bugs prefer. I've never found anything that would dare touch my tomatoes, and the squash & melons, too, usually remain nearly flawless (before I put in the dripper hose, I used to get powdery mildew on them; the hose fixed the problem). I am having some flea beetle damage this year on my eggplants because I overweeded the area and didn't do any marigolds near them this year, but they'll still produce. I'm working on getting some catnip established; mints usually compete well and deter bugs -- plus, I could harvest it for mosquito repellent (nepetalactone is 10x better than deet). I also wouldn't mind it drawing a few cats to scare our commando rabbits that could squeeze through a window screen ;)

It's an ongoing process, but I'm pretty satisfied with how effectively my garden keeps its own bug populations in check. :) Each year, I try to work out the most invasive/hard to control/least beneficial weeds and introduce some new species that are more useful. For example, Lady's Thumb (smartweed) doesn't seem to function well as a trap or deterrant and is very invasive, so I've been selecting it out; there's barely any left any more. I'm somewhat neutral to Lamb's Quarters and (not sure of the name -- fuzzy, rounded leaves, tall fuzzy straight stems, traps leafminers?). Wild amaranth seems to be an effective trap, is easy to control, and I'm hoping to get some of the genes from the "decorative" red amaranth into the wild populations. I'd really like to get more purslane; it's good for the soil, doesn't grow very tall, and it's a good edible, too. It wants too much sun, though.

So THAT"S what peaches look like growing on a tree! I hope someday to see that in my yard.

Kale is also a good volunteer trap crop next to eggplant and lettuce. Good for flea beetles.

I organically garden so when the kale is big--I cook it up as spinach--you don't notice the flea beetle holes at all. Very delicious. Just have to soak them, and spray them well with water to make sure you don't eat any beetles!

Thanks for the tip, mid tn mama :) I mainly grow it because I find it very pretty and it adds a nice bit of "jungle", but next time, I'll try using it as the trap near my eggplants instead of mustard.

Just give your tree some time. :) 3 1/2 years ago, I put this tree in the ground with a bit of compost and some mint at its base. The following spring, it flowered but didn't fruit. The year after that, it got a few fruit almost up to size, but gave up on them before maturity. Last year, I got 6-8 peaches from it; they made a yummy cobbler. This year, I'm going to be getting more peaches than I know what to do with. IA's a more hostile environment than TN, so I'm sure your tree will do just fine in time. :)

I couldn't see any of the pics on this thread. Did anyone else have trouble or do I just have something set wrong?

Perhaps your web browser can't handle pictures with spaces in their names?

- Karen

karen

In your list is "sequoia". Sequoia what? The tree, those little ferny plants in the first picture?

Anney: Sequoia as in "Sequoiadendron giganteum", largest tree species on Earth. :) I started one from seed in my greenhouse and bought the others. They're going to be a Christmas gift for my parents (they have some land in Indiana). I want to be able to baby them until they get big enough that they should be able to survive an Indiana winter on their own. That means, come winter, I'll be building them a microclimate to mimic a Sierras winter -- completely burying them in snow and insulating them up next to the house's exterior for milder temperatures with less wind. Don't want to put them in the greenhouse because they need the cold -- just not as extreme of a cold as we normally get up here. :)

Karen, what a productive garden you've got! ...and what a green thumb!

Karen,

Sequoias live in temperate areas along the California coast ( up to 100" of rain per year). They are rarely found growing above 3,000 ft.
If your parents get winter temps much below -5 , then the trees will need some winter protection.

Just a friendly warning.

Moulman:

Sequoias native range is in the Sierras, but they've adapted extremely well to all kinds of other places. In fact, they have really taken off in some places, faster than they grow in their native ranges. The largest single-trunk trees in Britain are sequoias, around 150 years old (the Brits started buying up sequoia seeds like crazy, spending a fortune on them, not long after the first groves were discovered). Sequoias are now grown all over Europe. In the US, they grow well all over west of the Rockies, all along the east coast, and inland a bit esp. where there's the lake effect snow.

The coldest winter Sequoias are known to have survived is in Poland -- a whopping -37C. In general, established sequoias are considered to be tolerant to -30C (more if there's a lot of snow on the ground, notably less if the tree is young). There is a more cold-tolerant cultivar -- Hazel Smith. The ones I have aren't Hazels, though -- they're from seed -- so we'll have to see how this goes.

Most sequoias in their natural range get 20-60 inches of precipitation per year. The limiting factors on sequoia survivability:

South: Heat and humidity of midsummer encourages fungi and rot. Leaves can scorchiof the temps get too high, but not usually enough to kill the trees.

Areas with too much rain or poor soil drainage: Root rot.

Areas with too little rain: Very slow growth, severe branch diebacks. (On the other hand, irrigated sequoias with good drainage grow at crazy rates -- over 4 feet per year has been known!)

Shaded areas: Sequoias are actually colonizers, not successional trees. In their native range, the ultimate succession is to White Fir. Normally, sun-loving trees that colonize a burned over area end up being beaten out by shade tolerant trees in the long run. Sequoias, however, cheat by getting so tall that nothing can shade them ;) They also get so thick that they can withstand the forest fires that take out their competitors. It's the only way they can reproduce in the wild.

Northern areas without heavy snow and/or significant winter wind: trees can die of dehydration (not freezing, as is common myth; the roots can't take in water when the ground is frozen). In their natural habitat, sequoias spend the first several winters of their lives completely buried beneath the snow, which protects them from dehydration. One grove once measured 29' of snow accumulation.

Yes, I've done my research :) If you're interested in giant trees, I've collected info about the biggest from all over the world. If the sequoias have too much trouble in Indiana, and trying Hazels isn't good enough, the next tree in my list is the Western Redcedar (Thuja plicata), another giant cypress like the redwoods. Here's the Quinault Lake Redcedar:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3f/QuinaultLakeCedar_7274c.jpg/480px-QuinaultLakeCedar_7274c.jpg

Here's my giants list (not constrained by habitat). I classified "giant" by either diameter, height, or combination of both:

Coast redwood
Various Tasmanian eucalyptus species
Giant sequoia
Western redcedar
Coast douglas-fir
Sitka spruce
Lawson's cypress
Alerce/Fitzroya
Sugar pine
Incense cedar
Jequitiba
Kauri
Sugi
Kahikatea
Red Mahogany
Almaciga/Dayungon
Australian Red Cedar
Ceiba/Kapok
Baobab
Sacred fig
Montezuma cypress

of your garden. I could spend hours wondering around to see how things are planted.