It's a beautiful summer morning here in the land of cinders and grasshoppers. We've had warm, sunny weather, including warm nights, all month, so the garden is going crazy. Every day plants are noticeably larger, and blooms appear as if out of nowhere. Unfortunately, weeds also appear as if out of nowhere--they seem to spring forth from our crappy soil and instantly become 3 feet high. I need to get busy this weekend clearing them out. Anyway, we'll ignore the weeds for a moment (or probably for another week, said the Procrastinating Gardener) and take a tour of the garden at the beginning of summer. There's a lot to see.
First up: the containers. I've learned that delicate little seedlings often do better here in containers than left to their own devices in our horrible soil with our horrible grasshoppers. So I've started doing more container gardening. So far, the experiment is successful. This is basil potted with something that goes by various names, including ornamental eggplant and pumpkin tree. I got the seeds in an online trade and applied my usual gardening philosophy: "Why not?" Apparently they become enormous, so this pot may end up being too crowded. We'll see.
I built a seed-starting rack this spring so I could start tender annuals and veggies from seed. The basil above is seed-grown, and so is this coleus. I'll move them to their own pots when they get a little bigger.
One grouping of containers by the front door:
And another. The white puffballs are onion blossoms. I keep a couple of pots of onions just outside the front door so I can have green onions year-round (this corner is the warmest spot in my yard). The pollinators love the flowers, so I let them bloom.
The tall thing in the white pot with the basil is Clematis tangutica. I grew it from seed I got from our local hospice garden, winter sown in 2017.
This is a rose called Purple Tiger. It has a story (yeah, I know, all my plants have a story, and I won't freakin' shut up about 'em. It's my blog, I'll blather if I want to). Anyway... Roses can be a challenge here in Flagstaff, especially out here on the east side with our cinder soil, grasshoppers, wind, and grasshoppers. I've killed more roses than I care to think about, including all the ones we brought with us from Southern California--except this one. (Yes, we actually moved some of our roses 450 miles in the dead of winter. We are a tad passionate about our roses.) We planted this poor thing in our backyard, where it got little more than water for about 3 years. It flourished. Last year we decided to stop trying to grow stuff in the backyard, since one of our dogs likes to dig, so we dug this one up and stuck it in a pot. It flourished. This spring it got too dry and died back. I kept waiting for it to recover, but it didn't. I gave it up for dead. A couple weeks later, a single tiny shoot appeared. Now it's blooming. I need to trim off the dead branches and decide whether to keep it potted or put it back in the ground. This is the toughest rose I've ever grown. I need to tell my local nursery about it so they can stock it. Oh, and it's gorgeous.
Our soil here is too alkaline for blueberries, so I grow mine in pots. I've managed to harvest about half a handful of berries so far this year:
Finally, I'm attempting to grow watermelons in a container. Yeah, I know, watermelons in Flagstaff. Sure. Good luck with that. The container is up against a south-facing wall, so I'm hoping that will provide enough heat and a long enough growing season. So far, so good:
Moving on from the containers. The mixed border looks like a jungle, and the hollyhocks are trying to take over the neighborhood:
The pond is thriving too. All ten of our fish (6 goldfish, 4 koi) made it through their first Flagstaff winter just fine and seem to be doing well, as are the pond plants:
The plant with the tiny yellow flowers is Ranunculus flammula, small creeping spearwort.
Water mint and my favorite water lily, Perry's Almost Black.
I had to drop my son off at the Phoenix airport earlier this week, so I stopped by my favorite water garden backyard nursery and picked up some water lettuce and water hyacinth for the summer. They're still looking a little pathetic from their sojourn in the car trunk on a 113-degree day, but they should bounce back in a week or so (side note: why, oh why, does anyone want to live in Phoenix? 113 degrees? Seriously? And that isn't even unusual down there).
Veggies are lookin' good. The garlic is starting to brown, which means harvest time is coming soon.
Tomatoes, beans, squash, and more.
And finally, the walking onions are going crazy!
If the wind lets up, I'll do some weeding this weekend and put out the last of the seedlings currently occupying the back deck. Hooray for summer!
I built a seed-starting rack this spring so I could start tender annuals and veggies from seed. The basil above is seed-grown, and so is this coleus. I'll move them to their own pots when they get a little bigger.
One grouping of containers by the front door:
And another. The white puffballs are onion blossoms. I keep a couple of pots of onions just outside the front door so I can have green onions year-round (this corner is the warmest spot in my yard). The pollinators love the flowers, so I let them bloom.
The tall thing in the white pot with the basil is Clematis tangutica. I grew it from seed I got from our local hospice garden, winter sown in 2017.
This is a rose called Purple Tiger. It has a story (yeah, I know, all my plants have a story, and I won't freakin' shut up about 'em. It's my blog, I'll blather if I want to). Anyway... Roses can be a challenge here in Flagstaff, especially out here on the east side with our cinder soil, grasshoppers, wind, and grasshoppers. I've killed more roses than I care to think about, including all the ones we brought with us from Southern California--except this one. (Yes, we actually moved some of our roses 450 miles in the dead of winter. We are a tad passionate about our roses.) We planted this poor thing in our backyard, where it got little more than water for about 3 years. It flourished. Last year we decided to stop trying to grow stuff in the backyard, since one of our dogs likes to dig, so we dug this one up and stuck it in a pot. It flourished. This spring it got too dry and died back. I kept waiting for it to recover, but it didn't. I gave it up for dead. A couple weeks later, a single tiny shoot appeared. Now it's blooming. I need to trim off the dead branches and decide whether to keep it potted or put it back in the ground. This is the toughest rose I've ever grown. I need to tell my local nursery about it so they can stock it. Oh, and it's gorgeous.
Our soil here is too alkaline for blueberries, so I grow mine in pots. I've managed to harvest about half a handful of berries so far this year:
Finally, I'm attempting to grow watermelons in a container. Yeah, I know, watermelons in Flagstaff. Sure. Good luck with that. The container is up against a south-facing wall, so I'm hoping that will provide enough heat and a long enough growing season. So far, so good:
Moving on from the containers. The mixed border looks like a jungle, and the hollyhocks are trying to take over the neighborhood:
The pond is thriving too. All ten of our fish (6 goldfish, 4 koi) made it through their first Flagstaff winter just fine and seem to be doing well, as are the pond plants:
The plant with the tiny yellow flowers is Ranunculus flammula, small creeping spearwort.
Water mint and my favorite water lily, Perry's Almost Black.
I had to drop my son off at the Phoenix airport earlier this week, so I stopped by my favorite water garden backyard nursery and picked up some water lettuce and water hyacinth for the summer. They're still looking a little pathetic from their sojourn in the car trunk on a 113-degree day, but they should bounce back in a week or so (side note: why, oh why, does anyone want to live in Phoenix? 113 degrees? Seriously? And that isn't even unusual down there).
Veggies are lookin' good. The garlic is starting to brown, which means harvest time is coming soon.
Tomatoes, beans, squash, and more.
And finally, the walking onions are going crazy!
If the wind lets up, I'll do some weeding this weekend and put out the last of the seedlings currently occupying the back deck. Hooray for summer!
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