a few things

Pulling weeds, I found what looks like a tiny red japanese maple. I planted it in a small pot. Lots of my neighbors have japanese maples in their yards, I'm not surprised a seed found its way onto my ground.

Hard to see, but the ginger is sending up new shoots! I've freshened its pot with a top-dressing of fertilized potting soil, blanketed it in mulch, and set back outside in the shady stump spot near the garden.

Sadly, I think I finally killed my boston fern. It was going out during the day, in at night- can't take below forty degrees- and one night when it happened to be particularly cold, I also happened to forget to bring it back in with the others. Dang. I cut back all the dead foliage, but am keeping the pot around and watering it now and then, just in case it revives.

I also tossed a few plants that just aren't doing well for me (needed their containers). One was the very pathetic "butt plant." I can't seem to do right by this one- out it goes, sorry.

random plants

Checked on my mint pots. Chocolate and ginger mint are still alive!

Love seeing the sunlight through pot of chives

Indoor lemon balm is getting taller again. I may pinch and use fresh leaves from its top just to make it branch out more.

My teen wanted to add fresh ginger to green tea. I dug some up from my basement pot, where the rhizomes were going to run into the pot edge anyway. They're smaller than I expected. And she said there was very little flavor. I wonder if because the plant is dormant, probably better to dig it in late summer or fall.

I'm thinking of planting some out against the house wall, on the shady hillside behind my row of big hostas. They need a backdrop! and it might like that spot which is kept damp by the sump output, and it would have plenty of room to spread. I could always dig enough to keep potted overwinter and plant out again in spring- something I was never willing to do for flower bulbs, but now considering for ginger . . .

nearly empty

My garden is pretty dismal, now. Well, except for the spot overtaken by my favorite fern! (I never should have planted it so close).

Quite a few of the beds are completely empty now- except for a few volunteer borage and celosia

We've pulled and eaten nearly all the carrots- a handful are left under this tangle of borage

The herb bed still has life- rue and green onions are thriving. Still have some sage and lemon balm, too. My thyme plant completely died. There's a few small leeks and a couple of parsley plants too.

From the garden moved indoors- my ginger pot is really happy! But I noticed too late that the lemon verbena behind it didn't look well. Pulled aside the ginger the other day- lemon verbena is completely naked of leaves. I found two grey caterpillars, one fat green one and a smug-looking gray leafhopper. Pinched them all.

I've also still got the salad burnet indoors. This one keeps showing stems that turn pale, anemic- looking and slightly mottled yellow. I suspected a bug but couldn't see it. I doused with soap spray, no improvement. I started just yanking out the stems when they began to look sickly- and what do you know, now it has more healthy foliage than not. But the stems don't have a nice even graceful growth habit anymore- they bend and turn. I think the light is not strong enough for it here.

brought inside

Most of the garden pots I brought indoors to shelter from the weather are crowded into my basement window.

Left side of the window to right. Lemon verbena and ginger

Stevia

wild mint I dug out of friend's yard month ago

coleus 'gay delight' under the others- I cut it back further, taking pieces to restart indoors and also replanting some cuttings in the front bed- so it's shorter than the other plants here

coleus 'watermelon'

curry plant- I often disturb it on purpose because I so love its scent

Mini jade or 'ice plant'- sadly this is the only one of the plants I got in a box for my birthday, that is thriving. Elephant bush got devastated by insects outside- I've had to shelter it apart from the others, in case its malady spreads. String of pearls just kept deteriorating and I'm almost ready to reuse the pot for another plant. Lithops continues to look sad. . . . But ice plant is doing great! It liked the summer outside.

Rosemary. Bottom half of the stems the leaves had turned brown and fallen. A lot of these plants got withered leaves trimmed and heavily sprayed with soap/oil mix against bugs before I brought them in, especially the rosemary. Top half looks healthy, though.

Another view of the rosemary-

Ginger mint

Chocolate mint- this one got a severe trim. I cut out all the stems that had sickly-looking leaves on them (from tiny leaf hoppers), stripped the bottom halves of stems and hung the tops to dry for tea in my dining room, and sprayed down the pot.

Here's how lovely it looked before I cut it back

Some of these plants will go back outside once we get sun again- but others- probably the stevia at least- I might keep inside now until spring. Other garden containers I simply left outside to take their chances: russian sage, summer savory, dill (those are mostly done for the season anyway).

gardening in other spots-

Peppers stayed in containers on the deck

ginger is finally coming up!

summer savories suddenly put on a lot of growth. I think I will thin them out and move some to grow around the green beans- I read that they repel some pests particular to beans. I'll sow more summer savory seed there, too.

basement window

Is in full use this winter, expanding the space I have for plants in sun. I have a cardboard panel there to keep the worst of the draft off. Here's my pink-centered coleus that was simply cut down in its pot, regrowing:

Ginger still has leaves, it hasn't gone dormant yet

some of the rhizome pushing above the soil.

My five-year-old pepper, the only one I saved to overwinter this year. It's kind of shabby looking, but doing better than I expected for a rather cool location.

I cut down the lemon verbena when it dropped all its leaves after frost. Cut it back and brought it inside. Didn't expect it to break dormancy until springtime- March or April perhaps. But here it is sprouting new leaves already.

ginger!

All is not lost- my ginger sprouted again! I had set the pot down under the deck and forgotten about it, until I saw some little green shoots come up. Late in the season- but still. It's alive! picture from a week ago-

and now

my big jade plant

is still alive, surprisingly. Several weeks ago I gave up trying to kill the aphids on it, but couldn't bear to throw the plant away. Stuck it outside on the deck in a corner. Forgot about it for a while. It only gets rain. Sun scorched for a while, recovered from that. Then I started dropping spiders on it. If I catch one in the house. Wolf spiders, small jumping spiders that hunt. I don't see them again- except for one tiny one with a furry gray and while face that looks like a little ewok, that bitty one hangs around the deck planter boxes. Jade plant seems to be doing better now- it has fewer leaves puckering and falling off, and more new growth. I don't see nearly as many aphids on it. I'm game to leaving it out here where the garden predators can help out, but wonder if bringing it back inside in fall will just make the problem crop up again in the shelter of indoors...

I had to throw away two of those overwintered pepper plants, from disease. Still have this oldest one .... Also into the trash due to insect-caused disease: over half my young celosia plants,

and two-thirds of the sweet potato vine cuttings. This bunch of it I'm keeping in a pot, is doing okay so far- you can see on the far right some puckered leaves that had that look of insect damage- I pinched them off and the withering has not spread. There's another pot of it on the porch that looks much worse- but I think I found the culprit today- I'd been looking for aphids and whitefly on undersides, but instead found a leafhopper bug.

Saddest of all, I no longer have any pretty ginger. I think it dried up in the winter- I went too sparingly on the watering. Never sprouted again this spring. I did love that plant.

ginger plant

This is one that got very little attention this summer. I didn't even use it much for cooking or tea. I just let it grow. At one point layered small stones across the top of the dirt, to keep chipmunks and/or squirrels from digging up the rhizomes. I brought it indoors this week to overwinter.

in the rest of the garden-

Broccoli is struggling along. It keeps getting eaten by those green caterpillars that exactly match the hue of the leaves so I search and search and don't find them all. I think it's the larvae of the cabbage white butterfly. I keep picking off, but am always finding another one... I'm not sure if the plants will regain health enough to produce any heads. Somehow I lost a cucumber plant. Only have two now, and they have bloomed but remain quite small- I think the soil in these new beds is just not built up well enough yet.

The herbs seem to be doing okay in there- I've got more oregano, basil (three kinds!) and thyme than I can use. Wish I had more of the dill, green onions/chives and summer savory. I love those on eggs or fish, and keep eating it faster than the plants can keep up! Must sow more. (In the picture, cinnamon thai basil on the far left, sweet basil on the far right, dill just to the left and summer savory just to the right of the tree trunk). There's green onions or chives in that planter, too, but I've cut them so much to eat, you can't even see them anymore.

In the main garden bed, beets are looking grand.

So are the ferny carrots. I pulled up the bolting lettuce and planted a few young peppers in their spot.

In the back of it all are my borage. Some fell over in heavy rainstorms, but then ends of the stems turned and grew upright again. They're just starting to flower now, too. I haven't seen any bees visit yet...

I'm still trying to thwart whatever keeps digging in here. Applying cayenne pepper and coffee grounds on alternating weeks seemed to be mostly keeping the digger away, but I got really frustrated that my ginger pot kept getting dug up. When I found one of the ginger rhizomes laid bare I really got upset. I laid stones all over the pot, and now they are left alone. I only have to move a few stones when I want to dig up some ginger myself. I wonder now if it was a chipmunk? (I'd think a squirrel strong enough to move the stones if it wanted to, but maybe it would just move on looking for some easier spot. But I don't want to put rocks all over my garden bed, so this will only work for troublesome pots).

how the garden's doing

the one with plants I can eat. Except there's not much to eat from there yet.

Just lettuces. And the lettuce that grew the best, was the one that's my least-favorite- bibb. It's already bolting, though. Most of the plants in the main bed are doing fairly well, most of the plants in the smaller, newer beds aren't growing as much. I think because the soil is poorly. I built up the soil in that main bed for a whole year and now it's nice dark crumbly stuff I can just shove my hand down into it, don't even need a trowel to plant. (Probably why the squirrels like it so much).

The beets are getting decent size

and the carrots have gone from this

to this in just a week. It's hard to see stuff against other greenery- I had just put down lawn trimmings for mulch. There are peas, but just a few. Why can't I ever grow peas well? Next year I will build a proper pea support.

Ginger has come up in its pot, but halted at a foot high. Hm.

I've put the last few plants in- three stunted-looking cucumbers, a few cosmos flowers, two more marigolds and a handful of sage. Some herbs bought at the store- oregano, basil.

Swiss chard is just sitting there, rather small. I should have remembered it does better sown straight into the ground. At least for me. Broccoli is also growing very slowly. And then I found I had a bunch of poor pepper seedlings languishing in seedling trays. Their size had not increased since putting out first true leaves- probably they were starved for nutrients. I promptly planted them into individual pots with richer soil, but I don't know if they will recover.

Well, at least my favorite tomato plant has grown the quickest. I still had a few cherry tomatoes in seedling tray as well.

They responded quickly when put out into permanent pots under tomato cages on the deck.

The biggest one has outpaced all the 'large' tomato plants by far! But I still have only lettuce and herbs to eat from the garden. It will probably be some time before anything else is ready to harvest, if at all. I might not get any good produce out of the newer plots until I've improved the soil for another season.