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Monday, May 30, 2016

No more boxwoods

I finally finished cutting down the boxwoods in the front gardens. When I last worked on this project, I managed to cut down two of the boxwoods in the perennial bed. Two down, two to go.

looking west

looking east
much better
One of them was replaced with a transplanted rudbeckia and two prairie dropseeds.


The other was replaced with a transplanted Shasta daisy and one prairie dropseed.


I ordered the prairie dropseed from a company in Wisconsin that specializes in native plants. They are very small now, but should be about 2-3 feet high and wide when full grown.

Next I moved on to the boxwoods in the herb garden.

before
after
These two were replaced with two New Jersey tea plants that I got from the same nursery,


closer look
The New Jersey tea should be about 3 feet tall and wide, and will have lots of white flowers that should attract butterflies and bees.

The only plants in the herb garden that were here when we moved in are two large rubeckia and two Shasta daisies. The rest of the plants I've either moved to the perennial bed (lilies and daisies) or cut down (yuccas and boxwoods). To anyone paying attention, that bed will look completely different this year than last.

Maybe that's why I like gardening. While it certainly requires patience, which I struggle with, it also offers instant gratification. You can completely change the way an area looks just by putting in some new plants.

I can hardly wait for all the new ones to grow up.

Thursday, May 26, 2016

Boom!

I realized the other day just how much growing had been happening in my raised beds. Apart from someone nibbling on the beet sprouts, things are looking good.

Might be time to start adding kale to my smoothies.


Garden fresh peas are on the horizon.


Look at that broccoli!


Little, baby cabbage heads.


Radishes which I promptly picked and turned into radish relish.


I've never had it before, but it sounded interesting, and I'm so glad I tried it. Delicious! I'm trying to come up with new things to put it on.

Looks like it could be my best carrot year ever.


The potatoes finally sprouted.


They've grown so much since I took this picture that I've already put the first layer of straw over them.

I finally planted cucumbers, zucchini, and squash (container varieties), so the only thing left to put in the raised beds is the green beans, and I need to get their tower set up before I plant them. Hopefully the rain will stop long enough this weekend for me to get that done.


Saturday, May 21, 2016

Tomatoes

Got busy after work the other evening and got the tomatoes planted out. As with the peppers, I started tomatoes from seed for the first time this year. I planted the same four varieties I had last year: Nebraska Wedding, Amish Paste, Mexico Midget and Italian Heirloom, all from Seed Savers Exchange.

The previous owners of this house had a couple tomato plants in this bed last year. That was one of the few good gardening decisions they made, so I'm also using the bed for tomatoes this year.


During compost-ageddon, I added some new compost to the bed, and the weeds and volunteers were already making good use of it. Since I have tall, sturdy tomato cages, I decided to try four plants in this bed, one of each variety.


Four a little perspective, this is the view from next to the bed, looking toward the rest of the backyard.


You can see the lovely, giant, painful-to-walk-on river rock that covers the upper portion of the wall. Our long term goal is to re-do the wall (because it appears close to failing), terrace this area into two levels, and then cover it all with gardens and growing things, instead of rocks.

The long black hose you can see in some of the pictures is the discharge for one of our sump pumps. This house has clearly had a lot of water in its basement in the past, and we have two sump pumps, as well as long hoses on our downspouts. I'm very glad all of that work was done before we got here.

Sometimes I daydream about using all of the rock to form a creek bed right down the wall along the fence on the left and using the sump pump runoff to have my own little part-time creek. I could even put a pond at the bottom. Clearly, a daydream, but fun to imagine, all the same.

Anyway, back to the tomatoes. For each of the remaining three plants, I simply cleared an area of rocks


and cut away the landscape fabric to expose an area to plant them in.


I hate landscape fabric, but it cut away pretty easily and I actually saw worms in the soil, so it's not completely dead under there.

Interestingly, when I started digging in one of the spots, I came across this:


The remains of a tree. It was soft and very easy to dig through. Guess one of my tomatoes is going to live the hugel life.


With a little warm weather and sunshine, this area will start looking like a garden, instead of a desert.

Thursday, May 19, 2016

Peppers

I finally decided it was safe to plant out my peppers, so I loaded them in my handy garden pouch...


and carried them outside. This nifty pouch was a birthday gift from a dear friend. The same friend who gave me the awesome Soil Scoop and the beautiful K's Garden stone. It's nice to have such a thoughtful friend. (Thanks, Carla!)

This is the first year I've grown peppers from seed. They are Napoleon and Healthy from Seed Savers Exchange.



If I hadn't marked the pots, I certainly wouldn't have been able to tell them apart at this point. They are both sweet peppers. Napoleon is more of a bell pepper, and Healthy is the longer, skinny kind.

Part of my purpose in moving the rudbeckia the other day. was to open up some room on the wall for the peppers. I may eventually have to move more flowers, but for now, there was room for all six pepper plants.

planted and caged
view from behind
watered and mulched
I have to admit that climbing up and down off the wall to garden is kind of fun. Good exercise, too.


Monday, May 16, 2016

Before and after

I realized the other day that I had my first good set of before and after pictures.

August 22, 2015
May 14, 2016

August 22, 2015
May 14, 2016





Sunday, May 15, 2016

First harvest and other tidbits

Saturday was a day of random chores. I had been planning to plant out my tomatoes and peppers but our nighttime temperatures took a dip into the 30's for a couple days, so I held off. I did get a lot of other things accomplished, though.

I picked my first radishes, officially the first harvest from the new garden.


I might get smart this year and plant some more seeds so I can have radishes all season.

I finally got some stepping stones for the herb garden.

before
after
Now I have a path to get to the hose, which is behind the boxwoods.


Speaking of boxwoods, I've discovered something almost as much fun as digging out yuccas...cutting down boxwoods!

While boxwoods can certainly look nice, they require regular trimming, and they SMELL, so getting rid of them has been on the agenda since we got here. I didn't want to take them out without having something to replace them, however, since a giant empty space in the flower bed would just fill up with weeds. I have an order in for some native plants that should be coming in the next week, but another idea occurred to me the other day.

So, I cut down two of the boxwoods in the front flower bed...

one down
two down
and I dug up some of the many volunteer rudbeckias growing on the back wall, and


now I will have lots more flowers in this bed. In the front center and left in the above photo, you can see some of the lilies that I transplanted in March. This bed is going to be a full perennial garden, and the best part is that I was able to use plants that I otherwise would've thrown away.

When my other plants arrive, the last two boxwoods in this bed will go, as well as the two in the herb garden. Parts of this yard are almost unrecognizable from when we moved in, which is exactly what I wanted.

The last tidbit is some newcomers to the garden. Last weekend I helped my mom with some garden work. Part of what we did was pull up strawberry plants that had escaped their bed. I decided to try to save some of them, and I planted them in part of the wall garden.


They don't look great yet, but they're not dead.



Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Garden tour

It finally stopped raining, so I was able to plant my beets and potatoes yesterday. I'm late for both of them, but that's just how it goes. The rest of the garden is doing great.

marigolds, radishes and onions
onions, cabbage and marigolds
carrots
lettuce
onions, broccoli and carrots
onions, kale and peas
peas  in jail
Of the seven asparagus crowns I planted over three weeks ago, this spindly little sprout is the only sign of life I've seen so far. I'm concerned, but will keep watching and waiting for awhile before I declare failure.


It's so small, the camera wouldn't focus on it.