Where to Put my Vegetables?

 I have limited space to grow vegetables. While I have a substantial yard, I can only grow vegetables where there is (1) sufficient sun and (2) protection from the deer. In addition, I'm reluctant to plop a vegetable bed down smack dab in the middle of my yard - I'd rather have them on the edges. As a consequence, these are the spaces I have:

This is a metal 3'x4' raised bed on the side of my house.
It is planted right now with broccoli and red cabbage.

This is a wooden 4'x8' raised bed I built years ago, at the back of my house.
I bought the frame and netting that covers it (new netting this year).
It has tomatoes in half of it, and I plan for zucchini in the other half.

This is a collection of pots, all planted with tomatoes.
They are easily moveable. Currently sitting on a wooden pallet
next to my driveway. Needs more deer & rabbit protection.

These are my latest additions, "Greenstalks". Not a gimmick.
Each tier has six pockets, so I have 72 planting pockets to fill.
I'm in the process of building a barrier behind them for deer protection.
They are where the Vespa used to park, at the end of my driveway.
(Now the Vespa is on dirt in the shade, I need to build a new pad).

 I try to rotate my crops in the raised beds, to minimize pests that overwinter in the soil. Last year in the metal bed I raised zucchini, so this year I've gone for the brassicas, broccoli and cabbage. Also, conveniently, this bed was easy to clean and prepare for spring planting with the addition of bagged compost, so it was ready when I spotted broccoli, a cold weather crop, at Home Depot. Last year, the big 4x8 bed had tomatoes in one half, and corn and beans in the other half. So this year, I've put tomatoes in the half that had corn, and I plan to put zucchini in the other half once it warms up enough.

I refresh the dirt in the pots and the greenstalk, so rotation isn't necessary. Basically, I empty them out (usually to a tarp on the ground) and then stir new compost and maybe new potting soil into the old dirt. I fish out any big chunks of last year's roots, and then put the refreshed mixture back in the containers. It's actually a fair amount of work, but since I wanted to move and add greenstalks, it was worth it this year.

The big experiments are the Greenstalks. I belong to some on-line gardening groups which is where I learned about them. I had seven tiers split into two stacks last year, mostly with peppers and basil. They revolve on their bases, so I can vary the sun exposure. This year, I have twelve tiers, with six spots each, for a total of 72 planting pockets. But I've started more seeds than I have spaces!

So far I have 18 various peppers out in the bottom 3 tiers of the light green tower; lettuce and scallions from seed in its top tier. The top tier of the mixed tower has various herbs from farmers market; the second tier has mini cabbage plants. Inside under lights I have a dozen pak chois, six Swiss chards, 18 eggplants, and 30 (!) basils coming along. The seedlings are too small, and it's too cold, to set them out today - but it'll be time soon!

I'll be able to squeeze a bunch of basil plants along the perimeter and between tomato and zucchinis in the big raised bed. Discounting them, I've got 36 planting pockets, and 36 seedlings (12 pak choi + 6 chard + 18 eggplants), so it just works out! 

Also, I am going to start harvesting my broccoli (in the metal raised bed) today. It'll continue to bear from side shoots for a while, but I may end up ripping it out and putting something completely different in there. Some of the herbs and greens in the greenstalks will also sputter out and I'll be able to put something new there. So as long as I don't go overboard at farmer's markets or starting any more of my many seeds, I guess I'll be ok.

Still Growing!

I'm still kind of coasting on gardening this year, but I haven't been completely inactive.

First, on the coasting, I've got some blooms showing up from prior years:

The trout lilies have made a big patch,
but not so many blooms

The bloodroot continues to shine bright
It moves around as the ants plant seeds

The sole remaining tulip from a big bunch
planted in 2019.

I do have plans for vegetables this year. I've rearranged some things in the yard, because I realized the parking pad I built for the Vespa was the sunniest spot in the whole yard. So I moved the Vespa, and I'll be doing Greenstalks on the parking pad. (Need to build a new pad for the Vespa but right now its on the dirt.) I'm rotating crops in the ground - I'll grow cruciferous veggies in the raised bed where the zucchini was last year. I got a six pack of broccoli at Home Depot and plopped them in there, after topping off the bed with LeafGro and compost. I plan to put tomatoes in the half of the big raised bed where I had the corn and beans last year, and zucchini in the half where the tomatoes were. I'll need to put some tomatoes in pots.

My baby broccoli

The hard thing is deciding how to fill up three 4-tier greenstalks - a total of 72 planting pockets. I need to get going on seed starts or buying plants will bankrupt me!
 

Garden Record-Keeping

I blog here partly as a means of keeping track of what is going on in my garden. There is a long and honored tradition of garden journal-keeping. In fact, garden records from centuries past are being mined for understanding how weather and climate has changed over time. On a modestly selfish note, I find myself sometimes reviewing these blog posts to see when I did what in the garden, and how it has changed over time. Photos are so important to see what was going on.

Tulips planted in 2018 are starting to fade.
Time to order new bulbs for fall planting.

I just looked back over the April and May entries I made from 2019 to last year. That (2019) was the first year after I lost the Big Spruce and got the fence up, totally changing how my garden functions, and of course June 2019 was when I retired for good and all, giving me a lot more time to work on the garden. I made some ambitious plans then, and I've carried out some of them! But looking at what I did and wrote in past years during the busy spring season has made me sad that I haven't blogged so much here. Even worse, I haven't even always taken pictures of what is going on! I've been busy in the garden (and inside, with seed starting and indoor plants), and I have taken very brief notes of what I've done, but not enough observations or photos of what has been happening. So here, I'm going to do some catch-up blogging. (Note: between writing the first draft of this and now, I've been out there and taken maybe a hundred new photos, so I'd be able to illustrate this and subsequent posts.) It's a grey day, still very wet from last night's downpour, and I had an especially good and vigorous workout earlier this morning, so I'm good with flopping on the couch with the computer actually in my lap. It seems so self-indulgent, with the world going to hell around me, but I'm keeping up with my tiny little piece of it.

Species tulips in the side yard last longer.

Because I started things from seed inside, and bought more things to set out later, I've been impatient with the weather we've been having. We've had some very nice days - rated 10 out of 10 by the Capital Weather Gang - but we continue to experience serious periods of cold weather. It's also often been grey, but rain has been below average (last night with over an inch helped!)  We had temperatures overnight in the 30s last week, and we'll see low 40s this weekend. We skirted the edge of a frost just two weeks ago. I planted peas in the ground in my back veggie bed in early March, and they came up slowly and have only poked along since. (They may have gotten nibbled by rabbits, because I didn't deploy the protective netting until much later.) Peas are traditionally the first crops to be planted, but it's been several years since I tried them. 

The traditional demarcations of spring planting seasons are: (1) As soon as the ground can be worked in the spring; (2) After substantial risk of frost is past; (3) After all danger of frost is past; (4) When night-time temperatures are in the 50s; and (5) When the soil has warmed up. I sat down and figured out when those dates have been lately, and then backed up from those dates to start seeds indoors under lights. But each of those dates has been later than in past years. To be fair, we've actually tracked fairly closely to the "traditional" date for the last frost - but the last several years have been warmer and I bet on it as I bought plants and started seeds. We still haven't gotten to nights in the 50s and warm soil yet, but I think the next two weeks will get us there. 

The ugly but effective grow house,
with Bixby for scale and decoration

My back patio, with two sides brick walls of the house, faces east and south and is very sheltered. I started bringing plants outside to the patio the second week of April, at first bringing them in at night, then finally leaving them there. The bricks absorb heat during the day and provide some warmth at night. I have shelves there, and plants on the lower shelves have a roof over their heads which also helps trap the heat at night. I have a "grow house", a white plastic-covered green house. I've been using it as a shed to store crap for years, but after a major de-cluttering last year, this year I've put some of my plants out there. It warms up substantially during the days, (at least five degrees on a shady day, and up to plus-twenty degrees in the sun!) and it cools to nearly ambient at night. I have a couple of big five-gallon buckets of water in the grow house, and the water heats up during the day and releases heat back into the air as it cools at night, which maybe can keep the air slightly warmer than outside.

This corner has deer protection from the fence
and a surprising amount of sun. I want to move the grill
and get rid of the bush to be able to put potted plants in the sun.

I've been observing the past couple of years, the sun and shade patterns around the house and yard. They are substantially different than they were when I moved in. For years, I've been in denial of the increasing shade from all the trees I planted. I'm finally accepting it, and that has led to some plans to reshape parts of the yard. Leaves have only emerged in the past two weeks (again, I've been impatient) and now I'm getting a better idea of exactly what to do this year. I'm amazed at how different my sun room is, now the leaves are out. My sunny room is now filled with a green, shady, cool, ambience. I intend to deploy a lot more pots outside, and tailor their placement around the yard to the light conditions the plants need.

The back entrance to my house (on the right).
There is a gravel driveway under the grass, to be renewed.
The new stone walkway will run from the end of the driveway
at the house to the gate.

I am contracting for one big landscaping job. The back entrance to my house is the flattest way in. There is a driveway with an initial steep slope about four feet up from the street, but then a gradual slope, and then it's mostly level from the driveway to the kitchen door along the back of my house. And the kitchen door threshold is only two steps up from the ground. (The front entrance has several steps from the street and then more steps on to the front porch.) If ever I have mobility issues, this back entrance may become my main entrance. So I've hired a local landscaping firm to renew my old gravel driveway, and then build a wide (at least 42", wheelchair ready) stone walkway from the driveway to the kitchen door. And to do it without sending the water that currently pools there into my basement. (No point in building a ramp up to the door, I don't actually need it yet and maybe never will.) I'm at the company's mercy on scheduling, but I'm looking forward to having it done at last. Once they are done, there may be more changes I make to the yard around the back. I'm delaying some projects that won't be directly affected until I can assess how things look and feel with the new walkway.

Big Dreams for the Garden

Plans

While huddling up inside in the warm, I have big dreams for my garden this coming year. I've only got one trip planned for the summer, not until the end of June, so I should be around to actually do things. And, I've decided that I have enough energy and strength to do many of these things myself (see: last year's rain gardens and rototilling for new grass). Right now, my effort consists of browsing the web and catalogues and exercising my credit card, giving me a sense of doing something without actually moving from the couch.

My long-term objective is to transform the yard into lower maintenance. Key to this goal are the strategies of (1) more container gardening, to focus my physical efforts into concentrated, manageable spaces; and (2) more shrubs and fewer perennials in the ground. Overlaid on this is the realization that many parts of my yard are not visible from inside the house. I should focus a lot of my intensive gardening on the views and the patio because constantly looking at something nudges me into action. And now, I have a much better understanding of sun patterns in my yard, and I think I'll be more realistic about what will do well where. Less wistful thinking about how there used to be sun in a spot where a decade ago I planted a tree which has grown considerably since then.

My exuberant sunny exotic plant zoo, from 2012
This is close to what I imagine
But sun/shade parts of yard are now reversed!

There is a meme that keeps showing up in gardening social media: a crowd of people shouting at the cheer leader: "what do we want?" "ALL THE PLANTS" "where will we put them?" "WE HAVE NO IDEA!" I have often fallen prey to this problem - from catalogs or at the nursery, buying things without a plan. So far, I've ordered plants and containers with a clear plan. I've also ordered many seed packets with a less clear plan, but I rationalize that as "seeds are cheap" and "they keep for years". (Both rationalizations are not necessarily true.)

I just ordered (very small) plants to go along the side street - "the court". (They won't ship until the nursery decides it's planting season.) Once upon a time the edge visible from my bedroom window was filled with four huge Norway spruces and anchored at the driveway end by a white pine that was dwarfed by the spruces. The spruces died a dozen or more years ago so I took them out, and for a while this was the sunny spot where I could grow tomatoes. On the short but steep bank to the street I planted a mix of native grasses and sedges, some of which survive to this day. I planted three small (3' high) native trees between some new raised beds for vegetables and the street. One, the hackberry, grew quickly into a nasty tangled and thorny mess so I took it out. (It has high wildlife value, so the suckers that still appear are tolerated and cut back every year.) One, a redbud, is huge and lovely every spring, but casts a big shadow. The last, a dogwood, is feeble and limping from the shade cast by the incumbent white pine (which leapt for the sky after the spruces had gone), and is on probation. The three raised beds I had put in are no longer sunny enough for tomatoes, and I haven't decided what to do with them instead. They are prime deer grazing venues, and variously but largely shady, so it's tricky. The things I've tried in past years haven't worked great.

I ordered some woody evergreens to go along here -  on the bank along the street - prostrate, low-growing pines and columnar hollies. They are supposed to tolerate some shade. We'll see if they make a decent finished-looking edge to the street. The plants I ordered will be about six inches tall, so it'll take a couple of years to find out what they actually look like.

I also ordered a couple of dwarf rhododendrons to go under the pin oak along the court side of my corner. This is very shady (though before I planted the pin oak, and for a few years after, it was sunny and had roses). So if these (6") plants survive, they will be broad-leafed evergreens, but may not bloom profusely. I do not really see this corner from inside the house (I can crane my neck from the bedroom) but having a screen along the street makes sense to me. 

For reference, existing garden spaces

I ordered two large metal raised beds which haven't come yet. (I had planned on one, but the New Year's sale catapulted me into two.) My plan for these are for the sunniest part of the yard - in the front where the big spruce fell over in the Big Wind almost four years ago. This is sloping, outside the fence, and taken over by tall prairie plants, mostly volunteers from around the 'hood. It is largely invisible from inside the house, which has let to some neglect. I have attempted to tame it each spring, and by July it is beyond me. So the current plan is for the raised beds to be installed and leveled, and to keep them civilized. I think regular rounds outside them with the weed whacker will allow them to flourish. This area is, however, on the deer highway up from the creek, so exactly what to plant in them is yet to be determined. Annuals this year, for sure, maybe big elephant ears and cannas and bananas. I may also net them to keep off the deer, though I don't like the look around ornamentals (versus vegetables). 

Outside my bedroom window on the side are azaleas and weeds. For years I have fantasized about having a lilac blooming outside my bedroom window so that I can smell it in bed (during the two weeks a year it blooms, the rest of the time it will be fairly ugly green foliage). I even bought a lilac a couple of years ago, and it died in the pot before I was ready to plant. I will have to dig up azaleas in order to make room, (may re-plant some to street-side) and the azaleas are also surrounded by weeds. It's a pretty big job, though one that could be started any time the ground isn't frozen or wet, so it doesn't need to wait until planting season. At any rate, I don't plan to buy any lilacs until I've done the work.

Another Rain Garden

I've had a big problem with drainage on my side yard. This isn't a problem for my basement, but after big rains the water has pooled there for some time. Last winter we had a stint of snow, warming to thaw it, followed by several days of a deep freeze, and that section of my yard turned into a skating rink. 

First iteration of rain basin, perking acceptably

Yards on my street tend to be mostly level, little plateaus created by bulldozers. But then there are steep slopes before the ground levels out to the next yard. This side of my yard is deeply shady, and slopes gradually to the fence, after which it drops down a whole story of a house. My ground is level with my next door neighbor's roof. This is great for privacy. It seemed, however, to be a bad idea to solve my drainage problem by sending it all down the slope to the foundation of the house next door - especially when I know they already have problems with water in their basement. Besides, I'm pretty sure water coursing down that steep hill will drive significant erosion in the slope, resulting eventually in my lovely fence toppling over down the hill. Deluges are becoming more frequent, and they drive much more erosion than the same amount of water spread out over a longer time.

Beginning of the trench

After some years of studying the problem, watching the movement of water through my yard, measuring slopes with a laser level, I decided to run french drains along the side to the front, where I have a small space far enough from trees, my house, and the drop-off to put in another rain garden. The natural slope of the land is from back to front so this working with gravity in my favor. I have a downspout off the roof gutters at the back side corner of my house which would feed directly into the drains. I have another downspout along the back of my house, and I would allow that to drain on the surface, where it should run down across my grass to the low ground in the yard where the porous french drains would channel it out of the area.

This was going to be a much bigger project than my front rain garden, because I would be starting from scratch. I don't think I would have had the gumption to tackle it without the boost from challenging myself in my vacations this summer.

First, I dug up and set aside the large stepping stones that made a path along the side from the back to the front. I needed the wheeled dolly to move many of the huge stones. Then, I laid out the drainage basin area in front, and dug it out with a shovel to about 18". I used most of the displaced soil to bank up the sides of the basin, especially towards the down slope. It dug fairly easily, but where I stopped the looser top soil had yielded to some hard clay. I dug down further into that hard-packed area, and mixed with the clay several bags of locally-generated compost, filling the basin partially back up. I filled the basin with water, and watched it drain - it took about an hour to perk through the clay and soil. That seemed promising.

The trench gets deeper

I trenched backwards from the basin along the house to the back yard. The first layer of the trench was done solely by hand, but there were only 2"-4" of topsoil there before I reached clay (I just put it to the side as I went). I have an electric roto-tiller, and so I got into a routine of running through the trench with the rototiller, loosening the clay. Then I would come back with a spade and remove the loosened soil for a couple of inches, tossing stones to the downside and dirt to the upside. There were some roots that required sawing by hand. (I didn't worry too much about damage to any trees, as the trench is about ten feet from the house, so the roots couldn't have traveled much further than where I cut them off.)  

This was a very big undertaking. It took me maybe five or six days of two hour stints of rototilling and digging to get the trench as deep as I was willing to go. This includes one day of rototiller repair, when I got it too close to a metal mesh fence and the blades got stuck in the fence. I had to pretty much disassemble the whole machine to disentangle it from the fence, and then put it back together again. 

During the deluge. See the drain pipe sticking out

Before I was all the way done with the trenching, we had a big rain - about 1.4" of rain in a few hours. I hooked the drain pipes together in advance of the rain, and watched how it worked. The good news is water ran nicely along the system as planned. The bad news is the rain garden basin wasn't nearly big enough, and it overflowed. The water that was collected there took over 18 hours to drain away - I figure that long time was because the ground was saturated and there was no place for it to perk to. So after it had dried out some, I resumed digging and made it bigger in circumference. I also worked on the berm and tried to slope the sides so that overflow would move in the direction of my main front garden, not over the edge.

Finally I declared the trench as deep as it was going to go. I lined it with landscape fabric, put down pond stones in the bottom of the trench, laid in the porous drain pipes, wrapped the landscape fabric around it like a blanket, and covered it over with the displaced dirt. Hooray!

Bixby digging

I set the stepping stones back on the surface. I still need to sink and seat them properly, on the to-do list. But I want to make sure everything has settled in place before I expend too much effort leveling them out. I should note that I have voles actively tunneling around and between the stepping stones. When I dug my trench I apparently cut through a major passageway, and they have been rebuilding. Bixby entertained himself going after them - it seems he can smell and hear them from the surface. So sometimes I would rake an area smooth, only to have to step and smash new vole tunnels, and rake dirt back into the holes Bixby had dug.

Stepping stones and plants in place

 

 

 

I planted white turtleheads into the rain basin, along with transplanting a single existing pink turtlehead that had popped up away from my main patch.  Along the side of the house - very deeply shady - I put in a grand total of about 30 plants - three kinds of ferns and three kinds of sedges. I planted them pretty densely and I have hopes of a green area with contrasting shades, heights and textures, that needs only minimal management. 

In the rest of the back / side yard, a flat open area, I planned to plant grass. I dug up the biggest weeds by hand. Then I rototilled the whole area to loosen the hard packed soil. Then, I distributed compost over the whole area, and rototilled it again to mix it in. Next I raked the whole area smooth, and tamped it down with my feet. Lastly, I spread bags of special "lawn soil" over the top, raking again, and finally, in advance of the first anticipated rain for several days, seeded it by hand. 

Baby grass! (I have to blow the leaves out-no raking yet)

Yay, ten days later, I've got baby grasses coming along! Last fall, when I planted grass inside the fenced yard, I felt I needed to protect it from Rocky's big feet and questing mouth. Now, I'm not too worried about little Bixby dancing across the tender shoots, but I monitor him and don't let him start digging for voles.

Whew! All told, over a month has elapsed. And as I said, it was years in the planning. We haven't had a downpour since the once that overflowed, (before I was finished) so I don't know how well it will do, but I'm fairly confident it will make a substantial difference.

Rain Garden

 Much of my gardening is driven by changing light conditions - trees grow, trees fall, buildings are built, and the light changes. When the giant spruce fell in my yard in March 2018, conditions changed substantially and the ripple effect continues. 

Peculiar blossoms and fruits

I had a Carolina sweetshrub bush, bought and planted in the waning days of the last century, in front of my house. It was one of several bushes planted in a little thicket beside the walk to my front door, deliberately to create privacy and block views from the street into my house and yard. I only put in shade-adapted natives: the sweetshrub, several blueberries, shadbush, dogwood, oakleaf hydrangea, arrowwood viburnum and cranberry viburnum. For almost two decades the Norway spruce overtopped them and provided shade from deep to dappled, and so they all poked along, establishing roots, growing slowly, intertwining as they way. When the spruce fell, the brakes came off! Now, it is a thriving deep dense thicket, ripe with berries and caterpillars and thus a prime bird habitat.

The sweetshrub, planted at the end of the thicket, was a real winner in the light-and-water sweepstakes. It turns out, this bush can spread by sending out underground suckers, creating a thicket all its own encroaching both on the other bushes and the lawn in the other direction. I realized by the year after the tree fell that it was dominating the space and might have to go. As I thought about it, I grew enamored of the idea of making prime full-sun space available for a rain garden. But it would be a considerable project. 

I dove into the thicket periodically to methodically dig out suckers, beginning with the ones farthest from the main bush. A few of the suckers I transplanted to the opposite end of my yard where there is currently deep shade. Last year, I got the size of the bush down to maybe three feet in diameter, and cut it all off to about four feet high. I kept eying the standing corpse and dreading the task of digging it out.

It's ripe for the plucking!

Houseguests to the rescue! Last October my boat partner and her husband vacationed in my basement for a week (almost as nice as their aborted trip to the Azores, no?)  And one lovely day while they were staying, my sailing partner and I indulged ourselves with weekday sailing, leaving her prone-to-seasickness husband to stay behind and work on his book. But, he asked for anything that needed doing outside. I suspect he wanted to mow the grass, but I pointed out the bush and where the tools were kept, kind of as a joke. But we came home to find the bush gone, all of its sticks bundled for removal and the roots out of the ground, a tidy hole in the ground left behind.

Waiting for next steps

All spring I worried over what to do next. I had spoken to a local contractor about doing a rain garden project, but he never pursued me and I'm past begging for folks to come do work I could do myself. I knew I had to dig out the space, connect to a buried drain from the roof gutters, modify the soil, buy lots of plants. It seemed a big and daunting project, and I did nothing about it. Every time I walked past the scar left behind it gnawed at me.

But, the kedge (planning a big difficult trip to make myself get in better shape) worked! In fact, not only am I in better physical shape, but mentally I'm more ready to tackle difficult things. And, once I got into it, making the rain garden was very manageable.

So, I dug out the space.

I modified the soil.

 

I bought some plants and put them in. It needs more plants, but July is not a great time to acquire plants - spring ones are gone, fall ones are not in. Some things I wanted are not available, and I may end up shopping my yard to move some things from elsewhere. Fall is a great time to do this.

I mulched the heck out of it.

Finally, we had some rain and I was able to watch as rain from the roof drained through the pipe and into the garden, where it filled up and then drained slowly over the course of some hours just as planned!

The one sad thing is this is still the deer highway where they come from the creek into my yard (to eat all my apples). So far, that hasn't been an issue with what I've put in. I'll continue to look for less appetizing plants.

EDIT: As it turns out, last night (evening of the day I wrote this) we got 1.5” of rain in 25 minutes! Towards the end of the downpour (when I thought it was safe) I went out to look. There were a good 6” of water in the rain garden throughout the bowl, with active draining from the roof. When I went out about three hours later, it had all drained away. Exactly the way it’s supposed to work! 

Grass

 The most vigorous project I’ve been intermittently working on is trying to actually grow a lawn in the spaces where I mow. In my sunny side yard, I’ve got a vigorous zoysia lawn that could stand up to a soccer match. But in my back and front, I’ve mowed infrequently and done little to nothing to try to foster grass versus crabgrass and other weeds.

Lawns have a deservedly bad rap. A perfect traditional lawn requires both labor and chemical inputs. I will never do that. I take no pride in having a perfect lawn. What I want is a green cover that can take footsteps and not erode. My sunny zoysia side yard meets that criteria without a lot of work. It only gets mowed - but pretty much never more often than every two weeks (in spring) and I’ve gone six weeks or more in hot high summer or fall. Sometimes (rarely) I dig out weeds like dandelions, but it’s so dense they don’t get a lot of footholds.

But my front and back yards have been sad territories, where a succession of weeds also leads to bare, muddy spots, and I fear runoff into my neighbor’s yard and the street. This year, I’ve been hanging out in the yard a lot, with the dog, and it’s really been nagging at me. I’ve maximized the part of my yard that is not lawn, that doesn’t need mowing, but I want to have space in the back (inside the fence and private)for me and the dog to move around. As is not unusual with me, I almost accidentally started a small project that has turned into a major renovation.

It all started with wanting to get rid of the azalea outside my kitchen window. One of my legacy azaleas, it was right beside the kitchen door and was infested with english ivy and a vine known commonly and accurately as “tear thumb”. Like all Japanese azaleas, it looked terrific for a week or so in the spring, and the rest of the time just sat there. It’s only wildlife value was providing cover and perches to the birds - no insects or other food. Sitting on my patio I had contemplated pulling it out, and on a lovely, not too hot day at the end of August, when it had recently rained so the ground was soft, I started digging. It took several hours, but I got it, roots and all. I raked it smooth, opened the huge bag of grass seed I had bought and spread it by hand. I fenced it off from the dog, watered it three times a day per instructions, and about a week later tiny little grass plants had sprouted! I was so excited! Time to start the next phase.

When I started digging, I realized I had bitten off more than I could chew. The first small patch I had planted had first been dug up to get the bush out. This next section was hard work to fork up. I already knew I wanted to do most of the backyard, so I bought a rototiller. It’s electric, rated “medium duty”, and it cost only 2x what it would cost to rent for a single day. It is a little bit scary to use, but it gets the job done. So September 12 I planted section 2 (and over seeded the many bare spots of section 1) and a week later I had many cute baby grasses sprouting up. More success! Keep going!

But, as so often happens, I took a digression. I had been planning to clean out my two garden sheds, because I thought it was ridiculous to have two sheds. One is very ugly, and the other needs repair. Cleaning them out meant pulling all the crap out of both, and then thoughtfully deciding what to get rid of (crap left over from the basement reno, mostly) and what to keep, and how to store it. A fine stretch of fall weather gave me a few days without rain where stuff could be spread all over. I’m happy with the organization for tools and garden supplies I ended up with in the red wood shed, and I’m still contemplating what to do with the ugly plastic white shed. It has a very sturdy metal pipe frame, and I could use a place to sit outside out of the rain, and to store things out of the elements during winter. I’ll mull over the winter. 

So finally, I had cleared out enough of the back to start on the next logical but much larger section. It took me a couple of days to rototill, because I kept stopping to rake up the crab grass or bend over and pull it out by the roots. I’m afraid it’ll have gone to seed anyway, but I wanted to do at least a decent job, though I know it’s far from perfect.. I switched the dog-barrier to defend the new territory (because the first two patches were thick enough to walk on and even mow!) and broadcast the seeds towards the end of September. Again, in about a week, baby grasses appeared, and it is nearly at the mowing stage! Three to four weeks, but again I did some overseeding of bare spots a couple of weeks in. Now, the voles have really gone to town, tunneling through the new looser earth. I walk over their tunnels and push them down, but I don’t know how that will affect my baby grasses.

I’ve got one more backyard patch to plant, but I took some digressions. I turned over by hand a small place by the front door that was purely mud (where it had been dug up for the gas meter in June) and planted more grass seed. I also raked and pulled crabgrass and wild strawberry from an adjacent front patch, and planted grass seed in raked furrows, without turning it over completely. I’m not going to get to that spot with serious prep this year, so I’m curious to see if the overseeding will do anything. I’ve got some plants to plant elsewhere, and some structural issues to improve drainage. I haven’t completely decided whether the drainage solution will expand into my remaining back yard future lawn, so that’s a great excuse to avoid hauling out the rototiller again.

The clock is ticking on cold weather, however. There is a limited window to do this. I’d like to get it done this year. Just not right now.

My Back Yard

 More “aerial” photos of my yard. They show my newly planted-from-seed grass out to my driveway and the street; my crowded and cluttered concrete patio; and my utilitarian cut-through side yard. Each of these areas is going through some degree of renovation and upgrade, but they are fairly unlovely right now. For example, the colorful mats are killing my crabgrass in anticipation of planting new grass from seed. As the back and side are the dog’s domain, I couldn’t have them both closed off to him at the same time. 

Look What I Did!

I’m looking into hiring a garden consultant to walk around my yard with me and talk about future plans. As part of the prep, I did a whole yard layout. I like it! I think if you click on it, it will embiggin and you can read the labels, if interested.

This pretty much represents what is there already. There is a red blob in the front where I’m thinking of putting a rain garden.

My Garden is Keeping Me Sane

Well, I guess that’s relative, huh? But I can zone out to a task in the garden, with or without listening to music or a book, better than TV or reading (with my eyes) or exercise or anything else doable these days. The task doesn’t have to be much. It’s the micro-examination of each piece of the yard, noting small changes. And, the step back and overview of what should come next.

My plan is to spend a few years (5 or so?) focusing on garden projects and intensive maintenance. By then, I want to have my yard in a place where it is more easily maintained. I plan to spend my declining years sipping cocktails in a beautiful yard that I can mostly just enjoy. I’ve never spent anywhere near as much time out there as I am right now. Everyday, new ideas and new projects surface.

Allegheny pachysandra emerges bright green and by fall
 flattens out to mottled and interesting foliage.

This past (migrainey) week has been spent on gentle projects. I’ve refrained from trips to buy more stuff, and didn’t tackle any of the bigger, more vigorous projects. But looking closely one day, I saw how the Allegheny pachysandra (not to be confused with common garden-center pachy) was spreading into the alumroot. I spent a very enjoyable hour or so digging the alum root and moving it to a new area. I planted the pachysandra a very long time ago, but it got overwhelmed with English ivy and myrtle, and it’s only really surfaced and spread since the fence went up two years ago and I got rid of the ivy. I’ll be content to have the pachysandra continue to spread, without further work, rather than have to defend the alumroot each year. The alumroot in the right conditions will form decent sized clumps, and I have enough bare ground waiting for just such a thing.

Here you can see the surface runners of the
Green-and-Gold

I am filling in bare ground inside the fence, in a shady area that drops off steeply to the neighbor’s yard. I saw an opportunity to be frugal and avoid trips by relocating some other cool plants. I may have pointed out my green-and-gold before, a plant also planted “years ago” that continues to thrive and spread to new places in the yard. It sometimes out-competes more delicate ephemeral wildflowers, so I am removing it from some places, while allowing it to spread in others. So some of that got relocated to a large, mostly bare, spot on the side.

Golden Alexanders is one of my wildflower triumphs. At one point, I got ambitious and tried to start wildflowers from seed. Many perennial wildflowers are very hard to start from seeds, and viable seed for the hard-to-start is hard to come by, because there is not much demand. A source no longer available, the New England Wildflower Society, used to have a seed sale each January. It took two years of learning to successfully buy from there - it was a brief sale without a lot of supply, done via US postal service. Finally, I got seeds for a bunch of varieties. Most didn’t come to much, but it turns out Alexanders are relatively easy. And once established, they seed themselves. Now I have a thriving colony, outside the fence along my stone wall. They seed themselves into the grass there, and I dug a bunch out and put them right away into the nearly blank canvas along the fence.

Golden Alexanders have lacy yellow flowers in spring,
and nice heart-shaped leaves all year.

Now, it’s time to step back and let things in that area just evolve for a while. There was a spicebush and a hosta that predated and survived the fence construction, and I’ve put some ferns in there. Except for some weeding and watering, I’ll just observe that area for now and see how things settle in.

My formerly blank canvas along the fence

Best Birthday Gift Ever!

My brother-in-law had to go to Home Depot and he brought me back enough potting soil to handle the planned pot farm! Yay!

More Garden Progress

Blood root. I planted some over a decade ago, and the ants 

move the seeds around to make new colonies. 

My records show this is the normal date for it to appear.

It’s usually the first of my wildflowers.

This is my happy place, my reminder that life goes on. I have been out there every day, grubbing in the dirt. This year is odd in my yard, and not just because everything else in the world is off kilter. It’s this screwy year of no winter that  upsets the balance. Unseasonably warm, some plants are sprouting early, while others remain dormant. The difference is driven because plants’ annual cycle can be driven by different factors - temperature, certainly, but also day length and rainfall. So those plants driven out of dormancy by warm weather are sprouting, and those keyed to the light are stubbornly sticking to the schedule they evolved for eons ago. My roses leafed out early, but my wildflowers lag behind. It’s interesting to watch. But it’s also daunting to think about how climate change will affect this - those plants that can adapt to the temperature will do better in the long run.

I’ve done a great deal of garden cleanup. Some of this should have been done last fall, but I leave perennial plants standing over the winter, to provide cover and seeds for critters. Leaf bags are filling up now, though I also have a vacuum mode on my leaf blower, which shreds (dry) leaves into a bag. It can then be used as mulch. I’m also weeding - most of what has sprouted so far are weeds. There are a lot in the garden spaces, because I have only mulched sparsely and the plants are not yet big enough to crowd them out.

So garden areas I’ve cleaned up so far (notes to myself, cleanup means remove debris and weed):

• My back vegetable raised bed
• My back-of-the-house flower bed
• The three little raised beds on the street side
• Both “down” and “up” on the rounded corner
• The sunny slope, from the street and stairs up to the bushes
• Only some of the front garden inside the fence
• Along the fence by the back patio

My Home Depot garden: Daffs, Hostas, Daylilies, and
Three invisible Blueberries that will leaf out later

The plants I mail-ordered are starting to arrive, plus I picked up a few tidbits at Home Depot. I’ve also got seeds to start, both vegetables and flowers. I planted lettuce seeds in a pot on the patio where later I will do annual herbs (protected from deer by the Big Fence, but it requires protecting from The Very Hungry Labrador, who likes to eat potting soil).  I transplanted six broccoli plants into the back vegetable bed.  I bought a dwarf Alberta spruce and put it in a pot. I put in three hostas from Home Depot along the fence by the back patio. I planted a (jarringly hot pink) moss phlox by the front steps. This last is blooming right now because of forcing by the grower; in subsequent years I believe it will settle down and bloom with other things, and thus be less jarring.

Much work still to do! Because of my previously placed orders, I’m set for a while with projects and planting without needing to venture out to a store. I’m going to order mulch from the high school sale, where it will be delivered in bags at the end of the month. I do consider garden supplies to be essential, and I’m still full of unwarranted bravado in my risk calculations. But I won’t go to the nursery for a while, hoping it remains open so I can go later. I have plans to do a pot farm, because I own a lot of large pots and filling them fits my longer term strategies for less weeding. I’ll need big bags of potting soil, which my local hardware store will load into the car for me. That can wait a bit, because I’ve got an unopened box of plants to tend sitting on my porch right now.

Getting Things Done

After the pruning and cleanup.

We’ve had a great stretch of good weather, and I’m making the best of it. On Sunday, I had a date with my neighbor, a chain saw, and a ladder. We finally trimmed the bottom tier of branches on four big trees, which will make a real difference in both light and air beneath them. We got to the redbud and the red oak along the front, and to the pin oak and the redbud on the other street. Not done (we got tired - my neighbor is even older than me!) are the trees in the back.

After a rest,  I spent the first daylight savings evening doing some light weeding while enjoying the late light. I noticed that at least two of the three chrysanthemums I planted last fall are sprouting now. I wasn’t sure they would come back. There are garden mums for landscaping and florist mums for decorating pots in fall, and the three I bought from a big box store were not labeled as perennial. Perhaps it’s just the mild winter, but I’ll consider it a win.

Monday, I finished cleaning up the smaller trim from the branches. I took a pass along the corner, both down by the street and up behind the wall. There were standing stems throughout, and a few weeds to root out. Now the sprouting foliage is all visible along it.

Still working...

I also have been doing a fair amount of planning and on-line shopping. I have a much more clear vision of where I’m going overall. I’m making sure I know what I’m going to do with everything I buy. I’m thinking a separate post for plans and purchases.

Today I did a pass through Home Depot, where things were buzzing from the sudden burst of warm weather. I was there for light bulbs, but I picked up some plants and supplies, again with a clear plan in my mind of where they are to go.

Tomorrow, I’m busy elsewhere much of the day, but I’ve got bite-sized chunks of work to squeeze into the afternoon.

I LOVE this time of year, and it is such a luxury to have the time to do things. I’m not as strong, and I don’t have the stamina I would wish, but I’m getting things done and I assume also building fitness along the way.

Winter Musing

We haven't had much winter this year, though there have been some cold days. And plenty of nasty, dark, wet days - but not snow days. The past two weeks have been sunny. Last week unseasonably warm, this week seasonably cold and very windy.

I confess, I did not get all my fall clean-up projects done. I have been working slowly away at them, as weather and motivation dictate. I actually mowed the grass around New Year's, the long zoysia on the north side of my house. It will do better in the spring to be short, and it looks much better now than it did. There were some leaves on it, and they just crunched up with the grass and hopefully all will be decomposed by spring.

I've intermittently been cleaning up leaves. I bought a new blower/vac (electric), and it is great at sucking up the leaves from the window wells. I engaged my landscaper to cut down the apple tree that was too close to the house and wires. He stacked the wood on my firewood pile. I've done some tidying of both sheds, and had the brilliant idea of decluttering to the point of having only one shed. So I'm dreaming about a better, single, shed, built on the foundation of current one. I kind of like the idea of a vinyl one, or some synthetic, so it lasts longer and is maybe more resistant to rodents. This shed thing is possibly a multi-year project - first (like the basement) I have to get rid of more stuff. The single shed has to hold my lawnmower and my bicycle, plus other tools, and perhaps winter furniture. This mostly requires rationalizing my tools and furniture.

I need a better-looking compost heap. It's really just a leaf pile - I pile stuff in, and haven't harvested the leaf mold at the bottom for a few years. It doesn't get much green stuff, so it doesn't cook much, just slowly rots. Building one out of fencng and lumber has its appeal, but is one of many projects I want to tackle. I may get inspired and do it one weekend, or I may just think about it for another year.
There is some pruning I want to do, urgently, before the sap starts flowing. This is really limbing up the bottom tree branches. I have a ladder and a chainsaw, and I'm (mostly) not afraid to use them. I want to do it myself, because I've made a study of these trees and I know exactly where I want them cut.

Daffs, including the newest ones along the fence, are poking their heads up. I know they can withstand cold weather, but I was concerned to see some of last year's tulips well up. I left most perennial plants standing, and they look crummy, but provide shelter and still some food for the birds. I can see some basal foliage appearing. Old stuff will be cut down - target February.

Now is an ideal time for certain kinds of weeding, a lovely low key activity. When nothing else is growing, it's possible to spot onion grass sticking up all green everywhere. This is a great time to dig it out - but it does take slightly warmer soil than last night's hard frost has left us. There are other unseasonably green spreading weeds, easy to spot, that also should be controlled. So I'll get to some of it when I can.

I will be ordering plants, too. I need to set a budget, and plunge in. Now is the ideal time to do this, and it'll involve sitting inside in the warmth, but virtuously feeling I'm truly productive. I lost the spring planting season, mostly, last year by working longer. There's nothing like a big box of things to plant showing up on my doorstep to force me out there in the spring. The forecast is for warmer next week, after a wet weekend, so outside chores may be more possible then. Reason enough to spend money now.

Attacked!

I noticed, idly, a couple of days ago that my adolescent shagbark hickory had lost some leaves on one of its branches. Yesterday, I looked out the window and at least half of the leaves were missing! There were green spines from some of the leaves on the denuded branches, so I assumed someone was eating it.

I took some pictures and posted them on the local neighborhood listserve, and also a local gardening one. The pictures weren't great, and I didn't get a lot of useful information. I dug out my camera with a long lens, and its battery was dead. An hour of charging later, I went out and took some high resolution photos and found these caterpillars. Also residue (previous instars?) on the trunk. And under the tree, it was very unpleasant, it appeared to be raining caterpillar poop (scientific name "frass").



The tree, planted by me as a stick about 15 years ago, is way too tall for me to be able to reach where the caterpillars were to spray with chemicals. Instead, I sprayed them with a high pressure stream of water from the ground, which knocked some of them off the tree, and maybe annoyed the others. But considering how hot it was, it was probably well received by them. I also topped off the bird bath, thinking birds were my only hope.

 This morning, I didn't see any caterpillars when I went out, but I bought some Bt. This is a bacteria that is specific to kill caterpillars and not much else, and doesn't persist in the environment. When I got back, I saw a regular parade of caterpillars making their way from my hickory, across the front walk, and headed steadily north under the azaleas in the shade. For no reason other than vindictiveness, I made it rain Bt on their parade. There was satisfaction in this.

I also preemptively sprayed my only other hickory, on the ground and on the trunk, though it wasn't their direction.

Healthy, established trees should be able to withstand being eaten for as many as two years in a row. Sadly, this tree was subject to big stress last year when the Big Spruce fell. On its way down, its branches grabbed the hickory and bent it double, all the way to the ground. When the crew came to remove the Big Spruce, I pointed out this hickory and said I wanted to save it. They were glad to have it pointed out, because these trees might whip back up and cause injury. As it turns out, it only came partially up. The arborist gave it a less than 50-50 chance to survive. This spring, it seemed to be quite healthy. It leaned, but it was filling out and growing straight on the new growth.

Luckily, it doesn't threaten my house or any powerlines, so I can just allow nature to take its course. If it lives, great, and if not, it just means more light and an opportunity to plant something else.

One Warm Day

That's all we had, just Saturday was very warm. But all it took to really hurry the garden along was that one warm day.

Blood root - I planted some 20 years ago,
and the ants spread the seeds around.
I've seen them in the wild within a couple hundred yards
of my garden, but I'm pretty sure mine are descended
from my plantings because how far do ants travel?

The National Arboretum had their native plant sale on Saturday and I hustled down. I gave myself a $200 budget but only spent half of it. I didn't go with a specific list, only a general one. They only had two vendors, but each had a very big spread.

So I bought eight plants for my $100. I got one each of blue indigo and carolina lupine. They are both pea family, and the flowers are similar in shape though different in color. I planted them along the fence at the south end, where they may be too shaded by the pine and the fringe tree. The indigo, at least, will not be able to be transplanted so let's hope it gets enough sun.

I'm afraid "hope it gets enough sun" will be a recurring theme. I realized as I tried to site the plants around the garden inside the fence that I don't have a clear picture in my mind of the sun and shade patterns currently in the yard. The Big Spruce fell March 2 last year, but last summer I didn't get a good idea of how the light has changed, other than in general there is more. It'll keep changing, but losing such a big tree is a step change, not gradual as from yearly new growth.

I also bought three yellow wood poppies and three "blue ice" blue stars. I am on a quest for the threadleaf bluestars (Amsonia ciliata) of which I have one beautiful, distinctive, clump I'd like to replicate. It's at the point of my corner, hard on the street. It has nice enough light blue flowers in spring, but becomes an amazing yellow-orange cloud of foliage in the fall. But this one, Amsonia taebermontanae, has more vivid blue flowers, and may also have orange foliage, though not a cloud due to the larger leaves. I scattered the poppies around, and the ants should also seed them about over time. I put the three bluestars together in a clump, along the street fence, near the southern red oak.

I have a history of over-buying plants, and then not planting them right away, and some die. My new plan is to try to buy in small enough chunks I can plant them right away, which worked this weekend.  That actually will not be totally possible, as there is benefit in ordering volumes from the mail order places to save on shipping. And the next plant sale on my calendar will be a huge one.

I may also decide not to buy very much this spring, and study the garden instead. Last year was very hard on it, with first the Big Spruce falling on it, and the workmen removing it tramping everywhere. Then the fence construction and the workmen tramping everywhere, and dumping subsoil on top of good soil, helpfully disposing of excess soil to even out low spots I had created for plants that like damp places, putting raw woodchip mulch over everything even though I asked for well-rotted leaf humus, and on top of all, unrelenting rain in the wettest year on record.  Something to recommend this plan: I can sit in the garden unmoving, and yet I'll be studying it ("see how the shadow has moved in the last hour!") and thus will be productive. Something else to recommend this plan:  it's way more cost-effective. What's not to like?