May Garden, Plantings, Flowers, etc.

Welcome to my 2020 garden.

I planted over two weeks later than normal, we had unheard of cold weather here in NJ for May. SNOW on mother's day weekend, followed by several nights of freezing temperatures or frost. It was unbelievable - I can't remember anything like that ever happening here in my lifetime. I keep joking that mother nature has been in quarantine too and forgot to turn winter off. Even on the first day of June it was 46 degrees in the morning.

But the good news is that the garden is in, things are growing rapidly and I think it's going to be a great season. 

The thornless zephyr climbing rose is blooming on the arbor and it's so pretty. 

I'm super excited, this is our first FULL season with the newly redone setup and I've been planning it for months.  It is preeeeeetty close to the plan from January... just with a few extra bits (because come on, who are we kidding? OF COURSE there's more in there than I diligently planned for!).  

Over the winter I hunted for garden support structures on the internet, looking for the best deals. Off-season deals on Amazon were the big winners - I got two set of 10 tomato cages for $12 (yes that's $1.20 each!), a green archway trellis for $22 and an green obelisk for $18. All this, plus my existing support structure pieces, means I can maximize my planting space by growing things more vertically!

When you walk in, there are these pots on the side against the garage. I have a morning glory in the big pot growing up the trellis. There are also flowers in little pots as planned, but then I added 3 hot pepper plants in 3 different pots. The discount flower place in South Jersey not only had great prices on plants, but also really great prices on ceramic pots (like the same price as plastic ones at Walmart and half the price of the big box store ceramic pots). So in these new pots are a ghost pepper, habanero and a jalepeno. Mike and Oliver are thrilled, they LOVE hot spicy peppers. 

You can see the lineup a bit better here against the garage:

Mixed Cut Flower Bed:

This is the first cut flower bed. In my original plan I was originally going to plant zinnias in 2/3 of the bed, then 2 globe amaranth and the rest chantilly bronze snapdragons. But then I had fewer viable snapdragon plants than planned (a couple just totally died under the seed light) and I was weak and ordered lemonade cosmo seeds (a pale pink ring at the center then pale yellow petals). So I cut the zinnias back to 1/2 the garden bed to make room for the cosmos and then I stuck a couple yarrow summer berries in here in place of the two deceased snapdragon pots.  The yarrow is a perennial so I will have to move it, but it will be pretty in cut bouquets and I had extra I grew from seed.

Dahlia Bed:

This is the second cut flower bed, all dahlias. Just like in the plan there are 10 plants, the only difference is that instead of a duet dahlia (burgundy with white tips) in here, it's going to be Wynn's moonlight sonata (orange-yellow dinnerplate). In the winter, I ordered an extra dahlia from leafari to hit the free shipping minimum because they were having a bulb sale that left me a few dollars below the mark even after my careful plans (such a hardship I know). The duet dahlia is in the spruced up side garden wedge next to the driveway in a second dahlia garden bed I planned out here. (Photos further down in this post.)

Planted dahlias include Wynn's Moonlight Sonata, Belle of Barmera, Labrynth, Fairway Spur, Preference, Cornel Bronze, Daisy Duke, Totally Tangerine, Apricot Desire and Jowey Whinnie (peaches and cream, my original choice, was out of stock and I had to choose something similar). 

Tomatoes: 

I grew 8 tomato plants from seed and that's exactly what I planted. 2 Sweet 100's Cherry Tomatoes, Purple Cherokee, Bloody Butcher, Early Girl, Yellow Pear, Bushsteak Hybrid, and Martino Italian Plum. They are a little floppy but I planted them deep and will fill in quickly. 

I planted my usual marigolds with the tomatoes, the perfect companion for pest control. I also planted borage this year here from seed. It's new to me but a favorite among gardeners for improving tomato size and crop yield when planted as a companion plant. I'm excited to see if it lives up to the hype. 

Part of the tomato bed in the corner  is the base for the archway, where I planted snap peas and spring peas back in April. The weather has been so cool they are only blooming now, so there will be some competition with the malabar spinach soon, but we'll see how it goes. I look forward to the archway covered in vines this summer. 

Vines and Veggies:

It's pretty amazing what you can fit into a small space when you have plenty of vertical support and I'm happy to say I stuck to the plan on this bed as well. This bed has peas growing up the archway and stringless blue lake green beans planted on the opposite side. There are 3 rows of carrots, melons for growing up the new obelisk, a row of rainbow bright lights swiss chard, cucumbers to grow up the back trellis panels and then nasturiums to fill in the groundspace. 

Herbs and Strawberries:

I went a little crazy in the non-rotating herb bed and it shows (things here greatly diverged from my conservative plan). One of my two lavender plants died in the winter and suddenly I was compelled to fill the space with six plants. So now there's chamomille, calendula, marjoram, basil, lavender, dill, lemon verbena, a back row of strawberries and a sunflower in the first bed. In a pot on the left is St. John's Wort. 

In the middle bed there's thyme, borage, sage, a sunflower, oregano and St. John's Wort in the back. The third bed all the way to the right is all strawberries and they are looking GOOD. 

 

Here's a wonky panorama to give you a better idea of the plants:

The pots in the back right corner include rosemary, lemon balm and nasturiums in the tall aqua pot that will hopefully cascade down. 

Elsewhere in the yard I have mint in a pot on the patio. Instead of just plain decorative grass I'm trying lemon grass in 3 pots and lemon balm for mosquito deterrent. I also picked up a jasmine (seriously for $2.50 how could I not?) which I'm hoping will fill the patio area with its beautiful scent. 

Other fruits:

Blueberries bushes, covered in netting in an attempt to keep the birds away. There are lots of blueberries this year so fingers crossed we can keep the birds away. 

The raspberry bushes are HUGE and full of flowers this year.

The mild winter didn't kill our Chicago Hardy fig to the ground and it's coming back on the branches! This is especially good since we have a shorter growing season this year with the late spring. The brown turkey fig (right next to it) did die back to the ground, but it's just not as cold weather hardy.

The blackberry bush is budding now - soon there will be lots of blossoms. 

Here's the secondary dahlia bed I mentioned earlier, I cleaned up the garden wedge next to the driveway that is often overgrown with violets and sweet peas and berries and often becomes a bramble.  I laid down weed blocking fabric to try to help keep the weeds under control and added support structures for the dahlias and sweet peas so they will hopefully grow vertically instead of everywhere. 

I've also upgraded the plant pots on the front porch area, I went crazy on aqua pots from a birthday gift card. I am SO happy with how it looks. Originally I was going to split them up and do half up front and half in the back, but they all looked so nice and cohesive all together. 

The tall half pot at the bottom of the stairs is my FAAAAVORITE. The glazing is gorgeous and it really upgrades the whole look. (Ignore the spilled dirt, I have no idea why I didn't clean that up before taking photos. Realism!)

And lastly, here are some pretty garden flowers because flowers make me happy and this is yet another gardening post. And seriously during this quarantine spring flowers are keeping me sane. 

The columbines out front are once again gorgeous. 

This is the new moon plant that I mentioned in my way back corner garden plan this week. It likes shady damp ground so it should be very happy back there. 

Here are a few more shots of the climbing rose on the arbor at the garden entrance. It's too pretty not to share. Those hot pink blossoms are darker than I expected (in the photos they were medium pink) but they smell AMAZING and practically GLOW in the sunshine. 

This is a hot pink double petunia and it's amazing. I wish I had bought a dozen more of these instead of regular petunias - the blooms are just spectacular. 

My fragrant honeysuckle can be smelled across the yard it's blooming so much right now. We've had beautiful weather this week with soft cool breezes and I constantly catch the sweet scent in the air. 

My fringe tree in the front yard is blooming. The whole tree is full of sweet smelling fringe blossoms. 

The peonies are juuuuuuuust starting due to the cool weather. But they are GORGEOUS.

The irises are doing GREAT this year, I think it's the cool weather. I never added the pink/yellow ones I thought about doing in the fall, but there's always next year. I love the white/purple combo and the blue-purples we have. There are so many blooms!