Gardening

As indicated by my username, I'm super excited for my fireweed to bloom! It's a perennial that dies back every autumn and regrows in the spring (this time of year it grows so quickly!). It spreads by wind-blown seed, but also by root so my fireweed patch grows bigger and thicker every year, which is such a fun development to watch. The flowers are so pretty and the native bees go gaga over it. Once established it's basically a zero-maintenance plant (where I live it grows wild along highways). I highly recommend it for any pollinator-friendly gardener living in its wide native range that doesn't mind a little weediness (they're easy to remove if they pop up where they're not welcome).

Last year a Lemmy user ( I think called Thrawn) mailed me some tomato seeds of their favorite varieties, plus some mammoth sunflowers. I sent them foxglove seeds. It made me feel connected. They have all sprouted and are growing vigorously. I'm excited to eat them! Brad's Atomic Grape tomato and Sart Roloise.

For the vegetable garden, our purple beans. They’re green beans with purple pods that turn green when cooked. My kid thinks they’re magic.

For our flowers, probably our anise hyssop. Or the frost aster that flowers when everything else is dying back for the winter.

Bit late for me since our flower season is almost over here.

But I’d say Brodiaea elegans is the star of late spring for me. Also looking forward to some jacarandas and trumpet trees if we are considering tree flowers too.

No deer? Our lilies rarely last more than a day before they become salad on the hoof.

I always look forward to the torpedo hydrangeas and the sheer variety of bees they bring.

Dahlias, this is my second year growing them, and I have expanded my collection this year with some beauties. I swear they are addictive!

Cascade and Mt. Hood hops!

Less specific plants and more anticipating results for some new infrastructure.

On the left I'm trying potatoes in vertical towers. There's about 8 inches of compost and soil in the bottom of each and as they grow, I'll add more straw. I put some irrigation in the top of each, so we'll see if it can penetrate down as it gets bigger.

On the right I'm scaling up an experiment from last season. I has some success with growing peas in pots next to trellising. Their roots make them perfectly happy in a pot, freeing up real estate in my other beds and allowing me to move the peas as I expand. My main issue last year was my trellis wasn't pea-friendly, so we're giving them more space and smaller spacing between trellis rungs (as they grow out, I'll add some wire to the trellis to help them climb)

I've also got a squash arch, but that's less exciting because I've seen them work

So excited for my dwarf tomatoes again this year! They were fantastic producers last year and I'm hoping for even better this year with better placement in the sunniest spots in my yard.

For flowers, I have a bunch of natives that I think are going to actually take off this year after several years of struggling with rabbits. Nodding onions, heart-leaved aster, and goldenrod to name a few.

Honestly I'm just excited for SOMETHING to grow. Winter is so long here 😭

Milkweed and butterflies

Egyptian Walking Onions & sunchokes

I have five new rose bushes in the mail right now!! I can’t wait to get them in the ground. I’ve been slowly adding a cut flower garden to what was once just a big hill full of weeds, and this year I think it will finally start looking more like what I envisioned with the roses coming in.

I'm planning to grow some cantaloupes this year. I started them in jiffy pots about a month ago. They've started sprouting and now my son keeps asking if we can move them to the garden yet.

Waiting for my Hostas to come in tbh.

I had an infant staghorn fern and then took a job in Japan and left it with my mother to look after. After 5 years I'm moving back next week and looking forward to picking it up and putting it at my new place. It took a few years and a lot of banana peels but it really took off the last 18 months or so.

I bought some of those GMO Purple tomatoes and I am super psyched to try them out. Right now I have three plants in pots indoors, one cutting in water (extra seedling from one of the pots) and some in my seed starting tray (which I over watered so they're not doing so hot). I'm planning to start hardening them off next month.

I have some Black Hungarian chili seeds in shipping, and several big pots full of Mel's mix and manure waiting for them.