Gardening Efforts

Here are some pictures of my gardens. I hope to overwinter most of the flowers so that I don't spend as much next year on gardening as I did this year.

Gerbera daisies:

The gerberas do really well. I've tried to collect seed from them but it really doesn't seem worth the effort. There are red, yellow, pink and orange ones there. I'm a big fan of gerberas. We are using red and white gerberas in our wedding.

Geraniums, impatiens, phlox, candytuft, and million bells:

The geraniums do great. Some better than others. As long as I pinch off the dead blooms they will keep on going. I expected the impatiens to be bigger, but I'm starting to think they will be bigger next year. The phlox had it's one bloom for the season and now it's done. I can't decide if I like it enough to keep it if it's only going to bloom once. Candytuft, I hear, doesn't really show up until the season after you plant it. So we'll see next year. And the million bells. Not terribly happy with them. They are leggy and the little branches often die off. Not the plant for me.

Dwarf Gardenia:

It's tough to get a good close-up. Gardenias are my favorite. They are gorgeous and smell amazing. Next year I will get a standard gardenia plant now that I know I probably won't kill it. I'd heard gardenias are tricky, but I've had no trouble so far. At one point I was taking a stem with a bloom on it to work every day and setting it on my desk just for the smell. If they bloomed in May and weren't so expensive, we'd have these in the wedding instead.

Herbs and Veggies:

I need to get an updated picture of the veggies. We've had a lot of rain and they are much larger and with fruit now. In the veggies pic: left to right, then top to bottom there are strawberries, early bird tomatoes, green bell peppers, buttercrunch lettuce, cucumber and broccoli. In the herbs pic: cilantro, basil, lemon thyme, rosemary, and oregano. I'm letting the strawberries propagate out. Tomatoes still haven't turned red. Need to figure out when I can pick the peppers. The buttercrunch lettuce grows great, but tastes terrible. I hear they taste better in the fall, when it's cooler, so we'll see. The cucumber hasn't done much and the broccoli has the tiniest heads ever. It's slow moving, but not bad for the first veggie garden. The cilantro was a force to be reckoned with at one time, but it's died off for some reason. Basil and rosemary are OK. The oregano and thyme though, they grow like weeds! I can't even give it away anymore. I'm trimming them back just due to lack of space.

So that's my intro to my gardening efforts. I'll post more on certain plants here and there.