Northern Gardening

[PlantLover]

I live in Massachusetts near the Vermont border. Gardening here has been a challenge the last few years because of the erratic weather.

The last three years we had very warm winters and very cold springs, in fact last year I started my seeds a month later and it was still to early.

Now this year winter IS BACK and I have no idea what spring will be like!

I planted a new perennial garden last summer and had loam/compost put in to replace the hard rocky dirt. I learned a lot from last year alone.

Tomatoes and Cosmos prefer poor soil to do well. Some perennials took right off and grew like crazy and some seem to be in 'this is to good to be true dirt' shock and took a little longer.

Would like to hear about other parts of the country.

PlantLover

[gardens-in-sand]

This was my first year here.

I'm starting a new garden in beach sand. Apparently this area was an ocean at one time. There is white sand all the way down.

I'm chopping out hawthorn, and putting down manure. when the blackberry briars come up, I dig them out & put down more manure.

So far, I'm able to grow datura writii, lantanna, brugmansia, cannas, lespadeeza, various grasses, cherry tomatoes, & thai peppers.

When it finally rained in August, I planted summer squash, cukes, & cantalope, which all produced a crop and rapidly withered, well before frost.

You aren't the only person who had a difficult year. I had a beautiful garden that I put 15 years of soil building into. It would have grown through the drought w/o problems... in the new place, I'm bringing in water enough to water once... one 5 gallon bucket at a time.