Pandemic Garden Club

[scrubjayspeaks]

Welcome to the September edition of Pandemic Garden Club! Growing good things in strange times!

Anyone is welcome to comment with what they're growing right now, things they would like to try, problems they're encountering, and questions they have. Share resources, answer questions, shout encouragement.

As for myself...

Not much by way of pictures this time, due to a combination of technical difficulties and lack of energy. Things are roughly as they have been in the flower garden. The four o'clocks have grown vigorous and numerous at last--yes, even the marbled ones. An assortment of snapdragons are scattered around, and a few of the zinnias continue to put up flowers.

Most thrillingly, one of the fancy morning glory vines finally started blooming. The flowers, brilliant purple-blue and star-shaped, show up without warning and disappear just as quickly, but there have been three or four at this point. I know that doesn't sound like much, but last year they didn't bloom at all. I had terrifying masses of vines twining up the tree trunk, but never any flowers.

Finally, the joyous triumph of the season: pumpkins!



We've got four pallets full like this, where they are curing and staying away from any rodental types that might gnaw at them. The very first pumpkin picked just gave way to rot yesterday, but that still means it lasted quite a while. So I should have plenty of good pumpkins by the time Halloween gets here. Oh, and there are still more--many more--pumpkins still on the vine. :D

Comments

[harpers_child]

Everything but the peony is doing fine. The peony is too hot and too wet. The packaging said it would be fine. My sister with the green hand looked at her stash of plant websites and says the packaging flat out lied. We're at least two zones too hot for it. Maybe three. So. It'll probably die and I'll feel bad about it, but I've done my best with the information I had at the time.

[scrubjayspeaks]

Ugh, that's terrible about the peony packaging! I have to take zone information with a grain of salt because we're in such a particular microclimate at our house. We're both hotter and colder than local zones are supposed to be, which makes for some real unwelcome adventures.

[satsuma]

So many pumpkins! I am in awe of your crop. Will you be cooking any or are they all just decorative?

Or only plant grown in large enough amounts to have harvests is basil — i put a pound of pesto in the freezer today

[scrubjayspeaks]

The pumpkin patch is about two-thirds jack-o-lantern and decorative types, one-third pie pumpkins. We do have some additional eating squash out in the vegetable garden, though.

I tried one of the pie pumpkins and found it to be unacceptably stringy when just baked up. It might not have been fully ripe, though. Probably pureeing them for pie and cake and whatnot will solve that problem anyway.

Oooh, pesto! I keep thinking I should get into growing herbs more, since I cook with dried ones so often. They just seem so...delicate. Rosemary notwithstanding--there's a rosemary plant out front that is probably going to survive a nuclear winter. That stuff's indestructable.

[satsuma]

The pumpkin patch is about two-thirds jack-o-lantern and decorative types, one-third pie pumpkins. We do have some additional eating squash out in the vegetable garden, though.

That sounds like a good mix! Hopefully the eating pumpkins will get less stringy when fully ripe &/or pureed :D

I keep thinking I should get into growing herbs more, since I cook with dried ones so often. They just seem so...delicate.

Yeah herbs can definitely be a bit fragile! Thyme is a good one if you're looking for sturdiness--there's a handful of varietals grouped under the name "carpet thyme" that can take foot traffic without fuss (though probably don't eat them if it's getting walked on--i can't imagine shoe muck tastes particularly good)

Our basil plants probably would have gotten all sad and wilted if we'd had a drought but they survived multiple 3+ in rainstorms in one month, so I was pretty impressed with them haha