Ellliquiy Gardeners Unite!!!

[Satya]

I LOVE GARDENING!!!
If you love gardening too, please contribute to this thread! Be it photos of your garden, photos of things you'd like to grow, success stories and failed attempts... Toss 'em in here.

I must have picked it up from my family on both my mothers and fathers sides. (my brain kind of blew up trying to think of where the apostrophes go in that sentence... ) Anyhoo. *ahem*

My main focus the past couple of years has been getting good at growing vegetables. This year I sort of spread my wings a little and started a few kinds of flowers from seed to see what kind of results I could get.

The garden beds pictured below were made by my brother and I, and they are cedar, and smell really lovely. We didnt have compost for the beds for last years plant, but this year we managed to yield a pretty hefty pile of rich looking compost. We used the usual suspects, like veggie/fruit scraps, egg shells, coffee grounds and tea bags, cardboard and paper (vegetable base dyes only on the paper folks!), and failed produce that didn't make it to full growth or ripeness from our gardens' plants.

Here is a gathering of potted plants. The bottom rectangular cedar planter is filled with carrots and one straggling garlic sprout. Most of these pots are occupied by tomatoes. There's some mint in the green pot, and bulbs in the lower blue glazed planters.


Opposite side of the first picture. Here you can see the humorously over sized pot holding a combination of lemon grass, Thai basil and Thai chili peppers.


OH hello! My Chamomile is starting to bloom!


Here we have shallots growing in that felt pot on the top right. This bed is home to a variety of beets, carrots, and kale. One bushy nasturtium on the right an a big bushy bee's friend plant on the left.


This is the pea trellis I made this afternoon. They are big enough now to be trained to grow up onto something, truth be told I probably could have built it sooner. Its almost impossible to see from this angle, but on the right side of the peas, I have two calendula plants (flowers), and one baby lupin plant (fower) growing.


Here is a photo of the rudimentary trellis we put together for our hops. My brother pre-ordered 4 root cuttings, 2 of each of a different variety. I guess buying hops is a big deal, and you have to wait for the date they become available online. Almost a big bidding war ensues for the rare varieties, almost like getting good seats at a concert hall. These hops are not ornamental, and can be used for brewing beer (YEEEEE!!! I ALSO LOVE BEER!!) but they don't produce a usable harvest until they're at least 3 years of age. Let me just say that it's astounding how fast these guys can grow. It almost seems like a foot a day. The two outer most hop plants are clearly the same breed, and the little dinky one in the middle is the only survivor, unfortunately. One of the root cuttings didn't take so we have a nice odd number of creepy hops.