At last, some sunny days!

I've been able to spend 6 to 8 hours a day getting the garden in shape and planting, as the last few days have been sunny and gorgeous.  Make hay while the sun shines, they say.

The whole shebang: left: in progress perennial bed; top: vegetable garden; 

bottom left: rose bed; bottom right: cut flower bed. I need espalier fruit trees on that shed wall!

The seedlings in my portable greenhouse are coming along.  Those that have to wait until consistently warm days and nights before being planted are looking good.

This year I only planted one variety of slicing tomato:  'Missouri Pink Love Apple'.  For all the other varieties and colors I've tested, this is the best one for flavor and quality, so I've quit trying others.  It's classified as a pink, but it's actually red - just not as deep red as the so-called red tomatoes.  

I started a couple of varieties of French melons, because one I tried last year was so delicious: 'Savor', and one is a new one for me: 'Petit Gris' - just to see how it compares.  

I don't know why some of the melon seedlings are so chlorotic looking.  They should come out of it okay.  I can only think that maybe I germinated them in soilless seedling mix.  Most of the time I fill the packs about halfway with potting mix and then top them with seedling mix, but I remember filling some completely with seedling mix before I caught myself, and maybe those were them.

I keep planting prairie gentian (lisianthus) flowers although they can be difficult in the germination process.  In the picture below, the left are seedlings from saved seed which I assumed might not germinate well and was very wrong.  On the right are some I purchased.  The seed is so tiny that the nursery "pelletted" them (coated in a process that makes each seed more easily handled, but the germination rates are unreliable), so I ordered the colors I want and  will hope for some blossoms from which I can collect seed.

The other issue with them is they take forever to get to a size they can be planted out.  I sowed these at the end of January and beginning of February, and this is all the further they've gotten.  Those on the left are going to be difficult to separate for transplanting, and I'll no doubt lose some.  It's amazing that the seed is much smaller than grains of salt, but eventually the flowers grow to be 8 - 10 inches tall.  And, yes, they're worth it.

Some of the seedlings I've already transplanted into the garden.  Never having grown celtuce before, I didn't know whether I need to start indoor plants, so I did, and they didn't appreciate it.  I transplanted what managed to pull through and sowed seed directly in the bed around them.  They've yet to come up.  The leaves are actually a very nice taste and texture, so if I have good luck with it, I'll be planting it again in future years.  It's a Chinese lettuce that grows a long stalk that's also supposed to be good eating.  We'll see.

Celtuce

There's a rabbit in the neighborhood that likes it as well.

Which brings me to the cabbage.

I had such a time with cabbage loopers in the spring and cross-striped cabbageworms in the fall, that I decided not to plant cabbage.  Then when I was starting seeds, I forgot that decision, and when I found I had some seed left from last year of 'Verona' and 'Kalibos' varieties, I sowed them on January 11.  Germination was very poor on both varieties, so I took what remaining seed I had and soaked it in paper towels to see if it would germinate.  After I inadvertently let them dry out and resoaked them, a few germinated, so I put them in soil.  When they got big enough, and I set up the portable greenhouse, March 8, I started putting them out there during the days and bringing them indoors at night.  

After all that trouble, I had eleven little plants that I put in the ground on April 2.

On April 4, the rabbit found them.

Kindly, Mr. (or Ms.) Rabbit left the growing tip on most of them, and they're coming back.  So now I'll have another year of cabbage worm control to deal with.  Unless Rabbit comes back for the new growth.

A couple of years ago, my grandaughter helped me hack out some old yew stumps from around their house, and I brought them out to the farm to use for firewood.  Maybe, some day.  Yesterday, I repurposed them to support an old wooden wagon wheel.  "Planting" them was infintely easier than hacking and sawing and digging them out of a bed that had been mulched with large gravel for years so that the gravel was compacted into the soil over a foot deep.

This solved two issues:  what to use for a cucumber trellis since I put in permanent grape vines and climbing roses on the arbor that supported the cucumbers last year, and how to incorporate that wheel I've had my eye on for three years into the garden.

I've been watching the two muscat grapevines I planted, every day since they went into the ground, looking for signs of life.  As a watched pot never boils, a grapevine never leafs out.  The buds are swollen large, though, so surely it's not long now.  

Some of my first seedlings have been flowers that I'm growing for my new perennial bed.  I planted nearly 200!  Yarrow, dianthus and globe amaranths (which are not perennials, but I liked the orange ones so much from last year that I bought seed for all colors this year and didn't have enough room in the cut flower garden to plant them all).

I laid them out where I wanted to plant them, and since I hadn't amended the soil with bonemeal, I sprinkled it directly on them before putting them in the ground.  If it helps at all, it was a lot easier than working it into the soil.

 

At the other end of the perennial bed, I prepared space for oriental poppies that I'll sow in late summer.  The perennial bed is the third I've created by digging up years-old perennial wildflowers.  (Don't worry, there's a whole yard of them - being overgrown with grass.)  It's not a fun chore.

The roses are leafing out, so I cut back all their dead wood, which after the harsh winter was most of it.  They're nearly lost in the mulch now, but I have no doubt they'll grow up nicely.

The Emperor Orange tulips I potted up last fall are just about ready to open.   I think they're lovely right now.

The weather is not cooperating

We got another inch and a half of rain that we didn't need, plus two nights with temperatures below freezing, at the end of March, so I haven't been able to get anything planted in the vegetable garden.

We did have several nice days between bad spells earlier that allowed me to get the paths mulched and the beds topped off with more compost.  With a little luck and sunshine, in a couple of days, I should be able to plant lettuce and carrots, since they are essentially sprinkled on the top of the ground and raked in.  And hopefully I'll also be able to plant peas and beets in shallow furrows.  Normally, I would already have all those things sown, and the peas and lettuce even coming up.

This year, I mulched the paths with shredded cypress.  I had been using red-dyed hardwood mulch, which is prettier when fresh, but costs about twice as much.  And since it's only prettier for such a short while, I decided it wasn't worth it.  For a bonus, the cypress was also easier to spread.

I'm lucky to have a generous neighbor who farms cattle and composts the manure - a generous neighbor, who gave me a pickup load of three-year-old compost to spread. 

I literally stumbled across a way to easily break up the larger clumps.  If this is something everyone but me was already wise to, skip the next four pictures.  Otherwise, here's what I discovered:

Using a hard rake (not a leaf rake), like this one:

Rake up the clumps onto the tines, like so:

Then take your foot and, applying slight pressure, scrape back and forth once or twice across the clumps on top of the tines.

Voila!  Fine crumb soil!

Note:  This won't work if there's a high clay content in your soil.  That will just coat your rake tines and stick to the bottom of your shoe.  Otherwise, what a toil-saver.  I can't believe I spent the last four years hammering away at stubborn clumps with the back side of the rake, or stabbing at them with a shovel, and still not coming up with such nice texture.  Old dogs can indeed learn new tricks.

Most of the roses have started to leaf out, but there's not much to look at in the rose garden yet.

The new tulip bed is coming up.  Little grape hyacinth (Muscari) planted there have popped open their doors to let in the sunshine.

That's it for now.  We're in a bit of a holding pattern, hoping we're finally seeing the back side of old man winter.  And, as a footnote follow-up to the last post, I was indeed able to leave the rhubarb plants uncovered in spite of the freeze, since they hadn't grown so high above the ground to be injured.  Probably the fact that the freezing temps were in the wee hours of the morning instead of late at night helped as well, since it wasn't long until the sun came out.  Thankfully, everything that was up even 4-6 inches (eg. daffodils, columbine, chives and herbs) hunkered down for the night and came through unharmed.

One last thing:  my daughter-in-law sent me a picture of some beautiful lilies my son got her for her birthday.

She said my son told her they were like people who have two rows of teeth, which kind of spoiled it for her. 😂  But I couldn't resist.  I ordered some from Michigan Bulb Company:  Double stargazers.

image from Michigan Bulb Company website

I did a little research and found out they're bred as clones from a mutant stargazer whose stamens failed to form, becoming an extra set of petals instead.  They have no stamens, so no pollen.  

And, while I was at it, I ordered a pure white Oriental lily as well.  And a fern.

I've got to stop.

October garden - heading into winter

The sugar maples in the drive are putting on a beautiful display right now, at the end of October.  The first windy rain storm will take their pretty coats, so I'm torn between hoping for rain and hoping for no rain.  

The garden is essentially bare except for some herbs, lettuce and arugula and a couple small tatsoi plants and a couple rows of dead globe basil and lima beans.  I'll leave them for their roots to rot in the soil over winter, adding some compost value, and loosening up the soil when I pull them out in spring.

dead Globe Basil

Arugula, lettuce in the background

Too bad I don't have a taste for salad when the weather is cool, because the arugula and lettuce look quite nice.

Cilantro volunteers are growing well.

Perennial oregano, chives and tarragon are generally harvestable year-round unless it freezes really hard, and then they come right back to life as soon as there's a little milder weather.  These have been growing since the garden was first installed four years ago and only died down this last winter.

My second planting of beets grew to a fair size and then just sat there.  I never harvested them, wondering what they would do.  Nothing.  They didn't grow any more, and they didn't fade or die back.  I pulled them this weekend and cooked them.  The greens (or in the case of 'Bull's Blood' variety, purples) were okay, but the beetroot was bitter.

I'll have to get on the ball more quickly next year to plant a fall crop of cucumbers.  They were coming along beautifully, and I got one cucumber large enough to harvest.  

Then we had a hard frost.  And then another.  They bit the dust.

This Viceroy the second week of October was the last butterfly of the season.  I hope it got somewhere warm, but I think it was lagging too far behind its kin.

The hummingbirds vanished at the same time.

I'm surprised at what's still alive in the cut flower garden, even after two hard frosts.  I had no idea snapdragons would stay green so long.  They quit flowering a few weeks ago, but that was because hordes of some caterpillar were eating the flower buds.  

The lupine is still green, and I'm excited to see what colors bloom next year.  I'm assuming something will.  None of those I planted this year flowered, but last year's one surviving plant did, and it was fabulous.  

Two or three delphiniums are blooming, if pathetically sparsely.  I didn't realize they bloom in early summer and again in fall.  Hopefully I'll get a better stand of  them next year.  And I'll plant as many as I have seed now that I know they bloom so long into the year.

None of the plants in the cut flower garden look especially pretty now, but it's nice to see they're still alive and green.  Hopefully that means the perennials are putting some good stores of energy in their roots.  The Farmers Almanac says this area will have a mild, snowy winter, so maybe even the snapdragons will survive.  If not, then maybe they will self-seed.

The frost killed the leaves of the 'Black Pearl' peppers, leaving them with bare berries, which are mostly red now and drying up.  I'll take down most of them so they don't sprout too many volunteers next summer, and I'll cut them back early on to make shorter, bushier plants.  They got way too tall this year for their location.

I decided I have too much space in the shady end of the garden for the crops I never end up eating, so next year, I'm going to interplant beets, arugula and lettuce in one plot, and tatsoi, sorrel and celtuce (something new to me) in another.  That's going to give me a bed under the mimosa tree for spring bulbs.  I've ordered three different gorgeous tulips, a bi-colored Muscari, Thalia daffodils and Hawara Narcissus online from Tulips.com.  If they turn out to be good plants, I'll add that company to my list of sources in the sidebar.

In the meantime, I prepared the bed by putting down a layer of maple leaves I raked up and bagged last fall.

I added a layer of good soil from the compost pile.  Then I realized that the leaves, although they were beginning to mold, might still form a barrier to rain and chopped through the soil and leaves with a shovel.  I hope it was enough.

Finally, I put down a layer of finely shredded cedar mulch.   

I may be sorry.*

bulb installation

On another bed, I raked up this year's leaves and ran over them with the lawn mower first to make them break down quicker, and then added a layer of compost from the last of the tree mulch we got from the county roadside crew three years ago.  I used some of that directly as mulch on a couple of beds last spring and wasn't sure that would work out, but it all broke down nicely.  I didn't have a leaf layer underneath, though.

I'm sure this is not a recommended way to add compost to your garden, but I like to experiment, so we'll see.  I will be putting some of the tulip bulbs in pots of commercial potting soil, but if I check on the layered bed in late winter and find that nothing is breaking down at all, I'll be raking everything off the top and replacing it with soil from the compost pile and then a layer of mulch.

The roses are still green, but fading. 'Dark Desire' was tenderer than the others and shows signs of burn from those frosts. All the shrubs got much larger and bushier than I expected.  Probably because there was no leaf disease due to the long, hot spring and summer.  And take a look at the 'Grande Amore' rose in the upper right corner of the bed in the picture below.  It's supposed to be a 4-5 feet high shrub.  Those two tallest canes are now about 7 feet tall!  I don't know where they think they're going.

Although the Japanese beetles are gone, shield bugs and cucumber beetles are still trying to feed on the rose blossoms.  After that first hard frost, I put little organza bags over some of the last buds to try to protect them from cold and insect feeding and get the last blooms for cutting.  

From a little digging I did in the rose bed, I unearthed a slew of Japanese beetle grubs.  I thought I had kept on top of them pretty well, but I guess not.  Sigh.

Everything in that bed got huge.  I had to take out the 'Caradonna' Salvia and the Gaura, so then I had to create another small bed across the aisle, taking out more wildflowers.  No telling where this will all end.

It's interesting to me to see how cold weather changes the color of some plants.  This was 'Acropolis' rose in summer:

And here it is today:

This is the normal coloring of 'Shazam!' (taken the first of this month before the frosts):

And this is what the last few look like now:

I did get a few more nice bouquets earlier this month.  Here's one:

'Winter Sun', 'Shazam', 'Grande Amore', Globe Amaranth, Pyracantha berries and white Delphinium

Speaking of how cold weather changes coloration, the 'Julia Child' yellow rose took on a pink blush, which made it pair nicely with the bright pink 'Knockout'.

And, here's 'Neptune' cold...

...versus 'Neptune' warm...

I've been watching the BBC TV series "Gardeners' World" through a Britbox subscription, and it's fabulous.  English cottage garden style is so joyful, and there's lots more to this excellent series.  If you love gardens and gardening, I recommend getting a trial subscription (free for a week, I think) and checking it out.  

I also recently ran across this on the internet:

How gorgeous is that?  I would love to be able to do it.  Alas, it's not likely to happen in this lifetime.  I have, however, made my garden plan for next year.          

More flowers, including a climbing rose, more melons, a grape vine, and fewer leafy greens.

We'll see what actually happens.

Until then...

Eat, drink and dream of a garden paradise.

UPDATE:

*When I got my bulbs, the literature that came with them said not to mulc with cedar!  So I had to rake it off and replace it with a light layer of composted wood chips.  I then went online to try to find out why cedar was bad for tulips and didn't come away any more enlightened.  Some sources talk about chemicals that repel certain insects, and one mentioned "cedar mulch toxicity" but called it a myth.  But, since the company selling the bulbs said no cedar mulch, I better obey.

UPDATE 11/9:

An early snow before the leaves have dropped from the trees was our first of the season, bookending the first snow of the year that came late.  All in all, it wasn't a good year for the vegetable garden, though the roses loved it.

That seven foot 'Grande Amore' rose was laid low last night.