Tell me about your garden!

[lilo]

(I tried to find an existing thread but the only related one I found was closed - sorry if I suck at searching and there is actually a thread on this topic!)

Tell me about your garden! Do you have flowers? Vegies?

I have a very small garden, but it's pretty much perfect. We have:

three fruit trees (avocado, apricot and peach) that were there when we moved in,

tomatoes, garlic, broad beans, a huge strawberry patch, scarlet runner beans, corn, zucchinis, cucumbers and pumpkins;

herbs: rosemary, sage, thyme, basil, cilantro, French tarragon, chives and oregano;

heaps of leafy greens too - a couple of different types of kale, radicchio, spinach, silverbeet, rainbow chard, rocket.

I've also got a chamomile lawn, which smells incredible - the cat loves it too!

We don't have heaps of flowers, but there's purple aquilega, and I've planted marigolds and sweet alyssum in amongst the greens, and I've got some cuttings that I've "borrowed" (ahem) from neighbouring gardens of different types of geraniums that are just starting to take root!

Now, your turn!

[Jetfire]

I have my own condo, but it's on the second floor. But it does have a large balcony with a south porch, so every summer so far (I've had it 2 years now), I get planters and have a pretty full garden.

Usually I do tomatoes; usually 5 -7 plants, peppers (bell, yellow, orange, jalapeno, sweet-hots) and whatever else catches my eye. I couldn't get a cucumber planter this year, but I did have a strawberry planter that did well for the early season.

On the railings (learned my lesson after the first year. ), I have my herbs... Rosmary, Chives, Basil, Oregano, Italian Parsley, etc... I'm trying to save them inside for next year now, but they grew like weeds over the hot summer we had.

All told I tend to have 3 2ft planters on the railings and I had 4 or 5 similar planters on the deck.

[MoonCat]

Our backyard is a bit on the wild side. The "lawn" is so lumpy it's hard to mow so I have to use the weedwacker instead, and try to avoid daffodils (yellow ones and pink ones) and hyacinths (pink ones and blue ones). There's also two lilacs, one near my bedroom window and one next to the garage; and a patch of oregano that would have taken over the yard by now if not for the drought we had this year.

Also a couple of roses (red); three peonies (one dark pink, one light pink and one white), a white lilac that escaped from the neighbor's yard, a dark reddish heuchera, a lot of ferns and an army of lily of the valley. And an old apple tree in the middle of it all.

On the front porch we had a ton of other stuff in pots: A "mouse ears" hosta, daisies, a dark red rose, geraniums, cilantro, lavender, lemon balm, and more that I can't even remember. It's all gone or put away for winter, now.

[Racket_Man]

I grow mostly roses and Bleeding Hearts.

I have 7 potted roses and 5 gound planted Bleeding Hearts in my front yard

If you have noticed my avaitar during the summer (here and on Fratching) I use pics of my roses.

[bhskittykatt]

I'm an anti-green-thumb, but I try and grow a few things on our back porch. I have strawberries and blueberries, both of which actually gave me some fruit this year. I have an orchid and African violets indoors. The orchid hasn't bloomed in years, but it isn't dead, so that's something. I also have a small palm tree. We keep it indoors most of the year due to the windstorms, but it gets to be outside in the summer.

I bought some tulips this last spring. Hope they come back again next spring. I forget which variety, but they're one of the "fringey" ones. They're dark pink with like-colored fringes (sort of like a Fabio, but reddish fringe rather than yellow).

[Sarlon]

I don't have much of a yard and it was a retal property for many many years before we bought it....

Forsithia bushes all along the north side of the house, and deep purple irises that I've had to seperate twice in 4 years. 2 rosemary bushes flank my back stairs leading to the house.

This spring however I'll be ripping out 2 bushes in my back (east facing) part of the yard and gonna prove my theory that my soil is so rich that I can drop a seed in the ground, leave it, and it sprout within a week.

plan on planting tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins, summer squash, and maybe zuchinni.

[taxguykarl]

Trees:
I have colonade (8' high 3' circumference) trees: 2 peach (seriously productive this year); 2 apple; 1 crabapple.
Dwarf pear, 2 dwarf cherries and a plum (planted this year).
Garden:
It is 20'X 18' with railroad ties forming a slightly elevated bed--I have been mulching there for about 8 years and tilling in the fall (after final harvest Columbus Day weekend) and once in the spring to combine the wood ashes.

I have a couple rows of asparagus (they are perennial). In the rest of the garden I planted tomatoes (good year), cucumbers (awesome year-cukes like heatwaves), beans (bad year-rabbits like them...too much), summer squash, okra and peppers. I also have a half-dozen planting containers in which I grew beets (I got a spam from Burpee about a sweet corn variety which can grow in those--I think I'll try it next year as I have a niece and aunt who love my corn relish).

Needless to say, my Christmas "shopping" mainstay is assembling gift baskets with home-canned goodies, which this year include: pickled cucumbers, tomato sauce, blueberry jam (see my U-pick thread), apple butter, pickled beets, zucchini relish, corn relish (I bought some at a farmstand), peach jam.

[lordlundar]

My mom did some veggies a few years but the huge maple we have in the yard stunted their growth. In another flower bed she has a variety of flowers ranging from lilacs and lilies to a bleeding heart. Most of those were transferred to pots to make for easier tending purposes. And of course my Dad has a bed of Strawberries and a grape vine that he never tends to.

I personally don't have one, yet. Nest spring I'm grabbing some flower boxes and using them for a fresh herb garden.