#zone 8b

I'm serious.

I can grow everything without issue.

Give me the most sensitive orchid and I'll somehow keep it alive without really knowing what I'm doing.

Tomatoes just grow in my backyard from where I had tomatoes the year before. Just volunteering themselves.

But whether i try to grow mint from seed or buy and established plant and it perishes. I don't understand. This year I started many herbs from seed and it didn't even germinate.

Only 1 single time have I ever grown mint with success and it was a fluke I'll never figure out. It was at my ex's mother's house. She wanted help with her garden and i was happy to be of service (despite my very much not liking this wonan. At all). We organized it and she decided to add mint. I told her it can take over yards and that it would choke out the veggies she wanted. She simply said I was wrong.

Because I am the grim reaper for mint I didn't press it.

Well.

Mint absolutely took over her yard. It overtook the grass. It killed all her other herbs and flowers. She had to pay someone to remove it all 2 years later.

So i guess it's very all or nothing with me.

Anyway.

Here's what im growing from seed this year:

18 mystery heirloom tomatoes

2 Serrano peppers

2 Bolivian rainbow peppers

2 Oaxacan Jewel tomatoes

2 Fresno peppers

2 Borage

3 Lemon Basil

1 Cucumber

Purple potatoes and Rosa potatoes

4 Oriental poppies

Various sunflower seeds

Scattered hundreds of annual poppy seeds in bare spots

Plants I'm adding:

Lavender

Huckleberry bush

Violets

4 Peonies

1 Aster

1 Hellebore

2 Yarrow

2 Chamomile

1 Jasmine

1 Clematis

1 Rosemary

2 Milkweed

I want a wall of flowers on all my fences.

I'll be adding more clematis or jasmine or honeysuckle later. Also planting more bulbs.

I want nothing but plants all around me while it feels like the world is burning.

[ID: Rows of grouped plants in the shade, positioned off the ground and in raised container lids.]

The smaller the pot, the faster they'll dry out & heat up (much hotter than the soil in the ground) on hot summer days. Most pots smaller than a gallon can require multiple waterings on warmer days, which also quickly leaches away nitrogen and other water-soluble nutrients. Letting them dry out, if you have clay soil in the mix, can cause shrinking from the edges that allows water to run right through the pot without really hydrating the soil.

I'm countering these problems a few ways. The shade tarp cuts the afternoon sun while still allowing light through, and since it's got plenty of clearance for airflow keeps the area underneath cooler. I've also placed the plants in solid bin lids for their raised edges, which will hold excess water and allow it (and any leached nutrients) to be absorbed over time back into the soil. If you do something similar, keep any diseased plants away and don't use so much water that the pots are constantly wet.

The combined shade, temperature drop, and extra water cuts the watering back down to every couple days and keeps me from having to continuously add new nutrients.

[ID: Sunlight cutting in under a shaded area, hitting larger pots of small trees before reaching 1 gallon and then smaller containers grouped in bid lids]

I also positioned the tarp so that it shades out my sugar snap peas, which suffer and die off in summer heat, keeping them sweet and growing higher and higher.

[ID: Sugar snap peas reaching between 5' and 10', with white and purple flowers and green hanging peas.]

The other side of the tarp shades out the hottest western sun from the front of the greenhouse, keeping it in the more plant-comfortable low 90s (with a fan on) rather than above 100F.

[ID: A variety of flowers sit shaded in a greenhouse]

January 19, 2025

Crop rotation 3, Zone 8B

Raised beds have been amended with compost and a light layer of bone meal. The dominant crop this year will be potatoes and shall take up the entirety of the first bed, both halves.

While turning my soil I found a few volunteer soft neck garlics hidden among the strawberries. They have been transplanted to the back bed.

Potatoes are sitting out in bright light and starting to put off shoots. They will be planted within the month of March.

This is my garden today. That metal trash can on the left will eventually be a compost bin

I need to move all the containers aside and mow it down, which is difficult for me physically. I'll figure something out. But then I need to rearrange it with their eventual grown-up sizes in mind, and have the ones who will be receiving big trellis systems put in the back/west (aka the right side of the photo).

Anyone else feel like everything is growing so, so slowly this season? I'm in zone 8b in the Pacific Northwest. I'm seeing other people posting fruiting squash and eggplants and I'm like, I got 5 radishes?

The herbs are doing well, especially the lemon thyme and sage. I want to plant more herbs next year.

Speaking of, check out this hot tip I found (I don't know original source).