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!

Garden Bloggers Foliage Day -Aug.2014

Aug22

For nearly three years Christina of Creating my own garden of the Hesperides has been hosting the meme which focuses on foliage in the garden. I believe her intention was to explore the important role which foliage plays in the garden, and remind everyone that although flowers often steal the stage, foliage remains to carry the show. Going out this week with the intention of focusing on foliage surprised me in two ways. First of all I always assumed I was one of those “immature” gardeners who always falls for the flash of flowers and doesn’t have much foliage interest. That was wrong…. apparently nearly all flowers come with some kind of foliage (who knew!) and even the most flower blinded gardener will have foliage. Secondly I learned another important revelation…. my garden looks much, much better in close-ups!

Powis castle Artemisia, snow on the mountain, nicotina, and Echinacea

I’ve grown Artemisia “Powis Castle” before, but never here in Pennsylvania. It was planted this spring and I love the gray foliage mixed with all the other stuff that seeded in with the compost. (fennel, nicotina, Echinacea, snow on the mountain)

Starting with A and Artemisia is as good place as any, and while we’re here I guess we’ll just keep going along the front street border. Soil improvement this spring and moving things around brought in plenty of seed-laced compost, and “Hopi Red Dye” amaranthus is easy to spot with its dark red leaves.

Amaranthus “Hopi Red Dye”, as easy to grow as its more weedy relatives.

I like purple leaves, but I don’t think I can resist a plant with yellow foliage, and this “Golden Sunshine” willow was an impulse buy last year. Rabbits mowed it down last winter but willows don’t sulk and this one bounced right back. Actually I think cutting this one back to the ground each spring would probably be the best way to keep the bright new foliage coming.

Salix “Golden Sunshine”… or at least I think that’s what this willow goes by. I really need to have a better recording system for my plant IDs.

If pushed I might even admit to having too much yellow foliage around the yard.

arundo donax variegata in perennial border

Arundo donax “variegata” in the front perennial border. An explosion of color with “Black Knight” buddleia, pink agastache, and yellow fennel blossoms. Btw, the arundo is probably 8 feet tall and the butterfly bush 6. Also it’s unusual for the grass to have this much color so late in the summer. Usually the heat makes it go all green.

Here’s a little blue in the blue spruce I moved last spring…. and more yellow.

Have I ever mentioned my love for the foliage of “Tiger Eyes” sumac? It suckers around a bit, but in my mess of a garden that’s no big deal. I haven’t yet decided if this is a formal enough planting for the front of the house though.

A foliage post without mentioning a cyclamen is just crazy, so here’s my little c. purpurascens plant (probably two or three plants since I see at least two leaf forms).

Good things come in little packages, this cyclamen purpurascens is a baby at only maybe 5 inches across but it might be my favorite cyclamen right now…. I’m sure that will change as others appear 🙂

I took a lot of pictures so this may be all over the place, but I’ll try to finish up the front yard first. Sometimes people think of hosta when they hear the word foliage, and I’ve seen them in a few gardens here and there (just a few!). Here’s “August Moon” a favorite old variety which lightens to nearly white when in full sun.

Hosta “August Moon” in one of my few shady areas.

Moving into the back near the (another yellow) sunflowers is the new heuchera patch. Someday you’ll suffer through an all out heuchera post, but until they grow in a bit I’ll let you off with just one.

One of several new heuchera plants, heuchera “Circus Clown” is off to a good start with a nice mulch and some much needed rain. It’s amazing how the colors on these plants change throughout the year.

The reason the heuchera can survive here is from the shade of a Seven Sons shrub/tree (heptacodium miconioides). My plant gets cankers and loses trunks every now and then but I hope it someday gets past that. Right now I’m enjoying the rich green of the curled stiff leaves. Kind of a coarse look, but for a guy with so many cannas and dahlias refinement isn’t one of my strong points.

Heptacodium miconioides leaves against a perfectly clear blue sky.

Enough with the babbling. Look but don’t touch.

Ptilostemon diacantha with verbena bonariensis blossoms. Of course this is where all the missed baseballs end up rolling.

Almost good enough to eat, plants in the vegetable garden (or potager when I’m feeling fancy) also can put on a good show.

Red cabbage and fig leaves, the fig would be happier in Christina’s Mediterranean garden but it hangs on here and the perfectly cut leaves make up for not getting any actual figs 🙂

Not all the foliage news is good. Miscanthus giganteus was off to a good start but our dry spell threw it for a loop and killed off all the lower leaves.

Miscanthus giganteus wants the steady moisture which I’m too frugal to supply. It might be easier to get something else for this spot.

Back by the house is a panicum “Cloud Nine” which is much more comfortable with drought. I hate this bed and constantly neglect it, but nature did its own thing and filled the gaps with rudbeckia, phlox, and patrina scabiosifolia seedlings. Sure beats the boring mulch I had there before.

The stepchild bed with Patrina, panicum, rudbeckia, and phlox.

So much for anything that even approaches subtlety. My tropicals come next, and first off are the geraniums (pelargoniums) which in my delusion and denial I have added to the overwinter and collect list.

I have to dig up the name for this one, it’s in its second or third year with me and keeps looking better.

A scented leaved geranium (pelargonium actually) with cut leaves, variegation and scent. Too much or something for everyone?

This scented geranium is another plant who’s ID is lost in the pot-full-o-tags database. I should probably work on that.

Another one to overwinter in the garage, my first aeonium is looking well. Hopefully it can handle the high-water location I planted it in -a pot with a variegated hebe and cape fuschia (phygelia).

This one’s label must still be near the top of the tag bucket since it’s a new purchase. A good gardener would go out there, find it and label it…. but all I’ve got for you is it’s not “Schwarzkopf”.

Now to wrap things up (so I can finally get to work on the stupid basement tiling job I started) here are my foliage stars.

Canna “Tropicana” might be the most obscene show of gaudy color in my garden. I love it with the dahlias and rudbeckia. Good thing there’s some green nearby to calm things down.

Morning light on the sunflower patch.

My ‘Polish cannas’ were a gift which traces it’s history back to a friend’s old Polish neighbor. It’s probably really canna indica “purpurea” or “Russian red”.

And same cannas at noon. A sculptural plant I think.

The small blooms aren’t much for a flower lover, but they have a graceful look and the hummingbirds appreciate them.

So that’s my foliage, thanks for sticking it out. I did manage to keep all the coleus out (but of course there’s still all of September for that) and I hope that gave a little relief, but I was really surprised by how much color and interest I get from foliage. Maybe I am growing up and my tastes are maturing…. but I hope not. I like my messes of color too much!

Thanks Christina for hosting and thanks for opening my eyes to all that foliage does in the garden.

Welcome to Fall

Sep29

Now that autumn is here I have officially given up on watering the garden. The cooler temperatures are not as deadly as the summertime heat, and the rain we had a week ago should be enough to keep things alive. So things are on their own for a while.

Most of the vegetable garden is done anyway. Yesterday I let the kids pick the pumpkins and decorate the porch for Halloween.

The ‘Red Wing’ onions were also harvested as well as the last of the eggplant. This pretty much finishes up the garden for the year (with the exception of a few peppers and a single brussel sprout plant). It’s a shame the dry weather sapped all my enthusiasm for a fall planting, the idea of a fresh lettuce harvest right about now sounds very nice.

Despite the end of regular watering, the dahlias continue to put out flowers and carry on. But they are beginning to look tired, and anytime the sun gets strong the leaves wilt. Just about everything looks tired. dahlias in the vegetable garden

The only dahlia that actually looks better now is this one. I need to look up the name, but the color that looked awful in July shines in autumn.

In case you haven’t already picked up on it, the vegetable garden tends to become a flower garden as the season progresses. Any gap in the plantings quickly fills with self sown verbena, Persicaria orientalis, and amaranthus ‘hot biscuits’. The amaranthus has a weedy look that not everyone appreciates, but I like it, and have been very generous with spreading the seedlings throughout the yard. At this time the seedheads seem to glow in the autumn sun. the late summer vegetable garden

The glow of autumn light is a signal to start thinking about protecting the tender plants for winter. My fig has had a troubled season. It spent the winter in the dark of the garage and began sprouting in January. The sprouts dried off by March but then a few pots of water brought some new shoots for April. By May I decided to use its pot for other, healthier looking plants, and while the fig waited for a new home (perched with rootball exposed on a spare saucer) it died again, this time I thought for good… on to the compost pile it went. But like cats, apparently figs have several lives. Around July I noticed a few sprouts coming up out of the compost and upon investigation found the fig root ball to be the source. Finally it was given a decent home, and it’s grown this year without any resentment. Now what to do this winter…..

Also needing a winter home are the tropicals on the deck. Even though I only paid three dollars for this red dipladenia, I can’t let it die! So either the dipladenia or the pansies will need to be repotted and brought in. I would have never thought of this combo, but pansy seeds do their own thing.

I don’t even want to think about the rest of the non-hardy deck plants. They’re growing and blooming and doing well in general even though I never got around to any of the summertime repotting or transplanting I had planned. blooming succulents on deck

The geranium should hang on in the dark of the garage, maybe the rosemary, but I’ll need someplace warmer for the coleus.

Fortunately the tropical garden survives the winter by seed or stored tuber. No windowsills needed for this end of the garden.

…and I’m finally getting some work done instead of just sipping drinks in the shade. The compost pile was turned and a bonanza of “god enough” compost was found underneath. It’s as dry as a bone in the pile, so I’m surprised there was any decay going on at all, but the plants will love it and I’m grateful for any scraps I find. the question will be “who gets it?”

Actually there’s no question, my favorite new bulbs always get the scarce compost. Here’s the newest bed in the back of the meadow. A privet hedge (luckily privet isn’t invasive here) is planned for along the fence, and a snowdrop (galanthus) bed will get its start here. I’ll bore you with the varieties next spring but for now here’s a picture of my usual low work (ie lazy) bed preparations.A couple inches of topsoil from elsewhere in the garden is spread out, bulbs are pressed down into the raked surface, a few inches of compost is used to top off and cover. The compost I used has a good amount of soil mixed in, but if it was more organic I’d cover the bulbs with a layer of garden soil too. They should be just fine here, and I’ll give them a good mulch of chopped autumn leaves once they come down.

I celebrate fall with bulb planting, I love getting the bulbs nestled down into the earth for next spring, I just wish the soil wasn’t so unfriendly and dry.

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.

sorta like suburbia

more than you ever wanted to know about my garden

Category Archives: soil prep/compost