The List

This time of year, it is easy to suffer from gardening burnout. There are a million things to do, and they all seem to either all need to be done at once, or done yesterday. As I spend time gardening, making my rounds of the greenhouses and garden stores and talk to fellow garden enthusiasts, a dozen good blog ideas come. And, somewhere, under the sun and dirt…they go. There just isn’t enough time! And with the beautiful summer weather we’ve had all through May, there is no excuse to put it off, and a LOT of watering to do.

My life is dominated by The List. This past weekend, it grew faster than I could cross things off as I walked around the property and noticed more things that needed to be done. Why is it that a half dozen 15 minute projects take 3 hours to complete? A) travel time. B) collateral projects. Tim had his own projects, finishing up the side yard where the trees were cut, and staging supplies for the next project… a compost “bin”. We were both soon over heated, over sunned and filthy. But, we did manage several hours of relaxing on the porch. So, in this blog, I’m just going to share my List with you.

First, there is the Shopping List. This contains all the supplies I will need, as well as all the Annuals and occasionally Perennials for replacement. I frequent 4 greenhouses, and if time allows, manage two more. Each one has its own speciality, and I make sub lists of The List to try to keep return trips to a minimum. Even so, I will stop at least twice at each one. For one thing, this stuff won’t all fit in the trunk of my car. Heck, it won’t all fit in the bed of the truck!

Annuals

28 Geraniums
16 Marigolds
2 Packs Wave Petunias
3 Packs Petunias
12 Sweet Alysum
8 Sweet Potato Vines
4 Calibrocha/Petunia baskets
10 of something (?) to go under split rail fence

Vegetables (Because I didn’t start any in the house this year)

3 Tomatoes
8 Sweet Peppers
4 Eggplants

Supplies

1 Peat Moss (Large)
1 Vermiculite/Perlite
1 Greensand
1 Iron Phosphate (Sluggo)
1 Diatomaceous Earth (In case they don’t eat the Sluggo)
1 Neptune Fertilizer
2 Epsom Salts



And then the To Do List. Each morning this starts with

1. Water

2. Thin Lettuce. The lettuce is growing exceptionally well, and this year I am going to thin it. I pick 1 or 2 big bouquets of lettuce babies, and cut the roots off. Then I rinse them, shake them off, and put them in a Ziploc bag for latter on.

Plant Geraniums
Plant Marigolds
Plant both whiskey barrels
Grow Through supports on Black Eyed Susans (other perennials have already been done)
Stem Supports on Irises
Trim back Tulips
Cut flowers off Rhubarb (AGAIN!)
Re-hill potatoes (Growing fast)
Take bricks back to pile
Weed strawberries
Add compost to north end of bed #1
Plant Cukes and Zukes
Pot up azalea bush (the myrtle is drowning it)
Mix Soil (involves laborious sifting of compost)
Plant combination pots
Hang shades in garden shed
Cut shade cloth for cold frame
Wash the garden shed doors
Find a home for unwanted perennials (sitting in pots against the house)
Scotchguard Porch Cushions


I only got four and a half of these things done, between all the watering and thinning! And weeding! If I had a nickel for every ash seedling I’ve pulled in the past month, I could take you all out for dinner.

One trunk load of Geraniums

Tonight's harvest meal: Fresh salad with baby radishes

It's hard to chose a photo of the garden because by the time I get around to blogging, it has changed so much that the photo looks pitiful!

Tim's tree project.  Nine blue spruce.  Our excavator is pleased and says he knows in 20 years Tim will cut them down and he will get to haul off the stumps and bring top dirt.  He says it's Job Security.

It just seems at this time of year, before it all gets established, it is a big burden to keep it all alive.  There are seedlings to harden off, things to fertilise, and water water everywhere.  Water the trees, water the tiger lillies we moved, water the pots, water the newly planted geraniums.  When you've spent all this money, effort and TIME, you worry about water all the time!  I just need a few raining days, or at least some seasonable weather instead of record breaking temperatures to catch my breath.

Great Garden Gadget ~ Cane Connectors

My favorite Garden Gadget of the year is the Garden Cane Connector.  I've seen them a couple of places, but bought these from Gardeners.com.

They are made out of rubber similar to old fashioned jar rubbers and come in a six pack.

 I put them to use on my conduit bean poles.

We're all ready for pole beans.

Rootin' 'Round the Tater Patch

It's time to plant potatoes in our zone, but we're ahead of the game.  Those gnarly sprouted potatoes that I planted two months ago during an unusually temperate March, are going strong.  Prior to the last snow fall, Tim and I covered them with salvaged roof panels from a friend's commercial greenhouse, and when the snow melted, we just propped the panels up for ventilation and left them there.  Voila' ~ Tater Greenhouse.

They are now ready to be hilled.  Now, the drawback to my tidy little tater patch at the edge of the walk is that there is NOwhere to put dirt.  Last year, we planted the potatoes, and when it came time to hill them we brought in a loader full of dirt.  And another.  And another.  There was no way we were going through that again.  The tater patch has been tilled and prepared, and was a good 12 inches higher than the railroad ties containing it, but luckily not eroding.  I had to come up with a plan to move the dirt.  I began by digging a trench to plant the second row carefully shoveling it down each side of the existing row, hilling up two thirds of each plant as I went. 

That seemed to be going well, so I paused to cut the larger seed potatoes.  You need to leave two eyes per section, then leave your cut pieces out in the sun and wind for a few hours to dry out and sort of scab over before planting.

When I had the first row laid out, I began digging the third row, using the soil to fill the second row and leaving the extra in between for future hilling.

When I was done I had one hilled row, and two shallow trenches planted with potatoes.  When the first row is ready for it's second hilling in a few weeks, I can pull dirt from the ridge over into the hill.  When the other two rows are ready to be hilled, I can dig my way in from each end using the ridged soil to in between the rows to cover the plants protecting the roots from the sun.  Extra seed potatoes went into large pots on the patio which I had great luck with last year. 

Next year, I will rotate my plantings and put summer squash and cucumbers in this area.  Then I will be faced with the challenge of hilling potatoes in a raised bed!

Grow ~ Fine Gardening

From the publishers of Fine Gardening, the lates issue, Volume 7 is on the newstands.  This is one of my favorite glossy gardening magazines.  I picked the first one up, by chance, in an airport newsstand, and have been hooked ever since.  It is published quarterly (approximately) and has so many useful gardening tips and great articles that I refuse to part with any of my back issues.

For those of you who cannot find it locally, it is available mail order, along with most of the back issues, from Taunton Press.

Mid-Spring Update

Spring is the time for relocating, replenishing, eradicating and euthanizing various perennials.  I keep an ongoing list of what needs to be done, and while I am weeding and edging, I am also making adjustments to each bed.  I don't think my gardens have ever been in a truly satisfactory condition.  There is always something on the agenda.  While we worked on the beds this year, I was doing figures in my head.  We have approximately 392 feet of straight edges to cut, and another 75 to 100 feet of free form curves.  And 144 railroad ties edging drives and beds which have hatched out a fresh batch of slugs that need to be salted.

We have had a beautiful spring for enjoying bulbs.  I planted quite a few last fall, and looked forward to the first crocuses and hyacinths.

This is the bed on the far end of the raised bed garden.  I planted clumps of large daffodils, with day lillies in between.  I have a list started for more bulbs to plant this fall.

There are some volunteer pansies which I have transplanted and added to.

The garden peas are up.  These were planted very early and have survived a dozen frosts and a foot of snow.  They came out a bit flatter, but none the worse for wear.  Down the center is a row of radishes and carrots, too tiny to note.  Ironically, the only plants I lost to frost this year were radishes.

The garlic is doing very well, and the onions have been planted.  I STILL have onions from last year in storage.  I don't use many, but they have kept longer than I imagined. 

The potatoes have proven very persistent.  I got tired of covering them for each frost, and even though they burned back to the soil line, they rallied and are thriving in the warm weather.

I finally got around to crushing the two catnip plants I dried in the coop over the winter.  They yielded a suspicious looking two gallon bag full of weed leaves!

Mitey Mite is enjoying it immensely

The tree project is in it's last stages.  Tim and Mike power washed the garage which had mud flung as high as the scalloped shingles from the day the trees were felled.

Hooking up the water line involved more men in holes.

Here mike is telling Tim that he "drills like a girl".

We had a HUGE garage sale which took up three bays of the large garage, and six large folding tables.

People were really chomping at the bit to hit the sale circuit and by late morning on day two we were down to two boxes and a couple of small appliances to donate.  Our house, basement, attic, both garages and the garden shed heaved a collective sigh of relief as their dusty corners were relieved of a five year hoard of unused furniture, construction materials, collectibles, antiques and junque.

We earned enough money to pay for four sets of Trex lawn furniture which will set out in a new fire pit area Tim is planning.  They each have holes drilled for sunbrellas.

The cold frame has been put to use.  We aren't using the automatic openers, we're just propping it open each day.  I have some herbs and annuals started, and will soon be filling it with vegetable transplants.  It's greenhouse season again!

Before the snow storm last week, we hauled out these greenhouse panels leftover from a friend's collapsed commercial house two winters ago.  They kept the taters snug under the foot of heavy snow.  Now that the temperatures have warmed again, we added bricks and propped the panels up, two bricks high so air can circulate underneath, and the potato plants are growing like crazy.  They're almost ready for their first hilling.  I have seed potatoes for the other two rows, and as soon as things dry out again, I'll be planting them as well.

The Ides of March

I suppose this could also be called Spring Cleaning Part II. I've been hankerin' to get the last of the old potatoes out of the basement. They did very well. I only bought a new bag from the store two weeks ago because I had run out of taters sizable enough to cut for home fries. Even though they were wrinkly and sprouty, they still made excellent mashed potatoes and I was using them for that. We also still have plenty of onions with a very low percentage being lost to sprouts. I am running low on peas, but am beginning to give away gallon bags of green beans!

So, despite the fact that it is mid-March, and at least 2 months early for the "sensible" planting date for potatoes in our zone, if you had a pile of ugly, wrinkly, sprouty potatoes lurking about in your basement.... would you compost them? Or put them in the dirt and let them take their chances?


We are in the middle of a minimum of 2 weeks of 70 degree forecasts. The soil is warm and workable. When I arrived home from the office today, Tim had just finished tilling the potato bed. I ran right down to the basement and got those taters. I had just enough for one row, half white, half red. I chose the row closest to the side walk, so if the weather changes and they freeze or rot, I can easily pull them out and start over.

It's a beautiful thing isn't it?

I also had two packets of Survivor peas left over from previous planting seasons. So, you guessed it, they went in too. The two rows planted today comprise half of my planned pea planting. I will be ordering more to plant by Good Friday. My mother recalls a year back in the 1960s ("the year Mom and Dad went on vacation"... her father was a dairy farmer, so there was only one vacation in family history to recon with!) that she planted peas on March 5th and got a wonderful crop.

There were a few odds and ends or potatoes left that didn't fit in the row. Those went into two 5 gallon pots on the patio. Those will be easy to save from bad weather should it occur, and they will be ready to pick before the end of potato planting season so I can use my next batch of leftovers to fill them for a second crop.

Spring Cleaning

The robins are back a whole month early, and all the bulbs are up but not blooming. If you weren't watching the calendar, you would swear this was April and not March. We have had a lot of warm dry weather so we are getting a head start on yard work.

I cleaned the old lettuce and remainder of last fall's carrots out and weeded my beds so they are ready for planting.

I trimmed the dead foliage and runners from the strawberry bed and pulled unwanted plant starts between the rows.

I raked all the mulch about to freshen it up and to cover the tender new shoots to protect them from frost.

We lost some tops out of dying ash in the shrubby strip beside the garden so we cleaned the tops out and cut the remaining trunks.

In a lawn surrounded by aging and dying ash trees, that was only the beginning of our game of pick-up-sticks. We took many loads of branches, limbs and brush back to the burn pile.

Speaking of tree projects. There was a strip of trees between the neighbor's drive and our side yard which have always stood in a swampy area. They have been were dying at an alarming rate and losing large pieces. There are few things more startling than sitting in your lawn on a sunny summer Sunday and hearing a huge oak branch thicker than your leg come crashing down without provocation... narrowly missing the garage eaves.

The neighbors had the trees removed, and took the opportunity to run the city water line in from the curb box, so this neat and tidy garden bed now looks like a muddy waste land.

This was my landscape bed, but everything to the left of the whisky barrel was on their land. So the plow and the rocks need to find a new home. The Hosta plant next to the fence is frozen solid in the ground so that will have to wait.

It is hard to describe the havoc that has taken place in that little strip of land over the last couple of months.

You can see how wet it is, so everything has taken place in the worst kind of mud.

After the trees were cut, Tim and neighbor Mike managed to restore some order, and the tree service returned to chip most of the tops.

Then the water line went in. It would have been impossible to trench through all those roots, so the stumps were pulled and hauled away, and the line dug to a meter pit closer to the house.

Many many loads of gravel were brought in and much of the nasty clay was removed to improve the drainage and restore some decent ground.


The property line runs right down this trench, and you can see that Tim has done his best to restore his lawn to pre-war-zone tidiness. We have several stacks of large red oak logs that will be milled into useful lumber, and neighbor Mike has several years worth of firewood to cut up.

When the ground firms up, a proper french drain will be dug down this line and the neighbors will be able to work on putting in a lawn and restoring the edge of their driveway. Then some shade trees will be planted, and before you know it peace and beauty will return. But as you can imagine... everyone is tired of sticks in the lawn.