If the disease hit your tomatoes, and the leaves were all yellow and curled, you had tomato blight. It's really common. Next year, plant your tomatoes in a different location and spread them out a bit. Blight LOVES crowded conditions. :)

Any one planting spring bulbs ,I am ,a little disappointed because there are certain bulbs I want but the stores here are not carrying them all I can seem to find is tulips and daffodils.I like bulbs but not the long winter wait:blah: but guess we have to have snow:dizzy:

Hi everyone.
I'm not a gardener becasue I just don't know how to do it but I would like to learn.
I have a couple questions maybe 1 of you could answer. I plantes some labelia when summer started and they ended up so pretty, but after it got to be over 100 degrees they just burnt up. Now that fall is coming up I want to plant something else. I had used the labelia as like a trim in my flower baed area and there are still a few alive so what do I do now. Dig up the crispy ones in the ground? I want everything to look nice so should I also dig up the few that still are living and plant then somewhere else, throw them away.
Thanks ladies.

Well for my second question, I live in a condo and I don't have a back yard, just a patio, is there anyways I can have a small veggie garden, in like some king of box or something?

Please count me in on this one! Gardening is my favorite hobby. Another Oregonian here, and slowly learning what's different from growing in California. I come from a large family of gardeners and learned much about it from my maternal grandmother and my father. But there is always more to learn!

We now live very rural and grow/raise most of our own food. We just stocked the freezer with a homegrown steer and half a hog... there is pear wine burbling away in the pantry and a ton of preserves already put up for the year.

In the vegetable garden this year we grew and are growing: Potatoes, asparagus, cantaloupe, peas, lettuce, green beans, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, corn, strawberries, tomatoes, basil, artichokes, onions, leeks, garlic, arugula, beets, carrots, radishes, peppers, celery, spinach, Swiss chard, cilantro, Italian parsley, chives, dill, rhubarb, sage, oregano, camomille, thyme and rosemary. We are fortunate to have an orchard that produces pears, figs, plums and apples. I'd like to add peaches. We have black cap raspberries, boysenberries and grapes growing in cultivated rows, and of course Oregon is overrun with wild blackberries. I just picked enough to make 9 pints of jam.

It's harvest time, and I will be canning like a mad woman for the next month or so... I'm sure to have questions for you all, and if I can make any meaningful contributions, I'm happy to do so!

Rae

Oooh double digging, that's aerobic exercise, seriously.

Today and tomorrow are my gardening days! I got a ton of fall mums in the little 6-packs at OSH hardware for only $3/pack. I replaced a lot of my burnt out summer beds with them today.

Here in El Lay it's getting time to change out the summer stuff and put the fall stuff in. Two things I absolutely HAVE to get in by the first of Oct; the sweet pea seeds I put on my tomato cages (if I'm lucky we have a house full of them for Christmas, but def for the new year!)

Things I'm planting a seasonal "Sonoma Diet" garden in October: mesclun lettuce "Monet" mix, "bright lights" swiss chard, cilantro, french breakfast radishes. The greatest thing is to be able to take some scissors out and cut some stuff for salad! Cuz I HATE wilted salad stuff, there is nothing worse than slimy bags of cilantro in the back of the fridge.

My aunt grew tomatoes and something else (don't recall) in window boxes in her condo.

Hi, ShyShy,

I have friends who lived in downtown San Francisco on a third-floor walk-up apartment, and they had the most astonishing vegetable garden on their patio... it was all in pots, and they had nearly every vegetable you can imagine up there! So yes, you can create quite a garden on your condo patio. It's all a matter of how much time and effort you want to put into hauling soil, water, fertilizer and the like. Many vegetables are fairly shallow-rooted and won't need soil much deeper than 6-8 inches. Tomatoes do well in pots. Lettuce and spinach need almost no dirt to grow (well, a few inches, though!). What sorts of things do you want to grow?

Re your lobelia, yes, if it's crisped, it's unlikely to recover to any meaningful extent... I'd dig it up and replant with something else.

losinitin07, what bulbs are you trying to get that aren't available? Usually the nurseries and stores sell the things that are appropriate to plant at whatever time of year they're selling them, so if you're after something that is better planted at another time of year, it will turn up then. :) Thanks for reminding me it's time to plant tulips -- we need LOTS more!!

Rae

Shy shy, this time of year I replace my lobelia in my front walkway with blue and orange pansies. They usually make it through the winter fine (here in LA at least!)

My advice is to get the little ones (in the 6-packs) - give them some spacing (6 inches or so) and they will fill out fine by Nov.

The only problem with discussing gardening on a national forum is that it varies so much by region. Now is a major planting season here in So CA, but in colder parts of the country they are doing coldframes and other stuff and sort of closing shop for the winter.

As far as bulbs go we can't grow crocuses and tulips and those things without a huge hassle (keeping bulbs in your fridge for weeks, away from apples and etc etc.) with one notable exception: Ranoculous! These are beautiful and you can plant them next month.....all you have to do is dig some good soil amendment into a bed, pop these scrawny little things in and each one will give you TONS of flowers in a few weeks.

i'm proud of myself..i just started a compost pile for my plants and soon to be garden. Did a bit of reading..and then this week when i did yard work, i layerd the leaves and grass clipping and now i'm adding the left over veggie waste, egg shells and coffee grounds as they accumulate. Looking forward to getting the thing going. Will turn tomorrow to see if its "cooking"

I luv gardening as well; but, the weather here this year was terrible. We did get some green and yellow beans; and my peas, onions and summer turnips did well. My salad garden by the door (it's in a recycled dryer drum; gonna do two of them next year) always does very well.

I always have marigolds in hanger planters, pansies and petunias also do very well in them too; fragrant allysum is nice around the edges. I have had some success with red geraniums too. My TINY TIM tomatoes are doing well; just pickin' the ripe ones as I go; have been having trouble with the slugs this year; we are battling over who is going to get the tomatoes.

We also compost; use the shell of an old washing mashine for that; DH took the guts and bottom off; it's so ez to use, just open the lid and put the stuff in; we also add a bit of soil now and then. Each year, there seems to be some problem that comes up, so we just move things around (rotate) and that seems to fix the problem.

We had bad frost that froze my potatoes; lost them and only about a half row of beans; didn't have enuff water in the spring, so got only half what we should have. Our winter turnip aren't growing much this year and the carrots are puny; but we are leavin' them in, as maybe by November they will be bigger. I'm changing my source for seed next year; going back to a more reliable company for a better quality seed. Oh well, there's always next year ...

I'm trying to find checker lilies,I'm going to mail order because no one here sells them ,There are only three bulbs to choose from this year daffodils,tulips and frittillia (sp) I ordered some checker lillies from ebay last fall they never came up .Might be the location or may be the bulbs were not good. I live in the woods on the side of a hill with lots of shade,last fall I planted a lot of bulbs the tulips the chipmunks ate ,now the ones planted with daffodils they never bothered,so I will plant daffodils with the tulips. I buy a lot my plants at the spring plant sale the local garden club has,the plants are .50 to 3.00 and they have a lot to choose from also I have a friend who has tons of gardens and she either gives me the plants or sells them cheap.I live in a small border town the nearest mall is 70 miles away and that one is a baby compared to the one in the big city which is 120 miles away all I here is 3 grocery stores,1 walmart and 2 hard ware stores,only walmart and one hardware store sell bulbs and they do not have the selection they had last year.:?:

I ordered my checker lily bulbs ,hopefully these ones come up.Where did every one go? I have been finding some really great buys on perennials big plants for $2.50 I read that this is the time of year to plant they get really strong roots over the winter.Today I bought a lily and a purple Jacobs ladder. I see walmart has marked their plants down but they are half dead any other northern gardeners finding deals on plants? :smug:I hope you all doing ok.Have a good day.

Shyshy, you can absolutely plant patio pots with vegetables -- it just depends on what you want! A great start is to get a large plastic or fiberglass pot (easier to move) and fill it with potting soil. Ask your garden center, because if you use regular dirt, it will be too heavy and will compact down and kill everything!
Once you have your soil, plant one tomato plant, 2 basil plants, one parsley, and one oregano plant. If you have room, add a rosemary plant. You will have an Italian garden box!
Another great combo is a hot chili pepper plant (try Thai chilis or jalapenos), cilantro, and vietnamese mint. If you want a great and hardy plant, try the specialty mint varieties such as chocolate mint (when you crush the leaves, it smells like an after-eight mint!) or banana mint. For flowers, you can go with a lavender. It will flower in the spring, but you can dry the leaves (just cut the long stems, bind them together with twine, and hang upside-down) and use them to scent your clothes drawers. You can even bake with lavender!
If you want to be more adventurous, you can get a triangular support (looks like a metal pyramid), stick it in the bin, and grow peas. Peas need to climb, hence the metal pyramid! You MIGHT be able to get away with baby carrots, but your space will be limited.
And, of course, for all season color, plant marigolds. The scent helps deter mosquitos, so they are great around the patio. Just pull off the spent blooms (called dead-heading) and they will bloom forever.
Make sure you check the soil each day and water accordingly!

Well spent some time this week cleaning up the gardens tis such a sad time know that old man winter is not far behind I miss all the colors that come with spring and summer .I have planted my fall bulbs just know waiting for the checker lilies to arrive so I can plant those .Well happy gardening :carrot:

Are you being tantalized by the seed catalogs won't be long though. I can't wait for all those bulbs the I planted last fall to bloom.I love to sit in the dead of winter and look at the catalogs with all the pretty flowers so many to choose from .It's almost like sitting in the garden on a warm spring day.;)