Although I did a little gardening post the first week of the month, I wanted to start having monthly garden updates. This will be my April update & {unless I do an outdoor DIY project} I will only post an update for my gardens once a month on the 3rd Wednesday. Just a little post about what I’m planting & how garden clean up is going. Today I’ll show you the progress I’ve made in my side garden beds. I’ve got a few tips for planting tomatoes & some exciting news about my pomegranate bush – exciting to me anyway!
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Mini Garden Makeover
The side garden I started working on in my Mini Garden Makeover post is complete – for now! I like to look at gardening as an on going evolution. It’s always changing!
I planted cucumbers in front of the old pallet, which makes an excellent trellis for them. You can see little radish seedlings popping up in front of the cucumbers.
There were some gardening buddies hanging on my pot tower that needed a little sprucing up. I think these were intended for indoor plants!
I just spritz them with a little blue & orange spray paint to match my pots. Much better! There’s a banana pepper in the bottom pot & red bell pepper in the other. More radish seedlings are poking up in the 3rd level. I planted basil & parsley seeds in the top two pots, but no luck yet. They were older seeds, so I may need to try again with newer seeds.
I bought an Indigo Rose tomato plant to tuck in beside the rosemary bush. Did you know you are supposed to bury 2/3 of a tomato plant? That means trimming off some stems & a tiny tomato! You can leave the stems on, but I prefer to trim them off.
You should also pinch suckers off to have a healthier plant & better production. That’s the little stems that try to grow between stems. This is only for indeterminate varieties, not determinate varieties.
This little guy is going next to the corner of the pallet, so I can use it for support later on.
There’s still tiny tomatoes left, even after pruning!
That’s all for this little garden at the moment!
Other Side Gardens
Just to the right of the garden above, is the AC unit, then a tiled area for the hose & buckets. Beside that are my two long stem rose bushes. I’ve had these for about 7 or 8 years. They almost reach the roof! One has huge fluffy pink roses & the other has multi-petaled red roses that smell amazing!
On down, at the corner of my house is my giant lily. My mother in law gave me a division from her plant originally & I’m not really sure what kind of lily it is, but it gets huge! This is what it looked like after our late frost back in March.
Here’s the back garden bed between the lily & back door steps. Doesn’t even look like it’s a garden bed!
I grabbed that little bird in the background & decided he was just too dull!
Now he’s resting in his lily nest! This has doubled in size in about 3 weeks!! I will have to divide this again in the fall. I’ve already divided it once & moved some to the front beds, which I’ll show you in another post.
This is the back garden bed cleaned up. I put a couple new flowers in, some peppers, & a tiny tomato side shoot. Since there are no gutters on our roof, I have to keep flowers up front & rocks in the back to avoid the run off. It still needs some kind of garden art to give it more color.
I also need to find a way to keep my dog from peeing on the plants! It’s turning the leaves yellow! : (
This little garden bed is on the other side of the back steps. I’ve got a Goliath tomato, some dianthus flowers in front, & an older mum in the back.
I’ve got a little more work to do in these areas, but it’s definitely looking better!
Other Gardening Tidbits…
I painted some old outdoor chairs a while back in an effort to spruce up the small front porch. Yesterday I added a few potted plants & a fun outdoor pillow.
The porch needs a good scrubbing {pollen!} & painting, but that will come later. More dianthus & some dill in one pot. Something called a Trixi Double Date in the the large pot.
Okay, now for the most exciting news! My pomegranate bush has blooms on it this year! This is super exciting for me because I’ve had this about 5 years or more with no blooms at all. This is a photo collage of buds to bloom.
I check on this every day! Hopefully I will be able to harvest a pomegranate in the fall! One more thing – does anyone know what this plant is?
My dogs love it & eat the leaves! It’s growing near the bird feeder & I’m wondering if this is from the seeds dropping. I’m calling it dog nip until I figure it out!
That’s all my gardening news for today! Hope y’all are having a wonderful Wednesday!
