A little rain to soothe us

And some morning fog to start the day after too many days of unseasonable heat.

I got sick of handling the little six-packs of peppers and basils and decided to go ahead and plant them in the garden a little over a week ago.  I didn't have any grass clippings for mulch, but I did still have some bags of maple leaves I'd collected last fall, so I ran over them several times with the lawn mower until I had a wheelbarrow full of nice-sized pieces to perfectly mulch the newly planted beds.

After a lot of tedious work, I had planted and soaked down two beautifully and thickly mulched beds so that on these hot days the ground wouldn't dry out quickly, and any little weed seeds that sprouted would be smothered.  

Well done!

Until the following  day, that is, when a scirocco from the Sahara blew all day long.  This is what it left:

Better than nothing, I guess.

These beds had okra in them last year, and when I added a couple inches of compost to them, I left the old okra stubs and roots in the ground.  My idea was that I could easily plant peppers and basil in the spaces between the roots, and the roots would rot away, amending the soil.  It turns out to have the added benefit that it's something of a deterrence to moles going through under the surface.  This is a huge plus.  The little pests almost wrecked the lettuce patch this year.  It looked like they were having a party under there, and the plant roots were getting pushed up and losing contact with the soil, and then wilting.  I had to keep going out and tromping on them to get them back down.  Of course, tender little lettuce plants don't like to be trod upon.  

Finally, I have a red-stemmed rhubarb plant!  After only thirteen tries.  Here's the story:  I found it at Springwater nursery.  I had to pay $10 for it, too.  It better live.  The variety is 'Canada Red'.  

The potatoes I tossed into the compost pile are coming along.

The second round of lettuces is coming up between the first rows, and I've got more lettuce than I can handle, despite the moles.  I'll be giving away bags full. 

That freezing weather we had the first two weeks in April did a number on the pea germination, reducing it to about 20% of what I planted.  They're producing pods now, but I don't think there'll be enough for a harvest.  They will just have to be one of those things that I eat raw while I'm working in the garden.

I planted the lima beans on the 12th, figuring they'd be perfectly happy in this early heat, and they emerged four days later.  Normally, I would be planting limas after the peas had produced all they were going to and I pulled out the old plants, which last year was the first of June.  This year, they'll be in there together for a while.  That pathetic stand of peas certainly won't crowd the beans.

Left side of arc: 'Improved Maestro' bush peas; right side: Henderson's Bush lima beans

Speaking of beans, the runner beans I planted next to the cucumbers on the trellis are being attacked by something.  I sprayed them with neem oil, which is a natural, all-purpose insecticide, miticde and fungicide.  Since I've not seen what's eating on them, I'm hoping this will mitigate the damage.  It's not nearly enough to interfere with the plant growth (yet), but the reason I planted them there was to grow over the trellis and look pretty.  They're beginning to confirm my suspicion that this might just be a jumbled mess instead.  

Whoever is eating on the beans doesn't seem to be interested in the cucumbers.

This arrangement is definitely going to take some serious management and vine training.

I haven't had any luck with the melons I've tried before, but this French Charentais variety ('Savor') looked so good in the description that I had to try it. 

I've put three plants on the compost pile with no support, and three in the garden proper, which I caged beside the yellow zucchini.  (I had to buy the zucchini, as the year-old seeds I planted failed to germinate.)

I hate putting up the cages, because they detract from the beauty of the garden, but once the zucchini plants grow up into them, they get covered with foliage, and picking the fruits is easier than if they're on the ground.  Also, they don't seem to get so many squash bugs.  Here's hoping the melons will benefit from the cage as well.  It's going to be a little tricky to remove the fruits, though, since they're not going to fit through the cage wires (hopefully!).

 

The cabbage row is growing large, and somebody is already eating it.  I don't know for certain who it is, but since a likely culprit is cabbage worm, I'll need to start applying Dipel, which spoils the beauty when you use it in powder form, but that's all I have.  And the melon/zucchini cages have already spoiled the illusion that this isn't a vegetable garden.

The purple Zi Su (Perilla aka shiso) is a disappointment.  The description of the taste said it's a cross between mint and basil.  I guess that's a fair description.  But the leaves are kind of hairy, and I don't like that.  Maybe it doesn't like this terrible heat, because it always looks kind of droopy.  I won't be planting it again, but the Baker Creek description mentions using it for color to make pink rice.  I might try that.  In fact, the strange flavor might just be a good one for rice.

(That reminds me - sidetrack:  I put some peeled hard-boiled eggs (brown eggs) in the liquid from my pickled beets, and within a couple of days they were a beautiful dark magenta all the way through the white and a little way into the dark yellow yolk.  I should have taken a picture of the slice.  Very pretty.  Fairly tasty.  But then I put some in the liquid from a jar of Kalamata olives.  After three days they were a not particularly attractive color, but boy, did they taste delicious.)

OK.  Out of the vegetables and into the  cut flower and rose gardens.

This is not what I was expecting from the Gaura (also purchased from Springwater):

The foliage is gorgeous, and that flower color is amazing (until it fades to a pale pink), but I was expecting the flower to be borne on a tall stalk, swaying in the breeze.  Maybe this is just an artifact of the bizarre weather we're having and the first flower production of the season.  I'll find out with time.

You just can't beat this 'Sparkling Sapphire' baptisia (purchased last year from Helmi's) for show:

But you can match it with this pink lupine (grown from seed purchased from Baker Creek, overwintered from last year):

A watched pot never boils, nor does a watched flower ever blossom.  I've been tracking this giant allium for days.  It's pretty cool the way it's unfolding, though.

Check this out:  I collected marigold seed last fall from my plants that had done so well.  Since I had three or four different varieties, I tried to keep the seeds separate.  I figured it was a long shot they'd come true to the parent plants since they were all close together and expected at least some crossing.  What I didn't expect was that the cross would produce a plant that had two different varieties on the same stalk!

When I saw this, I thought I'd simply gotten two seedlings growing together that appeared as one, but those two flowers are branched off the same stem.  

I've seen trees and shrubs that have been grafted to have more than one variety of fruit or flower, but I've never heard of a plant doing this on its own.  In theory, at least as far as my education goes, those flowers should be similar to each other, if not to the parent plants, but for one to be completely like one parent and the other completely like another parent is something I've not heard of.  I'm eager to see what the continuing blooms look like.

Always something surprising when you're growing your own plants.  

Fingers crossed for more rain. And a little cooler days would also be nice.  This isn't July.

'Karl Rosenfeld' peony and dark purple bearded (German) Iris

Too cold, too hot: Gardening in Missouri

Well, we had two weeks of spring, so I guess I should be happy.  

I'm not unhappy, just slightly aggravated.  The first two weeks of April were freezing, and the first two weeks of May are turning out to be late July/early August.  I'm going to have to quit looking at the forecast, because every day they show less chance of rain and higher temps - into the low 90s now!  We haven't had any rain since some time in March.  Luckily I have a source of water nearby, but this is not good.

Enough complaining.  I'm now able to harvest lettuce, and about to dig into my first garden salad with baby greens from the 'Rocky Top' lettuce mix, arugula, tatsoi, red-veined sorrel, and home made wheat bread croutons and last year's pickled beets.  

Things are coming along, even though they should be farther, I think.  Too cold at first, now too hot.  Nobody knows what to do.  This is definitely not weather for peas.  I'm sad about that, as they were so good last year I planted twice as many this year.

But, I'm feeling hopeful about the onions.  For the past two years my onion crop has been a failure.  Even when I harvested lots of onions and dried them, they ended up rotting.  I'm thinking that maybe I watered them too much - at least the year it poured rain endlessly, they even rotted in the ground.

I haven't watered them since they emerged from the ground this year, and it hasn't rained, but they seem to be doing okay, so maybe I'm onto something.

The runner beans I planted at the trellis are looking good.  The cucumbers I started early indoors - something I haven't done with cucumbers before - look good, but the seeds I planted directly in the ground failed.  Only one little plant emerged.  Also, the golden zucchini I planted directly didn't come up.  Both packets of seed were from last year's purchases.  Most seeds I get are good for at least two years, and there are always too many cucurbit (melon, pumpkin, squash, and cucumber) seeds in a packet, so I didn't buy new ones this year.  I've made a note not to use old seeds for those plants again.

front row: 'Sunset' runner beans; back row: 'Marketmore' cucumber

Another  issue I've noticed this year is little dead spots on several plants, not all of which are related: melons, cucumbers, tomatoes, tatsoi, sorrel (dock).  The first year I put out my garden, beets and arugula were loaded with the same.  I thought it might be something coming from the nearby wildflower garden, and active in damp, cool weather.  Obviously, that's not the case this year, so I still don't know what it is.  It looks like shothole fungus, a serious pest of fruit trees.  Here it is on the melon seedlings:

My best guess at this point is Cercospera, which attacks in warm humid conditions.  We're not having humid conditions naturally, but I am watering, so that would do it, I think.  I could be wrong.

I won't do anything other than pick off the leaves most affected unless it gets really out of hand, and then I'll either have to apply a fungicide or cry.  I'll be crying in good company of the farmers in the area if we don't get some rain.

Vegetable garden

Left: cut flower garden; right: rose garden

Chives in bloom

UPDATE 5/20:

I'm not seeing that spotting on leaves any more. We've finally gotten some rain. Maybe the change in weather is the reason. I picked off the leaves that were more heavily infested, so hopefully it won't be a problem going forward.

The fun begins aka No rest for the weary (or is that wicked?)

Peering at the ground where seeds have been planted and watching the changes as things grow larger is one of my favorite early spring activities.  Everything has been planted with the exception of lima beans, peppers and basil.  The peppers and basils are finally getting larger in their seedling cells, and I expect they'll be ready to transplant at the same time I plant the lima seeds - around the middle of this month.

Unfortunately, we're not getting any rain to speak of.  Fortunately, I have a water hydrant near the garden.  I have to drag a hose quite a distance to get to everything (including my rose and cut flower gardens), so thank goodness for the new light weight "pocket" type hoses.  This year, I found an even better deal than the cloth covered ones, because my dragging and pulling on them means even the toughest ones don't last more than a couple of years.

This stainless steel metal hose is as light weight as a pocket hose, and winds up neatly without kinking. 

You can get it from Amazon in several different lengths.  I got mine at Walmart.  Here's Amazon's picture of the construction:

So far, I am really liking it and expect I'll never buy another cloth covered one.

On the east half of the garden, beets are planted in the triangular center of this plot and mulched with grass clippings, with cabbages in the middle arc and peas in the outer arc (along with a few onions from last fall).

In an adjacent plot on the east end, lettuces are coming up nicely, and new rows have been seeded between the existing ones for a harvest succession.  The plot will look a lot nicer when the plants are larger.  The grass mulch keeps the ground from drying out as fast, and also prevents rain-splattered dirt in the plants.

Here's another view of the east end from the other side:

Peas in the outer arc, then cabbages, and beets planted in the triangle; that green plant on the right is red veined sorrel, aka bloody dock.  You might not be able to see them, but I planted shiso (Zi Su) in that plot with the sorrel.  It's purple, and still small, so hard to see in the picture.  I've never grown it before and have no idea what it tastes like.  I'll let you know.

And here's a third view with a triangle bed in the foreground into which I've planted all flowers: Queen Lime zinnias and marigolds.

The rhubarb looks great.  Unfortunately, the freezes in the first two weeks of April damaged the stalks, so much of it isn't harvestable, but it's growing new leaves rapidly.  The Egyptian walking onions in the centers of the two south side plots in the west end of the garden are getting quite large and may need to be tamed before the season is over.  One of those plots will take the peppers, and the other will take the basils.

I got tired of growing my tomatoes in their small pots, and it's so warm this week, I set them out into the garden today.  When I transplant tomatoes, I throw a handful of espsom salts (for the magnesium) and two handsful of composted manure into the planting hole, mix it up with the soil, and stuff the tomatoes down deep, up to their first true leaves.

Since tomatoes root anywhere along the stem, you can plant them deep into the ground without any harm.  In fact, you'll get growth benefits from more roots on your new plants if you do.  So, even if you find yourself with "leggy" tomato plants, just pull off some of the lower leaves and plant deep.  If the plants are extra leggy, pull off even more leaves and plant them lengthwise in a trench with only the top sticking out of the soil, instead of deeper into the ground.

This year I've planted my old favorite 'Missouri Pink Love Apple', 'Mr. Stripey' and 'Copia' (both striped herilooms), 'Carbon' (a "purple" variety), and 'Moskvich' (advertised to be early and to grow well in cool weather as well as warm.  By that advertisement I was expecting 'Moskvich' to be able to be planted earlier, so I started some seeds three weeks earlier than the other varieties.  They grew so slowly that they ended up being the same size as all the others anyway.  Hopefully, they will taste great and ripen early.

This is my first try for 'Copia', 'Carbon' and 'Moskvich'.  Baker Creek Seeds always sends some free samples when I order, and this year they sent tomato seeds of something called 'Black Vernissage'.  Some of the reviews were not so great, but I figured I'd try it anyway.  Not having any room for it in the garden proper, I planted 'Black Vernissage' on top of my compost pile.  It won't get the attention  those in the garden do, so I won't be able to blame it entirely if I don't care for it.  I gave a couple to the postmaster, so I'll have to remember to check with her this summer to see how she rates them.

I also planted two cherry tomato varieties this year.  A neighbor had some orange cherry tomatoes last year that were so sweet and delicious I collected seed to try to get the same.  Since she had a number of varieties of tomatoes planted nearby, it's possible that the seeds I got are crossed with something else, so I may be getting a surprise.  She didn't remember the name of the plant, so I selected seed of one called 'Sun Gold' that looked by the picture and the advertisement saying it's super sweet to be a possible match.  

My runner beans are up.  Hooray!  This is the first time I've grown them.  The idea is that they will grow over the top of the cucumbers and make pretty flowers on the garden "arch" entry.  It could end up being a jumbled mess.  

Now that I have a rose garden (since two years) and a cut flower garden (since last year), I have another whole garden expanse of fun and beautiful plants to talk about, even though they don't technically fit into this blog theme.  This year I added four new rose bushes to the rose garden that was supposed to only contain the five original ones.  I fretted over the older ones, worrying that they weren't coming back from this past frigid winter.  Much to my relief, they're coming along fabulously.  

The creeping blue phlox has decided to become a giant gorgeous pillow, and I've added several perennials into the mix: gaura, perovskia, lavender, and something that I have not been able to identify, and which was already on the grounds when I got here.  It's got a lovely spikey flower, and it spreads its seeds readily - maybe too readily.

The creeping orange thyme in the corner (foreground) is going to have to come out and be split up and spread around in the fall to make way for another rose.  I only have five more on my list of wants!  Yes, I know.  An original plan for a garden of five roses has gone awry.  Actually, the original plan was for one a year for five years.  Hahahahahaha.  Who thought that would happen?

I also have another new rose in the garden this year:  a compass rose.

Since I'm going to have so many roses, I decided to get some markers so I could remember who's who.  Or, rather, so I don't have to remember.

Fabulous foliage of pink gaura

The cut flower garden is looking good.  Who knows what it will look like when everything is mature?  It was quite tedious transplanting all those little seedlings:  Asters, Snapdragons, Delphiniums, Globe Amaranth, Toothache Plant, Lupine and 'Black Pearl' ornamental peppers.  I was sweating it out over the Baptisia that I planted last year, but they have finally come up and already have flower buds.  What I'm feeling might not come back is the butterfly milkweed and the lantana.  I shall be disappointed, but not crestfallen as I would have been had the Baptisia died.

Last year's one resprouted lupine, surrounded by new transplants.

I always like this time of year in the Hosta garden, when the ground is dark and damp and the leaves are brilliant greens, before the birds get in there and peck around in them and the wind drops little stems from the overhanging dogwood tree that pierce and shred them.  They start to look pretty sad by mid-summer.

'Rainforest Sunrise'

One of my absolute favorite things about spring: lilacs.  Does anything smell so heavenly?  Until I brought these in together recently, I didn't realize that the lilacs are the same color as the redbud flowers.

And so it begins...

View from the west end.

Ahhhhhhh, Spring at last

The first two weeks, and a little bit more, of April this year were freezing cold.  Literally.  It actually snowed on April 8.  This is what my garden looked like:

I went directly past despairing of ever seeing Spring to settling in to trudging out to cover plants for nightly freezes and uncover them the following day, only to repeat the same thing two or three days later.  Again and again and again.  My seedlings were ready to come out to harden off in preparation for planting, but because they couldn't go in the ground, I had to haul them up from the cellar in the mornings to put them in a makeshift greenhouse and tote them back down at night so they didn't freeze. 

What a pain.  Next winter, I'm going to have some better plant covers ready.  And maybe hold off on starting my seedlings a couple of weeks or so.

But, it's over!   Spring is here.

Tomato seedlings breaking out

The only things that sustained some freeze damage were the rhubarb and the peonies, and they will all come out of it okay.

Rhubarb row

This year, I rigged the cucumber trellis to form an archway into the garden.  I have some cucumber seedlings planted next to it, and on the outside of those, I planted runner beans, hoping to get some pretty flowers to cover the cucumber plants.  I don't know if that will work, or if I'll just have a jumbled mess.  We'll find out.

The beans/seeds themselves were so pretty I hated to cover them with soil.

I also created a sundial with some ceramic mushrooms and a little silver alien I got years ago in Roswell, New Mexico.  He's high noon.  (Or high eleven, with daylight saving.)

I love these hyacinths.  Aside from the heavenly aroma (which was blocked by the too cold temperatures), the color is brilliant. 

This is the second spring for my little magnolia.  Last year, deer ate every flower bulb off just as they were getting set to open.  This year, some of them broke open and then dried up from the cold.  Fearing I'd not get to see blooms again, I covered the whole tree for several of the coldest days, and was rewarded with this beautiful show:

Once the forecast quit calling for freezing nights (just last week), I started getting my seedlings and seeds in the ground.  Thank goodness I had already gotten the beds built up with compost and the paths mulched, because I have been nearly all day every day for a week planting and watering.  I'd be too exhausted to enjoy anything if I had to prepare beds as well.

Cabbage row (with a Nasturtium at either end)

 I've been putting a lot of work into my rose and newly created cut flower gardens.  Not having any grass clippings yet this year to use for mulch, I'm using whatever I have on hand.  For the things that are easier to mulch around, I'm using what's left of some tree mulch from three years ago when the county people came along and shredded their trimmings.  It's practically compost at this point and works very well.  I've even been forced to use a very light layer of it where I've planted seeds.  It's not ideal for that - a bit too coarse - but the grass didn't want to grow during those two freezing weeks either.

I had some maple leaves I'd bagged from last fall and used them in some places, but not having a way to shred them up makes them unsuitable for mulching very small seedlings or buried seed.  I also had a little dried cypress leaves from last fall that I was able to scrunch up into a light mulch that worked fairly well, but not so well as grass clippings. 

My cut flower bed, then, has a variety of mulches over dozens and dozens of little seedlings I planted one at a time.  It's tedious and makes for next day aches and pain, but I couldn't afford to have the full garden I'm going to get if I had to buy bedding plants.  Nor could I get the variety of plants and the less popular things if I didn't grow them myself from seed.

 

Cut flower garden

Aside from the perennial plants that I hope will come back up, this year's cut flower garden will have Delphiniums, Snapdragons, China Asters, Globe Amaranth, Lupine, and Toothache plant, along with a patch of Cardinal basil.  In the center, I'm going to plant Black Pearl ornamental peppers.

 One overwintered lupine, and newly planted lupine seedlings mulched with fallen maple leaves

 
I'm really excited about the rose garden this year.  I have my four new Palatine roses, and - oh glorious days! - all my roses from last year made it throught this crazy winter.  I was getting nervous. 

I had several perennial plants I wanted to mix in with the roses, and I found a couple last week at Superior Garden Center near Columbia.  This morning, I found the others at Springwater Greenhouse & Landscaping in Marshall.  I even picked up a couple of fluff ball grasses at Walmart which weren't in the plan, but they looked so fun I couldn't resist them.  This is how I have nine rose bushes instead of the originally planned five.  I only have four more I want to get next year!

It doesn't look like much in the pictures, but I love it already.  Can't wait to see it all in bloom.

Believe me, it's going to be gorgeous.

Happy Spring!