The Gardening Thread

[Opaque]

Oh wow! What a cute house! All the greenery is so soothing. Those tall trees are amazing! Do you know how old they are? They're lovely.

[Keep Looking]

Oh, wow, Jitter, this is such a lovely place! And the garden has so much space, I hope you guys have a good time making something out of it.

[Róisín]

Wow! What are those pink flowers among the wood anemones? And are those celandines (the ones you thought might be aquilegias. Our aquilegias are much more fine-leaved and lacy.)? The way to tell is to break a leaf and look at the colour of the sap . It is orange for chelidonium. Are there any snowdrops or lily of the valley? It also looks like the kind of place where hellebore might grow? Or foxgloves?

And those empty flower beds might be a nice place to scatter seed of poppies, sweet alyssum, cosmos and other annual pretties. Do you plan on a vegetable garden? I see you already have nettles, and they are good for the soil as well as being useful in themselves. And you could plant Bellis perennis in the lawn, maybe? If you don’t have the wild species you could maybe find the garden ornamentals, which are bred to be bigger and showier, but the wilding is prettier to my eyes and much more use for medicine and protective magic. Anent which, I am so glad that you have rowans! I need to grow another, because my old tree was part of the house wards, and it was struck by lightning a year or two ago. 

[Vulpes]

Oh wow, Jitter, that's a lovely place! I am terribly envious of your wood anemones, they wouldn't survive here. I have some crocuses and glory-of-the-snow that are meant to naturalize, but it hasn't been long enough to know if they're going to spread, or die out. It looks like a beautiful mature garden. And a rowan, hurrah! Your rowan (Sorbus aucuparia, I assume) isn't native here, but there are a couple on campus. Beautiful trees. The native rowans (S. americana and S. decora) are usually called mountain ash, or here in Newfoundland, dogberry, and they grow all over the place. They're among my favourite trees.

I had a minor indoor gardening success - I grew cherry tomatoes! On a lark, I planted a determinate variety suited for container gardening in late December. They germinated, and grew, and bloomed, at which point I had to play bee. To my surprise that worked, and they formed fruit. Last week I noticed something orange...

Spoiler: orange thing! • show

I was thoroughly surprised and delighted, but I figured they'd fall off before they ripened.

Spoiler: The Harvest • show

There will be more... but not that many more.  :'D
So, not exactly a bounteous harvest after 4 months, but it was still really satisfying to have super-tasty cherry tomatoes! The ones from the store are kind of carboard-y, so I don't buy them.

Our house is pretty tiny, so the only place to cram in a shelf for plants is the back porch/laundry room.

Spoiler: Indoor garden, tiny cottage style • show

The plexiglass is not a covid-19 safety precaution!    One of the cats likes chewing on pretty much any plant, so I had to keep him off the shelf - he really likes chives, and alliums are bad for cats.

I have seedlings started that I'll plant outside next month. Looking forward to full-on gardening season!

[Róisín]

Not just alliums either. Tomato leaves, while they smell lovely and contain a natural antibiotic substance, are not safe to eat. Solanine.

[Vulpes]

Not just alliums either. Tomato leaves, while they smell lovely and contain a natural antibiotic substance, are not safe to eat. Solanine.

Oh yes, pretty much everything on that shelf is bad for cats! Thus the plexiglass. He has his own houseplant-sized pineapple plant (those are safe!) that he chews and licks as a displacement activity when he's waiting for his meals. I was looking after it for a friend, she didn't want it back...

Spoiler: i have no idea why not! • show

[SkyWhalePod]

We have recently bought an almost 120 year old house, and at least @SkyWhalePod has asked to see what it looks like.

Yay That's such a wonderful, cheerful color. And a nice big garden! It all looks very homey, you guys (and your builders) did a great job fixing it up.

This might be a silly American question, but it occurred to me one day when Minna was sharing images of Finnish country homes on Twitch: why are there sturdy ladders attached to all of these houses? Is it to make it easier to remove snow from the roof? There are plenty of places here in the US that still get dumped on every winter -- Maine is sometimes one of those places, although less frequently thanks to climate change -- but I've never seen anybody with a ladder, let alone a ladder that looks like it means business, built onto the house. . . .

Very nice indoor tomatoes, Vulpes. I like your laundry room setup, and your cat-distracting pineapple plant. I didn't know that pineapple plants were safe for cats!

I live in an apartment with very little sunlight except in the summer, in the afternoon, so my gardening is done strictly indoors under lamps. I recently upgraded from a low-intensity purple lamp to a brighter white LED grow light, and my ragtag variety of scraps and seedlings are eating it up! I'll try to get a picture in later.

[Jitter]

Yay That's such a wonderful, cheerful color. And a nice big garden! It all looks very homey, you guys (and your builders) did a great job fixing it up.

This might be a silly American question, but it occurred to me one day when Minna was sharing images of Finnish country homes on Twitch: why are there sturdy ladders attached to all of these houses?

All of the fixing visible from the outside is so far done by the previous owners. We have demoed the upstairs from the inside to the inner surface of the yellow wall, and are in the process of building it back up With better insulation, while still using traditional and breathable materials, etc. and making a better floor plan upstairs - there were very many small and weird cabinets and tiny spaces there, plus one boarded up kitchen!

On the outside we’ll need to paint the roof and work on the windows - some are from the 1970’s and are not in harmony with the house, and just yesterday we found out that at least one of them is hanging basically by positive thinking, the wood part is rotted through. The older windows are original and they also require some love, but are apparently in a fairly good condition at the moment.

As for the ladders, there are two reasons. Firstly, if you have a fireplace (and practically all country houses and holiday cottages, as well as most one-family dwellings even in cities, do) you have to have the chimneys sweeped every year. And the sweeper will only do it if it’s safe, which means a fixed ladder and also there have to be even walking surfaces on the roof, called “roof bridges”.

Secondly, the upstairs must have an emergency exit, i.e. an openable window of sufficient size with access to a safe ladder. This has applied to new built for decades, not since early 1900’s though But as long as the ladder is there anyway, it makes sense to arrange a way of getting to it.

[Jitter]

Róisín, in the first picture of what I called hopefully aquilegias is probably actually wall lettuce and indeed a celandine on top of each other. And I agree, in these pictures at least it’s celandine flowers. Still hoping for some aquilegias too! They often occur in old gardens. Well, if there aren’t any now, there will be later!

Foxgloves are also common in old gardens, but the previous owners had small children. So I would have not let them grow, although there are rusty nails in the ground in abundance so maybe they were not the most safety-oriented? I haven’t noticed any at least yet though. Loads of lily of the valley coming up!

The pale pink flower is probably a candytuft, it grows in several spots. We also have a lot of blue anemones (I don’t like their actual name liverwort) but those are gone by now. Tulips are coming up in several places, but only a couple of scillas. I hope to make some small bulbs naturalize in the “lawn” and bellis would be beautiful too! I also managed to notice a peony that was growing among the grass at the edge of the driveway, and had already been driven over a couple of times! Now it’s been moved to a safer location, and will be joined by some sprouts from my most beloved peonies in my old garden when we move.

As for the trees, we definitely have oaks, limes (tilia, not the fruit), maples, one walnut (not the edible one) which is unfortunately in a terrible condition, and a couple of birches (surprisingly few!) along with the pines and spruces. I haven’t recognized all the trees yet with there being no leaves! One of the trees does have leaves already, I think it is a bird cherry but will know for sure when it flowers.

All the rowans are small, someone has felled a few good sized ones but they are sprouting now and new seedlings are around. I’m also thinking whether we should transplant one rowan from this current plot into the new one, and will also take an oak sapling (this old garden has only one proper size oak, but squirrels hide acorns very dutifully so lots of oak saplings). It would feel good to have a tree or two from this garden, as we have built this house we are now leaving.

[Jitter]

Róisín, sorry, it’s not candytuft but pennycress. Got confused.

Also identified one of the biggest trees as an elm.

[Vulpes]

I didn't know that pineapple plants were safe for cats!

Nor did I, but when he started destroying my friend's plant, I looked it up, and it's fine. I mentioned it to someone who asked me to be their SPCA reference to adopt a cat (I'm godparent to a dog and a cat from the SPCA now!) and they said they had a cat years ago that adored pineapple, as in, the fruit, not the leaves. Cats are always full of surprises!

As for the ladders, there are two reasons. Firstly, if you have a fireplace (and practically all country houses and holiday cottages, as well as most one-family dwellings even in cities, do) you have to have the chimneys sweeped every year. And the sweeper will only do it if it’s safe, which means a fixed ladder and also there have to be even walking surfaces on the roof, called “roof bridges”.

Secondly, the upstairs must have an emergency exit, i.e. an openable window of sufficient size with access to a safe ladder. This has applied to new built for decades, not since early 1900’s though But as long as the ladder is there anyway, it makes sense to arrange a way of getting to it.

Huh. Finland is waaaaay more safety-minded than anywhere I've lived in Canada! At present we live in a (mostly) winterized cabin with a very steep roof, and I'm sure the sweep hates us. The first time he came he looked up at the roof and said, "Oh yeah, I remember this place." He's the only sweep around. No ladder, no roof bridges, just a dangerously steep roof. And there is no requirement for second story emergency exits - I believe there do have to be windows large enough to get through, but no requirement of a ladder, not even a rope one stored inside. In fact, I'm more familiar with the advice to never have a ladder accessible anywhere outside your home lest someone use it to break in! Although when you think about it, that doesn't make a great deal of sense - why in heck would you climb up an unstable extension ladder to a second story window, even assuming it's unlocked, when you could much less conspicuously smash a ground floor window? Hm, this probably tells us something about the Finnish vs North American psyche, but I'm not sure what.

[Alkia]

I'm a bit late to the discussion, but I just had to chime in: Jitter, your new house is so beautiful, and it's garden equally so!!!!!! I absolutely love that color yellow (house color envy! arg!) and some of the pictures of all the flowers around almost look like something out of a fairtale :0

Also, Vulpes, I like your small but tasty tomatoes :>. We have a cherry tomato plant in the backyard, it usually grows by itself without much tending, although our harvest is also pretty small

[Jitter]

I was gardening last night at the old house, and it seems we were late to leave it! I got the Rash from there! 😱 Photo to prove this is here: https://i.postimg.cc/NFWxbFZX/AF5-BA7-E7-4488-4-DDF-9-CD0-B8-B5-CC875138.jpg (photo of the skin of my upper back, showing about 5000 mosquito bites).

I suppose it was kind of fair that I got attacked by insects, since I destroyed several of their cities. Ants had built nests in all of big planters, ehich I had to empty to move them here. Also I got loads and loads of saplings and bits from perennial flowers I divided! I did some heavy duty weeding (dandelion, why u so pretty an so annoying? Kinda like an Icelander we know and love!) while I was at it, and the irises were due to be divided anyways, so it was a win-win situation. Except for my back, that is.

The new garden is just  I have taken the dogs out to the garden on two mornings now and oh so lovely! We are having wonderful weather at the moment too.

Here are some prettier pictures from the new garden:

[Vulpes]

Oh wow, Jitter, that's a lot of mozzie bites! I hope you have plenty of anti-itch cream of some sort. So nice that you could bring some old plant friends with you, not so nice that it cost you some blood. What a gorgeous yard, I envy you the big trees.

We went from vaguely sort of spring-ish to full summer in one day, which is what it tends to do around here. Suddenly the garden is very green, with ferns shooting up (is that why they call it spring?) and the gosh-darn grass needs mowing already.    My vegetables are nearly all in, and some stuff that I planted earlier is up. Such a great time of year!

[Opaque]

Ouch! That rash must be annoying. At least it dosen't look too bad though and will be gone soon enough. The pictures of the trees and flowers are wonderful! It looks so nice there.