End of Summer Gardening

My daughter brought her play camera to our city garden plot the other day and took some really cool shots. Yes, I love everything she makes, that is my job, but I thought it might be a nice thing to share with my readers. Here is my 5 yr old's view of a day in the sunshine of our garden.


Marigolds gone by, looking closely and smelling their pungent fragrance as she dead heads them. I think this is a universal North American gardening experience. So happy to instill these scents in her childhood memory.


This one is so beautiful, she held a stick up and made a growling face, but "It didn't work", she said. I think it is a great self portrait. Very summery and sunshine. Even though it is the hot sweltering end of summer, this image is sweet and self aware.


I asked her to take one of me for fun. She had her turn with the hose and soaked me earlier, I am drenched in this picture. We really have a good time together when it's just us. I love going to the garden with her. She helped me weed the beets at age 3. Now at age 5, she is making friends with mourning doves and asking if we can take them home. I said she has to catch them first.


Watering plot #32. I propped up the hose in our neighbor's fence so I could focus on the other plot. I love to see her perspective, her vantage point and her world.


Morning glories cover the fences this year thicker than in past years. The vines provide some much needed shade in our corner near plot #2. She was hanging out close to me picking these heart shaped leaves and giving them to me. She repeated over and over that she was giving me the most important gift of the loving heart. I made sure to tuck them into my pockets so I wouldn't lose them.

It was a really hot blazing summer day out there, but we kept cool in the hose. There were a lot of weeds to pull, but we did find some creatures to look at. I squished harlequin beetles, squash bugs and we had to leave the mourning dove where he was perched on the fence. I left that garden closer to my daughter. Girl time.

Veggies of the Week, 7/14/10

We grew all of this. I have no idea how. I think my husband bought some seeds and started them. I have a vague recollection of planting them in our city garden plot.... I remember a lot of traveling and distractions...

We ventured out to check on things in the garden last week. Weeds had taken over a lot of the area, some veggies were being choked out by the healthy weeds, but underneath it all, we found food! Thanks to a good friend or 2 that watered for us while we were neglectful gardeners, the garden lived and somehow thrived! Check out that bounty! WOW!

Blooms of the week, Our Urban Garden

Our lilies have started, and it looks like they have really multiplied this year! These Asiatic lilies are early summer bloomers that have showy colors and a profusion of blooms. Although they are not fragrant, the color and ease of culture make them indispensable in the container garden. They withstand the heat in our concrete backyard. I love these easy care bulbs.

Blooms of the week, Our Urban Garden

We have had nonstop blooms in our city container garden. So happy to share some heirloom irises and a peony bloom with you this week. I have been waiting for this peony to bloom for 6 yrs, I planted it as a tuber. Finally!!!!

Blooms of the week, Dwarf Iris

These are old fashioned irises, I got them from an old guy's garden when I lived in PA. He had such a huge range of plants that he would split them up in the spring and offer gallon buckets for $3.00. What a deal!

This dwarf bearded iris only grows 8" at the highest. It's great for the front of a border or tucked away in a heat tolerant container garden. Lovely!

Spring Blooms in the Urban Garden

Our container garden brings us joy all year round! Over these last few weeks Baltimore has been hit with springtime weather. The flowers noticed and have been blooming nonstop!

So happy to see these pansies overwintered nicely.Robust and cheery, I imagine the singing flowers from Alice in Wonderland every time we pass.

And the daffodils trumpet springtime loud and clear!

New Gardening Club

This week was the first all volunteer garden club at the Southeast Anchor Enoch Pratt Library. It was a great day, 73 degree weather, raking sun, a perfect afternoon to set out a fall bulb planting.

With gloves and tools in tow, a group of community members offered to help us plant bulbs. We worked with a new local business, Baltimore Contained, who supplied about 200 bulbs for planting that day! The mixture of naturalizing daffodils and dwarf irises are really going to make a beautiful showing next spring!

Here are some great pictues of the event!

Bee Keeping, In the City

I have a friend who started a bee hive earlier this year, in his garden, right in the middle of Baltimore City. He was scheduled to check on them, to open up the hive and see what progress the new colony had made later this week, but had to do it last week before it got too cold. We were lucky enough to get invited over to witness the event!

This particular inner city hive made a lot of progress early on in the season, it even established more quickly and more robustly than another hive that was started by another friend out in Laurel, MD simultaneously. Even though Baltimore lacks trees and green space in some areas, there are spaces of thriving growth where nature has taken over. We do live in an old city that has a ton of wild growth out there.

We were very excited to see this type of Top Bar Bee Hive in action.

Veggies of the Week

We visited our neglected overgrown garden yesterday to see what was happening there. Tons of tomatoes, carrots, beets, beans, wow. Finally the sun and rain have balanced in our late summer days and we are getting voracious growth (including tons of weeds). Hooray!

But washing the swiss chard, this little critter ran for it, trying to stay above the waterline. Very exciting. We are going to try and keep him healthy and encourage cocoon building. At least someone will eat all of that chard around here. And of course, it is tomato season. So happy to sample the sweet juicy heirloom tastes that we have been waiting for. All of these plants were started from seed inside in the spring. It is so satisfying to get a bounty after all of this time waiting.

Blooms of the week

Lilies are still going strong. We have some yellow and white Asiatic ones still hanging on. New fragrant soft yellow trumpet lilies are blooming this week, some tomatoes are budding out and grapes are getting full. Day lillies are looking good this week, too. So elegant and pretty, this peachy orange variety is so summertime to me.

They Don't Call me Tigerlilly for Nothin'!

These beauties are growing in pots in my concrete backyard in Highlandtown. We live in one of the most barren parts of our neighborhood. I have watched the greening efforts on my block fail as people disregard the new trees and flower pots as some of the residents meagerly try to maintain them against the odds. Our yard is fenced, so things are out of reach from metal pipe wielding kids, trash, and you don't want to know what else...

In my insistance on beauty, I bought an Asiatic/Oriental lily bulb mix for my blazing hot backyard about 2 yrs ago and have been totally stunned at the blooms that we have gotten from them! These pics are the second wave of lily blooms I have had. We have already had melony-orange and speckled freckly yellow/orange go by. White, yellow, and my stargazers are going to open in about a week or so. These plants are totally fool proof if you give them the basics. If I can grow them here, you will probably have luck with them, too!

City Garden, Flowers of the Week

These heirloom beauties just get better with age. The irises have been blooming almost a week now, the ones that have gone past curl up and hang in such a whimsical way, I just love these!

Wisteria, climbing up the ugly pluming vent in the backyard. It has a really nice light purple flower that has a little dot of green in it, so gorgeous. I was so glad to see this vine bloom this year, it has not bloomed in the backyard in previous years, so I am really happy to see it thriving. I couldn't get a good shot, the flowers are too high to see up close.

Gorgeous romantic hybrid tea in rust red. The image doesn't pick up the real brick red color of this rose, so rich and old fashioned looking. It has a light sweet fragrance, a lovely addition to our garden from a generous friend who left town. Thank you Marcea, this rose is so you!

Urban Blooms, last week's city garden

I have been MIA with the blog here, my apologies! I was able to snag a few pics of the backyard garden last week. Have a look:

Above, these heirloom brown and yellow irises are an old fashioned variety from my husband's grandmother's garden in Connecticut. They are very hardy plants that seem to grow and bloom no mater what kind of conditions they see. Our concrete backyard seems to make them happy, blooming more every year.

A handful of wildflowers from my daughter, fresh buttercups, always a springtime beauty!

Purple saliva, sage that is super drought tolerant, this one should bloom for a while.

I am so excited about the growing season. Check back for more urban gardening pics. I am determined to have a flower garden in the heart of a concrete neighborhood. This month, it has been 5 years and our garden gets better every year!

Spring Gardening in the City

In our city garden plots, we are waiting patiently for our seeds and seedlings to get strong and grow. Seems like this spring was a long cold and rainy one. Now it is suddenly blazing hot. We are crossing our fingers, hoping these little guys can take it. I think we had more in the ground by this time last year that was already growing well.

This year we are looking forward to potatoes, onions, peppers, spinach, chard, tomatoes, beets, peas, lettuce, watermelon, cucumbers, radishes, and Chinese cabbage... so far. We are already strategically plotting how to fight our pests the cucumber beetle, squash borer, and harlequin bugs. I'll have to do a pest post this year. We are ready!

Purple Spring Flowers

It's amazing to me that in our tiny concrete backyard, it is possible to grow a lush variety of flowers. This is what is blooming this week, so lovely!

Growing Seelings for Spring!

Today is the fist day of spring! HOORAYYYY!

We have already been digging in our garden plots that we rent through the Baltimore City Farms program. The ground is workable, fertile and ready to go. We had a great bounty last year and are looking forward to this growing season. We've even started some seeds in our basement using the 'ol flats w/ fluorescent lights set up. So far so good. We haven't had any dampening off or legginess as of yet... YAY!