Here is my garden assessment:

Everything has been wintersown except the basils, and zinnias, which I'm holding off just another week or two on. So far, I have 63 container sown, with germination in 29 of them.

Peas (Sugar Snap and Green Arrow) have been planted and wire fencing installed as a trellis.

Peppers and tomatoes have been sown indoors with 7 out of 11 peppers germinating so far, and no tomatoes as of day 5.

New bed has been dug in the sideyard, and shrubs and perennials have been moved into it. I have decided this will be my perennial herb area, so lavender, thyme, and chives (if they sprout!) will go into this area.

Most everything in the perennial beds are starting to come up, and there are around half a dozen plants that appear to be "no shows" out of over a hundred perennials, so trying to decide whether to try the same plants again, or replace them with something different this year.

Things still to be done:

Buy and install rock border around sideyard bed.

Expand island bed and spread out the mums that are too crowded there. Use some of the wintersown sprouts in this area too.

Put down a bag of corn gluten meal on the lawn.

PLANTING SCHEDULE: (Please tell me if these planting dates are realistic!!!)

Transplant wintersown broccoli and lettuce to veggie patch in mid to late April (with row cover if needed)

Transplant peppers and tomatoes in late May (a couple weeks earlier for the ones with WOW's

Direct sow:

Carrots - late April/early May
Marigolds - mid-May
Beans - late May
Canteloupe - late May
Cucumbers - late May
Onion sets - late April

I feel pretty good about what I've gotten done so far, and I'm hoping the planting schedule is on target.

Anyone willing to share their garden progress or plans?

Happy sowing and growing to all!
Bonnie

It was only a couple inches and the structure turned out to be more folded than collapsed. It felt a little odd opening the door as the door lay flat against the ground, stepping into the open space and shoveling snow off the plastic.

This hasn't happened over the 6 or 8 years I've been using the hoop house. But then, we don't often get 2 inches of snow in April . . .

Back to the schedule - - I'm almost tragically behind in getting the garden soil prepared but there's still a chance to catch up. Two veggie beds and one flower bed have been cultivated and fertilized in the small gardens. The veggie beds have been planted already to onion sets, shallots and sweet onion plants. There was still snow on some of the beds on those days and I suppose there's a little more there now.

In the greenhouse . . . well actually, in the hoop house the ground has all been planted to Asian greens. The collapse didn't do any harm since the seedlings aren't above ground yet. In the sunshed every thing is close to being on schedule.

That may or may not be good. I'm pumping a lot of heat in there right now but everything has been planted that should have been planted by now - snapdragons, asters, statice, peppers, eggplant, tomatoes. The calendula and zinnias aren't up yet but they will be shortly.

I don't have the melons on my list but the seed can go in the pots shortly . . . I don't know when any of these plants can go out in the garden, however. A cold March has become a cold April and I don't see any forecast of warm weather in the immediate future.

The "Long-Lead Outlooks. 30-day (Apr 2008) and 90-day (Apr. 2008 thru Jun. 2008)" are below normal temperatures and above normal precipitation for this month but then getting back to normal for the remainder of the Spring. I can only hope. (You can see where your part of the world is in the forcasts on the same maps.)

digitS'

Let's see...my main "plan" for this year was to get the darn tomatoes and peppers started way early and growing strong. That's done, and everything is looking good out in the greenhouse. We cleaned out the old veggie bed and moved it to a sunnier area a few weeks ago, which was a high priority as well, so that's done, and I ended up starting way more "stuff" than I planned on, so a good deal of our annuals, herbs and extra veggies are also growing strong in the greenhouse. In that respect, I think I'm ahead of schedule, aside from a few tomatoes I started late that are just now starting to grow true leaves.

Yesterday I spent the morning digging out a new flower bed along the back garden fence, and I moved three roses from the front yard to that new bed, and planted two new bare root roses there. I also planned where several mini roses, some dahlias, lilies and the vines for the fence will go in that bed. Then I spent the entire afternoon out in the greenhouse potting up seedlings and starting dahlia tubers (can you say sore gardening muscles)? I'm behind in my potting up, but yesterday afternoon really helped.

My "To Do" list is still quite long:

- build a second raised bed for veggies
- finish mulching the entire back garden area, and ammending the veggie/flower beds
- Clean up the perennial beds from last year (this should be done already...I'm behind)
- Divide our huge artemisa bush (hopefully before it pops up!)
- Start annual vines in the greenhouse later this month
- Get some nice pots and a decorative bench for a new container garden spot
- Pick out plants for a shade garden we dug out and mulched last year, but never got planted
- Scatter thyme seed in our faux "riverbed" so it will hopefully come up on it's own, since my plan to start flats is going much more slowly than I'd hoped.

I'll probably kick the pansies out of the greenhouse in early May, but everything else will stay snug in there until the last weekend in May or so, just to be safe. I'll start hardening them off a week before that. The cucumbers seem pretty agressive, so I might kick those out a bit early too, after our last frost date (May 15th).

I'm not sure what our summer projects will be - my hubby isn't much help this time of year, because it's "too early" for him, but come mid-summer, he normally gets really motivated to start big landscaping projects, so I'm betting we'll be doing something later in the year (he likes to work in the heat...me, not so much).

Jamie, that is quite the list of projects you have there, but it definitely sounds like you DO have a plan, and are making good progress. I can't wait to see photos of your river of thyme!

I didn't list DH's landscape project, which is to build a pergola over the back patio, which I plan to plant grape vines over. Though my mother-in-law just informed me of a flaw in this plan. She said the grape vines will be a bee magnet, which might make spending time on the patio less enjoyable. Hmmmm ... would I still have the same problem if it were clematis or a climbing rose growing over the pergola? I really like the idea of bunches of grapes hanging down between the slats of the pergola though.

Bonnie

I hope you'll post pictures of the pergola when it's done...we were thinking about something similar, but now hubby has it in his head to do a sunroom instead. Neither will be done in the foreseeable future though...

Billie

The raccoons discovered it last year.

I think grapes would be one of the least bee-attracting vines you’d be able to find, since, as David has already said, the only time there’d be flowers would be in the (fairly early) spring—and you probably wouldn’t be lazing around on the patio too much at that point yet anyway. A climbing rose—especially an everblooming—would definitely attract more bees, and over a much longer part of the summer. And a rose would take a lot longer to cover something has big as you’re planning, and you’d also have a possible problem with the thorns since the kids will be playing out around it. So I’d stick with incredible edible grapes! I think you might have a problem with the grapes themselves on the years when you get a really good harvest, but overall I think you’ll be very happy with them.

Oh, and on the subject of bees—I agree that we should all do whatever we can to help protect them. Below is one of the many, many articles about Colony Collapse Disorder, which could conceivably cause major problems with food production in this country, and the rest of the world. Were that to happen, the transportation costs we’re all inclined to complain about nowadays because of the high price of gas, would make our current problems seem insignificant.

Happy planning,
Skybird

David, my sliding glass door in on the east/southeast, so my original reason for the pergola was to provide some shade on the patio for picnic lunches, cookouts, etc. It is in the sun until 2 or 3 pm during the summer months. If it helps keep our family room a little cooler too, that would be a bonus.

Skybird, last year we had hundreds of what I thought were yellow jackets. They made at least a dozen nests in our fence, and under the eaves of the house. Then I read somewhere that yellow jackets build their hives in the ground, so now I'm not sure what kind of bee/wasp they were. Anyway, I hope these wasps don't need protection, because they are very aggressive and multiply at an astonishing rate. With small children around, I didn't feel guilty about killing them, so I hope we are just talking about honey bees here. Anyway, I'm glad to know that the grape vines are the better choice, since it's what I really wanted anyway.

Bonnie

Just my thoughts.
Billie

Thanks for all the great advice,
Bonnie

Plant the bees some lambs ear (the type that flowers) and that will keep the bees away from the patio. The lambs ear is an absolute magnet for bees, and I can stand as near to them as I want and they could care less. They are too enamored with the lambs ears to care about me. :-)

Just thinking of all the things I want to do makes me too tired to type it all out! :-) Bonnie, I just need to follow your schedule.

Cheers,
Michelle

Here’s a picture of a honey bee.

Here’s a picture of a paper wasp.

And here’s a picture of the nests paper wasps make.

Do you recognize anything? There are also various types of hornets and yellowjackets you might have, but, except for bees, paper wasps are what I find here at my house most often.

Since I’m allergic to hymenoptera, and since I always find several paper wasp nests around my house over the spring and summer, I kill them with aerosol wasp and hornet spray whenever I find them. You can spray them from something like 20' away, and even get them up under the eves of the house, and it’s an instant kill insecticide, so they can’t come to get you if you actually hit them—and it also has continuous action for a couple days, so it gets any that return to the nest later. One thing I didn’t know until recently is that wasps, unlike bees, don’t die after they sting. They can pull their stinger back out, so they can sting over and over! Besides building nests under the overhang of the roof on my house and shed, every year I also find them building nests in multiple locations in my junipers—which is especially dangerous for me since I’m working around the junipers, and last fall I almost reached right into a nest when I was pruning one of them. After I calmed back down I discovered there was a second nest in the same juniper about a foot away from the first one. I also found they were building a nest inside one of the taillights of a car that had a small hole in the plastic taillight cover, that had been parked in my drive unused a couple years ago.

I have quite a few bees around here and I don’t have a clue where they nest since I’ve never found a nest, but my guess is that they live in one of the big old trees somewhere nearby. Bees build big nests, and if you found "at least a dozen" nests last year, my guess would be that you had wasps. Because I’m allergic, I’m very careful when I’m working in the garden, but, as long as I leave them along, I’ve never found honey bees to be threatening in any way. They usually seem to be way too busy collecting pollen to be interested in me! (That could change if the Africanized bees ever reach this area!) I’ve never done anything to interfere with the honey bees, tho if I ever found them swarming or building a nest on my property, I’d probably search out a beekeeper to come and get them.

Wasps are supposed to be helpful in the garden by killing small insects to feed to their young, but they’re way too pervasive with little nests here, there, and everywhere for me, so I get rid of them.

And while I’m here, I want to second David’s suggestion to plant something besides Concord grapes! I haven’t checked out the newer varieties lately since I don’t have anywhere to plant any, but they’re developing more and more hardy varieties of seedless grapes, and I’m sure you could find some yummy table grape varieties. Maybe I’ll need to consider growing some variety of grape up one of my privacy lattices.

Grapes sound good right now,
Skybird

You'll find that making jelly / jam is what they get used for. The store-grapes are pumped full of all kinds of stuff to make them big and juicy, and you won't get that on your own vines. However, the flavor is far more intense.

Minnesota Grape Grower’s Association
Table grapes on the bottom

CSU Organic Table Grape Variety Trials
Pictures of some of the hardy varieties, including Reliance

CSU Good Varieties for Southwest Colorado

It won’t be this year anymore, but maybe next year I will get a grape for one of my lattice panels.

Skybird

Yikes, I really don't think I will get it all done... still hoping though.

Billie

Okay, back to the grapes, how long does it take for grape vines to get large enough to actually produce, and when is the best time to plant?

Now back on topic, Billie, your list is pretty ambitious, but if you're like me, part of it is "have to's" and part of it is "want to's". For example, getting the beds ready or starting new beds is a have to, since there are sprouts waiting to go in the ground. The pergola is really more of a want, since it can be done anytime. I'm sure you'll get the most important stuff done. If you're in school, it will be a great escape from your studies (but hopefully not TOO much of a distraction).

Bonnie

Early on, I'd work on getting a single runner going up to the top of the trellis / pergola - I left several, but later on realized that a single, thick stem was better, and I had to cut several out.

Billie

I bet those grapes will be beautiful, no matter how many flying insects come along with them. :-)

Have not noticed bees in the wasp water trap. We have honey bees, bumblers, and some other types around. I enjoy the bees. They are perfectly peaceful and happy compared to the darned wasps. My access of the patio goes right through the lambs ear, and me and the dogs walk through it all day long while a million bees buzz around it. The bees are sweet natured about it.

Cheers,
Michelle

I rototilled some of the lawn to make a corn patch. Amended it with superphosphate and humic acid and then covered it with coffee grounds and compost. It's sitting waiting for warmer weather.

The cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes have been transplanted to larger containers and are looking good.

Next to do is set up berry beds. If I get a chance, I'll be making birdhouses and placing them around the garden beds.

I have more to rip out in the backyard so the maters, peppers and cukes can have more sun time.

I need to get some sort of markers put in so I don't forget where the tulips, crocus, and daffs are when I redo the beds.

I had ripped out the wood border around the tree in front and put in a flat paver border (even with the lawn for easier mowing) so it looked like a mound of nasties and marigolds rising out of the grass during the summer, but the neighbor's cats have been tearing down the mound using it as a litter box ever since. I got all the poop out and thrown back in their yard, and used liquid nails to attach 3x6 pavers upright to the flat ones. Now I want to get the decorative wire edging to put behind the uprights so it looks nicer and make it more difficult for the cats to access it.

Dafy

Click to enlarge

Cheap, cheap—oh, wait, that’s supposed to be chirp, chirp, isn’t it??? (Sorry, Jali!)
Skybird

Billie

Thanks again for the great hint,
Skybird

This is my first year to have bulbs mixed in with my perennials, so I guess I better think about marking mine too, since I am prone to moving things around. Thanks for all the great ideas everyone!

Bonnie