New to Forum

Hello - I just found this forum and will be watching with interest. I'm into all types of gardening: vegetables, fruits, perennials, annuals, containers with some laying chickens thrown in for good measure. On to reading some more threads...

Welcome pam...you will love it here...now tell us all about yourself!!

welcome pam yes we would love to hear all about you and your gardens its to wet to do any outside things yet and I beleave soon it will be to windy !!!!
Gloria ;0)

pam glad you found us and hope to see more of you and your gardens

Welcome Pam! We're so glad you've joined in. Tell us all about your garden plans for this year.

Brenda

Welcome Pam, glad you found the Mi. forum :o) We would love to pictures of all your flowers :o)

Happy Gardening Connie

Hi pamq......gee, I missed your welcoming...seems..course I was not doing it in 2004...there are so many forums here...glad you found us.....so I am sending you...a welcome mat...not for just the michigan forum but for all of DG...hehehe....come often here..and set a spell....get to know all of us...

hope your spring will come soon as all of us wish that..lol....

again welcome to the michigan forum...

smiles Diana...

Hello pamq and welcome to the Michigan Forum!!! Ronna

Hi Pam,

Welcome, Welcome!!

Delane ^_^

hello PAM,
I see you are not far from me!! Welcome and come on back here ...
Us Michigan gardeners say hello!!
I wish i could have chickens where i live.
Julie

Thank you for all of the welcomes. My husband and I garden on about an acre in SE MI. I am a librarian by day and gardener the rest of the time (when I'm not spending time with my grandchildren). I love gardening with containers and have a greenhouse for overwintering the tenders. There are also way more daylilies in my yard that a person has a right to own. We also love organic vegetable gardening and freezing and canning the produce. We used to have more homestead animals but now we are down to 10 laying chickens and 3 cats.
So you want a picture? Hmmm - here is one of my favorite containers - a big, cast-iron, pig scalding kettle I got at a yard sale for just a few bucks. I remember the guy I bought it from apologizing for the crack in the bottom and warning me it wouldn't be watertight. (Did he think I would be scraping pig-hides?) I was just thinking that I wouldn't have to drill any holes for drainage. Anyway - I like to think I rehabilitated the kettle to a much better purpose.

Pam

Gorgeous. Looks like Florida come to Michigan. Actually, I'm in Florida now and haven't seen anything that pretty. Lovely banana. That must be in your GH now. I planted some supposedly winter hardy ones at the cottage in Caseville. What do you think the chances are they made it through this winter. Nancy

Hi Pam,

I have a pig scalding pot too! I wish I could say I only paid a few bucks for it though. Mine is on a stand and I use it to plant annuals in. Mine does not have a drainage hole but because it is so huge and the annuals roots so shallow it's OK. I want to preserve it just in case I decide someday I want to scald some pigs. ha ha ha The neighbor down the road has pigs and two cows and chickens. We're thinking about getting some chickens but not sure yet. We do eat a lot of eggs so it would be worthwhile I'm sure. Your flowers are beautiful. Oh, and you're allowed and encouraged to post pics of the grandkids. We all do. :) So, do you heat your greenhouse in winter? There are a lot of daylily enthusiasts here. You'll enjoy chatting and sharing pics.

Brenda

Wow I have one too...had it for years...was cheap then...It has a stand...weighs a ton...most every year...short snapdragons..pink ones..come up from the year before...no hole in it..but deep....we like it...a treasure for sure...

Glad you are coming back...here...often that is great..for sure..

happy day now....lov the snow...???? Hahahaha....Caseville is a fun place..to have another lake house...lol.....

smiles..Diana..

Geez - the stand for my kettle was long gone before I got it. If it wasn't cracked, it would be a temptation to put a little water garden in it.

Yes, the greenhouse is heated and the banana is in there. Nancy, I'll be interested to hear if the winter-hardy bananas make it. We have had some cold nights but lots of snow cover too, so maybe???

Pam

I have one too(centennial family farm)its been upside down for years
Maybe this year since i have so many plants ordered i will do something with it-maybe!
Glad to have you here and love that pic-i gave up on bananas and brugs long ago!

did you say to many daylilies? how do you know when its to many? lol

like this

That's amazing. But it looks to me like you have a few holes that could be filled in, right? Let see how many varieties of daylilies are there? Nancy

Picture of the cottage garden. Only a few daylilies, though. The bananas aren't in this garden, but the the camellia that I managed to get though one winter so far. Nancy

Very pretty Nancy.I love your little iron fence. What kind of trees are those?

I grew up in east Dearborn and graduated from Fordson about a million years ago. :)


Brenda

The tall one is a rose of sharon. It was the only piece of landscaping at the cottage when we bought it. The medium one is a pink flowering dogwood. There is a weeping Japanese maple. The wrought iron fence is one of the ones you just push the stakes in the ground and attach the fencing. Oh so easy. Got it at Menards but I've seen it at a lot of places now.
I've been in Dearborn for 25 years and my children graduated from Fordson. Interesting place. When my children attended, they said 46 different languages where spoken in the homes of the kids going there. Nancy

pamq, I wish I had one of those kettles in my garden. I think they are wonderful. I know some people at Huron City who have a half water tank in their yard and made a water feature out of it. It's great. Welcome to the Michigan forum.
nancyruhl, there are over 68,000 registered varieties of daylilies right now and lots of new seedlings that are not registered. When you are in Caseville, come to my house in Bad Axe, It's an AHS Display Garden. I love to have people tour the garden.
That weeping Japanese Maple looks pretty close to the house. Will you have to keep it pruned to keep it off the house? I know they are slow growing, but eventually it will get up there.

Would love to come by and see your garden. We come to Bad Axe all the time, because my husbands family farm is there and we grow our vegies there.

The Japanese Maple isn't that close to the house. I know it appears that way in the picture. The growth is away from the house because of the way the sun hits. Thanks, Nancy

Well duh..........I SHOULD have known that was a Rose of Sharon. It's one of my favorites and I've grown them for decades. :) I thought that was a variegated dogwood in the background but was not sure. I tried at least 4 times at my city house to grow that and each one died. I do not know why. I finally gave up because my obsession was getting expensive. I've been told by a local nurseryman that we can't grow dogwoods up here. Not sure why. He said they would lose over 60% of the ones they sold at the nursery so they stopped selling them. I wish I could have a dogwood. I had a big beautiful pink one downstate and my city house. I miss it.

I moved to Dearborn in 1962 and left when I graduated in 1967. My Mom lived there until 2005 which she moved in with me. She always had a big vegetable garden well into her 80's. She lived in the Warren and Shaeffer area.

Dorothian, I would love to see your garden. Too bad we can't boat over. I think we're right across the bay from each other. :0

Brenda

I'm not far from your mom's old neighborhood at Oakman/Ford Rd area.

I don't know why it is so hard to grow dogwoods in your area. You're only a hop, skip and jump across the bay. Sand point, where the cottage is, is considered a zone 6 area by some. I did a little research and the kousa varieties of dogwoods are considered a little hardier. They are equally as beautiful, just more conical in growth habit, and less open and airy looking. There are 3 pink cultivars-heart throb. bush's pink, and radiant rose. Then there a cornus florida called spring song that is supposedly hardier than the rest of the species. Now the tough part is locating any of these varieties. All of those varieties are understory plants who need a protected spot, of course. I included a picture of spring song. TDF. I hate to see people throw in the towel on a plant if they really like it. I have, however, given up moving my hosta collection to the cottage. The deer who live across the street think of them as varigated salad. Nancy

Ahhhhhhhhhhh the deer. I have a love/hate relationship with them. I've had very good luck with a product called Liquid Fence. It's made out of rotten eggs and I forget what else. Smells horrid. It works though. I buy the concentrate and mix it up and put it into two spray bottles. I then drive my RTV around and spray everything from flowers to fruit trees. Then about two to three weeks later I respray. After that I only spray about once a month and they stay away. The rabbits won't bother anything either. I should have done a mid winter spray. Today I was picking up dog poo and a rabbit ran out from under my deck. I think he's living there. grrrrrrrrrrrrr He will chew on the barks of my trees and rose canes. I wish the coyote would eat him.

I might try one more time with a dogwood. I will have to try the hardiest of them all though. We've had a super cold winter this year with actual temps as low as twelve below zero. I'd try to play it up near the house and under my giant ash trees. I'll probably have to either mail order or go further downstate to find a nursery that has them though. Thanks for the suggestions. It may be the sandier soil up here that the dogwood doesn't like. At my city house the pink dogwood did good that was planted in clay. I never could get the varigated one to grow though. I think they are not as hardy but they sure are pretty.

I know the Oakman and Ford Rd. area well. That all used to be my stomping grounds as a teenager. Of course, it has changed a lot. The old Montgomery Wards is gone and so many other stores.

Brenda

I have a Kousa dogwood in my front yard near the house. It has been ther for several years and I hope it survived this COLD winter. It blooms later thatn the Cornus florida and still has some bloom in July. The wild dogwoods here grow in sandy soil, so I don't think that's a factor in not being able to grow them.
As to deer and rabbits, another deterrent is to use Milorganite as a fertilizer. It is made from human sewage sludge and they don't like the smell

Great idea with the milorganite. It's such good fertilizer, too. I do the spray and that helps. The garden closest to the street is a butterfly, hummingbird garden. They are attracted by smell, so I hope the milorganite doesn't deter them too. Mostly, I plant things that the deer are known not to like, like alliums, agastache, buddleia, asclepias, monarda, etc. I think the fawns have to try everything once to find out they don't like it.

I used Milorganite in my perennial bed last season. I put it down early. I had great success with using that. Nobody wandered in there to eat a thing. :) I bought extra bags at the end of the season when they were marked down. I've heard that fertilizer will be hard to get or will be very expensive so I stocked up on what I could.

Pam, I have one of those cast iron cauldrons too. My parents had 10 acreas, and I guess the cauldron was in one of the sheds when they bought the house and property. One of my brothers had it, drilled holes in the bottom, then decided not to use it. He gave it to me just before he moved. It is my pride and joy! I tend to grow lilies with annuals in it each year.

I was wondering how much one of those would cost now, found some on the web for over $400 ... yikes!

One on ebay for about $100 in Ky, but for pick up only.

Glad you found this forum. I pop in here once and a while and post occasionally. :o)
sharon from downriver