Ogier, Ogier, how does your garden grow? - 2019

[Niniel - Club Leader]

No, it's easy. (Otherwise I couldn't do it.)  Just water and try to keep the birds away. 

[Mrs. Cindy Gill - Donor]

Ah, the birds would be our undoing. The landlord feeds them so we have millions. Still, might could use mesh hmmm... maybe next year.

[Ryrin - Club Leader]

1 hour ago, Niniel said:

I live in an apartment with a balcony, no garden. This year we have a few strawberry plants on the balcony and even if it's not much it feels great to be able to pick fresh berries. 

 

You could maybe grow some herbs and green onions. I really love going to the garden and getting food!

 

We took a lot of yellow squash and zucchini to a BBQ. We grilled it. There was tons of food and our squash was almost gone. It was a hit.

 

 

 

 

[Jaimelai - Club Leader]

Was doing some gardening the other day when a small flock of ducks landed behind me and began poking around...

[Mrs. Cindy Gill - Donor]

Pretty, what kind of ducks?

[Jaimelai - Club Leader]

They seemed interested in power tools...

 

 

[Mrs. Cindy Gill - Donor]

We're in trouble when the waterfowl start using tools.

[Jaimelai - Club Leader]

They seemed more interested in picking at the weeds we were digging up.  They are hen mallards. They flew in while we weeding/trimming and hung around for quite a while.  Came right up to me while my back was turned, then they went after my wheelbarrow.

[Mrs. Cindy Gill - Donor]

Wow, they're almost as aggressive as geese ?. 

[Ryrin - Club Leader]

My latest harvest!

 

[Niniel - Club Leader]

Yummy! 

[Ryrin - Club Leader]

7 hours ago, Niniel said:

Yummy! 

 

 I was glad because we have tons of squash.

[Ryrin - Club Leader]

Today, we have watermelons.

 

[Jaimelai - Club Leader]

Looks great - I never have gotten watermelon to grow.

 

This year we have gone all out on butterflies though...

 

 

 

[Ryrin - Club Leader]

Wow! Great quality of photos too.

[Niniel - Club Leader]

So beautiful! 

[Mrs. Cindy Gill - Donor]

They really are gorgeous photos. How's do you attract butterflies? I've heard they like purple flowers.

[Jaimelai - Club Leader]

My son John is turning the back yard into a butterfly sanctuary.   He's planting different plants to attract different kinds.  The monarchs like milkweed (tropical milkweed pictured).  The pics are of a monarch caterpillar, a monarch butterfly and a "queen" butterfly (in the monarch family).

[Ryrin - Club Leader]

My friend does that to attract hummingbirds.

John’s efforts are working!

[Caroline - Member]

I enjoyed reading the gardening stories and looking at the pictures very much. I'm new to gardening myself. I always enjoyed helping my mom or my aunt when I was a kid, mainly in the vegetable and berry plant patches. But since I started my studies, I've lived in the city centre, in tiny apartments. I got a bit stuck there when I started working.

 

That all changed half a year ago, though. We moved to a relatively rural region that's not too far outside of the city, into a house with a garden. The garden's pretty big (at least to my standards), and it needs quite a bit of maintenance, but it's worth it. There are fruit trees (cherry, apple, pear, "sour cherry" and plum), a variety of hedges, low rose bushes and big patches of lavender. We tried out a couple of supposedly simple vegetable plants: zucchini, purple beans and a small kind of pumpkin. Slugs got most of the zucchini, but we have plenty of beans (even though they turn green when cooked) and one healthy pumpkin plant.

 

Since the bees aren't doing very well over here, we also sowed a variety of flowers that produce a lot of nectar. I was happy to see that those patches, and the lavender plants, are indeed teeming with bees (bumble, solitary and honey) and butterflies.

Sadly, there are no hummingbirds here. A Canadian friend of mine recently succeeded in getting them to come to her garden to feed. Amazing animals.

[Jaimelai - Club Leader]

Thanks for posting!

 

Zucchini still doing well with a couple more ready to be turned into zucchini bread soon.  Been getting spaghetti squash periodically, but not a good year for tomatoes.   My late planted peppers and onions are doing well though and it was a banner year for blackberries.

 

We have fruit trees too.   Apples OK this year, plums not so.  Lemon tree making a come back and our little orange tree is loaded this year.  Nectarine tree had some this year, but the birds beat me to them.  Not too much happening with the Asian pear or the jujube trees, but maybe next year.  

 

I bought a little garden cart to help out with the trimming and weedings (not my pic):

 

Kinda useful for us older Ogier, but I am still getting used to mine.  I'll post some pics of it in action soon -hopefully.

[Duadhe Wansho - Member]

Sounds and looks like you are getting a great variety of sweet and savoury fruit as well as all the colourful buttwrflies Jaim. Well done!

 

What are spaghetti squash? (I'm not finding it easy to imagine a fruit which could be like squash and like spaghetti.)

Edited September 27, 2019 by Duadhe Wansho

[Jaimelai - Club Leader]

Spaghetti squash is a squash that looks like spaghetti once cooked and shredded with a fork:

 

 

 

We serve it with a turkey spaghetti sauce much like in the picture.  

[Duadhe Wansho - Member]

Looks good!! Thanks for the info. I've never seen them.

[Caroline - Member]

A month has passed, the trees have been pruned, and the garden is mostly ready for autumn. Some bushes and the lavender still need trimming, and we're going to collect seed pods from a couple of flowers we really liked, but that's it. Although surely, something unexpected will pop up. Oh, like the nice variety of mushrooms that turn out to grow in the grass. My partner doesn't like them at all, but I think they're pretty.

That cart looks amazing, Jaimelai! My lower legs fall asleep all the time when I'm weeding. I must have a look to see whether someting similar exists over here. Do you think it needs a hard surface to be able to roll around, or would it work on grass or hard-packed sand too?