Karl's Garden Blog

For anyone that paid good money for a Topsy Turvy tomato hanger expecting the plant to grow downwards:
NEWS FLASH: PLANTS. GROW. UP.
I mean, seriously.

I have a Provence Lavender plant on my back porch in a container. It’s been growing nice and wide and is wonderfully fragrant. The dogs seem to leave it alone even though they enjoy sniffing it.
The big thing with Lavender is that it’s a Mediterranean plant — it’s used to growing in well-drained soils [...]

I’m sick with a cold (happens every year about a week after everyone comes back from easter break bearing fresh germs), so I don’t have anything new to report garden-wise. On the other hand, I did get to take some pictures of the gladiolas and marigolds that have sprung into bloom.
The gladiola that I’m [...]

Wow! Things are finally happening in the garden! It’s amazing to see four months of hard work start to (literally) bear fruit. Although today we’re having what an old timer would call “a real toad floater” of a thunderstorm…
As I’ve said, I’m not sure if I’ll actually get any edible broccoli or cauliflower, but [...]

But the first step is admitting it, right?
They were only $2 each at the farmer’s co-op end-of-planting-season blowout sale. They followed me home, honest. Can I keep them, mom?
I just hope my experiences with cheap plants don’t rival my experiences with free dogs.

Well, my Jiffy Pot experiences were lackluster, so I’d recommend not using them. But if you do — do something I didn’t, and remove the netting!
These pictures from Gardenweb are pretty amazing… amazingly bad, that is! Poor plant!

My tomato plants seem to be unhappy, and I can’t figure out why. They’re planted in a nice sandy loam mixed with plenty of horse manure compost, they’re mulched, they’re watered regularly without being overwatered, and in general they seem to have a gifted life.
But their purple stems and spotted leaves tell another story. [...]

I was talking about my plans to attract alternate pollinators and beneficial bugs with my mom, and she commented that she had always planted flowers in with the vegetable garden because her grandmother had. She had no idea why, and didn’t even give it conscious thought, but she mixed impatiens, local wildflowers, carpet flowers like [...]

A while back, I started a bunch of seeds side by side in the great sprout off.
I had a few problems and a few “Duhs” with the jiffy pods … and really, planting in general. I should really read directions more, but the basic problems that I had revolved around what order to do [...]

Things that have gone wrong in the past few days:

The kohlrabi and lettuce seedlings that I’d started months ago have finally all gone to the big compost pile in the sky. I’d hoped to save some of them, but it’s just not realistic… they have underdeveloped root systems, they’re far too tall to be [...]