Manifest Destiny

Jun22

The flower beds are expanding again at the expense of turf area and that’s fine with me since I hate mowing the lawn, but the lawn clippings are my number one choice for mulch in the garden. Less grass growing means less mulch is growing. An inch or less of lawn clippings tucked in around perennials and vegetables is a great mulch, it doesn’t mat much, kills weed seedlings, and most importantly moves all that free nitrogen fertilizer from the lawn into the more useful garden. Earthworms love grass clippings and happy earthworms mean happy plants.

So that’s my dilemma. More room for plants or more mulch growing fields…. obviously plant room wins every time. I guess my flower beds are like little European settlers ripping up the prairie and spreading across the land and the lawn grubs are tiny tiny bison losing habitat and being pushed to the edge…… ok too much coffee. I don’t think this has anything to do with history repeating itself.

So. Easiest way to expand beds: have someone else do it.

Second easiest: lasagna gardening or no dig gardening. There are books, FAQ’s, youtube videos, but it’s a simple concept. Basically all you do is lay down paper, newspaper or cardboard to smother whatever is there and then cover this with leaves, compost, topsoil or whatever else can hold the paper down and eventually become a part of the soil. It takes some time (about a year to rot down) and can be messy, so what I do for larger beds is plant what I want right into the lawn, throw a little compost around them for the worms, cover grass in between with newspaper (leave the paper out in the rain for a couple weeks to wet- it’s much easier to work with) and then hide everything under a nice layer of wood mulch. Much more suburban-friendly:)

Third easiest: Buy topsoil, dump topsoil 4 or more inches deep (with or without paper underneath, depending on what weeds are there), plant into topsoil, mulch, call it a raised bed.

Fourth: My prefered method, turn under everything and just plant away (more to follow)

Fifth: (notice I’m leaving out the word ‘easiest’ from now on) Dig up turf…… throw down compost, fertilizer, lime, whatever goodness you want to mix in….. dig or rototill it all together… plant with pride. You lose all the fertility and organic matter of the top few inches (the best part) but the soil prep makes up for it.

Sixth: Double dig. Hardcore stuff here. Dig a one-shovel depth trench across the bed and put that soil into a wheelbarrow or on the side. Get down into the trench and use a pitchfork to loosen the next shovel layer down. Add soil amendments if you’re that crazy and mix them in too. Get out of the trench and move over a couple feet. Dig a new trench, shoveling the soil over into the first trench. Repeat all the way across the bed. When you’re done, drag the soil you put aside down to the last trench and fill it up. Then to completely kill your back, redig the top layer across the entire bed adding whatever amendments you want. It’s a great concept which I tried a couple times back in my teen years, but teenagers are not well-known for good judgement and/or good time management. Plus I’m much lazier now.

Ok this is going on for way too long. All I wanted to do was put up a couple pictures of my expanded flower bed and I guess since the kids are sleeping late I feel like I could go on all morning!….. wait here they come….. time to wrap things up.

My choice for new bed prep: Line out your new bed with a garden hose to get the shape the way you want. Remember less is more as far as curves go, so avoid a sharper turn than your mower can handle. A sharp turn means you’ll always be missing that spot or mowing into the bed to get it.

Edge along the hose with a square spade. Use a round tip shovel to pop out a little of the grass along the outside of the bed and establish your edge.

Start digging. Use the round tip shovel to slice off a shovelful of grass and soil. Flip the dirt back into the hole grass side down and keep going. It helps if you remove a couple shovelfulls first in order to have a spot to flip the grass over into.

I plant immediately after turning, the section to the left was yesterday’s section. Over the next couple weeks the grass rots into compost and the plants love it. As always mulch!

Two last tips. Beware southerners, your grass isn’t as wimpy as mine and you’ll need extra smothering or even roundup….. also digging it over like this won’t barely phase it if it’s something like Bermuda grass.

Also ALWAYS sharpen your shovels and hoes. Use a metal file or better yet a grinding wheel to put a nice sharp edge on the blade. They don’t come from the store sharpened (for obvious reasons) and if you’ve never done this before you will LOVE how a sharp shovel or hoe cuts through the dirt and weeds.

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.

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!

Finally…. mulch is down

May7

It might take normal people a weekend to get their mulch spread, but I went for the one week plan. The biggest time drain was sprinkling the mulch down in between emerging clumps and working the wheel barrow back into a bed that was filled with soft sprouts. On top of that I was trying to stretch every mulch dollar by walking the fine line between too thin and too thick and trying to figure out just where exactly my limited mulch supply would go. Oh, and did I mention the allergies and sinus infection?

The newly renovated front bed got a nice top coat, showing off the mix of tulips I put in last fall. This is what a weak moment during Van Egelen’s fall clearance sale will get you. It’s the Scheeper’s mix, made up of all Scheeper hybrids. Not sure if the color is a good choice for in front of the orange brick….. but oh well, colors don’t clash in May 🙂

The mulch looks so neat and tidy, and it does look better than before when dirt was splashing everywhere and weeds were popping up by the thousands. Look how it sets off this “Isla Gold” Tansy.

The tansy is one of my favorites right now. I’ll be the first to admit I’m going through an I-need-everything-with yellow-foliage phase, but the lacy foliage, the fresh color, and the fact it keeps this color all season are just a couple reasons for my smitten-ness. Did I mention it even has little buttons of yellow blooms in late summer? I bet it would look great then with a blue salvia.

Right now I could pair it with polemonium reptans which is in bloom.

The polemonium comes from my parent’s house. The original planting was there when they first purchased the house over 40 years ago and has been going strong ever since, without dividing or anything. You could trim it back after blooming if you want but I never get around to it.

Probably about half the beds are now covered, but in order to complete the job I’m guessing it will take another load. Together the two loads will run about $660. That really kills my garden budget for the year, but mulch costs are easy to pass by the boss. I sometimes think that if our yard was just mulch beds, lawn expanses and a few rounded yews she’d be happy.

It’s May and tulips and daffodils are blooming all over the place. There’s more to do than time to do it but I need to post a few tulip pictures. They really rule the yard right now, and here’s a well mulched batch of “apricot impression” and some mixed lily flowered tulips. After the tulips fade this bed will hit a lull for a couple weeks, and I’m working on that, but usually hostas take over and a couple coleus find their way in. So it all works out well enough.

There are more tulip pictures. A lot more. I’ll be catching up on those next.

Springtime Fun

Apr27

The weather is perfect, the pond leaks, the mulch is here, and Donna wants to rearrange the furniture. With all this going on, the only thing I want to do is wander the yard with coffee in hand.

But there’s a couple yards of natural mulch in the driveway and it can’t stay there. It looks nice and dark right now, but will fade quickly unlike the dyed mulches. I don’t mind. I want to focus on the plants, cut down on weeding and save some watering. Plus my garden can do without the dye and whatever else they put in.

I guess furniture moving is first on the list. Then move the furniture again. Then talk paint colors (furniture moving always leads to multiple projects). Then try to make my escape. The mulch beckons and it will take me forever since everything has already sprouted and needs to be mulched around. Plus I stop all the time to admire stuff, and with tulips opening there’s lots of stuff to admire.

There are mixed lily flowered tulips, of which only the yellow/red seem to return reliably…. not the pink and white ones that I preferred.

These are “apricot impression” going on their third year. I have luck with tulips here, probably since I don’t water in the summer and they like the drought. Still, after three or four years division is a good idea. I guess we’ll see in June if I remember or not.

Project finale

Apr18

There was no more delaying, and I finally got the apple tree in the ground. I had to since Sunday it went into the bucket to re-hydrate, and Monday it needed to be planted. Plus I had practically all day to get it done since Monday I stayed home for a dr’s appointment. Still I wasted most of the morning, spent three hours waiting for my appointment, and only got into tree planting somewhere around 5pm. Good thing the weather stayed nice.

That’s the tree there with the little bit of yellow tape near the base. I mulched it with a bucket of compost and then topped that with chopped leaves from the early spring bed cleanups. I think it will do well here and it’s already made a big impression for this little corner of the yard. The apple twig has me calling this “the orchard” now instead of “the meadow”. This is the back part of the yard where I don’t mow until about late July or so in order for all the weedy little flowers to get a chance to bloom. The kids enjoy it but not everyone here thinks as highly of the meadow as I do. The annual mowing usually takes place right after some big argument over snakes and ticks and spiders.

The last thing done to finish up the tree planting was to cut down two small aspen trees. I let weed trees (sumac and aspen) sprout up in the meadow and then “edit” them out when I get tired of them. They’re a nice screen along the ugly chain link fence while young, but I have no plans to leave any. A quick zip through the roots with my handy reciprocating saw and they’re gone. I guess I could have reached for the fancy pruning saw, but (1) this one’s a power tool and (2) for the cost of the $3 blade I shamelessly cut through dirt, rocks, and roots and don’t care what I do to the blade. Come to think of it, lots of pruning gets done with this saw. I even use it to cut wedge divisions out of ornamental grass clumps. Sure beats digging.

The pond is in and getting its leak test.

It still looks mighty ugly but hopefully I can blend it in somehow. I think the shape is called natural, but there’s nothing natural about the way it sits all plastic and stiff in the hole. But the birds don’t care, I barely walked 15 feet to get a rake and the birds were sneaking in for a bath. Looks like it’s going to be popular. It’s already popular with the kids, but all they seem to want to do is throw things in. Rocks, dirt, and tools are all fair game.

Also there’s been a death. My daughter informed me that “Matthew” is dead at the bottom of the pool. Don’t ask me how an earthworm climbed the walls and got in there, but one did.

Do you like the little yellow clump of primroses blooming in the shovel danger zone? I hope they survive since I have a bad record with these. This is an older heirloom type given to me by a friend and promises to be a little tougher.

My current favorite daffodil (Pistachio) is open and just about every other daffodil is just waiting for some sun ….. also the kid’s pea plantings are starting to sprout.

Good thing I finally got the apple tree into the ground. As I came up to the front door to call it a day I found the second part of my mailorder shipment. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to order 7 lilac bushes, a nice assortment of different colors and sizes. Whatever I was thinking last month, looks like I have a new project this month. Plus mulch. Plus did I mention I ordered dahlia roots too?

How not to do a project, part deux

Apr15

Sunday rolls around and I’m not even sure what the weekend project is…. or was. I think it had something to do with that box of bareroot apple tree that’s been sitting on the porch for two days now. Bareroot plantings should be taken care of asap, first step is to plump up the roots again by sitting them in a bucket overnight, I think 24 hours is sorta the max for soaking, you don’t want to drown them. When planting, the only special thing to remember is to spread out the roots and work the soil back in between. A little dirt, water it in, a little more dirt, water in. It’s better to keep the root flare high rather than deep, you can always add soil or mulch around the base later if needed. Don’t bother mixing anything into the planting hole, if your soil is horrible, plant even higher and mulch well with compost and those nutrients will work their way down to the roots, just like they do in every forest on the planet. You may think it’s cruel not to try and improve the soil for your baby, but look around. If you can see other trees growing then your tree should be fine too…. unless those other trees are swamp cypress… you might have a drainage issue then.

So with a sense of urgency to get my tree (and 3 gooseberries too!) into the ground I got the coffe brewed and sat down at the computer….. breakfast followed and then some Lego villages had to be built. Then a friend stopped by. Six hours later, a run to the local nursery (to drop off $40), and this is where I’m at. It’s pansy season after all and buying pansies, shaking off winter, and supporting my local nursery are tradition in these parts. The apple tree is still not planted but it’s Sunday after all, and things shouldn’t happen too fast on a day of rest.

It’s more fun to plant pansies than dig holes for dormant apple trees, and you shouldn’t pick-axe pond holes on a day of rest, so I drug out the planters for my new purchases and got them planted. Again it’s not that easy. All the fancy pots already have stuff in them. It’s stuff like rubber trees and fig bushes that need repotting too, so that all came out to make room for the pansies. Did I mention I bought lettuce? I was embarrased to even think of my own seedlings when I saw the lettuce plants for sale. My reasoning was if I can get at least 215 servings of salad off these plants, they should pay for themselves.

The back deck got a little spring too. I should have powerwashed off last year’s stains first, but that’s another project and right now I’m too busy planting trees.

Tomorrow maybe I can actually get one in the ground. The rest of Sunday was spent taking the kids (my two plus another three) for a walk in the woods and down to the railroad tracks. They then insisted on seeing the drug house that burned down on Saturday. Funny how these things never get mentioned in most tree planting tutorials.

Around 9pm I snuck out and opened the tree box. Everything is soaking and has to be planted Monday before it drowns. I should have no problem getting to it since the only other thing going on is repairing the pond hole.

Regarding the pond hole, I made the mistake of leaving the shovels out next to the dirt piles, and after two hours of worm hunts, “climbing the pile”, and playing with the pick-axe, most of the dirt is back in the hole or thrown into the pond liner. A little more work for me, but at least most of the local earthworms (and a couple of grubs) have been given names.

April showers bring May cacti?

Apr13

Even though it feels even less like spring than last week, I lugged all the deck succulents and cacti out for an April shower. Temperatures should be above freezing for the next few days and skies shoud be cloudy so it’s a good time to get them used to fresh air and sun again. After nearly six months indoors with little light and even less water I bet they like the change. The pencil euphorbia and the purplish euphorbia in the back (I have the names somewhere…) hate my winter abuse, the rest don’t seem to care much. If temperatures drop to freezing I’ll push them up against the house, if temps go down into the 20’s I’ll either cover them up or bring them back in for a couple nights.

There’s a reason this collection is growing. They do fine in the heat, don’t mind my hit or miss watering, and look good from spring to fall. All are planted in a mix of 75% potting soil/25% sandbox sand, terra cotta pots, and topped with a light layer of garage sale aquarium gravel on top. I’ll admit there have been casualties (overwintering casualties) along the way but for the most part it’s been easy-peasy. If anyone is interested I’ll put up a list of what I have…. if not we might just visit them again in August to see how much they’ve grown!

sorta like suburbia

more than you ever wanted to know about my garden

Category Archives: early spring chores