Gardening #3: New Expansions & Second Garden Haul!

Hello everyone~

Who would have thought this segment still would have stuff going on? Honestly, you all keep me accountable. This year, I want to transform my garden as much as I can and really expand and landscape as I’d have been thinking about over the last year or two. A lot of times ,its just easier to just take action.

I looked back at the previous update 2 weeks ago and I’m happy to say that I did accomplish almost everything I wanted to, except one thing which I didn’t do because I still haven’t figured out what to do with it. Migrating plants in the garden is a little tricky and I want to make sure to only have to do it once and leave it there for a good while. Some plots are still causing me a lot of headache, so as I brainstorm, there should be further changes.

For now, lets take a look at what’s happened over the last two weeks. Most of it happened this weekend….if I’m being incredibly honest!

First Task: Planting Clematis & DIY Landscaping

A few tasks accomplished in this first part! One of the most important things was to plant the clematis. I kept thinking about it and the best place for it was where I had planted it two times before and it failed. Now, I believe that the failure was because the grass and weed took over. With that assumption, I decided to just dig up the grass and create an entire new patch. We had bricks from the previous owners stored under the patio so we took that to line it up. Under the bricks is a deep trench which I read could stop the grass from moving back in. The plant to the complete right was already there.

Next to it is my poor lilies that was in the raspberry patch and I keep wanting to move it and always being too late. I actually bit the bullet and ignored the thorny raspberry bushes and just dug in. Its not looking too hot right now. But I’m going to cut it a little so that it can strengthen, at least I think that could be the solution.

After that is the clematis from the last haul which hadn’t gotten into the ground yet. This was my top task so here we go! I’m hoping that this spot will work, especially since the one year it was successful was also with this white variety.

And at the far left is another migration from the front yard that I talked about last update: the poor little coneflower that was being overshadowed by the hydrangea last year.

Second Task: Second Garden Center Haul

From left to right:
Top Row: Purple/Coral/Red Salvia, Petunia
Middle: Green Bell Pepper, Peppermint Swiss Chard
Bottom: Hosta, Salvia

For the record, I changed the garden center from the last time to see if there was some other variety that I wanted to find so  I went to the greenhouse called Les Serres Dauphinais St-Hubert. Its right here.

 

 

Third Task: Current Updates & Ready for First Harvests

Mosquito Repellent Plant

Herbs: Basil & Curled Parsley

Lettuce #1

Lettuce & Cucumber

Kale & Cucumber

Lettuce #2

Mixed Greens

Kale

Vegetable Garden

Cone Flower

Water Garden

Lettuce Revival

Front yard: Dianthus

Flower Patch

Before the garden haul gets planted in ground, I wanted to do a quick update on everything from last time. Everything is grown quite a bit with the few heavy rainfalls over the last two weeks. The lettuce and kale are ready for first harvest which I will do in the coming week. However, the first thing to harvest is a harsh lesson from inexperience from planting bok choy for the first time. Apparently, Bok Choy doesn’t regrow like lettuce but you could cut the harvest leaves except with the heavy fluctuation in weather, the shock has caused all of them to flower so they have to be harvested completely at soil level. With that said, its why I have more veggies in this garden centre haul above.

I think I want to talk a little about the watering systems that I integrated in the containers. They are doing some great help especially seeing how the plants have grown a lot faster than they did last year. I’m sure the rainfall is a main factor but its kept the soil more moist for longer. Plus, the soil mixture of black, garden top and moisture control soil seems to have helped also.

Fourth Task: Planting the Haul

Petunias and Salvia Container

I know its a bit crowded here but I have planted them fairly close together before and it did relatively well. I’m just hoping that it will work out for the summer.

Salvia

The flower box should have been for petunias instead but of course, I forgot to look at the tag so well, it should still be okay. They look beautiful, mostly because they are my favorite annuals. I usually get the bright red ones but my husband wanted these ones for a change so I thought it would actually match with the current colors in the garden.

Green Bell Pepper – Container Gardening Trial

We haven’t planted peppers before in this current garden. I’m not sure how it’ll turn out. There was a lot of plants so I used one by itself to grow in a container and see how it goes and planted the rest of them in the vegetable garden below.

Replacing Bok Choy row with Bell Pepper & Swiss Chards

Here are the peppers replacing the harvested bok choy. Swiss Chards are the far end. I’m not sure how Swiss Chards are going to work out but it was just a fun experiment and we’ll see how it goes.

Purple Salvia in the new plot

Finally the purple salvia in the new plot. I’m hoping it won’t take up too much space and also end up having a restriction from growing too much with the limited space. Some observations for this place. I did try to give everything the space they need to grow so this spot won’t be going any further until I see the progress.

The only plant not in ground and taken care of is the hosta from the haul. I’m working on it right now.

Fifth Task: The Other Bits and Pieces

In case you all didn’t see the Avenue of Daydreams post, I actually had a surprise growth in my rosemary container and it turned out to be the ground cherry. It actually has unpollinated fruit. So I’m going to be moving this out soon since my ground cherry didn’t come back from last year.

Next thing was to move the little lettuce into the container. It has a decent amount of roots now so I wanted to get it into the soil. It might be a mistake since as I’m typing this up, its looking like it wasn’t strong enough. Chances of it not making it is fairly high.

That’s it for this gardening update!
Overall, there’s been a good deal of progress.
For next time, the hosta has to be plants and one of my plants need to be moved.
Aside from that, I do want to start opening up the side plot to start up the butterfly/bee garden that I had been thinking of. 

Gardening 2018 #2: Garden Center Haul

2 weeks or so has past since the first Gardening 2018 post!

Time sure does fly by. I’ve been working hard on weeding and setting up the garden with what I have so far. There is still a ton of stuff to do but Victoria Day long weekend is the staple weekend where I go to the garden centre and pick up at least my first big haul! This year, I went back to Les Serres Jean-Francois Dauphinais.

This place is still one of my more favorite places to go to. I actually also made a quick stop over at Pepiniere Auclair.

Here’s a lovely mosaic of what I did pick up at the center as a starter and after, we’ll take a look at what I’ve planted and other garden updates as a follow-up from the last post.

Lettuce, Bok Choi, Zucchini, Marketmore Cucumber, English Cucumber

Clematis (3rd try)

Basil, Curled Parsley, Lavender, Lemongrass

Geranium Citronella, Kale, Marigold

Water Lilies

Its the first year that my husband was fully awake to go to the garden centre with me and ended up leaving feeling like he enjoyed it. That is the difference of being on graveyard shift and normal shift (at least for him). It was a very different experience and he was a real champ and kept me company and helped me out a few times with the whole gardening thing. A different experience in some ways. This is definitely just the first batch and the two flowers are the only ones currently not planted in ground yet. We have a few little gardening clean-up areas left but my husband has been working on a few little things helping me open up some more of the garden this weekend as well.

Let’s take a look at how everything looks now!

First Part: Front Yard

The flower patch in the front yard definitely has grown a lot more since the last update. Amazing what two weeks could do. Crimson Star still doesn’t have any buds so I’m wondering if it will since its already much later than usual. The tulips are all blooming now and giving some beautiful colorful life to my front yard. Once these end, the yellow flowers in the back should bloom if things go well. Aside from that, it seems that my middle area is not coming back so I’m going to be moving something over that has been cramped up in a corner of the garden forever but I just never found a home for it. Update on that next time for sure!

Moving along, the Bleeding Hearts are looking spectacular. I’ll be posting some cool pictures of it over on Avenue of Daydreams over the next week or two. Its scheduled but I can’t remember when.

Honestly, this sad patch along the front facade of my house did get a nice trimming and yet again, I forgot to take a picture of it since the last time but the Dianthus seems to be coming back. This patch seems like its not having much perennials come back, however, as I walked around this week, I saw, what I believe is, the cone flowers coming back. Its the little leaves in the top right area. I remembered i had moved one there and it was shadowed by the hydrangeas but this year I trimmed the hydrageans so hopefully it’ll successfully come back.

Part 2: Strawberries & Raspberries

Enough said about this area. Its just growing out of control as usual. The strawberries are getting perkier and stronger every year. There are a lot of blossoms. Hopefully the bees are dropping by to pollinate it. As for the Raspberries, I’m trying to keep it under control but it sure looks like, its not exactly making much of a difference. I waited two weeks and already my lily is hidden in these raspberry shrubs already.

Part 3: Container Gardening

On with the container gardening! We are actually have quite a few of these this year despite saying that we’d have less. As usual, the planter for the ledge of the patio full of marigolds. Marigolds naturally repels mosquitoes so that is the purpose of them being at the edge. Talking about mosquito repellent, here is my mosquito repellent container.

Geranium Citronella, Lemongrass and Marigold makes up for my mosquito repellent container. I read somewhere that if you walk by the plant and brush your hands over it, it will help keep the bugs away. I did it on one arm and it didn’t get me but the other arm caught a mosquito bite. Even if its not effective, it still looks pretty nice. One of my prouder planting moments 🙂

A little change here as well. Usually I get a few herbs and plant them in a container garden. This year, we got the lavender that went into the ground right away (at least I chose to do that), leaving these two so I put them into a smaller pot. I’m hoping there’s enough space but the strong one will survive, right? It’ll make it out! *positive thoughts*

Others may hang flowers in their hanging pots but since 2 years ago, we’ve been planting lettuce in hanging pots and let me tell you, they are quite successful usually. This year, we are changing it up and putting 2 lettuces instead of three. Three always ends up one being scrawny and sad so hopefully two will work out for the better. With that said, the lettuce this year was slightly weak and when I was taking them out, two broke off from their roots. I’m currently trying to revive them in water to hopefully sprout back some roots but don’t know if it will work.

As you can see, lettuce and cucumbers are dominant in the garden this year. With limited garden space as the expansion is still in progress, we are doing two cucumbers in containers this year and I did some companion planting research and paired them up with lettuce. Kale makes no difference so I just put it in since they don’t take a lot of space and we harvest them fairly quickly as we like to make kale chips and cook it.

The final two are just individual kale and my variety of lettuce containers. The highlight here is that I’ve rigged the top one with a watering system. To be honest, I don’t think the system works as well. The water goes down a little too fast for it to be useful. The wine bottle method in the bottom is definitely still doing the trick. I’m going to compare the two and see at the end of the season, which works better. Who knows before we observe for a little while longer.

Part 4: Vegetable Garden

The echinacea is back! I’m really happy about that. I did lose one of them but at least one came back so I’m already fairly satisfied with it.

We put up the same fence as we had last year. Its to prevent bunny attacks on my lettuce. This part is the general informal entrance of my patch since you pretty much need to straddle the front trellis to get in. Its not tall but can still be hard to do. As you can see, my blueberries are growing well enough. The green onions are bursting with harvest and there in the middle is a cucumber plant. We needed to keep them near the mesh side and I’ll be getting a trellis to link it to the side.

Continuing to the other side and the full extension. The far left is all herbs. Lemon Mint and Oregano came back and in the center, I planted the Lavender. As for the rows, The first row is Marketmore cucumbers and Kale. The reason for this is to swap things around. I’ve planted zucchini in the front for a few years and its normal to change things around to help the soil replenish nutrients. Second row is all the Bok Choy. And the final row is English Cucumbers and Zucchini.

Part 5: Water Lily/Water Garden Debut

Water Lilies

What can I say? I grew up with a pond in my backyard. Water gardens remind me of my dad. A part of me has always wanted a water garden so I made the effort to get a water lily and try to make it grow especially after my mom gave us these giant clay pots last year which was my dad’s. The water lilies was pretty pricey but I believe if you put them under soil over winter, its supposed to make it through every year. My mom is the expert on that so I’ll get more info from her soon.

And that’s it for the garden!
We have an idea of opening up a few more patches so my husband has been helping me a ton with that!
He makes the progress go a lot faster especially when opposite from my scattered mind of wanting to do everything at the same time, he actually focuses on one task.

Still some research! I’ll update with the flowers being planted in ground.
I just want to make sure that I open a big enough plot so that I can see the Clematis and it will give it the best chance of survival and blossom.
And a few moving plants about the garden coming up and pruning of a few trees.

Seems that this Gardening thing will be a biweekly deal as it currently stands.
I’m just a beginner gardener so its a journey all on its own.