I like how Ecency prompts "Tell your story..." My story always starts with a flower 🙂 Painted Daisy this week. Welcome to my blog Starting a garden Post # 16.
Painted Daisies are really delivering the goods this week 😍
We planted these from seed and there is a nice variety of colors. We focused heavily on planting perennial flowers this year. Its the first year in a new house and we want to start building up some perennial beds.
On to the garden... First the good news. We have started harvesting a few things - Basil, green beans, zucchini, radishes, green garlic.
The cucumbers are doing really well.
We added some a trellis last week. The cucumbers quickly reached the top and put on lots of flowers.
And baby cucumbers 😘
We added an extention to the trellis (on the left side of this picture). The sloping part we added last week, the more vertical part is new.
Now the bad news...
Japanese beetles! Of all the fruit trees we planted the cherry trees were doing the best. I guess the Japanese beetles agreed and decided they looked delicious ☹️ I watch my trees daily and most of this damage was done in one afternoon. I applied a soapy water solution. Either it worked or the beetles just moved on.
Bad news story number two. Bunnies 🐰 We have a couple bunnies near our house and apparently they found their way over to the garden. We added chicken wire along the bottom of the fence.
You can see the chicken wire on the bottom 2' of the fence. So far so good 🤞
And final bad news of the week. Squirrels. I mentioned squirrels harvesting our sunflowers on Wednesday's post - https://ecency.com/hive-155530/@steven-patrick/sunflower-heist-wednesday-walk. That was in a bed, now they have also struck the sunflowers in the garden. Not sure we can win this one so we cut down some sunflowers and brought them inside to enjoy.
The weather has been really nice so we have been eating lunch on the screened in porch lately. We also cut some more mature flowers to dry and collect seeds. And we haven't totally surrendered...we are also trying pepper spray on the sunflowers to keep off the squirrels.
We still have a lot of sunflowers left so this could be a long drawn out battle 😆
I caught this pollinator at work 👍
A little good news...
I've been wanting some milk week to attract butterflies and other pollinators. I realized that one of the weeds I keep mowing down around the garden is milk weed 🤦♂️
Another group of milk weed on the other side of the garden.
I started a milk weed preserve lol. I stopped mowing a couple areas in the field around the garden. Fortunately milk weed grows really fast.
It was a little bit of a frustrating week, spending most of our efforts on fighting off pests. But time outside in the garden is always good 🌻☮️🙂 Thanks for checking out my post this week 🙏
Bonus pics:
Another of the perennials we planted - Phlox.
And the wildflower of the week, Queen Anne's Lace. Queen Anne's Lace is very prominent in the fields right now in my part of Vermont.
I can totally sympathize with the Critter attacks. Bunnies don't last very long in my neighborhood because of coyotes and owls, but squirrels all my they caused a lot of damage, and so do the Chipmunks actually they dig everything up I bought a product called shake away for rodents and sprinkle that on the dirt in my flower pots on the deck and that has helped a little, especially with keeping the squirrels away. But growing anything is a constant battle
So I just realized why I wasn't seeing your posts! I must have unfollowed you years back when you quit posting and when you returned I didn't realize that I was not following you still! But I am now. How silly not to follow one of my very best long time friends on hive!
Thanks for the follow 🤣 Speaking of critters, we saw a momma bear and two cubs. Close enough the mom snorted at us to stay away and the cubs got ready to climb to safety. But mom just moved between us and the cubs then they hurried away together. btw thanks for tip on squirrels, I'm gonna see if I can find some shake-away
Your Painted Daisies are just gorgeous! That's not to take away from the rest of your garden, of course!
Thanks ligayagardener. The flowers have been very rewarding this year. Hopefully a few vegetables to harvest too 🙂
I'm sure you'll fill your belly with veggies!
Yay! 🤗
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What a great way to start and end!! Alwaysxwith a flower!
They are gorgeous!
Thanks dswigle 🙂 Its like writing, start with a hook and always tie back to your intro with your conclusion lol Plus I just love flowers 😊
:)) me too!
The flowers are really too colorful and charming. Wonderful work, thanks for sharing.
Thanks for checking out my post kirlos 🙂 I'm really enjoying my new garden
You have a beautiful garden! It's a joy to witness thank you
Thanks! its brings me joy each day 🙂