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bettycbowen

Little jungle

bettycbowen
11 years ago

My small garden is a little jungle right now too. I enjoyed seeing the other pictures lie Chandra's & the video too. Chandra some day I want my eggplants to look like the ones in your garden.

While out watering I decided to take a few pictures too.

This is a fish pepper from the spring fling-thank you! I really like it so put it in a pot & will bring it in for winter & see what happens.

In the very foreground is a tomato I didn't stake and is now sprawling all over and is very happy. It only produced a few fruit this summer but is now covered in blooms. I think it got too much shade but I'm happy about that now. Also eggplant in an eternal bed of volunteer arugula and marigolds- mostly nema-gone. Behind are peppers

Sedum from Spring Fling-thank you! I love this thing.



Basil, asparagus, and two kinds of Armenian melons that are still producing. I am cucumber-challenged so these work for me. Ugly but strong trellis.

Rosemary takeover. Ok with me!

One more- not my garden!! I took this in June the last of my two evenings in Monet's gardens at Giverny where I got to paint after-hours. I wish I could grow even one decent poppy!

Comments (6)

  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    11 years ago

    Betty,

    It all looks so wonderful.

    I can't believe you visited Monet's gardens at Giverny. I've read two books about them and cannot even imagine what it would be like to see them in person. I assume they were spectacular.

    I grow wonderful poppies using the 'benign neglect' method. Here's how: buy seed, sprinkle on dry hard ground (unbroken ground with weeds and clumping grasses works better for me than fine, rototilled, amended and rich soil) and....down by the driveway, mailbox and bar ditch, but sometimes in the veggie garden as well) anytime between November and February, preferably when rain or snow is forecast. Do not cover seeds with soil. They need light to germinate. Ignore them. Sometime between Jan and Mar you'll see tiny rosettes of leaves popping up. Ignore them, although if they are too thick and you want to transplant them to thin them out, do it while they're tiny. My poppies usually begin blooming in April, more or less, and remain in bloom through May or June, depending oh how quickly the heat really kicks in. Deadheading them keeps them in bloom longer.

    I've grown them down in the bar ditch next to the driveway and around the mailbox since the year before we built the house here. After the county guys put in the drainage culvert and smoothed out the soil around it, I sowed seed in the newly bare clay and didn't have very high hopes. So, of course, they were spectacular. They reseed themselves pretty well, but I put out some new seeds here and there on the property every year when it seems like an area is getting kind of bare.

    We usually have poppies down by the road/driveway/mailbox area, and also in the flower border around the veggie garden, sometimes in the gravel driveway where I don't remove them if they pop up, in the pasture between the garage and the barn, and on the soil around the tornado shelter.

    They aren't hard to grow. Just forget everything you ever knew about gardening and scatter sow the seeds on poor ground and leave them alone. No highly-enriched soil. No watering. No fertilizer. No weeding.(Well I weed the ones in flower beds, but the ones in pastures have to outcompete the weeds.) They're the easiest thing I've ever grown. Sometimes it is all about timing. I usually sow the seed when I sow the seed of larkspur, if that helps any.

    Dawn

  • slowpoke_gardener
    11 years ago

    Betty, thanks for sharing, I love to see pictures also. All you garden is beautiful.

    Larry

  • susanlynne48
    11 years ago

    Betty, your garden is so lush and attractive! That Rosemary looks huge.

    I've always loved Poppies, but have a hard time getting them to grow for me. I, too, just toss out the seeds, Dawn, but nuttin' ever comes up. My favorite part of the Poppy is not te flower, but the flower buds, and the seed pods.

    Monet's Garden? Wow! I am a HUGE fan of the Impressionists and their inspirations.

    Susan

  • bettycbowen
    Original Author
    11 years ago

    Thanks guys, and thanks for the tips Dawn. I bought flower seeds, including poppies, at the garden, and might order some of these big ones. Having the place nearly to myself was amazing- I had to walk around awhile to keep from bursting into tears, seriously. All it took was writing in advance & paying seven euro for an artists ticket. But what I learned from the garden is that they grow the same stuff we do, mostly, I mean really the same- orange day lilies & all- but they organize & mass the colors differently. They use herbs and greens like chard in flowerbeds routinely, And they love dark foliage in with bright things.

  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    11 years ago

    Betty, You know, I was a little surprised myself when I started reading about his garden and noticed how many 'common' things he grew--like nasturtiums and poppies. I plant nasturtiums en masse every March, but mine usually die out in the July heat. In a good summer they'll make it all the way though and still be blooming in fall, but we haven't had a good summer since 2010.

    It is the same with Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. He is well-known for growing massive numbers of varieties, and when you look at the lists of veggies, flowers, and herbs that he grew, they're often the very same things we're still growing. His fruits are not necessarily the same because most of us aren't growing heirloom fruit varieties.

    When we first moved here and I had all the space I wanted for a garden, I kept 'discovering' varieties that were new to me....simply because I had the room to plant more. However, when I look at the list of what Jefferson grew, I see that a lot of varieties that were "new" to me were being grown by him over 200 years ago, bringing to mind the phrase that "there's nothing new under the sun".

    Dawn

  • bettycbowen
    Original Author
    11 years ago

    Yes, the gardens at Monticello were amazing to me too, although I think I saw more things there that were new to me, a casual gardener. At Giverny and Normandy in general, the roses were staggering, and I'd never seen Canterbury bells before (I had to ask what they were, kind of embarrassing). But other than that, it could have all come from Atwoods, seriously. It was all in how it was put together. Oh but there was one thing I saw that was awesome but I only saw it in one private backyard we walked past on the path from our hotel down to the town at Etretat-- to take a picture would have meant taking a picture right into their living room-- it looked like Queen Anne's lace but it was about seven ft tall and the bloom was at least two ft across. Like an alien being. Any ideas? The soil there had to be mostly limestone, right on the cliffs.