The Plant and Garden thread!

TJL (Forum Supporter) said:

Ive been working with dragonfruit for the last year or so. I finally got some blooms! Total, i think i have 7 blooms across a bunch of plants. Some are "American beauty", some are the yellow fruit variety which is much sweeter and has bigger crunchy seeds that i like to eat. 
 

All but 1 of the blooms aborted. I think they got too hot and too much sun. But the 1 that stayed looks like its going all the way, it was not in direct sun. It should bloom soon. 

Dragonfruit are one of my fav treats when I'm in Asia!  Good work 

Thanks! One of my neighbor freinds is Japanese and she got me started with dragonfruit. Many of mine came from her plants. 

In reply to TJL (Forum Supporter) :

I might try dragonfruit then, but I don't really have a good place inside unless he's RIGHT in front of one window and takes it up. Don't they grow flat and up, like a sheet?

In reply to GIRTHQUAKE :

they are easy to train into a smaller trellis. Im going to put one in my front patio area. 
 

Also, tonight is the night!

Pollination has been attempted.

Have so much salsa now I'm taking two jars to work tomorrow for coworkers.  We bought garden soil at the local large outdoor landscaping  place and with the rain we get things really grow.  

Hell yeah dude! My local places are getting rid of their manure and soil now for $2 a bag and I'm thinking of stocking up like mad JUST so I have extra to play with my landscape for native pollinators. I want my house to be wild in the cool way AND a little literally 

In reply to TJL (Forum Supporter) :

Dude, he's so pretty! I love him!

Is anybody familiar with Jerry Baker, the old guy that had a show on PBS and used dish soap and chewing tobacco juice for natural lawn and garden health?

We don't grow veggies because we rarely eat at home, so the results wouldn't justify the effort. But we do like gardening. Here are a few pics of our garden areas:

Gardening is a three season hobby for Annie and me, starting in early spring trimming and prepping our rose bushes and ending in late fall cutting and clearing all the dead or dormant plants. It's important to have good soil so we make our own compost and mulch. Here's a pic from the middle of May after I finished chipping/shredding a pile of yard waste from fall and winter:

I blended that with compost from my bin along with a generous amount of wood ash from our fireplace and firepit, and here's the result. The pile is about 6-feet in diameter and 3.5-feet high. It'll shrink down somewhat as it decomposes:

Here is some leftover mulch from last year. (It rained yesterday so it's still wet and icky, but it's great stuff for mulching. Lots of nutrients. We mulch all our garden beds:

We have to contend with beetles, rabbits, squirrels, woodchucks, and other bugs and critters. This appeared in our back yard work area about a month ago. The hole is about 10" at the outlet and narrows down to about 6-8" in the tunnel. I'm dealing with that sumbitch, but I won't say how.

And then today, while Annie was in the house and I was way out in the back yard, a damn squirrel decimated one of our potted petunias:

And last week I found bear "scat" in our back yard. That's a first for around here. But I doubt that the bear would disrupt the garden. They're usually transient. But it's all part of being a gardener.

In reply to Gary :

I don't see any bells in that scat so I know it isn't a grizzly. 

Put the bear poop nuggets into the wood chipper. 

It's been 54 days since we planted these Early Girl tomatoes which are suppose to be 60 day plants, whatever that means. They are over 5 feet tall and lots of fruit are 2" in diameter.

ooh!  I love this thread!!!!

Mrs Hungary and I have finally been in one place long enough that we're actually starting to grow stuff!

We have two properties at the moment, the first is a rental that we actually live it.  It looks like this:

Here we're growing potted things.  Tomatoes, peppers, some herbs, etc.  Also on the property are elderberries, a pear tree, and two look like cherry trees, but nothing came in this year.  Nothing too special, but we don't want to dig up the landlord's place to have a garden and the part of our yard where we COULD have a garden, he's using to grow corn (he owns like 1000 hectares back there):

Both of our places are about 1/3 acre, but they're pretty efficiently laid out so it feels like we have lots more.

Our second place has 3 pear trees, TONS AND TONS of grapes, peach trees, a plum tree, and a cherry tree (no plums or cherries there either this year...).  We're not often there, so we haven't started a garden yet:

Those berries there are Jostaberries (yo-sh-tah), which I've never heard of before, but we have two bushes.  They taste like big blueberries had a baby with a black berry.  In short:  They're DELICIOUS!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jostaberry

The grapes are insane though.  I don't do a thing but trim them and they just PRODUCE!  One year we got some friends together and spent a week at the house juicing grapes.  We still had two rows to go but were absolutely done having fun with the darn things.  We ended up with 200-liters of crappy wine (which we drank over the entirety of the covid pandemic).  It was good times, but last year I was so busy, they all just died on the vine.

Anyhoo, Mrs. Hungary and I have wanted to grow stuff for a long time so we're hoping to make our "million mistakes" while we're in our rental (I'm going to try to overwinter the tomatoes, and I'm also cloning strawberry plants) so when we're in our new house we can hit the ground running.

I built little planters to hold some of our potted stuff.  I need to build two more:

Nice fruit tree's Bill!

it looks like my attempt at pollinating the dragonfruit may have been successful.  It appears to be plumping up, turning red and growing more green whispy leaves that you see on the fruit. It would be awesome to have it produce fruit. This dragonfruit is the one from the neighbor, Yuko. Cuttings have been shared all around, but as far as i know, this is the first fruit. Nobody knew that they were not self-fertile and needed help. So this may be the first fruit its made out of MANY clones. I am excite. 

We are planting warmerweather veggies right now.  The broccoli peas and green beans are done.  We put in some okra and need to get summer squash in the ground soon too.  The bell peppers are looking great.  I will try and add a few photos tonight.  

In reply to Gary :

Is that a small potted fig tree I see?  My neighbor gave me my fig tree less than four years ago. It was late fall.   The fig was a pitiful little twig not 3" high, in a paper cup with one leaf on it.  I was sure I was going to kill it before spring could arrive. 

Surprisingly, I did manage to keep it alive in a window.  It even sprouted one or two new leaves.  I planted it outside in an area close to the house, warmed by a southern exposure.  It has thrived, and started bearing fruit in just it's second full year.

Picture of said fig today, along with close-up showing a great many fruits, some of which should be ripening within a few weeks.

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

Yes, mine is a "LSU Purple"  fig tree. I bought it in April and it has doubled in size. I expect to have a few figs this first year, but none yet. I love fresh figs. After a few years this variety is supposed to produce three crops a year, although maybe not in our Northeast climate (zone 6). I'll have to bring it in in the cold months. Your tree looks great, and a nice history!

In reply to Gary :

I don't know if my neighbor will know the variety of mine or not.  It did suffer some die-back from the cold two winters ago, and only a little this past winter.  I try to cover it when it gets very cold (rare here), but sometimes it sneaks up on you.

I seem to remember two full crops last year.  I'm getting impatient waiting for all of these to ripen.  Fresh figs are quite unlike anything else.  Enjoy!

Gary said:

And last week I found bear "scat" in our back yard. That's a first for around here. But I doubt that the bear would disrupt the garden. They're usually transient. But it's all part of being a gardener.

Somebody has to say it:  That is easily the most impressive poop pic that I can ever recall being posted on this forum, and needless to say, there have been a few.  The resolution of the photo is excellent also, but I'm not sure that's a good thing.