If you've followed my blog for a while, each summer I post about some sort of new thing I try in the garden or with my plants and perennials. The experiment for summer of 2026 is my topsoil gardens.
When my husband dug the hole for our house in 1997 he saved the good topsoil to various piles on the property. This is one of the good piles. Our local library gives away free seed packets in May of most years. Of course I go get a paper lunch bag of seeds for free. I scattered them back in May -- NOTHING came up! I don't always have luck with seeds and am almost always better at planting plants.
Since I had extra seeds because they were free, I waited a couple weeks and tried again. Woohoo! Where you see one of the nine posts, something is growing. Some of these will have vines. We'll have to deal with that when we figure out what they are. I had seeds for yellow squash, zucchini, watermelon, cantaloupe, and a weird white squash I never heard of.
I realized that what you mostly see in these photos are weeds. I will take more time and pull weeds for an hour in the mornings. Some of the best watermelon, pumpkin, and cantaloupe I have grown have come from areas like this.
Below is another area of what I call "good dirt". When I sold my house when we got married in 2003, when I moved my things I also took my dirt from my compost pile. The two acre lot had 100 trees. I actually picked up the leaves every year with my lawn equipment and piled it on the huge swampy pile in the back of the property that butted up against a golf course. We took three dump trucks of dirt out of that area and the dozed it flat like nothing happened. These three stakes show me where the plants are growing. I'm guessing it's watermelon and cantaloupe.
I had some left over zinnia seeds in a bag a friend gave me. I'm pretty sure that's what these below are.
The library didn't have any flower seeds this year.
Below is the crazy wildflower area. I have tons of wild daisies and these yellow things. My husband said enjoy them for now but he will be spraying weed killer all around. Don't worry... they will still come back next year.
This is another wild daisy area. I'm hoping this area gets spared by the weed-spraying husband. The pinkish purple flowers sprinkled in is crown vetch.
This weekend I moved plants out of the protected area (in a fence by the chicken yard to keep the deer from eating them). I know it's not the right time of year to move the peony, hosta, or little blue iris, but they were taking up too much space in the protected area and I needed room for the other plants. The peony didn't bloom well there anyways. I don't think it was getting enough sun next to the other coop and had poor air circulation.
This is a new area this year for plants. I decided to plant in the ditch or around the poles where I can't mow. The yucka are going to bloom this year. I moved them a couple of weeks ago. The buttercups bloomed. I'm hoping the bee balm does okay. There is also sedum, crocosmia, and blanket flowers growing in this weedy area. Again, don't worry about those weeds for now. We shall see what establishes here. The soil seems to have some clay in it. It is close enough to the house that I can get the garden hose to it.
The deer seem to really like this variety of golden-edge-leaf hosta.
I found a bag of this stuff for $1 at the bin store. After I watered it I sprinkled a dose of it on it. I guess I should have read the instructions. I was supposed to sprinkle it on the ground around the plant. Hope i didn't burn the leaves with it or kill it. This plant is pretty hearty. It'll come up next year if I mess it up this year.
On a happy note, look at my strawberry planter that was started this year! The pool ladder has cucumber vines on it. There is also one of those crinkly sweet red peppers in the space where the 50 strawberry plants didn't fill the container. There are petunias sprinkled in here and there for color. I just planted the baby plants this week.
Here's the second planting of the two zucchini seeds that came up from the whole second pack. I typically can't grow zucchini from seed. Two plants is definitely all that I need. I hope the zucchini doesn't grow off to the wrong side and weigh down the plant and rip it out of the ground overnight to its death. I'll have to keep an eye on that. This was the old kettle that my grandparents used on butchering day and to make apple butter. The white stuff in the planter is egg shells.
