Spring garden post with pics!

Her Pinkness sprawls across the corner of two yards; this is only part of her glory. She is repeated from yard to yard to yard across the neighborhood. Someday I will find someone who knows her name.

Senetti is the unexpected star of this year's garden. She brings us butterflies of various kinds. Because the wind kept blowing her over, she ius tucked into a pot which currently contains two American elderberries. You can see one at the front of the pot.

This is the old metal shelf unit that I repurposed for a raised garden bed. It's filled with compost and sticks, lots and lots of sticks. The blackberries are Triple Crown and the strawberries are Ft Laramie. Various herbs share the space also, including garden sage, thyme, lemon mint, and parsley.

The cherry trees are in a bed which was layered with compost and leaves. The clay is as sticky and bricklike as they come, and so there is a layer of half-done compost on top. It's made a big difference. You can see that the onions and asparagus like it just fine. The bags in the background are what is left of the gift of leaves.

The Mock Orange smells so beautiful this year! I'm waiting for the day when it bursts into exuberant bloom like Her Pinkness did; should be tomorrow or the next day!

The Long View, lol... these are the various pots on the driveway, including my strawberries from last year, the red-veined sorrel, the lilac, and a new rose. Behind them are the trees--hard to see, I know--on the far right (in the southwest corner of the yard) is the apricot, then the peach (not leafed out), then the two plums toward the southeast.

This is the long raspberry bed in process. Gryph the Garden Builder did much of the work on this one. It started with a layer of sticks which was trampled down to six inches; after that came layer after layer of leaves and dirt (with lots more sticks mixed in) which we were gifted by a neighbor after a yard cleanup.

Just a few more bags of leaves and dirt to go...

The finished bed!

After this long brutal summer....

The cukes have given us one last fruit; it was invisible until the vines died back.

The tomato bin has proven surprisingly resilient; I expect being two thirds oak leaf compost means it holds a lot of water. Really, that bin has the nicest soil on the property! It's been subject to squirrel depradations lately and I rather think there may be nut trees sprouting come spring. I smoothed the soil back out, broadcast carrot seeds over the whole bin, and dumped half a big trash bag of mixed dried leaves over the top. So far the squirrels are leaving it alone and the tomatoes seem to have perked up even more. There are two pepper plants on the right hand end and they're just loving having their feet covered. No fruits from anything yet, but there are blossoms on all the plants.

A closer look. I am so sold now on planting in leaf compost! If there is ANY way I can manage it, I am going to be steali---errrrr, I mean SAVING, yes, saving---bags of leaves wherever I find them this fall!

What's left of my gardens after summer's brutality. The pots are mostly empty, the garden about half empty. The weeds and the sprawling tomato vines, plus the honeyvine milkweed on the fence all make it look better than it is. I never got green beans and the plants were the first established garden plants to burn out this year. The cukes produced--we had to pull them half-size, but they produced until they also burnt out. The tomatoes did not produce but have only died back by about a third. The eggplant has been a modern marvel; small seedy fruits with bittr skins but the plants just keep on growing. The peppers have been lackluster, half-dead, and the lilac pepper did die. The strawberries and snow peas died out at the beginning of July and the snow peas I planted to replace them died in mid-July.

In the pots, the herbs and rose bushes have all died, except for one mint plant (Mint Julep) and the itty-bitty remains of the bronze fennel plant. Four strawberries survived, and the kohlrabi survived. The chrysanthemum seems okay, but the geraniums have all died mostly back. The red-veined sorrell was doing GREAT and jusssst before I went to harvest it a squirrel took the whole doggoned plant, right back to the roots!!

The lilac and the blueberry died--I swear, that lialc is the queen of resurrection, because this is the third time in two years it has leafed back out again. The blue-ray blueberry has green stems yet, but no leaves at all. I cannot tell if it's just dormant or if it truly has died.

Most of the pots just need to be replanted, which is why we put them in the back yard today. Autumn sunshine and the close proximity of the hose will, I hope, work an autumn miracle and give me a good garden over the next couple of months.... once I figure out the squirrell-proofing.

The experimental garden is flourishing in late summer and early autumn. What you cannot tell from this pic is that the squirrels have already made off with the first and biggest sunflower heads; those are the secondary buds from low down on the plants. The morning glories bloom every day into the midafternoon, deeeeeeep purple beauties, Grandpa Ott's (an heirloom). That's an eggplant dangling out the side there behind the sunflowers; it has a compadre on the other side of this garden.

The pinto beans have scaled themselves way back. During early and mid-August they were lush and overpowering, sprawling all over the garden and into the yard with leaves as huge as those on the morning glories and just COVERED with white blossoms. Now they are small again and have a couple beans. Sheesh.

Did I remember to mention how brutal this summer was??

There is purslane in there.

Somewhere.

This is the eggplant in the main garden, which has finally caught up with the eggplants in the experimemtals garden. That's quite a testamonial to Dylan's Microbe Booster because this eggplant is a month older than the others and was ahead of them for quite a while, but it just didn't weather the heat as well as they did. Now it is gifting me with nodding lavender beauty and ruffly huge gray-green leaves. I think it will probably do well for the rest of the autumn.

Are they not gorgeous? I'll try to catch a picture when the morning glories are open. I love the way the purple and gold complement each other.

I started this post with what's left... here is what's coming, more snow peas. I planted them in patches around the pepper plants at the far right end of the main garden and overseeded them with parsley and cilantro, then dumped the other half of the big bag of mixed leaves on top. So far no more squirrel depredations in here, either, and the peppers in here perked up as sis the luffa. Might have had something to do with the compost I spread around pretty liberally before I broadcast the herb seeds--that huge bin of sticks is finally giving me REAL compost!

All in all I'd say we survived summer okay, if rather bruised and battered around the edges. Now to see if we can flourish in autumn. Wishing you a long gentle season of recovery and/or new growth as well!

Bright Blessings,

Cath

An August Diversion

My water bill was $167. I almost fell over. But yanno, I said all summer that I didn't care what it cost, I was GOING to keep my trees and my gardens alive. I did it. It was brutal; I think Wichita set a record for the number of consecutive days over 100. At least once we hit 114 with a heat index at 122. I put a thermometer on my shady front porch and day after day after day I came home from work to see it registering at 110. I was sick from the heat constantly, our air conditioner ran constantly, my plants wilted constantly, my hose ran 24 hours a day sometimes. The plants on my front porch couldn't take it and started dying back.

And then one day I noticed I had parsley sprouting in the jog-out of the main garden. This tickled me, since I had broadcast an enormous number of herb seeds there and only gotten tree seedlings (ailanthus, thou art NOT my friend!). So I was looking forward to a long autumn full of parsleyish goodness.

And then, yanno, I saw something.... something intriguing... something busily decimating my parsleyish goodness. Oh what can I say? I can go buy parsley at the grocery store, yanno? But a swallowtail butterfly, well, it has to eat what's there.

So it did, ate both plants down to the nubbins, but I just couldn't bring myself to mind.

Isn't it gorgeous? Black Swallowtail butterflies are not as colorful as the caterpillars. They are actually black, with yellow or orange spots along the edges of their wings. The females also have blue iridescent spots on their hind wings. This link has pictures. http://www.butterflyfunfacts.com/easternblack.php

The parsley, btw, is growing again.

Catching Up In the Garden: End of July

At the end of July, I transplanted tomatoes and herbs from their pots on the front porch into the gardens. Two tomatoes and a chive plant were moved into the jog-out of the main garden. Cucumbers are growing at the back of this jog-out, and Mexican Mint Marigold has been transplanted near the right front. I transplanted other herbs but they died immediately and I cannot remember now what they were... oy. It was brutally hot.

Looking across the yard past the Oops tree to the main garden. You can see it was pretty green, but still young.

A tomato set! This is the ONLY tomato this garden gave me all summer.

This tomato set and ripened on the front porch. I picked it before I transplanted the tomato vines.

The Potato Bin gave us so very little, but it did leave me compost. My neighbor mixed in a 2 cubic foot bag of potting soil for me after I pulled the potatoes (no soil in the tub, though), and I transplanted several tomato vines from the front porch. I also planted pumpkin seeds but they never sprouted, and I planted borage and nasturtium which sprouted poorly only to be immediately eaten but something. I repurposed a bed sheet and some dirty clothespins as a shade cloth. It worked pretty well for almost a month but was finally blown completely off the plants in a storm near the end of August. By that time the tomatoes were well rooted, so I left it off.

The experimental garden. Remember I said last post you wouldn't see the purslane again? It's in there.... somewhere....

This garden gets watered by putting the hose in the compost bin near the edge, so it not only had Dylan's Microbe Booster working for it, it also gets regular drinks of compost tea. This is probably one reason it survived daily wilting all summer.

One of the cucumber vines and the only two luffa gourds that sprouted. See the dark leaf veins in the luffas? They're hungry, really hungry... only me, I was still thinking everything had gotten a virus from the black walnut leaves and I FORGOT that dark leaf veins are a sign of nitrogen deficiency. Duh.

I worried when the luffas sprouted that they would cross-pollinate with the cukes but my fears were groundless; they STILL haven't bloomed and the cukes are burnt out now.

Next Up: An August Diversion

Catching Up: Mid-July in the Garden

Here is the Experimental Garden. You can see my friend Dylan's Microbe Booster has the plants growing well, despite the heat. This garden lived longer and performed better than the Main Garden; it is as a matter of fact, still going strong now in September despite wilting in the heat nearly every day in August. Notice the purslane in the center of the garden--you won't see it again.

The Experimental Garden from the front, no purslane visible. Those tiny heart-shaped leaves at the back left are Grandpa Ott's Morning Glory. Pinto beans are in the front, sunflowers at the back right, eggplants on each side.

The Potato Bin, growing slowly in oak leaves but mostly making compost. Next post, end of July.

Gardenage! We have achieved Gardenage!

Well am I ever happy this evening!! At long last we have started our garden!

It happened like this, you see. I went to the pots on the front porch to get sage and French tarragon on Sunday afternoon, and could not for the life of me FIND my French tarragon! This, my dears, is a disaster of EPIC proportions; I waited almost a year to get that plant, and I clearly remembered bringing it home and I was preeetttttty certain I planted it *doubtful look* well I must have planted it, right? Because it wasn't still in its pot, so it must have been planted....

.........but I. Couldn't. Find. It.

EPIC proportions. It kept me awake, fretting, for part of Sunday night. I mean, it's not like one can just zip out and get a new plant whenever. The season will end soon, the hardware store will sell out, and THEN where will I be? And you can't grow French tarragon from seed, because it's sterile; you have to buy the plants from a nursery. And it's already mid-May.

Did I mention the season will end soon, and the hardware store will be out of plants?

You might remember that we don't have a car. There aren't any nurseries on the bus route.

It was my only chance.

So Monday afternoon there I was, groceries bagged and in my Old Lady Shopping Cart (I love that thing!!), and I mosied on from the grocery store to the hardware store and riiight into the plant section. Now ya gotta know the plants are outside, and so here I am pushing my Old Lady Shopping Cart half-full of groceries (including perishable cheese, ooops, lol) in and out of every aisle of plants even though I KNEW where the herbs would be, just dreaming my way through the garden.

It was doggoned hard to walk away from a plant called Two-Row Stonecrop, a kind of Sedum. You see, I was wearing a green shirt and pink sweat jacket (with sequins, no less!)... and the Stonecrop was green with pink edges! The pink almost matched my sweat jacket!

Oh well, I was good, I walked away. Eventually, after much dreaming through aisles, I came to the herbs. Aaaaack!! They didn't have it!! But then I found the last two plants tucked away on the back side of the rack (see I told you they were gonna run out!!)...... and son of a gun, French tarragon doesn't look like I thought it did! It IS on my porch, snugged up against the lavender plant!

So I had been to the grocery store, right? And Gryph LOVES bell peppers, had asked specifically for yellow and red bell peppers, and I went to the produce section to buy some-------------and they were $3! *faints dead away* Can you imagine, $3 for ONE bell pepper??!!!!

And there, right across from the herb rack, are--ta daa!--bell pepper plants.

Well, you know what happened next. I pushed that Old Lady Shopping Cart home with four bell pepper plants, one each of yellow, orange, red, and (of all lovely things!) lilac. And two eggplant plants. AND four strawberry plants, because they were half-price.... all of them perched on top of my groceries. *cheesy grin*

The flower pots on the front porch are already full, yanno, and there are still three tomato plants left to pot up. What was I going to DO with four bell peppers, two eggplants, and four strawberries?!

So the back yard is newly fenced this weekend, and it's a giant thrill to the dogs to be allowed to run free. After I got the groceries put up I took them out and hooked up our new hose so I could water the rose bush and the mock orange... the BARE ground under the rose bush....

Here's the thing. No matter how disabled a gardener might be, if you hand her too many plants she is GOING to find a place to dig.

Here is the beginning of our garden. The rose bush is on the right. Monday evening I watered the ground (thoroughly, I thought), started weeding, and then dug four holes and planted the strawberries. That's when I discovered that all that water I poured onto the ground only penetrated half an inch, and also when I discovered that my soil--that I thought was the nicest in the yard!-- is hard clay! How the plants are rooting through it is beyond me, but root they do, ailanthus (I call it stink tree, lol), dandelion, grass and even a few violets.

Today I made a HUGE discovery. Gryph likes to dig!! Wooohooo! This very sore gardener was thrilled to turn the chore over! That's what you see in the above photo, the area that Gryph worked on, pulling weeds and tree roots, digging out grass, and then using the Garden Claw to loosen up that hard clay soil. I had watered again last night and then this morning too, and Gryph kept the hose available.

You can't see it, but there's much more than strawberries, eggplants, and peppers planted in that garden. I also planted seeds: Grandpa Ott morning glory, Tendergreen Burpless cucumber, Bloomsdale long-standing spinach, early white Vienna kohlrabi, melting sugar snow peas, and Oregon sugar pod snap peas. Then I watered everything in, really thoroughly. If any of them come up, I'll be thrilled, and if they all come up, well, they'll look like a little jungle and maybe the squirrels will leave them alone.

Or not. I swear, one of these days I'm gonna get a t-shirt that says "Official Squirrel Hater." But in the meantome, I have plans!!



See the bamboo lined out to mark the shape of the eventual garden? That's native bamboo, by the way, from a friend down the street. It's also called rivercane. When you read about a canebreak, that's this stuff.



Here's another pic. You can see that this side of the back yard is really a work in progress, and what a lot of work it is!

And here is my hero, the Digger of Gardens and Vanquisher of Weeds, Gryph. She was actually sorry to stop digging for the day! Am I lucky, or what?!



So now, from That Garden in That Yard of That House, good night. May you sleep well and may your dreams bring you happiness and peace!

Cath

Plans for That House

Yesterday I spent some time talking to the Handyman. He reminded me that duct tape will buy me some time on a leaking drain pipe, so I've got that on my mental to-do list.

He was pretty blunt with his opinion about the inspector requiring we get a licensed contractor to repair the brick wall. Like me, he believes she overreacted, since the wall is a decorative facing and not structural at all. We have plans to put outdoor cabinets and a gardener's workbench in where the bricks fell out, so that the structural wall is protected from the elements and I have the outdoor storage I need for the lawn mower and my gardening tools.... but he has to get a licensed contractor to work with us on that, and it means a higher price. *sigh* Still, he's willing to work with us on a payment plan and that is absolutely wonderful. His goal is to do the work we need done at a fair enough price that in the end, our house's value is increased more than we had to pay him for the work. I suspect we'll be keeping him and his crew busy for a long time to come.

We qualified for the weatherization program but we have to get the roof fixed first, and probably also will have to get the brick wall fixed, since the acceptance letter said "major repairs" had to be done before they would help us. It's okay because the waiting list is six to twelve months now.

In order to get the roof fixed, we have to apply for the emergency repair program. They do roofs. We'll qualify--it's income based--but I don't know if they have any funds left right now.

My first garden is in, teensy though it may be. One eggplant, one strawberry, and two geraniums now live next to the front steps. Herbs and raspberry vines are still to go. The Mystery Shrub may be a Mock Orange (Philadephus). I am utterly enchanted whatever it is, because it's STILL opening new blooms and the old ones last for days, so that small section of fence is filling with lush white fragrance!