Gardening Woes
Posted: March 27, 2023 Filed under: Gardening | Tags: Green China Rose, Gulf Coast gardening, lettuce, Nasturtium, seasonal allergies, Subtropical Gardening 26 Comments
There are times when things don’t always go as planned in the garden. I am blaming my mistakes on allergy head, as this year my seasonal allergies are worst than ever.
I noticed some plants coming up where something else had been planted. I couldn’t recognize them by their first leaves but didn’t think they were a weed. The plants finally revealed themselves as a nasturtium. I wondered how did they get there so far from where I usually plant them? Finally, I remembered that when I was organizing my seeds, I found what I thought were Dancing Ladies seeds and planted them in that very spot. Mystery solved.
Next, blaming my slow-acting allergy brain and ducking under bushes to weed, I spotted these unusual red plants. When I stood up and oriented my view I saw the red plants were actually new canes coming up from the Green China Rose.
Because of my lack of motivation, again I blame it on my allergy head, I never planted my early spring lettuce. A big mistake, as a leftover seed germinated and grew into a big healthy plant without any care.
I would love to hear if anyone else is experiencing worse than usual seasonal allergies or your garden faux pas…just to make me feel better.
Automatic Gardening & Real Gluten Free Food 
I’ll admit it. I was inordinately pleased to recognize those first leaves as nasturtium even before I read about them. There was a time when I would have had a hard time distinguishing them from your letter, silly as that sounds. Obviously, I’m no gardener, so all of my faux pas have to do with identification!
As for the allergies, I have friends who seem to have gone through the season with the same level of discomfort as you’ve experienced. Honestly, this has been my least troublesome year in some time. I’ve taken one Benadryl tablet this year, and that’s been it. It may be that the winds have blown differently, because usually the cedar pollen from central Texas, and pine pollen from the east, can really give me fits. We had quite a bit of oak pollen this year, but it apparently doesn’t bother me.
My sinuses are draining like crazy causing me to cough nonstop. On a trip to Galveston, I didn’t even have to pop a cough drop. I need to move by the sea.
There are always glitches in gardening that we have to deal with. Hope your head feels better, tough for a gardener to have allergies. 😦 Do you take medication for it?
I took every OTC and nothing helped, so I decide to get treat for a sinus infection. The antibiotic made no difference.
😦
Reminds me a version of the song “Tiptoe through the Tulips,” which has a reference to nasturtiums. Something about stomping through the nasties, I belive.
Good one..
The oak pollen has been disastrous here this year. I have managed to kill some things by overwatering, which is unheard of for me, the water miser at heart. I really want some pinestraw but don’t want to ride in the car with it! I have been taking homemade elderberry syrup with local honey for allergies and that has helped.
I think I learned to garden by error and some trial. Moving here nothing was familiar.
Same here. Sugar sand was a complete mystery to me and still is in some ways. I look for plants that live through August!
Sorry about your allergies this year. It’s tough when you want to be in the garden and can’t. This doesn’t help you, but the story is timely: https://www.kut.org/health/2023-03-27/a-new-report-says-austin-allergies-arent-that-bad-locals-beg-to-differ
Hope you feel better and less fuzzy-brained soon.
I’m starting to come around to maybe a more normal occasional cough. My sinuses drain, which makes me cough and people scatter. Thanks for the article.
And oh yeah, our weather people announced one day the the winds blowing from the West were bringing more pollen. I guess I can thank Austin for that. (jk) 🙂
Wow, early spring bloom is majorly delayed here because of the strangely wintry weather. You may have seen it in the news. It is so unnatural for us. Early spring flowers typically bloom here before most places. Well, anyway, allergies do not bother me, even when bloom begins.
We would have had more flowers if they hadn’t froze back. I used to be fine with very light seasonal allergies, but this has been awful. Maybe getting old! 😦
Or perhaps there is more bloom than before.
I don’t have allergies, but for a while every spring Mr MG sneezes constantly. He takes the usual antihistamines but they don’t seem to help much. After a while, either he acclimatises to spring, or whatever it is that causes the problem finishes flowering. Could be the Photinia hedge which I believe has a pretty strong smell. ( I can’t smell anything)
I really never had bad allergies, but they seem to get worse as I age.
Luckily I don’t suffer too much from spring pollen, but I do make errors in the garden – with no excuse but pure carelessness! I sometimes uproot ‘weeds’ that are not weeds, or trample on new shoots. And I still haven’t sown my tomatoes! 😉
Sometimes it is hard to tell what is a weed and what is not. We usually have plants growing all year around and dropping seeds that germinate. It can be a waiting game to see what the baby plant will be.
So sorry to hear about your allergies! This year is supposed to be especially bad. But it’s kind of cool that you’re getting “volunteer” plants, as we used to call them in Kansas. I once got “volunteer” impatients and I couldn’t figure out how. I guess the wind blew the seeds?
Allergies have been hit and miss here. I feel like things were worse in December when the juniper pollen was blowing in from Austin.
I got somewhat better and now it has picked up again. Very irritating.
I am sorry about your extra difficult sinus allergies this year. I won’t mention that I have no allergies. 🙂 The best tomatoes I ever had were planted accidentally during a cookout at my folks’ house many decades ago. Apparently someone was a little careless with their burger and dropped a seed or two from the slice of tomato under the bun. The next summer we had a giant beefsteak tomato plant next to the back door.
That is a great tomato story. I find volunteers are the best plants. I did not have allergies until I moved here and never as bad as this year. I don’t know if pollen is getting worse or I’m getting old.
There certainly could be something different about the environment there from what you experienced in the northeast. But I’ve read that we can not only develop allergies as we age, but they can also fluctuate in severity, for better or worse, over time. And I was not entirely honest about allergies and me. I do have one for certain blood pressure meds and also doxycycline which I take when receiving a tick bite…or did take. Not sure what will replace that aside from duer diligence preventing bites in the first place.