2012 Home Garden Update: May

I got a late start on my seeds this year so I'm not going to be able to grow as much from scratch as I had originally hoped.

This is my 2012 seed starting operation. I'm re-using single serve yogurt and food cups and colored craft sticks from my dollar store.

Two weeks later...

I'm working on filling in the front of my courtyard with white and purple sweet alyssum. I'm hoping it will fill in nicely and re-seed on its own so that I can have some low maintenance flowers. I'm also seed starting some candytuft, aubrietta and rockcress so that I have some true perennials there, too.

This rose bush came with my house and was cracked out on chemical applications and not very happy when we got here. Three years later, with some love, pruning and compost, it's so beautiful and happy. This is the first bloom of the season. I have lots of buds waiting to burst open, and I'm hoping to make rose petal vinegar and rose petal jelly.

The aphids have arrived a bit early this year. I bought a small package of live ladybugs and released them in my garden overnight. This is the first year I've used ladybugs and was surprised that since releasing them, I haven't found a single ladybug on my rosebush (where aphids tend to congregate) but I can almost always count on finding at least two hanging out on my lavender plant (which as far as I can tell is pretty pest free) at any given time.

My container strawberries are blooming. I followed my own advice on how to increase yield by plucking off the first flowers and berries of the year to get a better yield. They are re-generating large beautiful berries now and hopefully in my June update, I'll have ripe red strawberry pictures to share.

Gardening Quick Tip: Strawberries

Oh, the first strawberry flowers of the season! I get so excited when I see them because sweet fresh berries are just around the corner.

What can you do to help increase your berry yield? It seems anti-intuitive: Pick off the first flowers and small berries.

See these? They seem so sweet. No, friends: they are the enemy.

If you leave these tiny flowers, your plant will make tiny berries. Pick off the first tiny berries and flowers and your plant will think it's under attack and respond by making even more and bigger berries....which means more strawberry shortcake for you. You're welcome.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

This is the first year I've really gotten serious about doing a garden journal. I've been taking pictures of my garden in progress to put together into a photo book at the end of the season. I've also been labeling some of the photos with what kinds of seeds I used so I can keep track of which things are doing well.  The first one I did of my plants in May looks like this:

If you save your layers in photoshop and keep standing in about the same place, you can drop a new pictures in every so often and just make minor adjustments to make sure the arrows are still pointing at the right plants. I love watching the progress of how things are growing.

Here are some progress pics of my front planter (One pic for each month. Also, if you'll remember, it used to look like this!)