Who enjoys gardening/plants?

[-Blue-]

I don't remember if there was a thread like this, but I love gardening. I am sure there are many or some members here who enjoy the same hobby. Currently one of my hobbies and what I enjoy doing is vegetable/fruit gardens. It's just fun to grow things from seeds, see where it goes, and learn along the way. For example I came across a loofa plant at some nursery. I had no idea a loofa was a gourd. I always assumed it was some kind of sea-sponge or something. I had to buy one to see how it grew and experimented. It was quite the process from gourd to loofa and honestly I'm not sure it was worth all the trouble, but it was a fun experience.

I always enjoyed gardens, but mine really took off in 2021. I am not sure if it was because of the pandemic or the fact that I had become someone's caregiver and it was honestly quite a stressful time for me. I felt alone when family piled that responsibility on me, washed their hands, and ran for the hills. I would never blame them for how things happened and since I had to be home a lot because of that I needed some kind of hobby outside to keep my sanity.

My garden wasn't always this size, but over the years I have kept adding to it. I will keep things in spoilers so not to stretch the thread out.

Spoiler: Garden

This is the main part where all the squash, melons, tomatoes, peppers and other types are planted.

I always like how the squash grow little flowers on them. It's pretty.

Spoiler: Planters

I always switch this up with the boxes that I made and will plant all kinds of single yield vegetables like carrots, onions, beets, turnips ect.

Stonks!!!​

Spoiler: Dehydrate

I've been using someone's dehdyrator mostly for fun and the heck of it. I had some watermelon in my fridge that was going to go bad before I ate it because it's not really my thing, but I still grow it. It takes forever to dehydrate watermelon and I didn't know what to expect, but it turned out really good. I know these look kinda gross, but they taste great. It tastes like a fruit-roll up, but probably way healthier. I ate most of it before I decided to take a picture because it tasted so good. Help it took like 20 hours and I ate it in like 2 minutes.

I'm currently testing out blueberries which I hope won't take as long.

So who else enjoys gardening or have outdoor/indoor plants and enjoy the hobby in some capacity? If you don't mind, I would like to see what kind of neat set-ups you all have or what kind of plants you all grow!

 

[Chronos314_XD]

My family has never tried gardening before so I can't really show off anything but honestly it sounds like it would be fun.

 

[Aquilla]

I’m a huge houseplant enthusiast! I love looking after them and learning everything about how to propagate or even cross breed them. Strangely I don’t like gardening though. Too many unpredictable variables and a lot of annoying chores like weeding etc.

 

[mewp0ka]

i used to love gardening and had to stop a couple of years ago, since it gets really hot here during the summer! watering and tending to my plants every afternoon was so much fun and i think i went overboard with buying them at one point lol would definitely do it again if i lived in an area that didn't stink so much. >:

 

[LoveGraceMarie]

I LOVE keeping houseplants. A couple of years ago I went to the shops for a small cactus and/or succulent, and came out with two cacti and two succelents, one of which has since grown into a huge plant. I now have several

 

[Flower-Loving Punk]

As a kid my dad and I kept a huge backyard garden, which was impressive to us because we live in a desert and it's 100+ degrees in the summer. We would grow broccoli, zucchini, tomatoes and beans. When I went off to school my dad kept it up, and when I was in college I missed it so much I got a million house plants to cope. Some were very temperamental and didn't live very long, but I still have some plants from my freshman year almost 5 years ago now. My three faves were a sensitive mimosa, a purple variegated coleus, and a pink shrimp plant.

Unfortunately the shrimp plant got a scale infestation and once it got it I was never able to get rid of them for good. It died last year, and I had had it for like 3 years at that point. Once a plant has scale it's kinda it, sadly. I wish pests weren't as hard to deal with as they are. It can make keeping interesting types of houseplants really hard.

 

[BetsySundrop]

Your garden areas are awesome! I love gardening. I'm starting from scratch (ish) next year. I'm older than the dirt i like to play in, so I'm hitting reset on the garden.

The plan - raised beds, at least 2 feet high and pretty good size - weed barrier surrounding them and under them. I got a few to start out. See what happens, if it makes it easier to keep up. I just got so tired of the weeds and all.

I'm the main caregiver for someone also and will be forever, and i can't always predict when I'll be able to work outside. Weeds wait for no one.
I usually grow the usual things. Herbs, veggies, beans. Some other things I've added - fig trees, blueberry bushes, horseradish.

 

[Rosch]

During the pandemic, I tried gardening, or at least take care of plants. But the plants die on me for some reason. So I just gave up.

 

[digimon]

i love gardening and trying to take care of the outdoor areas around the house but i’m not entirely good at it unfortunately my thumbs aren’t very green but i try my best to tend to the flowers and shrubbery around our garden. I’m usually the one who mows both the front and back lawns. i try not to keep indoor plants cause I don’t want my cats getting into anything they aren’t supposed to. but even without them, i have a terrible track record with indoor plants

 

[oak]

I have a couple house plants but usually anything I plant outside dies. I planted this big sunflower this summer and it was completely dead by the end of the season. I have a Christmas cactus inside though that is thriving. My mom got it from her neighbour when she passed of old age & then she gave it to me so who knows how old this Christmas cactus is. It still flowers every winter though!

 

[Kitsuragi]

i love gardening, i have house plants too that are doing relatively well despite me not being the best green thumb.

 

[-Blue-]

Wow I made this post ages ago and all of a sudden I kept getting notifications and it just boomed out of nowhere lol.

Snip

I plan on doing the same for some of the stuff I have in my garden! Just getting rid of things that aren't working are a big pain in the butt. This year between the intense heat wave and nonstop rain, a lot of my garden didn't thrive like it should've. So I'm scaling down, but keeping the same space.

Some of my planter boxes are falling apart. I made them 6 years ago? I've been slowly patching them up each time a piece rots, but I'm getting tired of doing that. So I'm going to buy a few metal troughs, drill some holes, and replace the dirt and trash them.

I have a grape trellis system I made last year. But the grapes grow to wild. And they aren't the right types anyway. Three are wine-making and one is more seed than grape that it feels like I'm eating bb pellets with each one. The stores always pass them off as seedless regular varieties. They just don't know. So I'm ripping them all out and getting maybe one variety and finding it online somewhere reputable that knows what they're doing.

You're never going to stop the weeds Betsy. I don't know what your set up looks like, but I get weeds even with my tarp covers. It's just a bit more manageable than if I didn't have it. Good luck with your reset! I have a row of blueberries to! They're on the far end of the garden pic. Some deer destroyed one of them because they got their antlers stuck in the bush? Had it for 5 years and it finally started to get a good yield. Had to fence it off because they destroyed each bush trying to eat the berries. It's a pain having to pick them, but they do taste good.

i love gardening, i have house plants too that are doing relatively well despite me not being the best green thumb.

Very nice! It looks like you had a good yield to me. I'd say you have a green thumb! Are you blanching all of that?

 

[Kitsuragi]

Very nice! It looks like you had a good yield to me. I'd say you have a green thumb! Are you blanching all of that?

tomatoes are pretty easy to grow, im lucky for that lol. we froze them all, gave some away, there's a lot more than just this image. idk what we plan to use it all for lmao, we just didnt realize how plentiful tomatoes are. i love tomatoes, i could just eat them as a day snack tbh, but this is a lot. our peppers didnt plan out well, sadly

 

[-Blue-]

tomatoes are pretty easy to grow, im lucky for that lol. we froze them all, gave some away, there's a lot more than just this image. idk what we plan to use it all for lmao, we just didnt realize how plentiful tomatoes are. i love tomatoes, i could just eat them as a day snack tbh, but this is a lot. our peppers didnt plan out well, sadly

Yeah it takes a while, but tomatoes start to really come in around late July until now. I have 8 plants I think? Used to have 18 of them. I thought it'd be good to save on money and blanch it all, but I still have bags of them frozen from last year. There's just not a lot you can do with blanched tomatoes. Stewed, sauce, salsa ect. It's nice, but you can only go so far with that lol.

Peppers are a bit more tricky. Sometimes I do great with them other times I don't. It's very hit and miss. I got a ton this year that I sliced/froze and also stuffed/froze. But I think I didn't get that much last year. Aquilla is right. There's a lot that can go wrong. I grew everything by seed on year and I was so proud of myself. I gave it the time to acclimate to the weather on my porch and then planted. The day after I planted an unexpected wind storm killed almost everything because it burned them up. Months of growing by seed ended in less than a day. If you look at my picture on first post, you'll see plastic covering all the cages. That's the reason I did that afterwards. I live on a wide open field so it can get crazy windy since there's nothing to stop it.

You can do everything by the book and nurture them as best as you can and it can all still fail on you. Don't be hard on yourself. You still got something out of your garden and that's enough if you ask me

Next year I really want to try to grow strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries and maybe other varieties like those and plant them where the grapes once were.

 

[BetsySundrop]

Some of my planter boxes are falling apart. I made them 6 years ago? I've been slowly patching them up each time a piece rots, but I'm getting tired of doing that. So I'm going to buy a few metal troughs, drill some holes, and replace the dirt and trash them.

Yeah I got some beds (on sale) to try. Supposed to be safe, nontoxic, rustproof. hope so, lol. I got them bigger because it's supposed to prevent overheating the roots. It's gonna take me all fall/winter to get all of them set up and ready. I put ag plastic down to work on while i put them together. Maybe it'll kill the weeds underneath.

Spoiler

You're never going to stop the weeds Betsy. I don't know what your set up looks like, but I get weeds even with my tarp covers.

Weeds are so awful. I'm actually thinking of getting a flamethrower. Not like, super huge, but they do have some that are made to flame weeds.

And omg the wildlife is also ridiculous here. We have deer, raccons, bunnies, all kinds. Good luck with fencing the blueberries! Something eats my fig trees every winter. Just eats the branches. Probably deer.

 

[-Blue-]

Yeah I got some beds (on sale) to try. Supposed to be safe, nontoxic, rustproof. hope so, lol. I got them bigger because it's supposed to prevent overheating the roots. It's gonna take me all fall/winter to get all of them set up and ready. I put ag plastic down to work on while i put them together. Maybe it'll kill the weeds underneath.

Weeds are so awful. I'm actually thinking of getting a flamethrower. Not like, super huge, but they do have some that are made to flame weeds.

And omg the wildlife is also ridiculous here. We have deer, raccons, bunnies, all kinds. Good luck with fencing the blueberries! Something eats my fig trees every winter. Just eats the branches. Probably deer.

Oh wow those are great! I didn't have the room for those so I had to make boxes at the time and they work pretty good so I'm researching for decent trough ones. They are raised as well. I still get grass and weeds growing in them. It's one of those things you're going to have to maintain so if you leave it alone for a few days or more it might get a bit overgrown.

I really want to grow carrots in them, but the seeds are so tiny omg. It's so hard to separate one per hole and then I get a handful growing in the same spot. I really want to know how people who grow carrots deal with it. Because I just can't do it perfect to save my life.

I already fenced in the blueberries. I bought some lattice fence and cut it at a length all around the garden. It's great for weed and pest control. They don't like that they're closed in and when I mow its acts like a barrier. It was worth the time and money because I never deal with those problems anymore.

Plant marigolds around your plum tree. Deer hate the smell for some reason and they won't bother it. Someone told me years ago and I thought they were full of it, but it actually works. Figured what the heck and tried it one year. I don't get any pests bothering my gardens anymore. I planted them on the outside of the fences and just went all the way up on both sides. Works great and I rip them out when they die at the end of the season. Good luck with all your projects! I'd like to know how it all turns out next season!

 

[BetsySundrop]

I really want to grow carrots in them, but the seeds are so tiny omg. It's so hard to separate one per hole and then I get a handful growing in the same spot. I really want to know how people who grow carrots deal with it. Because I just can't do it perfect to save my life.

Couple things to try if you want - seed tape, which has the seeds stuck on the tape, spaced out correctly. You just plant the strips of tape in rows. Or pelleted seeds. They put a coat on the seeds so they're a lot bigger.

 

[You got mail!]

I love flowers! Got a couple of flower pots outside my house and they’re so pretty to look at.

 

[Roxxy]

I wish I enjoyed gardening. Sadly I suffer badly from hayfever so it’s pretty miserable to be outside during the summer.

 

[Chibi.Hoshi]

I've always had a love for plants and gardening. Some time ago with my limited space, I managed to grow cherry tomatoes and maintain a small herb garden, along with a few pansy plants that added a vibrant touch of colour! I really enjoyed tending to them, I found it relaxing, and it was such a joy to pick fresh tomatoes and herbs for cooking! Since then, I have had to downsize quite a bit, and now I care for just a few succulents that sit on my windowsill. Though small, they brighten up the space and are wonderfully easy to care for!