I planted Cosmos and some earlier blooming flowers together, and the Cosmos shaded the other flowers out. Now I have to wait for the later blooming Cosmos before I can see the color I crave. Live and learn...

Silver Queen

Up here in Sebec we haven't had enough sun for much of anything to grow. Flower seeds I planted did not sprout, my vegetable garden is very slow growing, I'm afraid my raspberries are going to mildew before they ripen, which will be too bad as they are loaded this year. However, one thing I have learned about gardening in Maine, when summer finally decides to arrive, things start to grow like crazy.

Hi--from up north. My garden is not growing much either. We've only had 1-2 sunny days a week for the past month and a half!! Getting a bit depressing. What little bit is growing--the deer and slugs are scoffing! Have put a fence up--hopefully to keep the deer out--and put beer down for the slugs----we'll see how this does!

I think seaweed works bettter than beer. My experience is that beer also attracts more slugs, it becomes a high maintenance job with using beer. It does work, I just hate disposing of bubbly foaming slugs which make me want to gag when I see them and having to do it often.

My gardens are hurting this year, too. Cool crops are doing well...come on sunshine!

My flower gardens seem to be doing alot better this year than last...I tell everyone that last year must have acclimated them to these cool temps as last summer they grew like crap. My roses (some of them), clematis and peonies have had more flowers this year than they ever have! The gloriosa daisies are taking over! I think having more rain this year than last has helped alot as I'm not much of a supplimental waterer. As for the veggie garden, have gotten some radishes and had a picking of swiss chard with supper the other nite, it needs to be picked again already. Also had some broccoli too. Yum! Have a couple of zukes and yellow summer squash on the vines, but they have been there for a few days and just are not getting any bigger....we really could use a little more sun! It did manage to break thru early this evening, even saw a nice rainbow! :-) Sunday is suppose to be decent?????

Cathy

Kathy,

I believe this is my first encounter with the word "spleeny." We've been in Maine only about a year and a half, and I thought maybe "spleeny" was a special Maine word. I looked it up in the big dictionary and it gives several meanings, including melancholy, so I think you have used the word well to describe gardens that are under-achieving.

I take it from the "worm tea" that you are an organic gardener. I am not. I freely use such things as Miracle-Gro, as well as Peters and Schultz soluble plant foods. I do use some organic things, like make compost piles, mulch, etc. When the time is right (like not raining and in the morning with the sun shining) I will do foliar feeding with a good soluble fertilizer.

MM

P.S. Thanks, Steve, for setting up this forum.

Hi Burton - my dad has always used "Spleeny" to mean weak and stunted, so that's where I was coming from. Melancholy is a very good definition too. I am trying to be organic, hoping to not be responsible for too much poisoning of our water system, my autistic grazing son or the dogs & kids who sometimes walk barefoot through here. And I have found that it's cheaper to have worms and compost going, plus I don't keep running out at inopportune moments!

I grew up in northern NH and the term "spleeny" was common there, too. And, like Doll., it meant "wimpy", "whiney", basically without vigor. Funny how certain terms/expressions become more common in certain areas than others, huh?

We "gahden" organically here, too. The man of the house has taken the Master Gardener's course, and we've been members of MOFGA for years now. "Give me spots on apples, but leave me the birds and bees..."

And yes, the gardens are not what they were last year. I've noticed that virtually everything is about 2 weeks behind schedule. The annuals are really just now beginning to take off (the panseys are still thriving!), and the perennials are late (still have Astilbe arendsii in flower), and the Jap. beetles have only JUST begun to show up.

Still, though, the plants that favor cool, moist conditions have never been lovlier... Hostas, ferns, Asarum, Astilbes, even the Hydrangeas are behinning to respond and make a comeback.

Nice to see that my experience is echoed by so many. (I lost a huge portion of ornamental grasses, and some Perovskia, too... also Buddleia and Caryopteris).

I never heard spleeny until I moved to the Orono area from way up North (St. Agatha/Fort Kent)....and my new husband's 93 year old Aunt used the term about someone who was scrawny. I'm still a new gardener in the tropics of Maine......I went from a zone 3 to a 5...... Things have been growing fine in my opinion....but everything is way too wet. I'm watching out for mildew and mold issues. We need more heat and sunshine.
I'm so glad we have a Maine forum !!!!!!

According to my digital camera diary, many daylilies and bulbous ones are pretty much as far along as last year. But I don't usually take a pic unless it is something new blooming, or an exceptionally pretty combination, or to remind me of what needs dividing or moving. Digital cameras are the greatest. One of my favorite gardening tools, and a lot easier on the old back than a shovel or rake.

Marie, the crazy lady with the brass bedpost fence

I started stock from seed way back in late Feb. It is in a very sunny spot and so far has no signs of flowering. Has just recently appeared to put on some growth. Bought nicotiana transplants and they are quite short and just starting to bloom.

The perennials seem pretty much on schedule, maybe some a little behind.

In the vegetable garden, it has been a great year for sugar snap peas. Usually we have to rip them out by early July because it gets too hot for them. Banner year for lettuce. But others are behind schedule. Just picked my first bush beans yesterday. Have had about 3 zuchinni (it should be coming out of our ears by now). Peppers just starting to form fruit, although we did get two jalopenos this week. A couple blossoms on eggplant but no fruit, that's to be expected. But the tomatoes are pretty far behind. I grow Opalka, an heirloom paste that grows up to 7' every year. It is mid-July and the plants are only 2'. They look a little funny, as I thought I had finally found the perfect tomato supports for them that would contain them after struggling with collapsed 6' stakes last year. I got a couple of those decorative windmill pyramidical metal things 7' high from a friend who was getting rid of them, (sans windmill), spraypainted them dark blue. 7' metal support for 2' tomato plants. I hope they start growing upward soon.

Veilchen,

I understand your displeasure with collapsing tomato supports. Last year we bought about twenty inexpensive wire tomato cages at Reny's for 99 cents each. At that price they were small with rather weak wire, but they were better than nothing at all. Many fell over even with determinate tomatoes. I noticed Reny's was selling what appeared to be the same cages this year for only 49 cents each. Last year I tried to support my larger indeterminates with wooden poles cut from the woods as prunings. That was only partly successful and labor intensive, tying nylon stocking loops around the vines and pulling those close to the poles with strings.

We got a late start this year and re-used all the wire cages despite their marginal performance last year. Even the determinate tomatoes are now way over the tops of them. When I can find time and budget I plan to buy some concrete wire mesh and fashion bigger, sturdier cages from that heavy wire mesh, especially for my taller indeterminates.

MM

Veilchen and Maine Man,

I'm using cylinders made from field fencing. The're about four feet tall, and two feet in diameter. I train the seedlings with string until they can stand on their own. At this point, they're all standing up in the cages, resting their branches on the fencing. The openings in field fencing are just right for both supporting the branches, and reaching inside to retrieve your bounty. I keep them anchored to the ground with a brick on each side. Works fine for me! The only problem is finding field fencing by the yard. Maybe a really small hardware store would sell it that way.

Silver Queen

I use the "tomato cages" as supports for my bulbous lilies and taller phlox & a few others. A few years back I passed a house where a man had made strong cages from the fencing you mentioned. I bought a few and special ordered a few taller but smaller diameter ones for the trumpet lilies. But he had to go and die, so I made one myself this Spring. Didn't get it quite big enough, but will know how if I ever get the time to make more.

He also told me that he made the cages from rusted fencing, because the rusted ones were less obvious than fresh new wire. So I put my oldest rusty "tomato cages" in the garden closest to the road. And any newer ones in less observed gardens.

I picked up a lot of rusty cages and fence wire in the biennial May town cleanup program.

Marie the scavenger

Marie,

It takes about five or ten minutes to make a cage from field fencing wire. All you need is a wire cutter and a good pair of pliers. Going to the town dump on spring or fall cleanup day is a good idea in general. Given your name, I'm sure you realize that!

Silver Queen

Hope you don't mind a neighbor from the Deep South--ie, Massachusetts--checking in. My garden is definitely behind and with fewer flowers, especially among the annuals, this year. Cool and cloudy and rainy. And I just got back from a garden tour in MDI area where I finally got to see the very beautiful Rockefeller garden. The head gardener there said they were about two weeks behind and everything was not as full and packed with bloom as it normally would be by now. (It was still gorgeous.) Life is so short--seems hard to have a "spleeny" summer. Hope you don't mind if I import that word--will give all due credit.

Oh but I insist! Sometimes my dad also uses it to refer to someone who is unduly afraid of pain or can't stand the sight of something like insects or road kill.

A lot of my vegetable plants aren't doing so well like cucumbers and peppers, but a few of my flowers seem to be loving the weather. One of my Queen Anne's Lace measured at 6'4" and I have a Mullein at 10'8" and getting taller by the hour.

I have been doing a little more research on stunted plants and I am thinking I may have marginal drainage that is being aggravated by the plentiful rain. I have only been here for 5 years and have built my garden from a flat lawn, and this is the only way I can explain the same plants behaving differently in different beds. So I'll be piling on the compost this winter and I'll make sure to scratch it in really deep next spring. (I am a no-tiller, and all the beds have perennials in them so I can't till anyway) Luckily I have 3 big batches of compost that I expect will be ready by October. I am doing slightly more weeding because the plants just aren't getting big enough to shade out the weeds. Probably should have mulched with chopped leaves to smother weeds AND add organic matter for drainage.

Kathy,

"I am a no-tiller, and all the beds have perennials in them so I can't till anyway."

Does that mean you won't use a spade or shovel? Actually, if you have active earthworms, they do a lot to till for you by bringing up worm castings.

"I am thinking I may have marginal drainage that is being aggravated by the plentiful rain."

Have you considered raised beds? I am contemplating them for next year.

MM

Thank you for asking. I do use a spade, and a weasel for more sensitive areas. All the beds are raised - our yard started off mainly flat with a few depressions here and there, so I bring in bagged soil and mix it with what's already there for a raised bed. It's not the cheapest method but it keeps the projects to a manageable size.

P.S. MM, I think I have a goodly number of worms, I am making progress in being able to touch them without getting the willies! Yikes

Play and dance for the sunshine...Come on Summer...shine on us here in Maine.

Everyone clap your hands above your head and stomp your shovel 3 times deep into the soil and yell out to the sun gods..."shine on down on Maine!" followed by the foot stomping to the chant "SUn sun SUN suN SUN sun SuN"

(hope I get enough cucumbers to pickle this year)

Cheers-

Kathy,

"I do use a spade, and a weasel for more sensitive areas."

I've seen TV ads for the Garden Weasels. They look quite neat. I'll have to put one of those on my wish list.

I don't usually handle earthworms except when I am fishing. I have encountered several in the last couple of days when I was moving some top soil in the wheelbarrow. I tried to be gentle with them by picking them up with the spade with some soil underneath them as a cushion. Hopefully I moved them without any serious injuries. Earthworms are no doubt beneficial in the garden.

MM

I am disappointed in my Weasel, the long handle does not stay on so I can only use it with the short handle. I emailed the company and got no respomse.