New Look, More Planting

Time to update my garden blog...

Diligent hubbie decided we needed to upgrade to new half barrel planters to replace the old falling apart ones. I love the wine red stain on the inside of the barrels. (Yes, from the wine, of course.) A product after my own heart, LOL! Chris stained them with a natural light stain which soaks into the wood and protects them from the weather.

He also build me two beautiful cedar flower boxes for the landing on the deck stairs. We took down the old ones and planted tomatoes in them next to the greenhouse.

I have planted 3 of my 6 half barrel planters now with a variety of pink geraniums, white Ostoe daisies or double purple petunias. I added some 'Rocket mix" snapdragons to the tubs by the road. I love those snaps! They shoot up to 3 feet tall and bloom all summer. :)

Unfortunately the snapdragon seeds that I collected and planted have only resulted in ONE tiny little seedling and the other 3 pots had nothing germinate. I guess I'm not doing something right... Might have to Google it...

My Morning Glories that I grew from seeds are doing well and I planted a half dozen out in my stack stone bed by the trellis. Not sure yet what I will do with the other 6.

I also planted my Glad bulbs out in a cluster in that same bed. The flowers are called Passo and should be blue with silver. The leaves are already over 6 inches tall. I started the bulbs in a container of water and then planted them into pots once they reached about 4 inches tall. I have also used several of them as centre leaves in the middle of a couple deck pots. They look quite nice surrounded by geraniums or Osteo daisies and in August the Glads should bloom.

Two of my huge dahlia clumps are in the garden now. They have grown into giants in the greenhouse! One is a red cactus dahlia which I have had for 10 years now, over-wintering the tubers each fall, and the other is a gorgeous yellow and orange cactus dahlia called Firebird going into its third summer.

First deck pots: blue sage, orange gazania, gladiola (leaves), Samba red geranium (over wintered), purple pansies

Veggies:
We planted 12 swiss chard bedding plants into the vegetable garden along with 2 store bought zucchinis, 6 squashes (spaghetti, acorn and 1 delicata) grown from seed, which join the 3 tomatoes plants: 1 Early Girl, 1 Black Krim and 1 Lemon Boy.  Now we'll see which location grows the better tomatoes, the greenhouse, garden or deck.

Last and definitely least: dandelions. They seem to be the bane of my existence. I made a stab at digging some of them out, but its best done a day or two after it rains other wise it is a bone jarring job even with my fancy Fiskar dandelion digger.

We had a rain storm this evening with about a half hours worth of rain and a huge gorgeous rainbow afterwards! If I weren't volunteering at the Quilt Show tomorrow, that would be the ideal time to dig quack grass out of the garden or dandelions out of the lawn. :)