Gardening Update ~ April 2018: Planning to Plant

Are y’all ready for this month’s gardening update? Well, I’m just ready to start my garden already! Today I can only show y’all whats blooming that was already growing. I’m hoping to get some actual planting done this weekend. I’ll also give y’all a peak at my dad’s veggie garden which is looking pretty tasty! Let’s get our hands dirty, shall we?  : D

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Blooms Galore

Last month I shared some azalea buds, which I was excited to see this year because of the drought the year before. Once they started blooming, it was quite the show!

I also gave my rose bushes – Betsy {pink} & Bertha {red} – a trimming last month. These rosebushes almost touch the roof of my porch & really need to be trimmed back every year. Well, I trimmed them later than I should have & my red rose bush shed all of it’s leaves after the blooms died off! I also have some side shoots that bloomed before the trim & they are making magenta roses {far right}. It looks like Betsy & Bertha had a baby! Haha!

Anyway, there are leaves budding out on the red rose bush now, but they are at the top. If I cut it back down now it could kill the plant & I don’t want that! The side shoots really need to go, but I like the blooms. Sigh. Decisions, decisions!

The two blueberry bushes left in my “garden of chaos” had blooms last month which have turned into blueberries now. Well, technically they’re green-berries at the moment! I spotted some blooms on the two thornless blackberry bushes I planted a couple of years ago as well. It’s amazing anything is still growing out there!

I also found a couple more patches of wild blackberries, so my husband is off the hook for now!

When I checked out my strawberry plant earlier this week, I spotted my first ripe strawberry. It was quite tasty!  : D

My pomegranate bush finally has a bloom on it! I was worried there would be no blooms this year, but I spotted one today. Hopefully there will be more & I’ll finally have a pomegranate to eat!

I finally figured out what this “tree” in my front yard is! It’s not even a tree, it’s an over grown “golden privet” shrub! At least the foliage suggests it’s a “golden privet” and not like the ones in my back yard.

I have these other “tree bushes” growing out in my back yard. They are currently blooming & man they have a potent fragrance which I can smell as soon as I open the back door. It’s driving my sinuses crazy, so I decided to research what they were. Then I realized the one in the front yard is blooming too & they look kind of similar. Turns out the ones in the backyard are most likely “Chinese” privet, which is invasive & non-native to the area. No wonder every time I try to trim them back it doesn’t work! Bleah!

I did spot what looks like a muscadine vine among the stinky privet…

We’ll see where this goes as I continue to clean up & clear out things! I have plans this weekend to fill in the planter I made & set out some tomatoes. Hopefully I’ll get started cleaning up my “garden of chaos” as well!

Dad’s Garden

My dad bought a tractor & decided he was going to plant a garden this year. It’s looking pretty good! {These pictures were taken earlier this month, so things are even bigger now!}

He’s got corn popping up in rows already & his potato plants are getting big! On the far right are tomato plants in cages he made from old fencing. Dad even set up water lines for soaker hoses & sprayers!

More old fence & some posts serve as a trellis for cucumbers. You can see them on the top right just sprouting. The bottom right is a yellow squash sprout.

He’s hoping to have lots of cucumbers for pickle making! My mom has already made a cooking of pickles with cucumbers from the farmers market. De-lish!

Mom & Dad have 4 mayhaw trees on their property & since it’s almost May, they are ready to harvest. A mayhaw is a small berry about the size of a cranberry & it has a big seed in the middle of it. It’s not something that tastes that great eaten off the tree, but it makes delicious jelly! If you look close, you’ll see Dad collecting berries. His head kinda looks like a berry! Haha!  : P

That funky looking one on the bottom right has a fungus that Dad keeps at bay with a fungicide. The tree has big thorns on it, so you don’t pick the berries off the tree. Most people put a sheet under the tree and shake it to drop the berries. Dad has some plastic sheeting set out so he can check them daily. He’s already boiled some down for juice!

That’s all for today, except for this tree in my yard that looks like it’s trying to tell me something….

What do you think it’s trying to say??? Probably – get your gardening butt in gear girl! Ha!  : D

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