MY TULIPS ARE UP, MY TULIPS ARE UP!!!!!!

Sorry, I never planted tulips before...I planted them at Fred, the BF's house, last October, at the end of the bulb season, and they're two inches or so. I'm very excited!

Congrats! Will Fred get a vegetable garden again this year?

Yes, I think I'm going to start the arugula and lettuce seeds inside this week. I'm mostly going to go for greens, and tomatoes, and the Egyptian onions that I planted last year should seed this year.

We are putting the tomatoes in the ground today in "Wall-o-waters" until mid april when the last frost is past. Fresh herbs are not far behind.

We trimmed the overblown design by ourselves (we fired the designer) and have contracted directly with the deck/fence carpenter and the landscape/hardscape installer.

The carpenter started work this week, though it's been slow going because of the rain.

Yesterday afternoon, I pressed our mini indoor greenhouse into action and put tomato, eggplant, and pepper seeds into dirt (in a single flat). It's not much, but this is how it starts, and I can already feel the weight if winter lifting.

Just waiting for the right combination of free time and weather conditions so we can use the dormant oil spray on the fruit trees. Possibly this weekend... fingers crossed.

I'll have to check out the rhubarb on the way to the apple tree...

Fly

my crocuses have bloomed. because of the weird microclimate in my backyard they are 2 weeks later than everyone elses in the neighborhood, but i'm still happy about it.

What kind of tomatoes are you guys putting in? Since I have no garden I must live vicariously.

In Switzerland, I was given a gift of packages of seeds for 4 varieties of mache (which I love love love).

We want to plant them upstate, but we're only at the house one weekend out of every 3, approximately.

Whaddaya think about that?

Oooh, I forgot the sungolds! Possibly, because I ate them as quickly as I picked them, so they never actually made it into the house....

I have a black thumb. I kill plants, despite all the love and attention I give them.

But motivated by all this nice weather, I recruited my green-thumbed friend Liz and her boyfriend Don and we hit the dirt-filled empty dump my neighbors and I call a front yard. We went to the garden center and my friends picked out peat mulch, tools, gloves and various plants. It wasn't very expensive, under $100. Then we spent two good hours tilling the soil, pulling up weeds, throwing out rocks and other debris. Liz raided the yard across the street and scavenged some old bricks. She used them to border the dirt morass. Then we planted bulbs, flowers seedlings, and vegetable plantings. It all felt very "Little House on the Prarie" to me as I am a city girl and haven't had a yard in NYC for many many years.

Now with job accomplished I can't believe how pretty it all is. Nothing is grown yet. Everything is still in seedlings and little sprouts. But in 3 weeks (acc to Don) the tomato plants will shoot up and I will have to get trellises to hold them up. The impatiens will spread into nice big clumps of color. The Lily of the Valley bulbs will sprout and give off wonderful scent. By mid-summer I will have pretty flowers to see and plump tomatoes, strawberries and peppers to pick.

I can't believe my sense of accomplishment. I'm excited to watch my garden grow!

We've grown mache in the garden. It grows like a cover crop unattended. Infact some places sell it as part of a cover crop. Try it.

A rare sunny still from the construction DeckCam

The photos will get more interesting soon (I hope!)

We picked out the gigantic rocks for the rock garden:


and the underpinnings of the lower deck are done:



...which means that the landscapers are starting today -- yippee!! The carpenter will be back after the landscaping is done to build the dog run, add the deck railing, and lay the decking.

Hi, it looks good.
I notice that the posts in the second pic, SP, are set on concrete blocks- is this because of possible termite or rot problems?
Pardon me if you know this trick already, but a great way to get those rocks old and mossy-looking, assuming you like things old and mossy, is to pour the rinsing water from your rice over them before you steam it.
Youhurt also works fine, but it seems rather a waste of good yoghurt, I think..

Hi Alex... welcome to Mouthfuls

Can anyone recommend a good gardening book for beginners? Thanks.

I love the Sunset Western Garden Book, if you happen to live west of the Rockies. (I think you're one of them-thar Easterners, though... they have a companion Northeastern edition, but I haven't used it.)

Gardening for Dummies is suprisingly well done.

Pardon me if this has been covered before, but does anyone have a humane solution to a rabbit problem? We have a fabulous compost heap that provides supper for a lovely family of bunnies, but pretty soon we'll be putting crops in and I'm certain they rabbits will go for them.
Zoo doo, perhaps?

Here's a thread, though it doesn't give much info...

Thank you!
FINALLY a chance to Google "dried fox urine".

Cardoons and Thumbelina carrots have sprouted.





(Whoops. Resized photos and uploaded wrong code. Fixed now.)

How do you serve the cardoons, tanabutler?
I tried growing them last year, and while they grew well, they seemed bland and rather insipid....

...bacon and cardoons..? Now, there's a thought...
They seemed to be prone to mildew, here, but in a mediterranean climate such as exists here in the southern half of the country, they would probably thrive.

Discovered most of the bulbs planted last fall (hyacinths and tulips) are up! Discussion is under way about new tomato supports, and we planted a gorgeous new azalea. Spring!

Lovely little piece in today's Times about gardening, especially vegetables.

The $64 Tomato

Dug up the side garden and layered 320 pounds of humus on top. Dug up the weeds sprouting where the vegetables will be. Planted a dozen dahlias. Not surprisingly, my back hurts.

Humus? What is that in this context?

Thanks.

I assumed it was something like that, rather than Liza's new commercial falafel factory in the works.

I thought it was a generic term for all composted material- as in this is what you get out of your compost: humus.

I was copy-and-pasting from a soil-amendment company's site. I'm guessing what I pasted is just their specific formula.

On this perfectly glorious authentically spring day, I planted lettuces, arugula, mache, cilantro, carrots and beets. My indoor tomato, pepper, eggplant and cauliflower seedlings are looking strong and happy.

Today was spectacular here in NJ, as well.

Not a cloud in the sky, 70 degrees F, moderate breeze about 10 mph out of the southwest. Apples and cherries in blossom.

About as perfect as one could imagine.

Did you plant the cilantro as seeds or seedlings?

Everything I planted today was seed.

We planted lettuce last week and it's doing great. I've never had much success with cilantro which is a shame because I really like to use it 3 1/2 whiskey barrels of various lettuces.