Not so many flowers

Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog. It is true I’m struggling with the garden and getting lots of flowers. I know what the problem is and this winter I have a lot of work to do.

I think the fact that most of the dahlias that were planted out the front have not really grown is telling me that the soil out there needs plenty of work. I have put out fertiliser, but I think it needs a lot more than that.

When winter hits and everything dies back I think I might order some soil for the front and spread it out everywhere. Then I can see if that makes a big difference for next season.

I want lots of flowers and lots of different ones. I want the weeds gone and to be replaced with a garden that I can wander around with my macro lens. So that is the plan for this winter.

Speaking of macro lenses, I still have my Nikon one and I spent some time outside with it in the morning while it was still overcast and took some photos. It seems like forever since I used the Nikon camera with the macro lens.

I’ve been trying to talk Dave into letting me get the Fujifilm macro, but so far no go. I can’t complain too much as I still have a macro lens.

I hope you enjoy these images. Not a lot of variety, but I’m working on it.

Take care everyone and I’ll talk to you soon.

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70 Comments

  1. These are beautiful photos! I enjoy landscaping, taking hikes and bringing back wildflowers to plant. I wish you luck with your gardening! Keep up the good photography!

    1. Thank you Ashlynn. I haven’t done a lot of hiking, but that is a nice idea. I think I’m trying to wing in the garden, but I’m not sure that is going to work for long.

    2. As far as keeping the weeds from getting drastic. I find that putting sawdust around your flowers and in the empty spaces between your flowers helps immensely. You can always get sawdust at a local sawmill. As far as fertilizer I honestly grind used coffee and egg shells and spread that around the flowers base. I haven’t used any fertilizers from the store. During the winter months I have had luck with mulching my flower beds with leaves, it says to mulch with crumbled leaves but just a light layer of leaves have done the trick for me. All of my flowers are coming up, but will be middle spring till they bloom because I recently moved and transplanted them right before fall. I hope this tricks that I use can be helpful for you. I’ve planted herbs and other flowers in red clay dirt and then have course just normal dirt. Of course, where I live it’s a rough mixture of the too. If you have anymore problems with your gardens, raising your gardens by putting down landscaping plastic (I believe that the right name) and rocks or two by fours for the mold (in a sense) and filling it in with store bought dirt and planting your flowers will make beautiful gardens as well. The landscaping plastic keeps any weeds from protruding through your garden as well.

    3. I have a heap of mulch to put out on the garden, but I needed to weed it first as well. It is all going to happen. I did use fertiliser and all the egg shells and coffee grinds go to the worms or my compost bin. I’ve been putting heaps of compost around the plants too. I used to be able to just plant things, but it seems my front garden is just missing so many nutrients, that I need to do work to build it all back up. Thanks Ashlynn.

  2. Love your blog here! ❤️
    Also, I recently wrote a poem on the beauty of flowers, would love for you to check it out and let me know what you think!

  3. Having a flower garden with unlimited colors of flowers is the goal each year. Have you thought about spreading hay or grass (organic material) on top of your soil after the grow season? It’ll break down through the winter and help rejuvenate your soil. That is my technique and it works well for me.

    1. I think it is a great goal Troy and I should do it for summer to help with water, but didn’t quite get there this year, but will do it soon. I want to spread out some manure and compost first, then will cover it with sugar cane, hopefully that will make it all good for next spring. Thank you Troy.

  4. My late husband planted a lot of dahlias one year, and they were all gorgeous. I think every one was unique. However, he told me that the dahlias were so much work, they had to be dug up (bulbs?) every fall and put back in the next spring. I declined taking over the dahlias, too much work for me. I wonder what the deal was? Maybe the conditions were wrong because of freezing winters? I always enjoy your posts, and I like your flowers. 🙂

    1. I don’t dig up my dahlias each year, they stay in the ground. There is such a huge variety of them. I keep adding to mine. I dig them up when I know I want to move them. Thank you Pat, I love flowers too.

    2. I remember those beauties, and marvelled at the variety of blossoms. Bob also grew fig trees that had to be dragged into the house before frost. We had tons of figs one year in particular. Bob would grow anything, or try to. We are in a seasonal state that varies from below freezing to scorching heat. Ohio.

    3. There is so much variety, which I love. Fig trees, I don’t like figs, but my neighbour has one that is growing over the fence, unfortunately. I might have to do some pruning. We get a winter, but not as cold as you I’m sure. We get a few frosts, but that is it. We do get really hot summers though, which I do not like.

    4. I don’t remember the fig tree blossoms, but that one year we had baskets of figs. I even liked them fresh, as well as dried. Bob use to pull the growing plant over and bury it in the ground over-winter. When the plants got too big he would leave them in big pots and drag them into the stairwell into the basement and then drag them back outside in spring. That became to unweildly. The biggest plant got so big that we donated it to our local nursery, who kept it in their over-winter greenhouse unit.

    5. I don’t know that fig trees blossom, they just seem to grow them. Now they will drop all over my side of the fence. That sounds like a lot of dragging, he must have been very dedicated. They can get rather big, I hope this one doesn’t get like that.

    6. Fig trees are strictly ornamental here, except for guys like Bob, who will attempt to grow anything. He once grew a small tobacco crop, and another time tried to grow cotton. He got a few wimpy little cotton bolls. Neither of those crops is anywhere near our climate zone. 🙂

    7. There is nothing wrong with having a go, I don’t think. Figs grow fruit here, I wish I liked them, but I don’t. I think Bob was onto something Pat.

    8. He was a firefighter, worked shifts, and had plenty of time to pursue his farming. He was very resourceful, and always eager to try anything. He (and the kids) sold produce from a stand in the front yard…cabbage, apples, all kinds of vegetable crops.

    9. He does sound very resourceful, I can be. I mean I have lots of idea, but they always seem to fail. lol. I am enjoying the garden. How times have changed.

    10. Some of those “fails” were hilarious, too. I do have a lot of ideas, sometimes they work…or not. Bob was very resourceful.

    11. That’s for sure, I like playing around and you never know what you will discover. It is a constant thing learning how to do things. I think I might be the same.

    12. Like being computer-literate, some of the most otherwise savvy folks I know just panicked in the face of even trying to do simple tasks…it’s a shame to think of what they missed. I love my internet stuff, and the older I get the more I enjoy and appreciate it.

    13. I have a photo of my oldest granddaughter sitting at my Kaypro2 when she was five. Now her children are used to their computers since kindergarten. They all had school-issued tablets, their mainstay “classroom” during Covid.

    14. It is so true, they just grow up with me. My husband is very gadget happy, so my girls have always had various things.

    15. Our summer temps can go up to 100F but that is rare. Mid-90s is pretty hot, and we have high humidity as well. Now in Arizona it goes up into 120+ but the humidity is much lower.

    16. That is very warm and we get there quite often, sadly. I think the hottest here was 47C which is around 116F, I believe. So not great. We don’t have humidity usually, though we have had a bit this summer and we are not used to it. We usually have a more dry heat. That seems to be a common thing, the hotter it gets the dryer it is.

    17. One time I lost my rental car at a place, and was wandering around looking for it. (They all look alike.) It was in Tucson, Arizona outskirts, and I’m thinking 125F . A park employee on a little scooter/golf cart thing stopped and offered to help me. I jumped aboard and we did find my car…also a lecture on the folly of old women wandering around in the summer sun! Actually I should have known better, as I had lived in the area and visited numerous times. In fact my oldest son was born there when it was 106F… in June.

    18. At least you were able to find it. I remember hearing a story of a woman who drove her car into the city and couldn’t even remember what carpark she was in. Her sons had to spend the day going from carpark to carpark to find it. Doing it in high heat would be horrible, glad you found it. Heat is horrible.

  5. Lovely photos Leanne. You will need compost as well as soil if the garden needs building up. Compost is one of a gardeners friends to get everything going 🙂

    1. Thank you Bushboy. Yeah compost is a must and I’ve been making my own, but not enough for the whole front garden. I might have to get some delivered.

    1. Hi Leanne. I’m also an avid gardener and photographer. Just purchased a Canon 100 mm macro lens. Very excited to dive into the realm of the small and tiny. I will be putting a blog together for you and hope to follow your fine example. Love your work.

    2. I am really new to the avid gardener and can’t say I have any idea what I’m doing, but I do love it. I think if you love gardening and flowers then a macro lens is just something you have to have. I’m sure you will love what you discover through the lens, it is a whole new world. Thank you James.

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