The garden takes shape

So being gone two Saturdays in a row has done a lot for me mentally, but physically I can't take it anymore. If I were out at a spa getting massages all day long it would be one thing, but two Saturdays flying stunt kites down the beach only to come back sore and tired, then hit the yard the next day? Murder on the legs. (but at least I don't feel guilty missing my body flow class!)
While at the beach I read the paper (cuz they give it to us at the hotel) and they had a monster article on tomato plants and info on monster sales this weekend. Eek! I gotta get my garden moving! After giving some TLC to my herb section I made my way to the back of the yard for the Attack on the Weeds. I pulled about a dozen foxgloves out of the garden beds (they are mostly planted under the cedar just next to the gardens now) yanked a good couple cans of weeds, rebuilt my walls and started diggin up the sod for the new bed. Dan helped by torching the grass where the new bed will be... not that he really needed to, but he enjoys getting out his weed dragon.

Next week I need to finish getting the sod dug up, then build the interior walls of the garden somehow so I can be ready for dirt. This is going to require coordinating with Dan, as we'll need to take the camper off the truck and have a couple cubic yards dumped in the back (this'll be cheaper and much, much easier than having it delivered... since I don't want to shovel dirt from the driveway and Dan can drive the truck right up to the garden beds) I haven't priced out those cute little interior wall things yet at the garden stores, I'm debating about putting in a low fence like thing, or just using the extra tree trunks we have lying around and hoping they stay put. Maybe a couple of good sturty tent stakes will hold them in place? Last year I used logs and they rolled just a bit after I got the dirt in place, but I'd like to have a flat surface if it's economical enough (and I'd like to avoid using cinder blocks for the rest of it, because... they're heavy)

Pictures!

OK, for this to be impressive you have to scroll down to last week's photos of the Weed Beds of Doom - but look at how much progress I made in just a couple of hours! Wee!


This is a closer shot of the new bed. The cleaner boulder to the right is where the bed used to stop, everything to the left was lawn two days ago (well, half of it was dead from having left storm debris piled there) Dan was kind enough to torch what was left of the living grass, so in theory it'll be OK to just flip it over and dump dirt on top of it. Of course, I feel the need to dig down so my roots have more space to grow... hence the two new boulders I've dug up. If I'm lucky I'll find enough rocks to make a wall without having to build anything!


My herbs from above looking down. Rosemary rocks... it's SO easy to grow and these guys (the three big ones on the right) were on sale a couple years ago for 5 bucks a piece. Woo!


It has always been my dream to have a big ol' herb garden planted in some funky geometric shape like in all my herb books. I discovered, however... that if I plant them too far from my kitchen I tend not to use them. So, they live in pots, and for now the best place for them is this wall. From left to right, oregano, flatleaf parsley, chives, flatleaf parsley, garlic chives/dark leaf oregano and.. raspberry.
The oreganos and chives wintered over and came back on their own, the parsley is new this year, as is the raspberry (not an herb, but we don't have the designated raspberry area ready for planting yet, and this pot was empty, so it's renting space) I moved my thyme bushes into pots and stuck them on the railing holders so they are currently hanging off the deck near the waterfall. I'm not entirely happy with having the herbs on the wall, but it's the best place for them right now. Although, if the deck railing works out, I can imagine having an entire row of pots hanging off the railing and growing all my herbs that way... then I wouldn't have to worry about the racoons knocking them off the wall again... hmmm...


Seedlings!
The top shelf are the seeds I started in March... the little whispy guys are tomato vines, the ones on the left are what's left of my cucmber seeds (only 5 :( ) The bottom shelf are all the squash seeds I restarted two weeks ago. They are growing like gangbusters, and are much stronger than the seedlings I started last month. Only one bush squash seed didn't sprout, I think I may have planted it too deep. The tomato plants are growing, fragile as they look, they are developing true leaves... so although the greenhouse doesn't feel any warmer on the inside than the rest of the house, they must have been somewhat drafty being by my windows, so the plastic is helping. I figure once I get the seedlings into the ground outside I can use the shelves in the firepit area (maybe even put my herbs on that instead of the wall? I'm just always thinking, aren't I?)

Oh yeah, couple of updates on plans. Dan has put a halt to the idea of putting tomato vines in hanging baskets. damnit. The MIL (bless her?) backed him up by suggesting that if the tomatoes were to split then it would drip juice on the deck. Damnit. So Mr. Egg would rather have "something pretty" growing in those baskets. Whatever. He thinks I'm going a little "tomato crazy" because it's all I talk about planting, but it's just beause it's all I talk about planting, it's not all that I plan on planting. Besides, with the crap crops that we've had in the past, I need to plant more plants so we have a better chance of getting some food out of all this effort!
He also bought a few cone-shaped baskets to hang on the fence and plant "something neat" into. Apparently he has talked to the neighbor and he said we can do whatever we want to our side of the fence. He handed them to me as if I'm going to do all the planting... part of me wants to hang at least one on the chain link by my garden and plant (dumdumdumdaaaaa!) Tomatoes! After all, if my seedlings do make it I'm going to have like 10 cherry tomato plants to stick in the ground somewhere!

To answer LauraJ - and seedlings!

To answer LauarJ's question in the comments a few days ago... the jean thing in the photo is a quilt, which I now use as a rug under the rocking chair because the chair makes scratches on my floor.
A couple years ago I used to frequent a sewing forum, and a couple times a year they have stash competitions of varying degrees. This was my entry for a recycling contest... I took about 10 pairs of old jeans and some flannel that I'd used as curtains in one of the places we lived, and made a ragtime quilt out of it. Silly me, I put batting in it too, so the combination of flannel, denim and a layer of batting makes this puppy really heavy. Here is a photo of it back when I'd first finished it, since the I've trimmed all the strings back so it looks a little nicer as a rug.


The seedlings that I planted back around the 14th are growling like crazy! Add to that, Gayle planted zucchini seeds at school, and they are huge as well. I'm realy hoping to keep her plants alive, she is very proud of them and is excited at the idea of getting food in our garden that she grew all by herself (even if she won't actually eat the food!) I still have 5 cucumber plants left from the first round of seed starting, although a couple of them are looking a little faint, and the tomato plants are still alive... some have grown a couple of whimpy little true leaves, but other than that they still seem so, so tiny. I may end up keeping them in pots outside near the house for a while, once it is warm enough to put them out, and buy plants for the bigger garden. We'll see. I know for the cherry tomato plants I had already planned on keeping a couple in hanging baskets on the deck (saw it in a greenhouse once, the vine cascades down like an ornamental plant... very cool!) so if I can keep these seedlings alive long enough, that's where they'll be.

Happy Earth Day!

I spent a good portion of Earth Day Weekend either in the yard or at the nursary down the street. This place has become my new favorite place to buy plants, the prices are decent and the people are far more knowledgable than those mega-home improvement stores. For example, did you know that in my region, Mother's Day is the best time to put tomato plants outside? No? Neither did I, because the mega stores like to put tons of plants out as soon as they can in April, which always made me believe that getting my garden together in the beginning of May was far behind when I *could* be starting my garden. Turns out I have perpetually been right on time with starting my garden... and all this time I thought I was behind. I still want to get my garden beds prepared soon, so they'll be ready to go when I can put plants in the ground.

This weekend I mowed the lawn and even brought out the weed whacker to get those pesky sections that I can't reach with the lawn mower. I still haven't gotten the angle quite right on that weed whacker... either I'm not close enough to cut the grass, or I get it too deep and end up digging up the ground... but with a little damage control I managed to make the edges look slightly better than when I started. Beyond that I concentrated on the beds surrounding the deck, filling 3 32 gallons cans with weeds and forget-me-nots.
The Waterfall

It doesn't look like I did much, but the vinca and bishop's weed were both growing over most of the rocks next to the waterfall, and choking out the hostas we've got. Weeding this area takes a lot of balance, as I have to prop myself on unsteady rocks and yank plants out of the ground. We also had some unruly forget-me-nots growing from between the rocks and through the ornamental grasses to the right side of the waterfall. I left the smaller guys in the middle of the vinca though... I like the blue flowers and in years past when I try to yank them from the center of the vinca it tends to leave unsightly holes in the hill. I also had to pull the bird bath apart and re-level the base, as a critter has decided this hill would make a nice home, and the entrance should be dug out from under the heaviest item in our yard *rolling eyes* The top area, where the massive lilies are growing, is now happily mulched with our magic Storm Mulch Mix (the piles of our shredded storm debris)

The Dogwood Bed


This is the bed to the left of the waterfall area. I pulled all the weeds growing in the big stairs (I really think we should gravel those sometimes) weeded under the dogwood and mulched. Ten wheelbarrows of mulch moved from the far corner of the yard down the hill to this beastly area, but it looks so darned pretty now. The dogwood is blooming (big tree in this shot) this week will be a great time to take pictures of these guys.

Star Magnolia/waterfall area from the top

This is the same area, looking from the middle of the yard towards the house. A lot of today's work involved crawling under the star magnolia (big tree in the middle) and digging out all the dead leaves from last winter. Gotta say, leaving them over the winter helped keep weeds from growing under there... most of the weeds grew in areas that had not been covered in leaves. It's still a pain in the tookas to climb under there though. I mulched this too, to make it just as pretty as the rest of the beds.

The Birdfeeder Bed


This has been Dan's ongoing project for the last month or so. When we moved into the house this bed housed a dying butterfly bush, and that was about it. Slowly we have been adding plants... this year Dan took an oversized hosta, split it into three sections, and put them in the ground and has systematically added plants around this whole bed. Our big issue is that the previous owners moved their lilac bush from wherever it was to the spot it is now, which blocks the sprinkler (which they also put in) so we are currently debating about changing that sprinkler head to a series of pop-ups or a soaker hose solution for this bed.

Time to hang my head in shame. :)





My garden beds, this year's before photo. After the storms, Dan pulled a lot of the cinder blocks we used for the side walls and built up a mid-yard fire pit to get rid of a lot of debris. Do you like my cover crop of weeds and foxgloves? I actually like fox gloves, so they will be removed and placed in a happy home at the back of the yard.

April 14

So I made a bit of an impulse buy this week:



It was on sale and I figure since covering the tomato seedlings seems to have helped them (they perked up, and some even have true leaves coming in!) I figured a big plastic dome over everything might be a good idea. Technically it is supposed to be an outdoor greenhouse, but I couldn't figure out how this outside would keep the plants any warmer than they already were inside my house... particularly at night. So I put it together and stuck it in my front windows. Well, it looks better than that old folding card table did anyway. I also re-started a few squash seeds... I figure that I'm not getting my garden beds put together by mid-April anyway, so I might as well just start some more seeds and get them growing... maybe by the time they are ready to harden off I'll have a place to put them outside.

The frog eggs have landed, in massive quantity. I found a couple of terrarium type things at the store that have clasp on lids, so we can safely have some froggy friends grow without the danger of them crawling out of the bowl. (The first year we pulled tadpoles that happened - luckily I saw the little bugger up on the bowl and set him free outside immediately) After digging through the algae to find the egg sacks it became clear to me that I could no longer put off cleaning the pond, so that was my Main Accomplishment of The Day today. I'm happy to report that my pond is now sludge free, I have recovered my froggy statue that the raccoons plunked into the pond last winter, and the waterfall is in good working order, so perhaps the mosquitoes will stop laying eggs in my water! (And I did replace most of the egg sacks in the pond, save for the ones I pulled for Gayle's preschool class and for our own little watch-them-grow cage in the house)

Dan has been busy working on getting the new plants into the ground. Once he is done cleaning up the messes he has made (he likes to pile weeds on the sides of the beds and just leave them there for weeks at a time. Grr....) I'll get some pictures.

April 9, 2007

Ugh.
I think if I want to start seeds indoors in the future I'm going to have to invest in some sort of table top green house. The little plastic lids that go over the seed pot starter kits are OK for smaller plants, but once they touch the top of the plastic I have to take them off, then they get too cold to grow any further.

This is what I have discovered after finally talking to some nursary folks. I described my entire seed-care process and the lady can only assume that my living room is too cold for the plants to grow decently. I've replaced the cover on my tomato seedlings to warm them up, but I have lost all the zucchini plants and most of the bush squash as well. Several cucumbers are still alive, but they have also simply stopped growing. I'm debating about looking for a little green-house type set up this season or just chucking the whole seedling thing and buying plants from the nursary. My garden is nowhere near ready for planting anyway, so I have a good few weeks to think about it. My tomato vines can at least stay under the cover for a bit, but everything else has been repotted and is far too large to put back under that wee little cover.

I figured I'd end up buying plants anyway. I learn something new every season, hu?

In other yard news...

I've been hearing the frogs in the yard again, and yesterday I noticed what looks to be egg sacks in the pond. Yay! I plan on pulling some out and putting them in a fish bowl so we can watch the tadpoles grow up close (and out of harm's way, since the raccoons like to eat the little buggers out of the pond) but I also want to bring some to Munchkin's school, so I need to find a container at a store for that. I have to pull them out to clean the sludge from the pond anyway, and I'll probably put at least some of them back in the pond once I'm done with that chore. (can you feel the excitement? Scraping muck from the bottom of a pond is just so fun!)

I mowed the lawn for the first time this season on Tuesday and it makes the entire yard look tons better. The lawnmower picked up a lot of the fiddly little branches we missed in our post-storm cleanup and helps the yard look nice and even. Dan is still convinced that we need to kill off the moss, but I've learned to live with it. It's still green, and there's enough grass growing through it that it looks like lawn for the most part. There are a few areas that look like forrest floor instead of lawn, but I'm not complaining. It's green, so who cares? If we concentrate on ridding our lawn area of anything, I vote dandylions and clover, because the flowers attract bees.

More pictures next entry... we bought a lot of new plants last weekend and are in the process of finding them homes.