I Didn't Plant This

 Sorry there have been so many gardening posts the past couple of months.  I've been making the effort to do some kind of active gardening once a week.  Half of it is what I call destructo-gardening, which the rest of the world calls pruning.  The ornamental vegetation had been ignored for a couple of years and was encroaching on everything else.  I do have a gardener, but he tends to like the look of a full bush and merely shapes whatever grows faster than the rest of the plant.

I kind of went ballistic on the hibiscus after Molly got caught on a branch and it tore off her collar.  There was also a lot of whitefly in some sections.  It will grow back in a couple of months and I got back about 18" of lawn.  I had forgotten how many pavers were under the hedge.

A week after I fertilized, turned over, and seeded the front patch for tomatoes, something sprouted.  It wasn't a tomato.  It's some kind of gourd.  Once it had a couple of leaves, I dowloaded a plant identifier app.  It says it's a pumpkin, but that doesn't really help at this stage.  Hard-skinned squashes will also come up as a pumpkin, and I've planted both in that patch at some time in the past year.  I'm going to have to wait for the first female flower to figure out what it is.

Meanwhile, I did intentionally plant pumpkin elsewhere.  I'm trying more container gardening, and put a few seeds in a bowl planter where I can trail the vines down an under-landscaped area of the driveway.  Watermelon are in another bowl nearby.  The tomatoes did come up, and I'm attempting cauliflower in the empty corner of that bed.

For the backyard, the Dollar Tree planters aren't as successful as I was hoping, but I don't think it's the pots' fault.  Many of the seeds are older.  I also could have put it in a sunnier spot.  I'm not giving up yet.  Some pole beans I put in 6" pots are doing great and will start climbing the chicken wire trellis any minute now.  I'm starting to realize that I planted a lot of beans, but I also eat a lot of them.  I doubt I'll grow the 6-8 pounds I generally eat in a year, but I'm hoping for at least making back the price of the seeds.

I put about 4" of potting bed soil and compost/manure in the Pond after pulling everything except the kale and one celery.  That is now going to be a catchall of tomato, cauliflower, more watermelon and pumpkin, and a random scattering of carrots.  The celery in the pot finally bolted, so it's going to be another cauliflower.  I don't even like cauliflower that much, but the leaves make great greens that can be grown in warmer temperatures.

We'll see if that's it for my summer garden.  The eggplant is going to be thrilled when I finally pull the green onions around it.  Waiting for one seed head, and they will all come out.  I'm probably close to harvesting garlic.  The artichokes are done budding for the year.  I'm crossing my fingers the herb bowl I started from some free seeds gives me enough fresh marjoram, dill, and basil for whatever I want to make this summer.

Meanwhile, it's going to take me weeks to get control of the neighbor's ivy that is trying to tear apart the back wall.  I found an old photo of the yard that showed it cut back to the property line, so that's what I'm working to achieve.  He's entitled to his landscaping, and I'm entitled to my brick wall not being destroyed by it.