Amy's Garden in Mid-July

It is only July 10 and I am in the thick of harvesting from my garden! I have harvested onions, a raspberry, 6 potatoes, zucchinis, basil, elderflower, yellow summer squash and it is a delight to be are gardener once again.

Amy's Garden 2022

When i was in my twenties and thirties I always had a vegetable garden. I bought my first house alone in 2006 and tended the yard and attempted a garden in the lawn which failed. The past few five years I have had a fallow area in the middle of lawn with goldenrod for the bees. It was usually wasps that came by to feast on the flowers. That spot in the yard was cleaned up and meticuously exfolieated and derocked and roots of weeds removed by my friend Vern. He is German born and is an amazing worker. Very methodical and thorough. I dedicate this post to him becasue without his hard work i would not have such a garden as i do. He planted some of the potatoes and also the garlic. The garlic was planted in the fall

The garlic was from my son, the tomatoes, onions, shallots,zuchinni and some of the potatoes were from my daughter.My daughter starts seeds in greenhouse. The sunflowers self sowed. There are three lupines that also self sowed. Some of the potatoes sprouted initially in the kitchen, they were from the grocery store (Vern planted them early in the spring) I have never grown dahlias, this is a first for me, and I found a punky old treestump nicely rotted down to put them near and in. They came from my friend David. I put bone meal down and sprinkled them with flower fertilizer. Friends and family make a garden special!

The Donkey's Tail Tale

I love my houseplants. This one, The Donkey's Tail came from a cutting from my mother's plant. She had a bigger one and would grab the tails and lift them up over the plant, and exclaim, this is how they multiply! I am not criticizing her method of propagation, but I am a little more gentler with my plant. She must have given me some that she had potted but I don't recall the incident of receiving the babies, I just know my plant came from hers. I have given a potting of babies to my grand-daughter so the tradition goes on. One plant of donkey's tail down through four generations. I have two ways of propagating them, one is by rooting the stems and the other is by letting the succulent leaves take root. I use a clam shell from the grocery store. That is a plastic see through container with a lid. Store bought potting soil is my choice of potting medium.

kalanchoe

I was at the place I hang out which I have been forbidden to mention on my blog and I found a little snippet of a kalanchoe, this was a few years ago. The snippet was about 2 inches long. I put it in water above my kitchen sink and watched it grow over the years, almost allowing it to die a few times. When it trailed to long, i cut it and and rooted the cutting. I happened to let it dry out a little this fall and it must have been exposed to low light, because it was stimulated in the right way to burst forth into blooms.The cutting looks good too with blooms.