Gardening Thread - Show me your gardens!

Looks like a monarch to me. That's awesome!

 

I relocated this hibiscus this spring - I was shocked when it flowered. The bees approve:

 

Definitely a Monarch. We let milkweed grown around our property to try and attract them. My wife also plants dill in pots to attract Swallowtails. If they get on the dill plants we use for pickles, then we move the caterpillars to the 'sacrificial' plants.

 

We’ve been trying to help out with their population and attract them. We've seen a lot of swallowtails around this year but no Monarchs yet. Fewer birds as well. Last years fires west of me and all over were part of it and our late winter snow and cold was pretty rough.

 

I’ve had this Tiger Salamander living in one of my basement window wells. Spotted it 8 years ago. The window well has always been pretty rough. Just some old rock mulch, weed fabric and weeds. I’d spray water down there occasionally to help him out. He has burrows all over at the bottom but can’t get out. He burrows down and survives the winters. I think he eats a lot of worms. Today I finally made him some better grounds. Sand, pea gravel, rocks, water tray, compost and plants. Went to the pet store and got a dozen crickets. He came out and chowed down! It was like wild kingdom!

Here he is in 2017:


And today in his new garden:

 

100 degrees today. Haven’t seen the little guy in few days since his cricket feast. Tonight he was out soaking in his new pool. Looks good! Better than hiding in his hole.

 

Gone for a week and the spaghetti squash blew up and took over everything! Passion fruit is looking good too.

 

Very cool! I'm sure he (or she) appreciates your kindness... great job!

 

We have had terrible luck with pumpkins and squash since we started and worse in the past month. I was wondering why I didn’t have any of my BigMAX or jack-o-lanterns yet, squash vine borers cut them out; addressed them, and the vines looked fine then found some pumpkin caterpillars! Sprayed with BT and thought we got ahead… in the last week we went from 5 pumpkin vines and 10 squash vines looking amazing just no fruit to having zero leaves I mean leaves decimated just vines left. Took all vines out with caterpillars still active and put them all into the vegetation shredder. I feel like I did something wrong this year so next year I’ll be using row covers for all of my squash and pumpkins and introducing pollinating insects at my discretion.

 

i grow these things:

 

What's the beer bottle in the ground? Some sort of bug trap?

 

It was the fuel, for me to be in the sun. just there for size comparison.

 

I've had the same problem with growing pumpkins. The key is to stay ahead of the infestation problem. Most of my pumpkins had holes bored in them from caterpillars. Don't grow them next to any other fruit that attracts the same kind of bugs either. I was growing squash, then planted pumpkins mid summer. That was an open invite for the problem to migrate over.

 

This is awesome!!! Thanks for taking care of the world's critters

 

Arapaho Crepe Myrtle

Deep red flowers, some of the flowers are so heavy it bends the branch over:

 

This is the Bali Hibiscus I moved back in spring. I was convinced I was moving it at a bad time so I gave it the best new home and soil I could. It started blooming prolifically, second photo shows all the buds.

 

Alright master gardeners, what would you plant along this stretch? It gets 5-8 hours of sun at varying points during the day. I was hoping to use it as the garden, but fear there may not be enough light for that. It’s about 100’x 3’ average.

Here is the rest of the project.

 

Id plant a ground cover plant (lamium) on the ledge above the rocks with some hosta's scattered spaced 4' along the ledge.
https://www.greenmylife.in/ground-cover-plants/

 

Thanks for the link. Wife likes it, may do some thyme as well.