Tag: New Hampshire

A Little About Sunflowers

Types of sunflowers and possible problems when planting and growing.

Soon the sunflowers will be popping through the soil and by mid-summer their happy blooms will decorate the garden landscape.
Sunflower plants can be tall or short. When mixing varieties be sure to leave enough space between them as they all need lots of sunlight. Seed packs will describe which is which.

yellow sunflower poster
Sunflower Poster

Besides bright yellow the petals can be rusty redish orange as in the Autumn Beauty
variety.  (I don’t know what variety this red sunflower is, but it’s pretty.)

red sunflower
Photo by eponaspirit @ Pixabay

I used to plant sunflower seeds until I realized that the squirrels were digging them up as fast as I could plant them! My gardening space is very small, so I don’t need many sunflowers, but a few are nice to have. Because I feed sunflower seeds to the birds in winter, I always have a few volunteers that grow on their own. All I have to do is weed out the ones that are too close together and let the others survive. Of course they don’t always sprout where I would prefer they live, but I can’t be picky. It’s that or no sunflowers, and a summer without sunflowers is just not right!
Here is a picture of my garden last year.

backyard garden scene
My Backyard Garden – 2014
grasshopper eating a sunflower
Grasshopper on sunflower


I like the fact that sunflowers grow beautifully on their own.  Usually they mature and have plenty of seeds to feed the birds.  The goldfinches love them.  Although, I have had squirrels climb the stalk and chew off the stem to steal the entire flower! Those little buggers are a real nuisance.

Now that I have cats prowling the yard, I haven’t had that problem.
I did however have big green grasshoppers chewing on the flowers. It’s always something. But they were so interesting that I let them eat and got some photos.

May Brings Out the Dusty Street Sweeper

street sweeper
Street Sweeper in May
It has to be dry to sweep the streets, and the day the sweeper came by he sure kicked up a ton of dust. May is when our town sweeps up winter’s leftover sand from all the roads. They put a tentative (because of weather) schedule out, but I am never really sure when they will appear in my neighborhood.

Having the street swept is a new thing for me. The first spring in my new home, I noticed that people were making rows of sand at the edge of their yards. They were brushing (?) the sand off their grass somehow, and I wondered why. The sand comes from the sand trucks that frequently sand and salt the roads all during winter. I found out a while later when the noisy street sweeper came through the neighborhood and sucked it up!

I don’t bother to sweep sand off my “grass” mainly because I don’t have any grass. I’m working on it, but that is far down my list of yard work that needs to be done. I did get this photo of the sweeper as he went by a couple of times, kicking up clouds of dust. It’s a normal part of Spring clean up in this part of New Hampshire.

Gardening in Small Spaces

Each year I face the challenge of gardening in small spaces. Nearly three years ago I moved into my long-awaited home. It has the smallest usable yard space of any house I have ever lived in. The lot size is just about an acre, but much of that is down a hill and in the woodsy wetlands area. My front yard is large enough for me, but I wish I had more to work with in the back. Each Spring I must find the best ways to rotate and plant vegetables which will get enough sun to grow well.

backyard garden
Small Garden Space

I have a family of three, but my kids are not as excited about eating fresh garden vegetables as I am. I don’t have to grow much of a crop of anything – just enough for me. And that is a good thing, since I don’t have the space for it.

Last year I tried fabric pot gardening and it worked out well. You can see in my picture above that I had one large round raised garden. I used the smaller garden bags to grow potatoes, beans and carrots. The nice thing was that I just set the pots in the sunniest areas along the deck, and had instant gardens!

The rest of my planting is done along the strip of ground at the edge of a drop off which is loaded with blackberry briars. With all the trees growing nearby, the lower part of the yard is too shady to plant anything. It doesn’t leave much room to do everything I’d like, but I do get some nice veggies by mid to end of summer.  And I put up a cement block raised bed out front which helps expand the crops too.

Pictures of the Lenton Rose

The unique lenton rose flower will poke out of the snow in early spring.

This is a photo blog post showing some images of the two Lenton rose (hellebore) plants growing in my yard. This is a new plant for me to grow, but I love the fact that the buds form and flowers bloom in mid-April. Sometimes there is still snow on the ground!

It’s a pleasant thing to find flowers blooming after a long, cold winter.

Hellebore Flowers are Unique

Besides blooming early in Spring before most other perennials, the flowers of the Lentos Rose are unique.

Flower colors can be pink, beige, white, light green or spotted. The flowers will stay on the plant and turn color too.

lenton rose spring buds
blooming lenton rose
lenton rose

Early blooming hellebores can bloom before daffodils and tulips!

single lenton rose flower
lenton rose green flowers

The flower is unique and comes in a variety of colors.  The light green flower is coveted by brides for their wedding bouquets.  Finding green flowers in nature is always a treat, but the light pink and spotted varieties are stunning as well.

This is one plant that I would like to have more of in my garden. This perennial is easy to grow and blooms profusely. As you can see, the leaves are nice and green even after being covered in snow all winter!   After the flowering stops, the green leaves continue to grow all summer and add interest to the landscape.

I’ll keep my eyes open for other varieties when I visit the local nursery this year.

Fabric Bag Gardening in a Small Backyard

small backyard
Small backyard space

Having a small backyard means facing some challenges when planning a garden. Throw in tall trees bordering the property taking away sunny patches, and it adds to headache. That is why I tried my hand at fabric bag / pot gardening.
My backyard is small and narrow. The picture I’ve added is one I took before I closed on my house. The slider was taped off so one would try to go out where there were no steps. Who would? Anyway… those are the old, wooden steps sitting out back at the edge of my small backyard. Although I have an acre of land, the usable part of my backyard stops right there. So the space I can use now (with a small deck that I added) is long and narrow with spotty areas of good sun.
Last summer I had planned to dig up a couple of new areas back there that tend to get pretty good sunshine, but that is so much work. I really didn’t want to have to dig and then add amendments and all that. Plus I didn’t have the time. I needed an alternative to the traditional way of gardening. So I decided to try container gardening.  But instead of regular pots I used fabric bags, in various sizes, filled with good dirt.
black fabric raised bed large bag
This large fabric bag held tomatoes, basil, radishes and some herbs. There was no digging involved, but I did buy a truckload of good loam and had to wheelbarrow it over to fill the bag. I planted my small seedlings and they took off.
I also used smaller fabric bags to plant potatoes, green beans, and carrots. I learned a few things from using these bags, and some things I will do differently this season, but all in all I was happy with them.
I wondered if I could save the bags and re-use them, so we’ll see how well they hold up when I try that this spring.

Pictures of My Backyard Raised Bed Tomato Garden

large fabric raised garden
The Bigger Fabric Garden

raised bed with tomatoes
The tomato bed as of mid-July

Here are two (before and after) pictures of my backyard gardens. I planted 4 tomatoes in this fabric raised bed back in June. I added a few basil plants and radishes around the edge. As you can see, by mid July they are growing like crazy. I haven’t eaten any tomatoes yet, they are still green. I have one red grape tomato that I will probably eat tomorrow and that means there will soon be more that are ripe. All my fabric raised beds are doing well except for the potatoes, but I don’t know if they are just ready to be dug.

The potato stalks look like they are dying, so I hope when I dig down into the bag I will find potatoes worth eating. Those little turd bugs got ahold of the leaves while I was away for 10 days.  My carrots don’t look too good either.  I haven’t grown carrots for many years because I never had much luck with them getting large enough to use.

My concrete block raised bed is also doing well.  I have zucchini in that along with a couple of grape tomato plants.  I just ate boiled zucchini for breakfast!