Garden Thread

Garden Update from Dick 'n' Hisses Manor -- I took all the seedlings and the two trees out of their "hardening off" area of the back deck and put them out in the garden proper today! There are now tomatoes inside the garden fence! WOOOO!!! As the person who tends the seedlings, this is always a very big day for me. They aren't in the ground yet, or anything, but knowing they're at least sitting atop the beds makes me feel like they're baby birds who've left the nest!

The hope was to do the big planting this weekend, but man, it was weird weather.  Hot and humid on Saturday, but with threats of heavy storms in the evening, and then temperatures plummeting again with a culminating low of 40 on Sunday night.  We figured the plants could wait two more days.  So we did all the infrastructure on Saturday -- finished topping off the very last of the beds, did thorough weeding, and got all the tomato towers, bean trellises, and cucumber fences into place.  Tonight after work we'll be able to just plunk all the baby plants into place, and finally Garden 2016 will be fully operational.  I can't wait!

Sunday and Monday were the first two days without rain after a 17-day streak. Therefore, we put the tomatoes in the ground and put up the supports I told 🐍 cahusserole 🐍 about.



Only the Sun Golds and Beefsteaks get a "tormado". The Oregon determinate variety, the ones that look biggest and strongest, are in between. 30 plants in the ground, plus a couple alternate seedlings left at the house.

That's an interesting article!  There's certainly no question that getting to "play in the dirt" is always something I'm thrilled to get to do each spring...  Of course, a very small percentage of my garden time is spent in physical contact with dirt, and it still makes me less stressed, so perhaps I'm getting a placebo effect here?  

Spent part of the beautiful weekend painting my chicken coop! (My garage, which contains no chickens.) And with peonies finally blooming, I am one step closer to getting my backyard into shape...

Brief, tragic update: all of the peppers and tomatoes were doing great as we brought them in and out of the house to harden them off...and then we put together the portable greenhouse we bought last year. What we didn't think to do was thoroughly clean the greenhouse out after taking it out of storage and before we put plants into it. Instead we put the plants in the greenhouse on Sunday morning, and two days later all of the peppers are wilted. Two are complete losses. Pretty sure there's a fungus among us. We cut all the dead leaves off and took all the plants out of the greenhouse. We treated them with a fungicide, and I'll keep bringing them inside and out until we can put them in the ground...if they don't all just die. Such a bummer. Lesson learned.  Really kind of bummed that I didn't take photos when they looked good.

Thanks, me too. This has just not been my year for garden starts.

Good news - the tomatoes seem to be avoiding the weird blight that hit the peppers. The peppers are a bit of a mixed bag - we've lost four total now out of something like 12 - but it looks like most of them will survive. We had a few that didn't go into the greenhouse (started later than the first wave) that also got the weird blight, so I feel at least a little better knowing that this probably wasn't 100% caused by the fact that I didn't clean out that portable greenhouse thing before filling it with plants.

What else...

It looks like something took a nap in raised bed #1 - around a third of our garlic has flopped over. We won't get to harvest that 'til summer.
Green beans are in the ground over at the community garden and in raised bed #2 at home (the one that was previously just death and bugs), and they're all kicking moderate ass as far as plants go.
We planted some cukes at the community garden, and they're slowly doing their thing, although we lost a few to...something (my guess is squirrels).
Peas in raised bed #3 are growing like gangbusters; the biggest issue there remains keeping the puppy out of the bed. Yesterday I caught her standing on her hind legs and leaning on the fencing we put up so she could eat pea vines.
Assorted greens from raised bed #1 have been making their way into salads and sandwiches. We lost a bit to slugs and bugs there.
Strawberries are ripening up and being immediately devoured by slugs as predicted. I surrounded the plot with copper tape in hopes of slowing them down. Beer traps pending.
Blueberries are going strong - lots of green berries on all bushes. Looking forward to blueberry pancakes this summer.

BTW I wrote up some super-basic instructions for building some raised beds for a friend of mine; I can post them here if there's any interest. The plans are for 3'x5' beds around 20" deep but could be easily adapted for other sizes as needed.

Well, so far

The hydrangea bush that I planted like five years ago, the one that spreads out but has never gotten taller than knee-high, has all sorts of blooms on it! They are pink, but still - hydrangeas! 

I also planted two small ones last year, and one of them has put out a tiny little bloom. He's trying so hard to be a grownup!

The salvias I planted this year seem to be getting along nicely, same with the new rosemary, lemon balm, hostas, coral bells, and autumn sedums my friend sent me.

I have also put down that black fabric stuff and piled the mulch on it in one flowerbed-esque area, a new little area I cleaned out specifically for dorky little lawn decorating purposes, AND in the already-framed off area where the metal shed used to stand. Back there I also put some cobblestone thingies I had lying around, and repainted some metal lawn chairs, so now it's a little sitting area that gets liberally showered with pecans and leaves. I need a little table.  And a trellis, so I can move the wild rose bush that just goes apeshit in another part of the yard and can't be controlled over there.

Also I discovered that the ground-level stump in the front yard was now rotted out enough to just pull out with my hands, so I did that, and OH MY GOD there was this one bit that looked all yellow and wood-coloured, just like solid wood,  and when I touched it, IT WAS MUSHY and it was the grossest thing EVER and then I filled in the hole with like four bags of topsoil.

Plus general shit-trimming and thinning out irises and daylilies. Man, those daylily fuckers do not want to come out of the ground.

Oh yes also put like three more bags of pebbles in the....pebble area by the porch, added some more coloured glass and a metal dinosaur.

Next up: more shit-trimming and iris-thinning, trimming the pampas grass and trying to move part of it to another location, and doing something about the goddamn monkey grass. I like it, but it's going insane.  Also if anyone has any ideas how to murder a trumpet vine, let's hear it.

P.S. I still hate yardwork, but having someone to do the actual mowing has made me feel this much [] better about it.

How I made my raised beds:

Tools:

drill with Phillips screwdriver bit
measuring tape
saw


Materials:

Four (4) 2"x10"x8' (I used Douglass Fir, untreated) - cut into 3' and 5' pieces (I had Lowe's do it - no extra cost)
- untreated to avoid contaminating the soil and your veggies
- might want to stain the outside for weather protection (I didn't)

Three (3) 2"x2"x8' (for some reason I used cedar for these)
- cut one into four 20" posts (you'll have some left over)
- cut one 20" piece off of each of the other two (total of 6 20" posts and 2 76" posts)
- the longer posts can be trimmed as needed and used as supports on one end of the bed

Two (2) 1lb boxes of 10x3" exterior wood screws (I used "Fas-n-Rite" - one box MIGHT be enough but why chance it)


Highly recommended:

as flat a surface as possible
at least one patient assistant


1. Lay two of the 5' 2"x10" pieces flat, one above the other. Place 2 of the 20" posts across the two boards - one flush with an edge, and one in the middle. Place one of the 76" posts across the edge of the 5' pieces so it is flush with the edge and bottom. Screw the 3 posts into place, with the screws going through the posts and into the board. (I used 4 screws per post). This will be one of the walls of the bed - the posts will be on the inside.

2. Repeat step 1, making a mirror image of the wall from step 1 (so when you assemble it, the longer posts are at the same end).

3. Lay two of the 3' 2"x10" pieces flat, one above the other. Place 1 of the 20" posts across the two boards at the center. Screw into place.

4. Repeat step 3. You now have your four walls - two longer and fairly sturdy, two shorter and a bit wobbly (for now).

5. Assemble one corner. This is probably the trickiest part, and is MUCH easier with (1) a flat surface (I used the sidewalk) and (2) an assistant. Have your assistant hold one of the longer walls up, and place one of the shorter walls perpendicular at one end. (I'd recommend using one of the longer posts as the first corner, if only because it makes the wall easier to hold in place.) From the outside of the corner, screw through the shorter wall into the edge of the longer wall's 2"x10". From the inside of the corner, screw through the post connected to the longer wall into the shorter wall. (I recognize that this would be easier to follow with pictures.)

6. Repeat step 5, adding the second longer wall to the edge of the shorter wall so the two longer posts are at the same end of the bed.

7. Attach the second shorter wall to the open end of the two longer walls, using the same steps above to form the last two corners.

I also put copper tape around the top of the bed, in hopes of keeping slugs out at least a little. If you only want it to be 12" deep, you could probably just use two 2"x12"x8's and make the walls one board high instead of two. You could probably just put the posts at the corners in this case.

Aw look, it's the lil'est hydrangea

Lime can be used to increase the alkalinity of acid soil, and sulfur can be used to increase the acidity of alkaline soil.  I knew you could use either as needed to have different color blooms on different hydrangea plants, but I'd never heard of multiple colors on a single one.  Pretty impressive.

We moved into our house last fall, so we are still largely in the "Is it a flower, or is it a weed?" phase of things.  I did spend like $250 at the local native plant sale a couple of weeks ago and finally got everything in the ground.  Next up is transplanting ostrich ferns to the roadside strip so I don't become roadkill mowing the pathetic grass there.

The internet has informed me that I can put coffee grounds around the plants or work it into the soil? to make them blue, so I shall try that or the lime! But since they're blooming right now, that's probably a task for next year? I don't really know how that works.

I am afraid I have no iris-growing tips; some of the ones in my yard are probably older than me. This used to be my grandmother's house, and god only knows when she planted them. They just grow and spread and I don't do a damn thing to them, my preferred way of gardening.

I have a mind to make little fairy garden items, like this.



 I've made some window frames from lashing twigs together and from polymer clay & am planning eaves or other bit to attach to a stump and/or trees; I am a huge sucker for tiny little things and am also four years old.  Actually if it's as easy as it seems to be, I've considered selling suchlike on Etsy or at local artsy festivals.

I did see a tutorial on Pinterest about how make moss grow on stuff that looked pretty cool; I do like the look of moss-covered.