After losing my summer zuchini to squash bugs and borers, I grew patty pan as a fall crop. They did great but their more bland flavor wasnt wife approved.
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I keep forgetting to post pictures of my potato jungle. Unfortunately you cant see all the flowers that well. Included are also other photos I forgot to share here or there.
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Figured id post in this thread too since i think i came up with this independently and some may be interestedā¦ I use modular tomato cages to much effect on my cane fruit. I just put it around the plant once it gets heavy with fruit to lift it up and keep it off the ground. I find it easy in my small space vs having a permanent or semi permanent trellis. Plus i hate tying things up. I just put this on sometime near ripening and then take it off and prune in the fall.
looks something like this when i connect it, can sometimes do 3 high depending on them. Ive had good success with this method. Allows the flowers to be really spread out when getting pollinated then when theyre nearly ripe lifts them up for harvest. Do it with my dewberry (trailing) and my semi erect ones (no idea on the variety, it was here when i got the house). Plan on doing it to my fall gold, ponca, and black raspberries that are in the ground as of this fall. Does it save space compared to traditional trellising? I kind of think so.
Note* wear your rose gloves while you do it
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Well, one of my direct neighbor houses is going on the market. I think thereās a 99.9% chance itās sold to a builderā¦Iām frantically making plans to move things around. It will cause an afternoon shadow on 3 nectarines I planted this year for full sun. But, a builder would take out the dogwood and open up afternoon sun further on that property line (while taking away my kids pride and joy climbing tree). Anxiously waiting to see who buys it. Best case scenario would be a retired couple that doesnāt change much of anything and allows me to keep pruning back the large dogwood!!
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i just spent all of yesterday planting my partnerās damn apple seedlings all along the edge of the lot. plus two maple he started āfor funā went into the devil strip. then all the grapes and raspberries he started that i hadnāt found until now
those went along the side fence so the neighbor kids can pick them i guess.
we also have a tray with a note, in his scrawled handwriting, that says ācherry, plum, peaches, donāt touchā that look like empty pots but will probably sprout a thousand seedlings in the spring
the back side of the note is one of my basket patterns that i was searching for.
edit to add i have now found and planted more than two dozen of his ānew babiesā. i should not have gotten him interested in the trees, but itās too late now.
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This is too funny! Iām sorry you have to share your limited space with his new projects. I hadnāt considered that as the downside of a partner coming round and getting into gardeningā¦I saw a social media video about stand over apple trees that are laid horizontal on rebar/wire only 2ā off the ground and lining a garden bed or bordering a walkway. Maybe you could do something like that with his projects?
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Iāll probably have to! for myself i planted and sprouted a single pawpaw, which has gone into the patch of them.
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Driveway garden with a beautiful fall mess of colors and covered in the neighborās dogwood leaves. Triumph apple went in there and just moved bush Cherry as well. Pretty sure at this point that the neighboring house on this side has been sold to a family that will demo it and rebuild. So, the lovely dogwood will disappear. At least that will open up full day sun in one place when a house shadow will obliterate it in another. Iāve started working on plan B for the nectarines that involves moving one over 3ā (so ridiculous but thatās make it or break it on a tiny lot) and moving another to a different location. Iām hopefully Iāll be able to convince the new owners to plant wisely and not put some stupid large shade tree in a bad place. And, Iām hopefully I donāt eat the words I just typed outā¦
Front yard mini orchard space prepped and getting planted. Involved excavating out the compacted construction rock rubble and backfilling with good soil. That was awful, but done. 5 tree plantings going in this space at 6-7ā spacing. Naturally, Iāve changed the plan 562 times since reading too much, so now I have to wait until spring for the other trees. The ones in there now are a 2 in 1 plum to be grown as a single tree. Fence to go up around the area in the spring. This was my pumpkin and large melon patch, and I still plan on growing those in this area around the trees.
This fall, I also added another strawberry bed to my backyard vegetable gardens and spaced out where we are putting a kiwi trellis in the spring. Next up: chip drop this month to cover the new orchard, winter veg beds and smother the useless grass around gardens and sides of the house. Mentally gearing up for that one.
Unfortunately, my dense planting schemes and the planned fence are making it more challenging to get a wheel barrow from the driveway to one side of the backyard, though still possible. The only area that should remain to mow is on the backyard side where the mower is kept.
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City lifeā¦ my neighbors lot is about to be demoed. They took down the most beautiful and best kids climbing dogwood yesterday. Instant light boost to my driveway garden, but itās always sad and desolate when a lot is being trashed. I was able to get the chips along with what they had in the truck ā good native hardwoods, a lot of it. I wonder what itās like to move chip chops with machinery on larger land? A few more hours of shovel and wheel barrow today, and I might be done.
Itās possible my nectarines will get shaded too early in the afternoon by the new large house shadow, but Iāve decided to wait and see what happens. The influx of afternoon light in the front half of the driveway garden is tempting me to put another fruit tree from my containers on the property line. Thankfully, the new owners are super nice and want me to landscape. Fingers crossed that comes to fruition this fall or next spring.
I seriously hacked at my rental neighbors (other side of my property) neglected sht hedge this winter. Itās become my job to maintain if I donāt want 12ā of invasive honeysuckle, ivy and poison ivy trying to take over my yard. The amount of time I waste pruning this crap throughout the year is Stupid and makes me furious. Owners are old and the epitome of cheap and wonāt spend a dime on the property. (Thereās also a mostly dead 30 maple in the backyard that we fear will fall and take out part of our house. They brought in tree people in the fall to trim it- only because half of it fell on the back neighbors property. I was appalled they left the other half of the dead tree!) Iām planting between the crap in the hedge and plan to keep guerilla gardening there and removing/killing off whats there until itās all gone. 2 year plan.
I was bored this winter. I came up with ways to add 6 more creative trellises and got a bunch of pallets and cedar for making some more strawberry beds/towers to squeeze in anywhere I can. Lots of creative constructing and, assuming it all works, updates at the end of spring.
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Iām on a lot of about 6400 sq/ft and Iām growing a lot. The back yard is all food forest now, no grass at all. The front has a number of edible species but also a lot of native plants and native ground cover. Only a few tiny residual patches of grass left now. I donāt even now if I can list everything I have there is so much. I guess Iāll try :).
- Bananas - several cultivars (will probably shrink this to the best ones over time)
- Avocado - Wurtz
- Papaya - a few cultivars
- Strawberries
- Blueberries
- Loquat
- White Sapote
- Black Sapote
- Atemoya
- Sugar Apple
- Plum
- Peach
- Mango - a few cultivars
- Passion Fruit - a few cultivars
- Mulberry - a few cultivars
- Fig
- Starfruit
- Pawpaw
- Kale
- Mustard
- Radish
- Kumquat
- Calamondin
- Wolfberry
- Bird Pepper
- Jamaican Cherry
- Everglades Tomato
- Egyptian Walking Onion
- Muscadine Grape
- Pineapple
- Tropical Greens - Katuk, Longevity Spinach, Sissoo Spinach, Jewels of Opar, Salad Tree
- Herbs
- Cassava
- Achira
- Moringa
- Pineapple Guava
- Ruby Supreme Guava
- Guava Berries (Psidium firmum)
- Turmeric
- African Potato Mint
- Lemongrass
- Longan
- Lemon Drop Mangosteen
- Wampee
- Hog plum
Iām sure Iāve forgotten somthing, haha.
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Wonderful! Post pictures of how you fit it all in when you get the chance
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I will snap some photos soon to share. That list is so large because Iām very much still in the experimental phase. I started a couple years ago and have steadily been adding this whole time. Many of these are still young and small. Iām planting densely with the expectation that the things that thrive will stay and the things that donāt will get pulled out or moved. When things start to mature I think I will have to pare down the numbers a bit and there will also be things I decide are not worth it and have to go.
Iām not even out of space yet. Both sides of the house have not been touched yet. Eventually, when I get the time to clean them up and remove the overgrown pre-existing hedge on the north side, Iāll have more spots to plant more.
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I plant very densely. It doesnāt look nearly as dense/lush as it normally would because so many things were knocked back by the frost and Iāve removed, moved and planted a lot of things. I wonāt even try to list whatās in these photos because there is just so many different species. Feel free to ask if you want to know what something is.
This is just the back yard food forest area. I have quite a few things planted in the front but not as dense or wild looking. Have not started planting the sides of the house yet either as we need to clear a lot of preexisting plantings. But Iām excited about having more space to plant once we get those spots cleared!
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What are the pretty blue flowers?
I believe its ohio spiderwort. A native to much of the u.s. theres also a virginia spiderwort and i think a few others. They spread like crazy but are great
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Yep, thatās our native spiderwort. I love them and I donāt even have to plant them. They just pop up all over the place and I just let them do their thing and pull out the ones that are in spots where I donāt want them. The stems and flowers are edible too.
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Same boat here, small garden and half of it is patio. Iāve ended up going vertical with everything, espalier apples along the fence and a fan-trained plum on the south wall. The shadow management is real though, I spent ages working out which spots get enough sun before planting anything permanent. Containers for the stuff I canāt fit in the ground, mostly blueberries and a fig.
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This is my little āwoodsy area.ā Not so much woodsy since the 3 trees were cut down, but gets shaded vt neighbors trees and dense root systems throughout. Pictures donāt do it justice. 5 years ago it was dense English ivy. Iāve spent the last 4 year intensely rehabbing it- not an easy feat given than from the black plastic covered stump (Japanese maple we cut down last spring) straight back in the picture is all heavy gravel with soil sunken through over the decades from an original driveway that ran from the street to the back property line. I excavated between all the tree roots and backfilled for the first round of planting and then just decided to add a bit of soil and stick things in and see what works. Turns out, everything has done just fine growing in 50-75% gravel! About 30+ different types natives in here. Itās my favorite garden this time of year. This week, I went shopping in the yard and moved many volunteers and divided plants to fill in all the gaps- tweaking/designing is my very favorite thing to do gardening. Iām super excited to see it fill in and the summer bloomers grow as the season goes on.
I also added a gooseberry, American plum, hybrid witch hazel, New Jersey tea and Asian pear (that Iām going to change to mulberry next year). arguably most exciting: there is a Beautyberry ā thatās ALIVEā in here! I have planted 6 beautyberries all around my property in the last 4 years. I have no idea wtf is wrong with that plant and my land, but they always die or barely grow and then die. BUT, now I have one here (far back corner, possibly the worst āsoilā on the property) and one I shoved in another shady, crappy spot is growing! Lesson learned- they donāt like good soil or good sun on my lot.
I donāt seem to have taken any pictures looking at it from the long side, which is my favorite.
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I spent winter bored and scheming up more vertical growing being very out of land. One is just 4x4s and 3 wires for espalier kiwi, nothing unique. Second is a wooden cucumber trellis we built into the metal beds that I need to get a picture of although itās bandaided at the moment, incomplete AND the stupid 2x2ās are wonky warped. 3rd is electrical conduit system 18ā deep going around the deck sliding door - itās built and just waiting to get spray painted white and then concreted into 3g bags at each base. This year, it will be for container passionfruit and maybe one kiwano- this area gets HOT and sun scorched. Maybe watermelon next year. 4th I keep putting off starting: a bamboo trellis over my blueberry foundation bed for watermelon, beans and fuzzy male kiwi. The blueberries need shade badly as it gets way too hot for them. I truly hope I am posting a picture of it in 2 weeks and all the projects big and small are done!
Number 5 was so easy it felt like cheating. spare piece of cattle panel put at the base of the deck steps with a few zip ties. growing out of the hanging pails. Iāve vacillated on what to grow here 100 times. Scarlet runner beans this year mostly because the hummingbirds love them, and we have a great view of the top from inside.
Oh wait. Itās 6. I keep forgetting I still have to put up a 2 panel tunnel in the narrow space between my deck and fence. Ugh.
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I need to get a couple more cattle panels for my placeā¦
I spent yesterday removing a flowering quince that was encroaching on my front yard since I bought the house a couple years ago. I donāt know that I have any ābeforeā picturesā¦ my body is sore from using a pickaxeā¦
Planted two honeyberries there so far.
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