Somethings Old, New, Green, Redo!: planting

Showing posts with label planting. Show all posts

Friday, March 28, 2025

Midwest Gardening 2025: Prepping and Planting in the Greenhouse

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Well, we have a few temps moderating...today is a balmy 70 ish....nights are still quite low, and the heater goes all night long in the Greenhouse. Our average frost date here is listed as MAY 7 which is a long ways away.

My goal for April is to get everything out of the kitchen and into the greenhouse by April 11th, so I can get my house in order for Easter.

This week I Prepped a bunch of containers for planting after I watered and cleaned out the greenhouse to make more room for more starts.

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We bought quite a few on sale LARGE POTS

last Fall at the end of the season.

This is a 20" double walled pot

that we needed for PEAS.

My Peas and trellises blew over several times last year...so I will have to dolly this monster out of the greenhouse later.

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Here's my hand to give you scale, and that's a 7" wide pot upside down to eat up some of the space in this huge pot.

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I stuffed a bunch of old stems, wood and dried garden waste in the bottom and then

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Stuffed dried leaves into it also.

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Two 8" pots full of dried leaves. These were tamped down, and then two more pots of leaves.

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Then a thick layer of a heavy potting soil.

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Then alternating layers of my bin potting soil with peatmoss and vermiculite. This is getting down to the bottom, but the compost pile is still frozen. I have a few pots around the yard I can add to the bin and then modify the soil.

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The layers were stirred around...mixing the damp hard soil with the loose starting soil from my bin.

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I then stuck in my 6' bamboo sticks in and wire tied them at the top. When the PEA Sprouts begin to come up I'll add some fabric trellis around. This will be kept in the greenhouse until it has 3' tall plants.

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Another 14" sale pot was started with two Canna bulbs. I will split these later. Hopefully it is warm enough on the floor in the greenhouse to get them started.

UPSIDE some of my Dahlias in small pots are up about 2-3"---YAY!

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I had to move lots around in the greenhouse to make room for these big planters on the floor and some on the shelves. All will be started with flowers/vegetables/herb seeds and watered. I have a paper record and sticks to put in for Identification.

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This one I will use by the fisher kids pond...Nasturtiums, Allyssum, some Cosmos and a few Peppermint Zinnas. Some are old seeds, so I plant those heavy.

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I planted 4 of this size railing planters with veggies a few weeks ago, but now we will be starting with flowers.

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I made a second 16" pot for Peas with bamboo. Then I had to rearrange the greenhouse some more.

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Tomorrow I will plant Evening Sun sunflowers in these pots, and some more

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This sad little railing pot will be to be transplanted with coleus eventually and maybe some bought Impatiens. I think I will move it off the desk to outside--the rim is cracking off from the UV rays and the heat we have been having the last few years. These railing planters I've been using for up to 10 years, so as they die, we replace them. This will be the last year for this one and it will be designated for shady. plants. That's it for Wednesday. I'm all out of water, so planting will have to begin tomorrow.

What are you Prepping for Planting

in your neck of the Woods?

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Monday, May 15, 2023

Midwest Gardening 2023: Finally getting ready to plant!

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Last Thursday I managed to get the front porch cleaned, all the 'started' plants outside, and the furniture and windows cleaned.

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I purchased a few plants that I normally start---like herbs and a few flowers.

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Rosemary, Cilantro, Thyme...

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The Liatris bulbs (55) I think all must have sprouted. I put 2-3 in a 4" pot and they certainly have outgrown their containers. With icky weather looming, I chose to harden off these plants on the front porch, back in the shade of the overhang.

The evening temps have been in the high forties, so that's perfect. Here they are protected from the wind and blazing sun if we have any.

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I did move this broccoli tray to the back porch to wait to go into the Vegetable Garden.

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My Giant Dahlias are almost to big to transplant, I will have to trellis them.

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The Elephant Ears are slowly turning their leaves---that is the last window I have to clean, when the plant gets moved. I really wish it wasn't raining today

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My very limited source of purchased plants. Sadly not using the greenhouse this year, is definitely crimping the budget.

The yard is quickly catching up on the late Spring.

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Our Viburnum promises to explode as soon as the weather goes back to sun.

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Our Yellow Barberry has exploded---I will have to prune this back. The mild winter has helped some things for sure.

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The Iris are busy making leaves, not too many stalks yet though.

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I think this is the fourth year for these Hostas, so I may have to divide them this Fall.

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This is our humongous Giant Hosta and it's so beautiful as it unfolds and grows so fast this time of year.

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I love this later variety of tulip that grows in our planter along the steps.

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On the back porch are my coleus which are so slow--planted in early February.

Peppers, Tomatoes and Liatris are ready to go---but the garden isn't tilled yet,

WE ARE SO FAR BEHIND!

but, gorgeous weather forecasted for Monday planting!

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Sandi

Thursday, May 11, 2023

Midwest Gardening 2023: Way Back When...Ivy Tomato Cage Topiary

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Way back when...in 2015, one of my first posts was this how-to make a homemade Ivy topiary. I had roughly 8 inexpensive ivy plants I had put in my floral arrangements that year, and I didn't want to kill them, so I thought what a great idea for a topiary since they had so many long trailers.

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Original Post for Ivy Topiary HERE

2015, Gosh that was a long time ago in the blog world. Anyway, we are behind in the Spring weather here in Chicagoland, we are having one of those years where we jump from snow last week to the 80's this week.

Plants and PEOPLE are confused, lol.

I dread turning on the air conditioning,

when we have only had a few days of windows open.

Our gardening is way behind, but I had to get the house plants out of my claustrophobic kitchen. Because of our all house mess this Spring, we never got the greenhouse planted, and the weather prohibited taking the fragile seedlings from the kitchen to the greenhouse.

Anyway...back to the IVY TOPIARY....

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Here it is in 2016...already almost full in the 12" original pot.

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I think this was 2020, thick and full and already on it's 16", third pot. At this point it was trailing 30" from the bottom of the pot to the ground.

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This year, it was huge, but the pot weighs nothing because the plants have eaten all the dirt...I will have to transplant it to another bigger pot and somehow do an extension? I've done this three other times, and I know the root ball will be all roots and no dirt.

For now, I gave it a huge trim, it was touching the ground when perched on the bar stool. I didn't have my blogger brain on and forgot to take photos today of before...but as you can see all the trailers are cut and on the floor, and I have two glass jars filled with healthy cuttings for rooting.

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It's now in the 16" pot...and it needs to have new dirt in it again, which I will do later when it recovers from the trauma of being chopped. I clipped anything dead or scraggly off....and it is still so full!

I'm wondering if I can somehow wire another extension on it. Anyway, it's outside now and will be happy in the corner long as I spray and drown it regularly in water.

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Tools just my scissors. When making cuttings for rooting, make sure you strip all the leaves on the stems below the water line. I picked only the thick plump stems, and cut off all the woody or thin bits. I had a grocery bag of throwaways, but I think I will have enough new plants for everyone I know for Christmas.

I'm thinking Holly and Ivy...LOL.

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Here you can see some of the cuttings that didn't make it...anything that didn't look happy and rich green. The smaller jar is full too.

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I will have my kitchen back...with all the plants wandering to their new locations outside, but these cutting will come inside.

I love my blue jars, this is a two quart Ball jar from upper Wisconsin. I literally got cases of them from my mom-in-law and her friends.

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It was fun to take photos outside, the rich greens and sunlight after such a long dreary Spring.

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The reason these Liatris are on the porch is to harden them off a bit before planting. Inside the house was too warm and not full light, despite our having the huge windows and a fan blowing all the time.

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Broccoli was ready to go into the ground weeks ago--but snow isn't really conducive to planting. Tilling isn't done yet. Hubby has other things he has to work on---we are dealing with construction deadlines, electrical, and plumbing. The all house generator will be installed next week and this week the plumber is coming to check the wall and floor construction for the basement bathroom.

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That sprawl on the chair is Dahlia bulbs for giant Dahlias? I didn't realize the plants were Giant, I have to figure out a wind safe place to pot these???

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The Elephant Ears went bonkers---I have them leaning to the house---but they will shift around with the light...they are like---LIGHT VANES...and sway and grow toward the light.

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This is my entire collection of other flower/starts..Coleus which are really plants.

Plantings will be slim this year as I'm used to growing all my own flowers. The budget will be tight. Another project will be these back stairs that need to be replaced with synthetic planking---this area never has sunlight for 9 months of the year and it just is rotting.

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We do have peppers, more Liatris, Japanese Eggplant, Yellow and Red??? not sure, labels got jumbled in the house upset. The Peppers on the left look fab, which is great. Hopefully the Peppermint pots I hid in the compost pile will revive and we won't have to buy any of those.