Patio Gardening

In the beginning of the year, as I was waiting for winter to finish up, wishing for spring, I was dreaming of my garden this year. Last year, I finally tossed away my old corner planter. It was rotting out and growing more mushrooms than anything else and it was time. So, I spent the early months of the year planning what kind of planter I'd use to replace it! 

Originally, I had though to do a big long one with upcycled windows for a cover. It would be like a mini-greenhouse for the early months of spring, and also help keep off the rain if I was worried my plants might get drowned later in the summer. Also, I thought I might make a little trough-planter to put my lattice in, so maybe my peas would climb better. I was excited!

It was a lovely idea, but then the world got crazy and the local recycle depot (where I was going to get the old windows to upcycle) closed down until further notice. So, with no windows, it was back to square one. However, as it happened, I did still have a bunch of wood leftover from a different (also put on hold) project. So, I decided instead of a small trough-planter, I'd make a longer, bigger one, using what I had on hand. 

First, make a plan... then, chop some wood!

Next, a little bit of sanding and on to assembly. I got the sides made, legs added and was just about to attach some slats to make a bottom... and my drill gave out. 

Poor old drill, it was a wedding present and it's had some use these last 10+ years ... and as I was drilling the pilot holes in the bottom slats, it just decided that holding onto the bit wasn't that important...

Happily, a friend nearby was willing to lend me her drill, and I was able to extract my bit without trouble and finish what I had started, and even without having to wait too long. (I was very grateful!... waiting is not easy)

Boom! A little behind my originally imagined schedule, but I had a completed planter. Woo!! Now, onto planting. 

Since things here in the Chicago area are pretty thick with CORONA-19, I've been doing a lot of my extracurricular shopping online. One of the drawbacks of patio gardening is that periodically, I have to buy dirt.

Most years I try to reuse my soil or mix in a little new soil to give my old stuff a boost. However, since I had tossed out all my planters last year, I had tossed away all my yucky dirt as well. So, I had to buy all new dirt this year. Which I did online. 

Trouble with online buying is that I accidentally bought the wrong kind of dirt and in the wrong size. Whoops! However, I did some research and figured out ways to make it work. With a little trial and error, I got some dirt into my planters and I was finally ready to put something in them. Happily, by this time, things here in Illinois had started opening up a little more and I was able to go to the garden center and pick out what I wanted (and get a little more dirt too).

Whew! This year's garden seemed a little ill-fortuned.. Historically, I get my garden in and going by mother's day... or Memorial Day at the latest. This year, with all the COVID-craziness and my tools giving me trouble, it took a while longer. But determination won the day and I got my seeds in the dirt on June 1st and the baby plants from the garden center about a week later.  Now things are looking promising!

One of my little nasturtium seeds poking up through the soil.

A whole line of peas, getting ready to climb up the lattice!

I did all flowers and greenery in these horizontal planters this year. Last year Townsend gave me a little petunia for mother's day and it did really well. He was hoping we could do more this year. When I went shopping I couldn't find any petunias, but there were these supertunias at the garden center, so I put them in the middle up on top. They're supposed to trail over the edge, and that should be cool!

And, of course, inpatients on the bottom row.. historically, they've done really well with the more shady level of the planter. 

You can see a nasturtium sprouting in the top level of this 3-tier planter. I'm interested to see how the seeds fare over in this planter (more shallow, more shade, straight potting soil) vs the bigger wood planter (deeper, more sun, a mix of a bunch of different soils). Only time will tell! 

This year, I put in some lettuce in my big, new planter. It's a new one for me, and I bought it on a whim, so we'll see how it does. Only, I forgot where I had planted the sunflower seeds Moon got from preschool... I thought it was in the other corner of the planter, but it's looking like I was wrong..  so we'll see how they do being that close to each other.. haha.

June is the most hopeful time of year - all the plants look fresh.. seeds are starting to sprout.. anything can happen! Here's hoping things continue to look good as the summer progresses. 

More Garden Updates

So, our townhouse association had the patios painted. It was supposed to happen earlier in the summer, but it fell into mid-July instead. By this point, my garden was well established. However, with great care we moved everything away from the fence and railings and then waited for the paint to dry.

It was only a couple of days, but there were some winds and my poor flowers suffered a bit of excitement...

Happily, they bounced back ok. My tomatoes are still growing more leaves than tomatoes, and the weather's been too hot so the few that are growing aren't turning red. (the internet said if I brought some green ones inside to ripen they might fare better.. so, I've got a couple inside to test the theory)  My peas did climb up the lattice.. and a few little white flowers bloomed but, so far, no peas as of yet. Fingers crossed the cooler weather will encourage things to progress.

My three tier planter is doing well. I'm enjoying watching the morning glories climb the ropes.

Here it is all put back together, with newly freshened paint.

Overall, my tomato is a bit frustrating - no red tomatoes and all. However, things are going along pretty well for my little patio garden!

Garden Updates

It's only been a couple weeks, but my garden is thriving! I feel like June is always the best month for the garden. Things are still freshly planted, it's not gotten blazing hot yet... I haven't forgotten to water things yet.. I'm still feeling hopeful that everything will last the summer! So, I enjoy it while it lasts..

The petunia that Townshend gave me for mother's day is going strong. He gets excited to count the blossoms, he said that we're up to ten (from the 4 we started with). My tomato is growing so fast! I wonder if the potting soil (with added fertilizer) is feeding it so much that it's gotten so big. I just hope that it's not so busy throwing out new branches and leaves it forgets to make flowers to grow me some tomatoes. I'm excited that my peas are starting to climb, I'm just hoping they'll latch onto the lattice soon (they don't seem to like having to grow sideways temporarily).. but I'm persistent.

Initially, I planted some marigold seeds in the hanging cans, but after nearly a month, nothing had come up in any of my beds.. so I picked up a couple new flowers to fill them with.

The things in the wall planter are getting bigger too. I was excited to find that my greenery actually had some little white flowers pop up. And the inpatients, though many of the blossoms were pummeled by some late-spring hail, are filling out nicely.

June 16th:

 June 22nd:

Then, last week, I scored a sweet sweet planter off the local resale page. Three levels of possibilities. On the top, I put some of the new pink flowers, in the middle went some trailing purple flowers, and I planted some morning glory seeds (saved from last year) in the bottom one. The hope is that they will grow and climb up the sides of the planter 'cuz that could be really cool!

Overall, I'm loving the way my little garden is looking.

I just hope it can survive when I have to rearrange everything in a couple weeks when our building is getting all the decks painted... but this is the season of hope!

Memorial Day Fun - Weekend

It's crazy to think that the school year is almost done and that summer is practically upon us! It seems like just last week we were whining about all the spring snow (happily, that seems to all be behind us now).

Though, unofficial, Memorial Day is really the beginning of summer. We try to do something fun that weekend, to kick off the fun. This year it turned into a very full weekend!

First, Saturday, we went to the conservatory. It was beautiful, as always! We checked out the flowers and played and took the train home.

We finished off the adventure with a stop at our local donut shop.

Then, Sunday we planted the patio garden.

And there was still time and sunshine, so we went for a bike ride. Of course, the destination is almost as important as the ride, so we worked in a visit to a new park with a playground and also a little water fall! (with some train spotting in between)

An excellent beginning. It's so fun that the boys are getting bigger and we're able to do more things! Bring on the summer.

Final Garden Stuff

All in all, I'd say this has been a successful patio gardening year. There was that bit of a dip in the overall health of my plants from my going out of town for the family reunion; my absentee-watering attempts, though not hugely successful, kept most things mostly alive so that, in the last several weeks, my little garden has bounced back pretty well! However, it's getting to the end of the season now and things are looking a little scraggly out there.

my poor spinning flowers have had a beating this summer!

Though the leaves are starting to turn, there are still blooms coming!

Now, the weather is acting like it might actually be Autumn (which is nice since we've officially exited summer at this point), signaling that it's time to start thinking about cleaning things up and resetting the deck for next year.

This crazy tomato has grown taller than Townshend.. we never did get any tomatoes off it.. but it sure grew tall!

In the spring, Townshend got a marigold from preschool that we attempted to plant. However, it did not make it. Still, we did get some lovely orange ones from the store so, with those seeds,we can try again next year.

The other day, I also snagged some spent blossoms from the school garden, so we'll have some yellow ones to try next year too.

The morning glories have been a fun experiment for my garden the last couple of years. Originally, they grew from seeds a couple years ago. I was nervous because, from all accounts, trying to cultivate morning glories is a challenging thing. However, they worked that first year and, to my happy surprise, they gave bunches of seeds at the end of the summer, so I saved some and tried again last spring. The new seeds looked different than those from the store, so I wasn't sure what or if that would cause any changes to the new plants.

Earlier in the season, I wasn't sure if my morning glories would give me seeds... maybe since the seeds were smaller, they wouldn't make seeds. Though, honestly, I wasn't sure if the birds weren't eating them all! Then, just a day or two ago, I went out to check and I found a bunch of seeds tucked up in that bundle of leaves and vines at the top of my lattice.

seeds!!!

I was so excited! So, I grabbed a few to save for next year - quick before the birds came back. Now I've got lots of seeds to play with. With all the lovely climbing vines and beautiful color, I'm thinking I might need to get another lattice to get more morning glories... They're so fun!

Now, it's time to start clipping off and cleaning up, and shutting it down for the season. It's always a little sad to take down all the color and fun from the deck, but I'm excited to have these seeds to try for next year!