...How Does Your Garden Grow

Urban queer learns how to keep a few plants alive. Wanna take this journey with me? Jess/Bexley, 44, Eastern Massachusetts. My wife bought a few rose bushes on a whim and now wants a whole damn horticultural farm. Currently [July 2026]: Apples, cherries, peaches, plums, pomegranates, blueberries, loganberries, two varieties of tomato, and roses.

[milkandvoid]

[marymary-quitecontrary]

A further six pages of notes from Fruit Trees in Small Spaces, taking us through page 331, since many of the intervening pages are about fruits we do not have and do not plan on getting, mostly citrus (neither my son nor I are supposed to have much citrus because of medications we're on).

This past week, we bought some landscape fabric and a whole lot of mulch that will hopefully actually go down mid-week -- we had to trim and shape the barrier fabric, and that took longer than expected, and then the weekend got away from us, but we should have some time in the next few days to get that handled.

We bought a composter!! Not that that's a substitute for reducing food waste by actually using what you have, but at least during those weeks where The Bees in My Head win out and I just don't manage to cook, I have some way of giving back to the earth through composting and feeding my plants. It's small, but it's something.

Also, Kira bought some things for out patio bed:

Jalapenos are great, I love making pesto, so I'm psyched about that, and sweet peppers area delight. The Armageddon peppers have a Scoville rating on 1.3 MILLION, so that can be my wife's domain if she's feeling daring, or the literal birds can have them, as capsaicin doesn't affect them.

[marymary-quitecontrary]

Once again, not really intended for reading, but more for personal archival purposes -- photos of today's notes from my continued reading. Focusing right now on the trees that we have currently; I have put a kibosh on purchasing more trees and instead focusing more on some container gardening.

Speaking of, tomatoes have started coming in!

My wife came home from a mulch run with more small pots of two variety of hot pepper, a variety of sweet pepper, and some basil, so those are going into our raised patio bed later today.

[marymary-quitecontrary]

Likely illegible (and not really intended for reading, lol, more just to squirrel it away for myself), but notes I took today from the first 100 pages of Fruit Trees in Small Spaces, by Colby Eirmen. It was a good choice of book to start with, I think; a lot of easily broken down advice, and a consideration for the space we actually live in, including tips for container growing fruit trees (ours are in the ground, but I appreciate the acknowledgment that, like, space or land ownership (like for renters) might be an issue).

My wife won, by the way. We are expecting our cold-hardy pomegranate trees (and a few plum trees) this coming Thursday, lol.

[marymary-quitecontrary]

Pomegranates and Honeycrisp

My wife has discovered cold-hardy cultivars of pomegranate, and has now decided they are something we need to add to our backyard.

This was apparently spurred on by the latest My Brother, My Brother, and Me, as the sponsor was apparently a company that will send you cultivars of various fruit trees that are proven to flourish in your area. We're Zone 6, and she of course had to immediately go and see what they offered for us.

The things that pinged her were pomegranates (which, admittedly, I do love, and with my metabolic syndrome would be lovely to have on hand, as they are excellent for both blood pressure and cholesterol), and honeycrisp apples, which are, to be honest, one of my favorites. It would be nice to have them readily accessible.

I really don't want to tell her she makes a compelling case, lol. I decided to take on summer work because "we could really do with the money," which sounded suspicious to me to begin with, and which I later found out meant "so we'd have a tree/garden budget," lol. I'm not actually upset, mind you, but I would have appreciated the transparency.

The immediate gardening concern, however, is trying to figure out how to keep bugs from eating all of our apples. When I say we have walked into this blind, I mean fully -- I haven't the faintest idea about tending fruit trees or really any kind of plant life, but I guess we're forging ahead...? I have taken a few books about urban gardening out on digital loan from the BPL, and will hopefully have some time this week to read through them.

You know, I have a blank notebook down in my studio that I've been racking my brain to figure out what to do with. Perhaps it'll become my gardening notebook.

Anyway. The next few days are supposed to be record-breakingly hot, so I will be keeping a tight eye on all our plants and trying to make sure they stay properly hydrated. I'm nearly as bad at watering the plants as I am at watering myself, lol.