Feeding the Soil

Oct15

So yeah, another day lost to endless rain… I actually cleaned the kitchen and cooked some food for the fam instead of escaping to the garden. Nothing healthy was cooked, I’m a maestro with the deep fryer, but for a gloomy and gray, chilly day it seemed appropriate. Now it’s 9pm and after several apathetic attempts at a blog post throughout the day, I suppose a firmer tone should be set and anything should be posted. Photos were taken yesterday for just this purpose, so maybe something good can come of a day with no garden time.

Allium thunbergii ‘Ozawa’ has finally opened. Although I’m the only one to notice so far, I’ve been checking him each day waiting for just this moment and that’s exciting.

The biggest news is that after years of no Allium thunbergii, I’m suddenly basking in the joy of four separate plantings. One of them really doesn’t count. It’s the miserable patch of seedlings which I’ve been nursing along for at least seven years, and has only bloomed once in all that time. I don’t want to talk about it. I do want to gush on about the two I picked up at a NARGS plant sale, and then the one which showed up a few weeks later when a friend was nice enough to send me a division as well. From a thunbergii desert to a garden flooded with October blooming alliums was more than I could hope for, and now in their second year here I’m quite pleased. My friend sent the cultivar ‘Ozawa’ and the other two are maybe a straight species form, and the white ‘Album’, and all three are putting on a great show.

The small white Allium thunbergii album with another A. thunbergii which was just labeled ‘pink’. These two are showing off just inches away from another patch which rarely flowers… It’s hard admitting that one of your babies is a little ‘lacking’.

Now before I start mulling over the idea that an early fall-blooming snowdrop would complement these alliums wonderfully, lets check off the last of the colchicums. In this garden the long-blooming, double white C. autumnale ‘Alboplenum’ finishes off the season, and this late favorite now comes up in a couple spots around the yard. It should be a couple more, but the colchicum transplanting steam has cooled off, and it looks like these are going to have to wait until next summer to get a little more space and maybe a little more sun elsewhere.

Colchicum autumnale alboplenum looking slightly sparse and tired, but still giving a decent show under a dwarf white pine. I always like how the falling needles blanket the ground for the colchicum, but the dry shade doesn’t always please the colchicum.

The steam on a few projects has cooled down, and maybe that’s where the rain is coming from, but the focus is now turned to embracing the new wheelbarrow and moving dirt again. Pickaxe a few square feet, shovel them out, wheel them back, repeat… and then go sit down for a couple minutes. No sense in wearing yourself out, and absolutely no reason that a gardener should be working so hard as to sweat in mid October.

One of the rest seats faces the end of the front border. Things are beginning to wind down, but as long as frost holds off there’s still plenty of color.

As I’ve probably mentioned way too many times, this garden isn’t built on the deep, fertile soils of a lush river valley, it’s just a few inches of topsoil skimming the top of construction fill, which sits just above rocks and bedrock… and then if you keep going coal mines will be the only other excitement down there. Roots do not go deep, and I’m always trying to improve on that, even if it’s in ways which often do more than they should to avoid anything which seems like real work, or even worse, sound like they could be costly.

At least the newly seeded lawn has been enjoying all the rain. This area was completely dug up and bulldozed and I’m counting on mulches like lawn clippings to bring life back and re-create some topsoil.

Sifting out rocks, double digging beds, working in amendments and soil conditioners, and buying in ‘topsoil’ are all great ideas, and I love seeing other gardeners do it and then watch as their spades slice through a delicious chocolate cake soil to plant things, but there’s about a zero chance that will ever happen here. Here my main method of attack is (1)dump organic matter on top and (2)wait for the worms and other creatures to work it into the soil, and (3)grow lots of things. Growing things have roots, and the roots work through the soil, and when they die they leave a path and organic matter… so let me alter that and say (3)grow lots of things and then kill them but leave the roots there. You can probably guess I’m not one to worry about removing stumps, and pulling things up and getting all the roots? Also not a priority.

Of course some roots have to come out, but wherever I can I try to smother weeds with a layer of mulch first. Lately lawn clippings have been my mulch of choice, and from snowdrops to daylilies to boxwoods, they’re all getting a nice inch or two.

The lawn alone doesn’t give enough clippings, so this is when the meadow gets a scalping as well. All the rain has it pretty lush so hopefully it’s more clippings than weed seeds, but even a few weeds are worth it.

A cleaned out bed is easier to mulch, so chopping back has started and where better to throw the spent stalks and fading foliage than on the lawn? It all gets mowed up and thrown back onto a bed elsewhere and all that organic matter stays around the plants which produced it. Things doesn’t look 100% fancy, but is so much easier than hauling it to the compost. It’s only the hellebores which don’t get their own shredded foliage returned to the same bed, and phlox stems also go elsewhere. These are the only plants which give me any kind of build-up of disease concerns. Everything stays in the garden, it just moves to a different part with other plant species.

Isodon effusus, formerly rabdosia, formerly plectranthus, is flopping all over the snowdrop bed and in full bloom. It’s impossible to photograph, and the name is impossible to remember, but it does bring in some excellent color, even better when the red maples begin dropping their leaves alongside the blue.

Golly does the rain have me chatty. I’m moving dirt, building soil, and the only other thing I still want to mention is power washing. The spotted lanternfly is into its third year here and is about as bad as last. They’re mostly annoying with their clumsy hopping and bumbling flight, but their honeydew pee is beyond annoying and enters irritating. The sweet pee is gross, but the black mold it grows is disgusting. The black mold is the reason you haven’t had to endure endless succulent wall photos, since most of my succulents are blackened by the drizzle they get under the aspens. Pretty much anything around the bases of trees is sticky and black, and of course the white birches don’t show well either when they’re dripping with pee and mold.

Hopefully a November once-over with the power washer will clean this gunk off.

According to most Lanternfly information I should be stomping and spraying and controlling the beasts as best I can, but I’m not. When the mold started getting bad I briefly considered pulling out the shop vac and making a brush attachment to sweep the trees clean, but you can guess where that ended up. Cracking open a beverage, pulling up a lawn chair, and vacuuming up a wasp nest is fun, but running the vacuum up and down trees for the lanternflies seem like work, so no thanks. I’ll take this first hit in stride and hope it balances itself out similar to the Asian ladybugs, Japanese beetles, stinkbugs… hmmmm there’s quite a menu of invasive pests which have come this way over the years…

Spotted lanternflies beginning to lay eggs at the base of the tree, alongside the blackened foliage of a peony.

Let’s leave off on a good note… as the patter of rain on the roof has picked up yet again…

Each fall I keep wanting to transplant a few of these hardy garden chrysanthemum seedlings to more spots around the garden and each spring my attention is elsewhere. Today this double orange is my favorite. I should collect seeds when they’re done and play that game again 😉

So that’s a post, for better or worse. I hope if anything it entertained, and I also hope that your Sunday is sunny and enjoyable!

Of Waste Places

Jul9

I remember seeing an exciting new bird the second summer after moving here. It was an Indigo Bunting, and the all-blue plumage on a blackbird sized bird in the back of the yard was quite the sight in my young garden. Surely this was a sign that all kinds of wonderful new things would be showing up as the garden grew and developed, and not just people but also wildlife would appreciate my masterpiece. I rushed inside and grabbed my bird book (this would be 15 years ago when books and paper and such were still a thing), and when I found the entry for my new friend it was the phrase “of waste places” which really stood out. Waste places! It’s a good thing that wasn’t the day I named the gardens or this blog, because I’d probably reconsider or regret it some days, but it was a good reality check on my gardening ambitions.

The rains have returned and the lawn is again in need of mowing, but the borders are still sparse owing to the dry May and the resulting lack of self-sown treasures or motivated planting.

In the between years the garden has filled in more but I have yet to see a second bunting, and that’s a relief as far as creating a ‘waste place’, but somewhat sad since Indigo Buntings are quite cool. In hindsight when it happened they had just recently bulldozed down the woodland and shalebanks behind us for the industrial park, and I suspect the acres of weedy and seedy re-growth had more to do with luring in new birds, but to this day I sometimes look around and think ‘what a waste place’.

Maybe a waste place, but at least a boldly colored one with the bright red of crocosmia ‘Lucifer’.

Actually it’s not that bad since the rains came back. Things are growing again and since someone mentioned daylilies let me start with those 😉

Daylily ‘Brookside Sparkle’, a souvenir from one of last summer’s daylily farm visits, and so much better than a t-shirt.

The daylily farm is doing well but ten out of ten people have suggested that I make it bigger, even if the suggestion was more of a nod when I said I was planning to make it bigger… and it was more like one person and not ten, but statistically that’s 100% of the people surveyed and why bother doing customer research if you’re going to ignore it? To that end I have budgeted $60 to buy more daylilies this summer, and also as any wise investor will do I’ve taken inflation into consideration and will be willing to raise that limit to $75 if things go that way. Now I just have to pickaxe a few new planting beds.

I’m committing to no more heavy equipment in the yard and will finally level and plant this access area by the street. It needs to be lowered a few inches and dug up for compaction and rocks… and about 25 square feet of concrete I uncovered for which I’ll need to drag out the jackhammer again…

So dirt moving and daylilies. That seems to be the theme for 2023 and I hope you can see a little progress in the next few photos.

Along the side of the house the grade was brought down a few inches, leveled, rocks were dug and finally, now that it looks like rain might be a thing again, a grass path has been seeded between a new bed and the old cholchicum bed which runs alongside the house foundation. The daylily farm is visible on the right… isn’t it beautiful?

Nearly all the tons of soil alongside the new addition have been wheel-barrowed to the low spots behind the potager in the back of the yard. Many rocks have been uncovered, some barely movable but mostly small, and these will go into lining the path of grass which will be seeded and extend down to the back of the house. As you can see the house foundation is still waiting for the masonary fund to mature, and might have to wait a year or two especially if the daylily fund keeps taking precedence.

Excavation piles are finally gone, and you can again see through to the pond and potager. One last section of soil to move, and then it’s on to wall building, final grading, and then grass-path seeding. The area in front is the already-seeded path which runs alongside the house.

Seeing the garden slowly uncover has been a relief, and each new section replanted has been one less weedy mess to ignore on the daily garden tours, but the real excitement has been seeing the level areas beyond the potager grow wider and wider each week. There is grass coming up on the new paths and whenever I get a minute in my mind I’m planting and replanting the open sections of the new flatlands. One day it’s filled with pumpkins, the next it’s daylilies, then tulips, then daffodils, then a new greenhouse, then a snowdrop farm… I think you get the idea, but right now it’s sterile, rocky, dries-like-concrete fill and even in my most optimistic minute I know I don’t have the time or energy to do anything with it this year, so I’ve decided it’s going to be my new waste place.

To shade and hold a bit of moisture in the “soil” I’ve started throwing weeds down and any other trimmings and organic material that usually gets thrown in the compost. I’m letting weeds come up. I’ll probably let them go to seed and then regret it when I have even more weeds, but whatever. I’m hoping the birds and other wildlife will like it, and to help that along I picked up a $3 box of finch and canary seed from the petstore to throw around. It’s basically pure millet and I think the sparrows and doves will enjoy it if they mature into a seedy mess, and hopefully I don’t regret a millet field in the back of my yard…. and now with that in print I’m thinking I should have at least looked up what millet looks like or done any kind of research, but…

My better half asked what the plan is for this back area. I thought it better to say ‘I’m not sure’ rather than explain how it was to become a ‘waste place’.

So we will see where this ends up. The birds and rabbits seem quite pleased by the general weediness of the yard, and I’ve never seen quite the procession of baby rabbits coming out of the flower beds as I have this year, but there has been one uninvited guest who I do not appreciate.

Deer tracks in some of the freshly leveled soil of the back 40

There is a single deer who has begun to make a habit of visiting the garden. One deer who has walked through perhaps four times and I’m already nearly apoplectic over the damage and I can’t imaging people suffering through local deer herds in their neighborhood. I thought our visitor was a large doe with a fawn hidden nearby, but Friday afternoon showed it to be a he as the nubs of developing antlers were visible when chasing him out of the yard. Maybe I can convince one of my friends that begonias and geranium adds a special flavor to the sausage, and one of them will be willing to stake out my yard come November… assuming I can make it that long… but in the meantime a minefield of fencing seems to be entertaining him, even if not really slowing him down.

Something random. My first flower on this cobra lily (Aarisaema fargesii) and it has a cool way to it, but I still think it’s the tropical foliage that impressed me more.

Typical. He plants for wildlife and then gets upset when wildlife shows up. Maybe all the digging is going to my head, as well as the heat and humidity, so today’s day of rest is probably a good thing.

Hope you have a great week.

A Dull Boy

May30

We are just wrapping up Memorial Day here, so a three day weekend of remembrance and outdoor eating has come to an end and tomorrow is back to work. Going back to work might be a bit of a relief since I’m tired and sore and could probably use some time at a desk rather than behind a shovel, but this time of year there’s always more to do in the garden than time to do it. At least I got to play a little on Saturday when friends twisted my arm for a garden visit and afterwards we took a spin out to the local garden center to see what’s new.

With an introduction date of 1992, the iris ‘Ominous Stranger’ seems like a newer one… until I do the math and realize that’s 30 years ago! This smoldering color looks fine close up but in the garden competing with yellowing tulip foliage, it gets lost.

Of course garden friends always bring a few goodies, and I may have bought a few more on our excursion, but in the grand scheme of things a few more treasures to plant is just a drop in the to-do bucket. Kind of like blogging, and with three weeks since my last post you can guess where that ranked on the list 😉

To me the 1950 iris ‘Port Wine’ seems old enough to qualify as historical. It’s shrugged off our late freeze, moody temperatures, and lack of rain and is making a bold show in the front border.

I have been somewhat busy but a dry May really de-motivates me, and with about four weeks since the last real rain I would say this qualifies. The bearded iris shrug it off but other plants are wilting and the grass is turning brown, and I guess I could continuously complain but what would be the point to that. Years back I planted with summers like this in mind but then a couple rainy years rotted all my iris and turned my cacti into bacterial mush so I changed course. Boy will I feel stupid again when I rip things out and replant the iris just to have them rot again.

Here’s the historical iris ‘Elsinore’, a special thing with some unique coloring that dates from around 1920. Of course it’s a favorite. I’d have more planted around but it tends to over-bloom, with all its growth fans sending up flowers rather than multiplying for next year.

Feeling stupid is nothing new, so I’ll just keep chugging along, stuffing the wrong plants in too closely, letting the weeds explode everywhere, and focusing on things which might just be a waste of time. Speaking of ‘wastes of time’, I guess an update on the earth moving is in order.

The back of the new addition has been dug to the level of the rest of the yard and I’m happy with the progress. Please ignore all the other dirt and rocks which still must go.

So before the update, let me just say that some people spend all day baking bread from scratch, or hours over a stove making tomato sauce. Both can be purchased for under $5 in the store. Some people spend months knitting sweaters and socks when they too are available for much less than your time is worth so let me just enjoy my dirt-digging waste of time thank you very much.

The slope up to the daylily farm has also been graded and I’m excited to say I have found plenty of rocks along the way. Never mind that the one in front is too heavy for me to budge, I can always rearrange the garden around it.

Maybe the eye rolls on top of the lack of rain is making me a little sensitive but I doubt it. Lifting shovel after shovel of dirt is far more useful than lifting weights, and the sideyard is much more pleasant a place than the gym. Also if you notice the damp soil in the last picture it’s because I washed off the wonderful rocks I found, all just to admire them more closely. Try doing that with the weights at the gym and I suspect someone would put a stop to it rather quickly.

The best part of all the shoveling is I’m finally bringing the back of my yard up to a level grade. It’s terribly rocky and poor soil, but at least it’s not clay or pure sand, and eventually mulch and compost(and water) will make a garden out of it.

So iris, dirt pictures, and complaints about a lack of rain. Hopefully it isn’t the same story all summer since I am planning on planting a few annuals and will end up resenting them if I have to water all summer. Maybe if I start really small I can ignore the dry ten day forecast and pretend that watering them in really well will be enough.

With all the amazing plants for sale, you wouldn’t think marigolds would find their way onto my cart but here they are. I’m quite pleased and they’ll go in the potager to fill up the space that should be filled with vegetables if I were one to enjoy vegetables.

You never know. Maybe we’ll get a string of thunderstorms and June will turn into a gray, humid mess and we’ll all have something new to complain about. Actually since I just ordered new pool filters and a couple billion other accessories there’s a strong possibility the weather will change just to derail my summer plans. Replanting iris would probably seal the deal, but even if it doesn’t I still like to remind myself it’s not January.

Have a great week.

The Poisoned Earth

Jun8

I’m not an organic gardener. I sprinkle fertilizer around, spray for pernicious weeds, douse a bug here and there… I figure “progress” has to be good for something more than shorter winters and a warmer globe, plus I like cool things like antibiotics, vaccines, and diabetes and heart medicines. Unfortunately, there are a few things which scare me and I’ve been thinking more and more on them lately. The most recent is the death of this year’s tomato plants.

For all the neglected vegetables of the potager, sauce tomatoes are always in demand and always harvested. The kids might throw cherry tomatoes around and play baseball with a zucchini but the paste tomatoes always find their way to the saucepan or freezer, and if it were up to me they’d all go towards pizza, not sauce, but now I’m getting distracted. This year the plants went in early, the stakes before they were needed, all were watered, mulched, and looked great… for a little while.

I mulched with lawn clippings like I always do and within a few days the plants were dying.

All the new growth on the tomatoes is coming out curled and stunted. According to what I’ve seen online it’s classic 2-4-D herbicide damage and chances for recovery are zero.

I take care of the lawn next door, and my mother in law always reminds me every year to put down grub killer and something for the weeds. I usually “fib” and say sure and things are just fine, but this year the clover and dandelions were getting a little too obvious, so rather than explain how the stuff ‘doesn’t always work 100%’ got a bag of Scott’s weed and feed to spread around. It worked for the most part, we’re back to a monotonous yawn and she seems happy.

The cabbage and cauliflower bed doesn’t seem as sensitive and are growing well. They likely absorbed the same poisons and now I have to consider the fact it’s part of the cabbage leaves and future cauliflower heads.

So that was the end of March. Two months of growing and mowing and rains and I was desperate for some mulch in my earliest-ever and most-promising tomato bed. My lawn is still sparse from bulldozer traffic so what the heck, it’s been months since the last illegal clover shriveled and died over there, so let me just use a mower bag full, what’s the harm…. and then the tomatoes went belly-up. It scares me to think of that whole yard as still being toxic.

No-mow May is a month long break from all the chopping and edging and spraying and fertilizing of the lawn growing cult. I love the way it looks.

Leaf miners are what started all this nervousness about chemicals settling into garden. Years back I would lose most of my daffodils, snowdrops, snowflakes, amaryllis, and lycoris to narcissus bulb flies… that is used to until I started sprinkling grub killer around the bulbs. The bulb flies disappeared and that was awesome but then one summer I realized how perfect all the leaves on my columbine (Aquilegia) were. Perfect leaves on columbine is something I’ve never seen in this garden, they always end up with a bunch of leaf miner tunnels and it’s not perfect but not that big a deal either. If I feel like it the foliage is trimmed back, and new growth returns quickly, but it was weird to not see them.

Columbine often seeds into areas where I planted daffodils and snowdrops. The columbine takes up the grub killer and becomes poisonous enough to kill the leaf miners. Whatever else sprouts there also becomes poisonous. The leaves decay and the compost becomes poisonous. Many people say the pollen and nectar of the flowers contains the poison and the bees suffer… and of course people love bees… but think of the crickets and katydids living in the shrubs which also share that soil, suddenly they’re as likely to die as the leaf miners are.

One bag of grub killer would last me for years since I used it so sparingly, but today it’s only columbine in the far reaches of the yard which ever show an occasional leaf miner. They’re basically extinct in my yard. Just imagine how a normal person would use a whole bag in a day, across their entire lawn, and from then on every grass blade, perennial plant, shrub, and tree in the yard becomes toxic to insects. Think of how many neighbors use Lawn Doctors and Tru Greens, and I don’t think they use anything less-toxic than the unlicensed, off the shelf products we gardeners use. No wonder insect populations are crashing.

A no-mow May meadow. Hopefully this is a toxin-free buffet for both myself and the bugs. I’ll resume regular mowing in August and then keep it up until fall.

I’m probably preaching to the choir here. I already have some much-smaller, far-less amazing tomato plants to plant in another unmulched bed, and so what if there aren’t any leaf miners. I just hate to think of everything else we’re losing.

Hope you’re having a great week. Happy June!

Imma Savage

Aug4

The weather is hot, the weather (was) dry and the gardener spent a three day weekend spreading mulch. He was not lazy. He showed no mercy. Sentiment was shed like a stream of sweat as plants were moved, underperformers were whacked, and all the mistakes and shortcomings of 2020 were buried under a fresh brown frosting of shredded bark mulch.

Edged and mulched, the front yard looks very... neat. — Edged and mulched, the front yard looks very… neat. Not bad considering the lawn has only been cut once in five weeks.

There was actually more involved than just three days of hard labor. The weekend before I had the gardener start ripping out and chopping down anything which didn’t please me, stunted things, dried up things, things which were just too crowded and taking up too much space. A few runs were made for free township compost, and the most promising plantings got some pre-game mulch to hold the moisture and give a good shot of nutrients going prior to the big event.

Along the street there’s no towering wall of sunflowers this year. Even the purple coneflowers were stunted and about half were pulled due to the lack of rain. Thinning, some compost and watering, and then a coat of bark mulch really made a difference.

Transplanting annuals in 90+ (33C) heat should be frowned upon, but since the gardener was not smiling anyway it seemed appropriate. The zinnias and verbena survived.

About two wheelbarrows full of fennel left the front border, plus a bunch of other dried stalks from June. Now I can almost see the stunted cannas and butterfly bushes.

I have to admit I’ve been watering the zinnias and a few other things for the last few weeks. It’s been worth it, and since I’ve been informed on exactly how much the water bill has gone up, I can tell you exactly how much it’s been worth. No doubt it will be worth even more next month when an even higher water bill surprises the mailbox.

Agapanthus ‘Blue Yonder’ has earned its regular watering. Perfect foliage and at least three weeks of this strong blue color is quite awesome, and I hope no one is tiring of seeing this same plant every year.

When I went to order the mulch, my mulch guy said “that’s a lot of mulch”. He was right of course and the price was not so I cut back to the smaller truck and still had plenty. Several areas remain which could have used a coating, but as I filled the last load into the wheelbarrow I was thanking my mulch guy again and again for saving me from myself.

Around the side of the house and into the backyard. Moisture from the neighbor seeps down through the tropical garden and from a distance it looks almost lush 🙂

Mulching in August is probably a stupid move, but I wouldn’t expect anything less from my gardener. It takes forever for him to work mulch in between plants, and of course things need clearing out, pruning, and edging and all that adds to the work involved. On the plus side, there’s less mulch needed since a full flowerbed usually doesn’t need mulch extending any more than a foot or so in from from the edge. Less mulch means less money and I think you know where I stand on that.

Most of the best gardens boast classic topiary in one form or another. Obviously we would expect no less here in almost suburbia.

The potager did not need mulch, but that of course did not spare the vegetables from my savagery. Potatoes were dug, onions harvested, and another few tons of zucchini were brought into the house for processing and gifting. A woodchuck was trapped. The trap was brought over to the car for a trip elsewhere. The woodchuck escaped… fortunately just before the trap was placed in the car…

Cabbage transplants are in although this family rarely eats cabbage. Perhaps the woodchuck will return and take care of that, just like he took care of the broccoli (leafless stalks, lower left corner) and parsley (leafless stalks alongside orange marigolds).

I took my woodchuck frustrations out on the boxwood. Even in my most savage moments there’s a calm satisfaction in seeing an unruly hedge go from wooly to neat, and although the zen of trimming with expensive hand shears is extremely overrated, I did survive.

The potager is too neat. Trimmed hedges are nice, but I think it needs more jungle so perhaps this week’s rain will do the trick.

As the gardener continued to mulch past the potager he could feel his will to live slowly begin to fade. Fortunately the pile of mulch remaining in the driveway was also fading, and with just a few more edges to do that works out just fine. More mulch might have tempted me to just bury the entire shade garden and put it out of its misery since the weak little rain showers which almost kept the lawn green never penetrate the red maple canopy which shades this area.

Everything looks wilted and sad, but for the most part nothing ever dies. Of course it never really looks good either, but…

Dry beds and dry mulch did have the advantage of being easy to clear, and easy to shovel and spread, but the dust was terrible. Normally I’d just put on one of my dust masks, but since the mulch was in the front yard I didn’t want the neighbors seeing and thinking I don’t support our leader, so I suffered my way through and tried to cough it all up later.

So the job is now done. We are expecting around two inches of rain today as the remnants of Isaias pass through and the view will likely change, but at least the mulch should look even nicer as plants (hopefully) burst back into life. The gardener will need a few days to rest up and rehydrate as well, so that works out… although there are still bags and bags of daffodils to go through and cyclamen need repotting.

Fortunately it never ends. Have a great week!

Happy Halloween!

Nov1

Surprise of surprises the month of October has passed and there still remains a general air of pleasantness and overall contentment with the autumn season. Even as the wind and rain buffet trick-or-treaters, the gardener has yet to mention death, gloom or futility, in spite of light frosts and dropping leaves and various ghouls and other undead wandering the neighborhood.

Fall color seems especially bright this year. The view towards the tropical garden doesn’t really seem all that tropical anymore but it’s not bad at all in my opinion.

To be honest I’m not 100% sure a ghoul qualifies as undead but I am sure that the garden still has plenty of life in it. Last weekend was excellent weather for outdoor labor and even this gardener got a few things done. Mulching was probably the most rewarding job and being that I love mulching, and free mulch is even better, it was almost a struggle to wait until a respectable 9am before making the first run to the town’s free mulch pile.

The new hellebore garden is finally fit to show. Stepping stones have been leveled, mulch spread, and now all that’s missing is a nice blanket of leaves on top. Nature will oblige I’m sure.

Free mulch around here isn’t the fanciest thing, but I’m still thrilled my friend Paula inspired me to go looking for it again. I can head out, fill a couple buckets and an old trash can, and pull back into the garage in eleven minutes flat, which isn’t all that unreasonable and compares very favorably to the time I would have been sitting around “resting” anyway. In all I made four runs, which quickly adds up to forty minutes, but since two of the trips included picking up or dropping off children I still think I’m not doing too bad.

Orange is the color of the week. Tonight’s wind and this weekend’s frost will change the picture but for now I love it.

Besides mulching and mowing, a few other things were checked off of the to-do list. Stage one of tender plant triage includes cuttings of the most cool-weather sensitive things such as coleus, and that was completed a couple weeks ago. Stage two is dragging all tender potted things closer to the garage and off the deck. Stage three will be the end to procrastination, and means dragging them all in when frost threatens (Friday night), and then Stage four will be all the hardier things such as potted geraniums and rosemary which can handle a frost, but resent a freeze. It’s kind of late for a hard frost this year, so I’ve been enjoying a nice drawn out process where things are a little less hectic, and a lot more organized.

Some late season blooms on the Tatarian aster ‘Jindai’. A delay in a hard freeze means this slowpoke has had enough time to put on a nice show this year.

A beautiful fall, a relaxed pace in the garden, projects getting done. It all still seems so remarkably positive that I almost hesitate to bring up a dark cloud, but it’s there nonetheless. Deer have made my garden a regular stop on their nightly forays. It’s not unusual for them to come through as they grow restless in the autumn, but this year they really seem to like what they’ve found. The little piles of ‘pellets’ seem to tell me they’re spending quite some time here at night and the stripped leaves and beheaded chrysanthemums tell me what they’ve been doing.

I love this tender salvia which went in as part of the autumn upgrade to these containers, but I also loved the purple oxalis that used to fill the front. Stems are all that remain.

This gardener hopes they move on during the winter. Maybe the colchicum flowers they ate will upset their tummies enough to make them wander off to greener pastures, or maybe the cyclamen flowers left a bad taste in their mouth… but I really suspect they just liked adding a bit of exotic flavor to the diet. In any case you can probably guess who has been encouraging the neighborhood hunters to shoot local this year…

There’s been some activity on the berm. A close close look may reveal the small green sprays of new ‘Green Giant’ arborvitae as well as a few other tiny things. In about 15 years maybe I’ll post another picture to see if it’s amounted to anything.

Don’t let a few deer nibbles give off the wrong impression. It’s still a remarkable autumn and I’m quite pleased with the progress and with the garden… even if the days are becoming rudely short and time outside is becoming annoyingly limited. With that in mind I’ll leave you with something exceptionally positive.

The first snowdrops are up. The fall blooming Galanthus reginae-olgae ‘Tilebarn Jamie’ looks fantastic amongst the autumn leaves, and it’s just one of a few which are in bloom this week.

The first of the little snowdrop treasures are too precious to run the risk of facing the elements outdoors, so of course they’ll have to face the risks of a fickle gardener indoors and hopefully that works out well. A few fall and winter bloomers did survive outside last year but not enough to give me the confidence to gamble with these, so in another two or three weeks these will also migrate to the winter garden alongside other plants too special to give up. I’m sure I’ll enjoy the company while we wait for the garden to thaw out again 🙂

Still Not the Worst

Oct13

Ok, so I think I have to admit I’m halfway liking fall this year. Those who know me are shocked. I’m shocked, but to be honest the weather has been decent, there’s been free time to work in the garden, and just enough rain has come down to make planting and projects a pleasure, so it’s kind of an ideal autumn. Gnats though, that’s one thing I can complain about. They’re all over, but as long as I keep my head covered and don’t sit around too much it’s still tolerable… usually… until they get so thick I inhale a few, and then I’m done and back in the house.

‘Pink Cadillac’ chrysanthemum just starting in the front border alongside some floppy little bluestem and perovskia.

Once the clouds of bugs thin a little, I sneak out a different door and try for a few more minutes in the garden. October is chrysanthemums, and surprisingly enough a few have survived all the summertime neglect to now look bright and fresh in an otherwise tired looking garden. One of these years I will really give them the springtime attention they deserve, but they don’t seem to be pining away waiting for me to come through for them, and look good anyway. I’ll enjoy it while it lasts.

A nice orange chrysanthemum which was discovered after the Rosa glauca was cut back mid summer. It’s been blooming for at least a month and the flowers get to be almost four inches across, so I’m good with that!

Although I’ve been enjoying the finale of the garden more than usual this year, I’ve also managed to squeeze in some actual work and projects. One such project has been building up some of the flower beds which drowned last year in the endless rain we had. A load of topsoil was ordered and delivered, and slowly found its way around the house and into the backyard, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow, and will hopefully help in keeping plants up and out of the swamp… just in case we ever end up in another repeating loop of rainstorm after rainstorm after flood.

Drowned hydrangeas and rhododendrons are gone, and this bed’s been raised about two or three inches. Also a nice walk out of salvaged stones makes this bed look promising again.

Although I am entirely against hard labor, at least the delivered topsoil is root and rock-free and easy to dig… as long as it’s only slightly wet, and hasn’t crusted yet or turned into rock solid dirt clods. Hopefully it makes for easy planting and good growing next year with a minimum of weeds, but experience suggests otherwise and I should probably get a plan together as far as mulching and groundcovers.

The bog garden is looking quite nice now that the pitchers have grown a little and some spagnum moss has been moved in. Now if I only knew what to do with it for the winter.

I had planned on ordering a load of shredded bark mulch to follow up on the topsoil, but yesterday discovered my source is closed for the season. Easy come easy go I guess, and I’ve taken that as a sign to not bother, save the money, and instead find something else (preferably free) to cover up the newly bare and exposed real estate for the winter. My friend Paula mentioned her frequent trips for free township compost and that sounded like an excellent plan. A little research on my part and I discovered there may be free compost available from my town as well, and maybe just maybe I can squeeze a few loads into the back of my less than three month old suv without making a muddy mess. We’ll see. It’s about time I broke it in anyway.

The topsoil ran out and so did the gardener, so this is how I left things. Maybe tomorrow I’ll have the energy to redo the stone path and set the last of my stones… but I still need more soil to raise the bed and all of that is gone…

Oh and by the way in between dirt moving and stone setting, I weed wacked the entire industrial park berm. Ok so it took three days and it was before the dirt was delivered, but I’m glad it’s done and I have to admit it does look nicer… even if I almost broke a leg a couple times as I lost my footing or tried to reach just a little too far down the slope…

The berm stretching back from my mother in law’s to the end of my yard. The spruce are at least ten feet tall, so it’s a big area and a lot of work to clear. Imagine my two word response when someone said “I wish you would have done that all summer”.

The boring neatness of a cut berm is far less interesting than the front yard, so it’s out there that I go to enjoy some color. We had a bit of frost last Saturday, but overall it’s still fairly colorful with a few late bloomers and a bunch of lingerers.

After ten years a few of my conifers have finally grown big enough to become noticeable. Oh my gosh this might qualify as winter interest!

The lingerers are mostly annuals and dahlias holding on until frost, and the late bloomers are mostly mums and asters, but there is one star which always makes me happy to see. ‘Sunnyside Up’ pokeberry (Phytolacca americana) has been lighting up the street side of the border all summer and as I found out this past week has been stirring up the neighborhood as well. While cleaning the last of the dirt from the driveway a neighbor stopped by to tell me about the ‘invasive’ he saw growing out there. “Those weeds are all over my backyard” he started with, and then continued to go on about how they spread and how fast they grew, but not much further before I cut him off with the offer of another beer. Problem solved.

At this time of year I love the red stems and purple berries alongside the yellow foliage of “Sunnyside Up” pokeweed. I get a little thrill every time the mockingbird swoops down to snatch another berry or two and spread the joy of this lovely native far and wide. As long as you’re going to have pokeweed might as well have a lovely yellow leaved strain.

Once the subject changed I didn’t even mention the masses of mugwort and the forest of bradford pear seedlings which lined the road behind him. Or the bittersweet which went from just a sprig to a tree-strangling mass in five years… or the Japanese knotweed, stiltgrass, honeysuckle, garlic mustard in the woods… or the purple loosestrife growing in his foundation beds. Hmmmmm. Plenty for another post. We should enjoy just a few more autumn flowers instead 🙂

One of the last of the colchicums, C. autumnale album plenum. Just as a note I’ve tried to refrain from posting too many colchicum photos this year, so fair warning that 2020 will be a rebound year.

I’m thinking the reason I’m finally enjoying autumn is the new ‘I don’t care’ attitude which has developed out of my previous ‘because I can’ attitude. At first it was actually a little hard to leave the lawn uncut and let weeds grow, but unless it was really necessary I let a bunch of the tedious labor slide this year in favor of stuff I’d still be enjoying years from now. New shrubs. New beds. New paths. Lower maintenance plantings. Simplification. Last year to keep the garden perfect meant continuous mowing, trimming, and weeding that went around the yard and then started all over as soon as it was done. Thats no fun, and it’s also only appreciated by myself. So I let it go.

The hardy cyclamen (C. hederifolium) alongside the driveway are flowering well this fall. About half rotted out from the rain last year, but the survivors seem to have recovered and are seeding about.

Or… maybe I’ve just reached critical mass for fall flowers and this is the first year in three that every day doesn’t start with gloomy, rainy grayness, but I think it’s the flowers. Better get to the nursery this afternoon to make sure I haven’t missed any fall blooming plants that can still go in 🙂

My bougainvillea has greeted cooler weather with a second flush of flowers. The colors scream summer, but the blooms are welcome regardless even if they do look a little out of place in October.

Or maybe I’m overthinking all of this. The truth is I have new snowdrops, and some are already sprouting and in bloom and that makes me think of spring. I love spring. Maybe all this talk of autumn is really just a very very early spring.

Have a great week 🙂

Winter Ennui

Dec26

From Merriam-Webster online; Ennui – a feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction : boredom

On this day after Christmas I’m missing winter. Winter is a time of year which really needs some good press and I for one enjoy the clean crispness and simplicity of the season. On the other hand this weather we’ve been having seems like an endless autumn, and those who read this blog may already know my lack of enthusiasm for that season. If I was forced to rate seasons, autumn wouldn’t even make the top three.

The front door did get some holiday attention this year with a homegrown selection of evergreens and bits from the woods.

Regardless of my feelings of ennui towards the garden, and my wish that the seasons would just move on with it, I have managed to get a few things done. The Christmas lights and holiday decorations have never gone up as comfortably, and even though they’re a mismatched collection of leftovers and scavenged pieces they suit us just fine.

Staghorn sumac (rhus typhina) seed heads catching the solstice light.

I often admit to ‘economizing’ my actions in the garden, and some equate this to laziness, but sometimes this leads to a few nice surprises. Without freezing temperatures it was much easier to push evergreen boughs and branches into the soil of this summer’s planters rather than working out something new. Imagine my surprise when on the way out the door for Christmas dinner I was treated to the most perfect gerbera daisy rising up out of the dried debris.

A single gerbera daisy welcoming Christmas.

I’ll admit a single daisy is not quite as thrilling as a hedge full of blooming camellias or sheets of early snowdrops but it does make the lingering autumn a little more tolerable. Also making the autumn more tolerable are new bits of winter interest such as my growing evergreens and this nicely colored red-twig dogwood (Cornus sanguinea ‘Midwinter Fire’) which a friend surprised me with.

‘Midwinter Fire’ dogwood belongs to the tribe of redtwig dogwoods. I love how the branches in the inner portion of mature plants get a yellow orange color while the ends turn darker red.

The long autumn hasn’t been a complete bust. Between leisurely bulb planting and leaf cleanup I’ve still managed to drag myself out for a few other small projects. I finally removed the invasive burning bush (Euonymus alatus) which anchored the end of the front border.

Bright autumn color wasn’t enough to save this wolf in sheep’s clothing. There are other burning bushes (Euonymus alatus) planted throughout the neighborhood but I’m not going to let this one contribute to all the invasive seedlings which have begun to show up.

I can see why the bush did so well in this poor spot. The roots became a thick fibrous mass in the six years it’s been here and I’m going to be on the lookout for root sprouts in this area over the next year or two.

A prime clear spot in the front border. I promptly filled it with daffodils and tulip bulbs, yet will need to watch for burning bush seedlings and other invasives. One of these is the Korean feather reed grass (Calamagrostis brachytricha) which still turns up three years after the mother plant was evicted.

What I should really get done is more bed prep. Fall mulch and compost are the best things for this but my spirit is slightly broken in this regard. This fall I did my usual whoring around in neighbor’s gardens, selling myself for far too cheap for the chance to take home some beautifully chopped autumn leaves. It was all going well until I discovered my haul was missing. Who had been watching and waiting to steal my treasure? The six bags of mulch were tucked out of sight behind a large panicum clump next to the driveway just waiting to bless my compost pile with leaf mould goodness. They were heavy. I know that because I lugged them out of the neighbor’s backyard and jammed them into the back seat of my car to get them home.

Long story (and several phone calls around town) ends up with the township yard waste collectors trying to “get ahead” in their collections. They came up the driveway, found the bags, and hauled them away to the dump. My only consolation after calling all over to “get my leaf bags back” is that I found out where free mulch is available, and if I can drive, lift, and lug for a few trips I might be able to ease the pain.

Another bed expansion with a nice edging trench, leftover lawnclipping ready to spread to smother the turf, and a topping with township mulch. Chopped leaves would have been nicer. Just saying.

Other beds have been cleaned, other plants have been moved, bulbs are in, weeds are out. There’s always plenty to do but my heart’s just not in it. I’m moving into winter garden mode and hopefully between now and New Year’s I can get that set up properly. Snowdrops are coming after all.

My first snowdrop for this year. I have it on authority it’s a Galanthus elwesii var. monostictus Hiemalis Group ex Montrose… unfortunately the label needs supersizing before I can update.

So that sums December up. I hope it’s been a merry Christmas and I hope the holidays are going well for all, and here’s for a wonderful start to the new year! Best wishes 🙂

mumble mumble mulch

May3

Spring is here and I love it. It means work of course, and for me it’s hard to hit just the right balance of sitting around and actually doing something, but I try my best. One problem which always haunts me is that I’m the type who (again while sitting around) usually gets tons of unnecessary projects in his head, starts them, and then moves on before they’re done. Fortunately I’m not much bothered by this, but someone else here is, and sometimes decides to be helpful and remind me of the obvious…. but most of the time that person doesn’t notice unplanted chrysanthemum collections or realize it’s been years since the boxwood cuttings should have been planted out, so it all works out fine. How can it not when rain and rainbows and warm sunshine have brought out the daffodils?

Double rainbow over the ‘potager’. A beautiful sight if you can tune out the industrial park and white vinylrama next door 🙂

I’ve been relentlessly mulching. It started innocently enough with a load of mulched leaves hauled out of the woods, but then exploded from there. My neighbors were so generous last autumn with several heaps of nicely chopped leaves and grass clippings that I couldn’t stop lugging them back to the garden. The entire front bed got a nice layer and I would have kept going but of course ran through all the available bounty.

The front perennial bed all nestled in with a nice mulch of chopped leaves. The earthworms will munch them all down by the end of summer but for now they should go a long way in keeping the weed seedlings down. Did I mention it was all free?

As if that wasn’t enough, for some reason when finished I got it in my head to crack open the wallet and order a load of shredded bark mulch to finish off the yard. With most of the front already covered I felt finishing with a little purchased mulch might be something the budget could handle, so $290 later I was mulling over another new heap in the driveway. It seemed a steep price to me but judging from the other $1,000 plus order slips hanging next to mine I guess I’m being downright frugal. Also, mulch is a gardening expense the boss never criticizes, so now it just needs to be spread. More on that later, daffodils first!

Always a favorite, ‘Tahiti’ is an awesome daffodil. Sorry if you’re not a fan of doubles, but this one never fails, and the yellow petals seem to glow with an orange shade which I love.

I’m stuck on orange lately. The daffodil ‘Serola’ tops the list this year.

Narcissus ‘Serola’ with the first of the tulips opening behind. When I divide this bed (hopefully this June) I’ll need to put these out in the front garden to brighten things up even more!

My whining about space in the vegetable garden is entirely due to my weakness for spring bulbs and the abundance of open space left when vegetables finally give up the ghost in September. It’s so easy to just pop a few bulbs in here and there 🙂

It’s so much easier to line a few daffs out in the vegetable patch than it is to decide on a spot in the open garden! I’ll just plant a few pumpkins or squash over them in July to make it look respectable again. (fyi it’s bouncy house season so please ignore the deflated mess in the background)

One more orange. ‘Kedron’ has a color which stands out very well…. if you’re into colors that stand out very well 🙂

Narcissus ‘Kedron’. Notice the empty spaces nearby. Not everyone does well here and I just don’t have the patience to nurse unhappy plants along, so while ‘Kedron’ takes off the others just fade away…

Although the vegetables complain, bulbs in general seem to like my lazy (or complete lack) of an efficient watering ethic. Tulips in particular like the open, sunny, fertile soil, and unless I weed them out (which I could never do) most clump up and bloom. Even if I do pull a few of the smaller bulbs they just end up in the compost anyway so get spread throughout the garden a few months later when I take and spread the barely rotted goodness.

Yet another plant which needs to find a permanent home outside of the vegetable patch. This double hellebore seedling is taking up prime bean and pepper real estate.

Believe it or not I’m making progress with my bulb issues. When I was younger and carefree I used to plant out patches of whatever tulips I had on hand and then dig them up again in June just in time to clear the beds for tomato planting. It was insanely beautiful (to me at least) and I can’t rule out this happening again.

Tulips blooming in the vegetable garden (spring 2013). These would all be dug, dried, and stored while the warm season veggies occupied the same beds.

Maybe my bulbaholism isn’t getting any better. Maybe it’s just migrating. I planted these fritillaria imperialis bulbs out in the meadow late last fall (clearance bulbs) and can’t wait to see how they do. If I get one decent spring out of them I’ll be thrilled, but in my heart I want them to settle in… even if they do look slightly out of place in the short turf. Hopefully they enjoy the dry summertime baking this spot receives, and the grass should come up soon enough to hide the yellowing foliage.

My ‘meadow’ is in danger of becoming a bulb field. The fritillaria imperialis don’t look entirely happy yet, but I have my fingers crossed they’ll at least bloom and then maybe return next spring?

Out front I may have a few bulbs as well. Early spring is when I love the front beds the most.

Tulips and daffodils where snowdrops ruled just a few weeks ago. I should have taken this picture today since I mulched yesterday afternoon, but after all the work I was ready to just sit and relax!

I better wrap this post up. Now that mulch sits in the middle of the driveway I’ve got plenty to do even from the non-gardening viewpoint. And it’s not the fastest process since mulch needs to be worked in between sprouts and edges need to be tidied up…. and actually a bigger problem is that I’m coming up with all kinds of bed enlargements and side projects while I dilly-dally on finishing the main project. I promised to trim back the yews along the side of the house, and this golden arborvitae just happened to show up in the lawn between us and the neighbor. As long as I’m mulching, might as well create a nice big bed around it 😉

new perennial bed

Let me get out there then. Good luck on all your own spring projects, may they progress more quickly than my own!

A day of rest

Apr26

Sunday being a day of rest I try to avoid too much noisy, heavy labor on this end of the weekend. I don’t exactly deserve it since I did plenty of resting yesterday as well, but on this subject I will defer to the higher authority and take it easy. With daffodils beginning their season it’s hard anyway to focus on serious projects. The blooms are a great distraction on what thankfully turned out to be a warm sunny spring day.

The vegetable garden is looking good in spite of its lack of vegetable space. My favorite daffodils deserve a good spot just as much as some bean or pepper plant.

I did manage to get a few things moving in the ‘potager’. With so many flowers filling the beds, calling it “the farm” anymore seems a bit inappropriate. Maybe a flower farm, but definitely not a hotbed for fresh produce. I did find a few open spots for squeezing in a couple lettuce and broccoli transplants. That should keep the rabbits happy.

Lettuce and arugula tranplants are in and hopefully will amount to something before temperatures rise. I also planted a few of the sprouting potatoes found in the back of the storage bin. Not a picture for the serious gardener but that’s how we roll here 😉

Covering all the vegetable beds with whatever mulch I could scrounge up (mostly shredded leaves and grass clippings from the lawnmower bag) has made bed prep a snap this spring. I just stirred in whatever leaves were left of the top coating and popped transplants into the ground. My little vegetable babies from under the growlights will hopefully make me proud in no time at all.

I’ve given up on this vegetable bed, and the daffodils have completely taken over. Note the empty chair. Trust me it gets plenty of use 🙂

So I did get a little done yesterday to deserve a break. Not exactly a lot by most standards but after waiting so long I hate to see the season fly by. I want to soak up every minute and hope you can do the same as well!

sorta like suburbia

more than you ever wanted to know about my garden

Category Archives: soil prep/compost