The Sandbox

Jun3

This doesn’t exactly fall into the garden category, but it is out there and involves digging and I guess someday will retire to take on some kind of garden purpose, so here it is.
I wanted a sandbox for the kids and there was no way I was going to look at one of those stupid plastic turtles. Plus I knew it would be around for a while, so I wanted something that could hold up for a couple of years. Construction behind our house unearthed a couple nice large rocks, I had a couple slightly used bricks, and lo and behold a sandbox was born.

It’s a hole lined with bricks and a couple of stones are patched in. The boulders are intended for seating, but I’ve never seen anyone over the age of 10 sit there. I dug out the pit to a depth of around six inches and then filled it in with something like a million bags of sand. Each spring I end up adding a dozen or so more bags to replace the sand that ends up in our house and in the kid’s beds.

It’s held up well, this will be year three. The only problem so far happened on the day the boy and his equally disorderly cousin decided to play with hammers and started mining bricks and then cracking them apart. Such is life.

…..and in case you’re wondering, no, the neighborhood cats do not use the sand for their business. They far prefer my mulched flower beds.

Adios Spring

Jun2

It always gives me a sense of sadness when spring rolls into summer. All the anticipation, the return of growing things, and the new life makes spring my favorite season, but it goes too fast. One after another things rush into bloom, have their day in the sun (or freezing drizzle) and then are gone for another 11 months. It’s definitely a “gather ye rosebuds while ye may” season and it comes and goes in a rush as we hurry to get everything done before the heat and humidity settle in…..

When the first rose opens I call it summer and I face the fact that not all the projects are going to happen like they were supposed to. So time to regroup, sit back, and get into porch and pool mode. A couple 90 degree days push it along and before you know it spring is a memory and you’re into the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer.

Clematis “multiblue” is carrying over from spring. I bought it as something else and got this overfluffed flower. Not something I would pick for myself but its become a favorite. A “didn’t happen” project from spring was moving it out of the veggie garden and getting a real structure for it to grow on instead of bush trimmings…..

Clematis “Ruutel” is also struggling along in a less than deserving position. I have trouble finding spots for clematis, I think I prefer them growing up small shrubs but never manage to get a good pairing.

A new favorite for this time of year is “Ray’s Golden Campion”. It flowers during my spring lull and does a good job covering dying spring bulb foliage. I have some seed left and will be starting a few more this summer, they were a gift from Nan Ondra at Hayefield and I couldn’t be happier with the color of bloom and yellow leaves…. it’s another plant that could use better companions though.

I think this is peony “Do Tell”. It’s blooming happily in the middle of the vegetable garden. The reason I’m not sure of its identity is because out of a bag of three this is the only one matching the description. Now I’ve never seen an ugly peony (yet) so it’s not the worst thing to have happen, but I guess it falls under the ‘get what you pay for’ heading…. they were clearance Van Engelen and the other one (the third hasn’t bloomed yet) is a big fat fragrant double pink so it’s win-win so far.

Just about all my plantings are on the redo list. Sometimes it’s not entirely my fault, but I guess it depends on how you assign blame. By definition I never really “planted” any of these iris, they’re the result of using not-quite-ready compost as a top dressing before putting down shredded wood mulch. It speaks of the hardiness of bearded iris that the rhizomes could survive a couple of months in the rotting compost pile and then still come back to life but I guess it also speaks of my laziness. I never actually prepped the soil in this bed, just planted the stewartia and hostas right into the turf, covered the in between grass areas with a couple of layers of newspaper to smother it, covered the paper with compost and then topped off with mulch. No one seems to mind and maybe when I plant better things here I’ll do soil prep.

I did do soil prep for the tulips but in the vegetable beds it’s easy. They’re starting to die down now which means bulb digging and then bean and squash planting. Even though I did go through the effort of soil prep, I may have done some shallow planting last fall. I don’t think they’re supposed to be this close to the surface and showing signs of sunburn. It will be interesting to see if shallow planting effects bulb size since usually deep planting is recommended in order to keep tulips from splitting. A real problem is that bunnies like to eat the exposed bulbs. It’s possible this isn’t the first shallow planting of tulips and bunnies may have attacked last year. But they need their vitamins too.

History in the Garden

May29

Using the term history around here is a bit of a stretch. History to me means centuries, not the fifty or so years that have passed since our house was built. Fifty puts us into the outdated category as far as baby blue bathroom themes go, but it doesn’t exactly put us on the historical register. The garden is even younger. Fifty years ago five trees were planted, they did well but four were removed just before we bought the place…. and for fifty years the lawn was mown. So I guess we have one pink dogwood, antique grass and not much else.

Since I can’t afford timeless stone walks and weathered brick walls I settle for the history behind plants. In my opinion plants with a story behind them are worth growing just for that. Passalong plants are those which are passed on from gardener to gardener and generation to generation. “My grandmother gave it to me” vs “I bought it at Home Depot” I guess. Iris pass on easy, and some of the historic iris even followed the settlers west as they looked for familiar plants to fill their farmyard gardens. Maybe that’s what I was thinking when I brought these up from the old garden to plant out by the street.

The pale yellow is “flavescens” which dates to 1813 and is indestructible. Mine comes from the side of a highway and survives drought, mowing, weeds, salt…. but does much better in the garden. Sometimes it gets beaten down by relentless gale strength winds (such as we had last weekend) but it always blooms, blooms long, and keeps decent foliage all season.

The other iris, a mauve/violet with white standards (the top part) is from my mother’s garden. It’s been there since they bought the house 40ish years ago and is a favorite. Like many historic iris it has a strong grape scent which fills the yard (you can see the windblown flavescens in the background).

“Indian Chief” 1929, was given to me by a friend and is also out there. It’s a well-known historic and shows up in cemeteries around here frequently since it welcomes neglect. I sometimes find the darker ‘smokier?’ colored iris hard to show off in the garden and this is one of them. If anyone has any suggestions on combining them I’d love to hear it.“Color Carnival” 1949 is not a favorite of everyone. I would describe it as a fleshy pink with purple veins and a tangerine beard. My descriptions don’t always match the catalogs.

This batch came up when I used some not completely done compost in this bed. A year of composting and the roots still made a comeback, not bad.

I got this iris as a kid. It was growing in our neighbor’s yard against the wood fence. Rather than outright ask for a bit I patiently pried apart the boards enough so that a single fan could grow through. A year it did and at that point I felt comfortable digging it up and calling it my own. It’s been following me around ever since.

“Rhages” 1934 was purchased. No story. It’s reliable and I like the speckling. In iris talk the speckling around the petal edges is called plicata, sounds fancier that way.

Of course iris do blues best of all. This no ID comes from the same highway roadside as flavescens and is just as hardy. Flowers aren’t too big or too ruffled or too deeply colored, they’re just clear and elegant.

I guess that’s plenty of iris. One last one is “Mme Chobaut” 1916 it’s growing out back in the meadow and could use a decent home. Maybe this year.

In case you’re interested in older iris there’s HIPS, the historic iris preservation society. It’s a great resource for info and for getting in touch with other old-iris lovers. Members have an iris database to browse and a forum to post to. There’s also an annual sale and quarterly magazine.

I could easily be convinced to grow more of the modern iris, some of them are just amazing in their ruffled fluffery and colors, but I resist. For now I’ll stick with the tried and true. Plus this year the late freeze has killed most of their blooms. Here’s an iris traded to me as “mesmerizer”, but it’s not. Maybe it’s “Nordica”, another white but with orange beards.

The one bloom looks ok but the other is stunted. The freeze also damaged leaves and killed off most of the other stalks. Such is gardening. It’s like baseball, there’s always next year…. even though you hate to lose.

Late Freeze

May22

A little over a week ago snow and rain and then freezing nighttime temperatures hit this part of Pennsylvania. Plants were frozen solid and frost covered the lawns in the wee hours of the night until the sun finally came out again to warm things up. There was damage to many things, but even a week later things are still showing up. Luckily these blue columbines didn’t miss a beat. Strawberries also looked good on the surface, but closer in you’ll see black centers to some of the blooms. I think the freeze killed off the berry part of the bloom while the flower was developing. Good thing there are more coming.The wisteria was getting ready for a great show, a good recovery from last years freak freeze that killed all of 2012’s bloom. Then this freeze came and did the same thing all over again. Here’s how it looks today, most leaves are dead and damaged and the blooms have all fallen off.

Even with the damage on most shrubs and trees, I have no doubt they’ll all make a full recovery (the aggressive wisteria for sure). The dried and damaged leaves won’t look good for weeks and maybe all season, but if it’s not a freeze ruining perfection it would be chewing bugs or children with golf clubs or something worse.

Enough about the freeze. How can you think badly of spring when it’s the start of iris season? Down along the street the historic ‘Ambassadeur’ (1920) is just coming into full bloom. It’s not a favorite, but grows like a champ and the grape scent perfumes the area.

I’ve got to move those boxwood, they were never supposed to stay there. I have hedging issues and for some reason always have a couple dozen little boxwood cuttings coming along and in need of a spot to call home. There are projects galore to deal with around here and finding homes for hedges is always one of them. It seems like such a good idea in August to take a couple dozen cuttings, but when you have a tray of fifty looking for a home guilt kicks in. Enough guilt. Here’s more iris. This is ‘Pink Bubbles’, a more modern iris…. I’m not crazy about it this year but the violas make a nice backdrop.

Spring vegetables

May21

I finally got the early vegetable plantings in, each evening last week I prepped another patch of soil, and by Sunday afternoon was able to plant and fence. My buddy approves, but I suspect she’d rather the fence wasn’t there between her and the lettuce.

I’m guessing it’s a she (I really have no idea) and I’ll go out on a limb and guess there’s a nest of baby bunnies nearby. She’s never mentioned where during our talks, but she’s around the yard all day so I’m sure it’s not too far.

Soil prep in my case was digging under all the weeds, stray tulips, and whatever leftover dead stuff was lying around from last year. Once dug over, compost would have been nice, but since I have none I raked/hoed in some chopped leaves from last fall and followed it with a good watering down.

Once I get some grass clippings I’ll give it a thin mulch to keep down the weed seedlings. I’m glad I finally got the stuff in, it’s already late for cabbages and onions, and a better person would have done all this prep in the fall. If you look around the edge of the fence you’ll see twigs laying on top of the unfenced plantings. This seems to be enough to discourage Mrs. Bunny from pushing through and nibbling the new transplants underneath.

So now I hope things have enough time to mature before summer really kicks in….. and if they don’t, at least it looks better than the unkempt weed patch it was last weekend.

Mental note for next year is *prep the bed in the fall for spring plantings*. It sounds easy but it’s advice directed more towards the better people who follow suggestions and learn from mistakes. I’m not sure if I can include myself in that group. A better person would not have planted a peony in the middle of the bed, a better person would not have first let last year’s turnips go to seed (just to see what they looked like), and a better person would not have left the daffodils in the middle of the lettuce.

That wasn’t smart

May19

Do as I say, not as I do, in this care it applies to wearing garden gloves. Usually I do a pretty good job of keeping them on, but I was next door moving some stuff for my MIL, there were tools out, some bushes that could use a little pruning, and before I knew it I was applying pressure for two hours in the waiting area of the emergency room.

Seven stitches later I was back home working my way through a pint of Ben and Jerry’s. Calcium is an important part of any recovery program.

I guess I’ll take it easy for a couple days, but there are things that need planting and the weather is heating up! Things need to get in the ground while it’s still cool. Fortunately the kids are jumping right in to help. My four year old came in and wanted an ice pop opened so I grabbed the scissors to make the cut. She looked at me, reached for the scissors and said “Daddy wait. I’ll do it. I don’t want you cutting yourself again.”

So other than losing the confidence of a preschooler there is the bonus of extra sitting around time. Yesterday I put together two early bulb orders that I’d been considering but dragging my feet on. New corydalis and snowdrops should go a long way in easing my pain… and the ice cream didn’t hurt either…. but I’m running out of space on my hand for Dora stickers.

Camassia

May16

The garden here always goes through a bit of a slump once the tulips begin to fade. The iris haven’t kicked in yet and most of the late spring flowers aren’t doing a whole lot. Bleeding hearts, columbine, and oriental poppies would all probably help out, but camassia is what looks the best right now. I have two types, Camassia ‘Caerulea’ and ‘Blue Danube’. One is supposed to have a rich lavender color and the other a dark blue…. but I can’t tell a difference between them. One might be a few inches shorter but that could be soil or location or whatever.The yellow iris behind is ‘Elsa Sass’, a historic iris from 1939. It blooms early for me, but maybe that’s from being close to the house.

Camassias are a bulb native to Northwestern North America and while I grow them in regular garden soil, they’re supposed to tolerate wet soils and clay soils. Apparently they’re edible too, but I’ll pass for now. This is the other clump, Camassia ‘Caerulea’. I like both types well enough, blue is always welcome and they’ve never required any special care, but for me they don’t seem to bloom very long. Just over a week seems about average, I’d much rather they held out for at least two.

Just another day at the salt mines

May14

I can sorta relate to the people looking for low maintenance plants and landscaping. I for one love being outside, watching things grow, tending plants, dividing, staking, deadheading…. even weeding. About the only thing I really don’t care for is watering, so when it’s spring and I have a list of projects to work on and halfway through start to think it’s more trouble than it’s worth….. well it might be time to hit the lawnchair with a drink. In a sick way I sometimes look around at my fellow suburbanites and think their yards look just as good as mine, but then I remember it’s unlikely they have a couple dozen different iris coming along into bloom, and they probably don’t even have any more than one or two snowdrops. That helps my mood and I go through and finish the day with a smug grin, quite pleased with myself all over again.

The late tulips are still holding out, these (probably “Dordogne”) mixed in with all the others keep the patch colorful even after the rest are over. Unless Sunday’s high winds beat them silly, they should last another week.

I think what beats me down is the lawn maintenance. If you want to talk high maintenance a lawn is right there on top. Part of that is my fault, I’m stubborn and insist on using a corded electric mower instead of something bigger, stronger, and faster. It’s not the most manly mower, but from someone who’s always wandering the yard looking at his flowers….. well, the mower doesn’t help.

Something that’s mostly no-maintenance is fothergilla. It doesn’t need pruning, blooms with these nice white bottlebrush flowers, is presentable all summer, and come fall puts on a nice show of glowing reds, yellows and oranges. The blooms don’t last long for me, somewhere around two weeks, but that’s plenty. You miss it when it’s gone, which in my opinion is better than a plant that wears out its welcome.

Round around July the lawn starts wearing out its welcome. Mowing in the heat stinks and I look forward to the summer sun and drought sucking the green out of its blades. As long as I mow on the long side it just goes dormant, and the summer vacation from mowing is much welcomed, since mowing clearly cuts into pool time. But right now I need the flush of green clippings since they’re my number one mulch for the vegetable garden. I use them and some leftover chopped maple leaves to smother the grass and weeds that are buried in this new bed.Most of the weeds and grass will die, and hopefully by the time tomato planting weather rolls around (2 more weeks?) I can carefully dig down to soil level, plant the seedlings, top the bed with new clippings, and admire my avoidance of actually digging up this patch of hardpacked gravely “soil”.

Since I don’t have enough better things to do I actually transplanted some of the grass from the new bed into the former bed-turned-new-pathway (lower right of the picture). I’m a big sod mover. I hate waiting for grass seed to sprout. People will disagree, but I like grass paths through the garden. If you noticed, mine are edged with fancy pink marble sections. Some people have compared the look to “deep south cemetery”, but it’s the best use I could think of for the stone we pulled off the house front. Maybe it’s the second best…. we also have a pink marble compost bin.

In the orchard our new “Freedom” apple has even put out a few blossom clusters. I should of course nip them off so the tree has more energy to establish, but I don’t care. For all I know the tree could die tomorrow, so I’ll enjoy the blooms today.

Speaking of dying tomorrow, we have a frost predicted for tonight. I brought in a few succulents and four or five early summer plant purchases. The rest of the stuff is on its own. Planning for low maintenance gardening means not sweating the small stuff like late frosts. The cold weather veggie seedlings will tough it out (strong sun would damage them more than cool weather).

So we will see where the weather takes us. I figure if the tulips and iris don’t mind this afternoon’s snow, they shouldn’t mind a slight frost.

Snowdrops in the green

May11

Most bulbs are best moved around and transplanted after they’ve yellowed and died back. The bulbs are dug, dried and stored for a couple of weeks and then replanted again when the proper planting time rolls around. It’s a convenient way to handle them and most bulbous plants are designed to handle months of dry, hot, dormancy. Snowdrops are not. Most snowdrops don’t appreciate drying out, and to get around this quirk the practice of sending snowdrops “in the green” started. It’s a genteel way of saying you dug them up while growing and transplanted them that way.

My “in the green” snowdrops from The Temple Nursery arrived about a week and a half ago.

Snowdrops in the green are dug and sent shortly after bloom or even while still blooming. I planted them (almost) as soon as I got them and I can’t wait to see them grow and thrive in my garden. The bulbs look great and are carefully packed in damp sphagnum moss, wrapped in paper towels, hand labeled, bagged in plastic, and shipped priority mail. Everything about my order said that care was taken and attention was paid to all the details. Mr Hitch Lyman is the proprietor of The Temple Nursery and is well known for this old-school attention to details. The catalog is a carefully prepared list out of his own garden, and the list changes from year to year depending on what’s ready for dividing. There’s no internet presence, and correspondence is hand written. Based on how fresh my bulbs were I feel his “dug to order” description was entirely accurate.

I didn’t mean for this post to be a gushing waterfall of praise, but I guess I’m excited about my plants. There are a couple other sources for snowdrops, Brent and Becky sells them dry and is a good source, the three other “in the green” sources I’ve heard about are: Carolyn’s Shade Garden, Linden Hill Nursery, and Black Hog Farms (couldn’t find a web link… they might only do garden shows etc.). I also got a batch of dry bulbs from Van Engelen, and they were excellent.

If you want to give the Temple Nursery a try, send a catalog request to: The Temple Nursery, (Mr. Hitch Lyman), Box 591, Trumansburg, NY 14886. I’ve never heard anything official on this but I sent $4 with the request. Send it early. Not only do the snowdrops sell out fast but the catalogs are also limited, so send it out soon!

Tulip Time!

May9

There must be some Dutch in me because I’m a little wacky about tulips. Not real bad, I don’t collect every kind and have them all over the place (my criteria for plant wackiness), but I’m always adding a few new ones…. and then I feel some kind of urge to tend them and multiply them and replant them. It should end once this relatively new garden starts to fill up, but for now I can indulge that inner Dutch.

The rain and cold kept them shut for a while, but even then they looked nice (these are pictures from early last week). Four years ago I bought this blend on clearance as a generic “darwin mix”… it was nearly all orange, so I threw in a couple pinks just beacause I had them.

The “sweatheart” tulips were new this year, don’t know why I bought a lemon meringue colored tulip when I have so many daffodils in similar colors…..

Also new was the “Princely mix” from Van Engelen. Not sure what’s in it, but again…. on clearance… can’t beat this color for around$15. Plus I spread the other half of the box around the rest of the beds :)The random white peeling post is our attractive front light. The less you see of that the better.

“Pink Impression” (also new) is always a winner. I’ve bought it before but have gotten other, similar tulips instead. This looks to be the real thing and the flowers are huge!

Tulips will last much longer in cool weather, but when a warm sunny day finally hits (like we had last week) the flowers open wide and you know it’s finally full, head-on spring.

I just go around on days like this and get nothing done. It’s too tempting to just sit around, enjoy the sun and admire the season. Since the vegetable garden is the easiest place to plant out your excess tulips, that’s where most end up. I’ll regret this in a couple of weeks as I’m scratching my head looking for a spot to stick a tomato.

I don’t really cut too many for the house, most of the picking is done by the kids. A couple end up at grandma’s, some get planted in the mulch, many get pulled apart and thrown, and random neighbors often get deliveries in exchange for an ice pop or cookie.

Daddy sometimes gets a flower, but much of his time is spent protecting the double tulips, since they seem to be particularly attractive to flower collectors. The doubles have started to grow on me though. Ever since I bought this mix of early doubles called “magic carpet”, I’m finding an excuse to keep them around (even though the singles are still so much more graceful). To me the doubles look like huge fluffy wads of tissue paper…. but wow! that’s some fluff!

My favorites might be the ones just coming into bloom now. The late tulips seem to have the most subtle blends and nicest forms. If you ignore the color clashes in this planting and just look at the color and almost lily shape of these fruity colored “Temple of Beauty” tulips, I think you might like them a little too, even with the crappy camera focus.

Tulip season is a little past peak now with the earliest ones already going by. The pickers are still keeping busy and I’ll be busy too when I need to dig them all up out of the veggie garden. That’s a job for June though, May is for enjoying flowers.

sorta like suburbia

more than you ever wanted to know about my garden

Author Archives: bittster