Absolutely gorgeous!!!

I just love seeing photos of in-progress work. They make it so much more fun and I can be a part of the process, well, virtually!

One day, I might actually rip everything out, remove the weeds, put in a weed barrier and put it all back in.

Bindweed, ack!

Thanks for sharing!

Jennifer

Thanks Jennifer - glad you enjoyed it! :-)

I cleaned out the greenhouse this past Saturday...and Sunday, it started snowing (and hasn't really quit yet). *eyeroll*

Great job, Jamie! I can't wait to see how everything progresses this year. I feel your pain on the bindweed issue. I think I spend half of my summer pulling it out. It's not too bad in the perennial beds, but it's all through the yard, and there is a patch that I'm trying to contain in the vegetable bed. I'd like to add rhubard somewhere too, but it may require ripping out a couple of mums to do it.

My new projects for this year include, making a small corner bed next to the pergola, planting grapevines for the pergola, and adding a peach tree. This is also the year I'm going to come up with the PERFECT container combo of annual flowers from all of my wintersown seedlings, LOL.

I've also got another corner in the backyard, that I can't seem to decide what to do with. The phone and utility boxes are located there, and so is the irrigation pump, so I have to be careful about planting that area, but I sure would like to hide all of that stuff. Open for suggestions on that one.

Thanks for sharing your pictures!

Bonnie

Well, I looked carefully for the "Halloween Bash" in that photo wondering what the heck it might be. Bush? Annual? Fiiinaaaally, I realized that it was the "River of Thyme" you were directing our attention to. Does spending 5 minutes trying to see around the zinnias count? And, are you saying that you spend nearly 2 months planning a "Bash" for Halloween? You got room for one more at this year's bash?

There's a lot of work showing in those photo's. Very, very well done!

digitSteve

I don't pull bindweed in the ornamentals, spend enuf time pulling it out of the veggies. No, in the ornamentals I want lots of leaf growth to catch the Round-up! Ha, ha! . . . and then I come back - and spray it again!

Hi Jamie,

Thats quite a project you have going on there! What a lot of work! IÂm anxious to see the thyme blooming when it starts to fill in more. If the plants I see in the River behind the zinnias are the thyme, theyÂre big enough that you could start taking "plugs" out of the center of the plants to start new plants in other places. That would help them fill in faster, and if you dig out part of the center of the plant, it should fill back in very quickly, yet still allow the existing plants to keep spreading from the outer edges. What kind of thyme did you decide to put in?

One other thing! Is the spot where youÂre going to plant the clematis in the picture, or is it a ways away from the rock mulched area in front of the greenhouse? Clematis like cool roots, and if theyÂre planted right next to all the rock, I think youÂre gonna have trouble with them. With our hot sun, it really helps if you can mulch a fairly big area around the roots with a THICK layer of a natural wood mulch, or, even better, plant some short plants around the roots that will get big enough to shade the entire root area of the clematis.

And I second what Digit said about the bindweed! I was lucky with my veggie garden because the soil in that area was all in a big heap when I bought the house, and as I spread it out I spent several hours sifting, by hand, thru it to remove as many of the roots as I possibly could. Then, the first year of the garden, I carefully dug up the plants that came up from the few remaining bits of root that was left in the soil. The second year I had to dig out just a few more that still came up, and since then my veggie garden has been bindweed free! And I make darn sure to watch for seedlings that come up and pull them before they grow enough roots to become established. But in the perennial beds, and in the grass, I spray them! Hand pulling will slow them down, and if you keep it up long enough, it will eventually kill themÂbut "long enough" is going to be years and yearsÂand YEARS! There are a few places in my main perennial bed where it was coming up from, and well established, below the landscape fabric that was in there when I bought the house, and IÂve been spraying them for 5 years now, and theyÂre still coming up! Much weaker than they were in the beginning, but still coming up! When they do, I let them grow enough foliage to be worth spraying, pull all the foliage away from the perennials, and get Âem! Around the perennials I use Roundup, and when I find some coming up in the grass I use Weed-B-Gon. ItÂs taken a while, but IÂm winning the battleÂand I WILL win the war!

Keep reviving this thread over the summer to show us more "progression" pictures.

I just checked NOAA, and it looks like no gardening right now! More snow heading your way tomorrowÂand COLD!!!

Stay warm,
Skybird

Thanks all. :-)

Bonnie, I look forward to seeing your pictures of all that. A peach tree - wow! And I'm still trying to figure out how to get my annual containers looking good too...I have petunia seeds coming to start, and will get geraniums from our annual "Geranium Fest" in May. Maybe this year we'll both get good pots...

Steve - I'm not sure how to say this without sounding completely insane, but my husband and I spend far more than 2 months on our annual Halloween party. We...uh...start planning/working on it the day after the previous one, truth be told (it's always the weekend before Halloween). We just start the actual *decorating* 2 months before - it takes that long to do the whole house, and finish with the yard. Of course, there's always room for 1 (or several) more people at the party! :-) I just got our first order of props for this year's theme yesterday, along with another order of seeds for the greenhouse.

Those zinnias just went *crazy* last summer - I just tossed the seeds out in the spring, and they took over *everything*! I'm going to start seeds in the greenhouse this year, so I can put them where I want them - they tried to smother out my roses last year, and that just won't do...

Skybird, those plants in the river are indeed, thyme - I think it's "Mother of Thyme", but have forgotten how to spell the Latin name at the moment. Thanks for the tip about pulling plugs from the middle! I think I'll do that when it warms up a bit, and see if we can't get it spreading better. We want that whole river bottom covered with thyme eventually. I forgot to add that my hubby will be building a bridge over the river this year too.

Like I said, with the bindweed, we just went into pure smothering/pulling mode. And between the weed mat and several inches of thick mulch, it's not anywhere *near* as bad as it was. I'll continue to hand-pull it though...I'm not a fan of chemicals in the garden (even on ornamentals), and it's not too big of a chore to go out and weed every other week or so. It really is a million times better than it was though - that whole mulch-covered area was just wall to wall (so to speak) bindweed...that's a big part of why we decided to landscape that whole section of the yard.

As for the Clematis, they'll be planted along the "dividing fence" line, not out by the greenhouse. Their roots will be underneath roses, dahlias, and mulch, and with any luck, they'll grow all over that green garden fence. So I think they'll do okay - they'll get southern sun for most of the day, but lots of shade for their roots at the same time.

Here's my freshly cleaned out greenhouse from Saturday (when it was around 90 in there with the door and windows open):

And a partial view from my back door yesterday. It's still snowing today, of course...Brrrr!

I am glad I didn't start seeds as early this year. Last year, I had them in the greenhouse already by now, and it was a pain to keep the heat up when a similar cold snap hit the first part of March. I decided to wait a couple weeks this year, and I'm glad I did!

Jamie, that looks a little like my backyard.

Four inches of snow . . .

We are starting to get record low, HIGH temperatures.

I'm not happy about trying to keep the little plants that will soon need to go out in the greenhouse - warm! Well, I'm happy now because they are inside with me. But, soon . . .

DD is several miles away with a car door frozen open. I'm not sure if it wouldn't be better if it was frozen shut. Time to warm up the truck.

d'Steve

Back around 1980 there was a pop song, I think it was by the Alan Parsons Project, with the lyrics: "Thyme, keeps flowing like a river... to the sea."

Silly me, I thought he meant "time".

Jamie mt,
Bubble wrap on the inside of the greenhouse in winter? I love this idea. Thank you for posting the pics. How long do you keep the bubblewrap up? Are you growing all winter?
I see you do use a supplement heater. I use one in my greenhouse but I don't have any type of film or plastic on the inside. I bet that makes a HUGE difference.
XOXO,
Jilly Billy.

Jilly Billy, the bubble wrap stayed up year round last year, because I only use my greenhouse in the spring, and I'm lazy. :-) It would be far too costly (and frustrating) to try to keep the heat high enough in there during our coldest months to grow things, not to mention I don't want to be wading through snow to get water out there in sub-zero temps any more than absolutely necessary. The bubble wrap helps the heater keep the temps around 50-60 degrees overnight, without it, I was having a hard time early last spring during a few cold snaps (well, it was hard to keep the heat up even with the wrap in late Feb).

I may go ahead and take the bubble wrap down in May this year, when the heater isn't working as hard at night, to help acclimate the plants to full sunlight. I need to clean underneath it anyways, but then I'll put it back up so it's ready to go for next spring again. :-)

Ooo, how I would love to have a greenhouse! Fabulous pics, Jamie.

Here's a few photos of my garden last year.

Nothing but dirt at first:

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Then, after what felt like forever, things began to grow:

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The sun got to be a bit intense at times, so I improvised with an old sheet:

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By July, things were picking up quite a bit:

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First pepper:

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Then a nasty hailstorm came, right as the garden was looking its best. *sigh*

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Hail damage:

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The mutant cucumbers that followed:

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An autumn pic:

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Cleaned up for winter:

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Strawberries in November. Who knew?

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Miraculous mums:

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(and finally) The Kale That Would Not Die:

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Wow, Laura - thanks so much for sharing! Talk about garden ups and downs, eh? Bummer about the hail storm...

Your garden space is so neat and tidy, and even cleaned up for winter. My neighbor and I are of the exceedingly lazy persuasion - neither of us clean up in the fall, so we're both out there in late March/April cleaning up and getting things ready to plant. :-)

I can't wait to see your garden as it grows this year, hopefully without the mid-season hail storm!

And thank YOU for starting this thread -- it's so neat to have found a place to share my newbie gardening adventures.

It's fairly easy to have a tidy garden when it's so small. *grin*

I really hope the hail doesn't hit so hard this year, but I've lived here long enough to know that there are no guarantees...