Soon....

 

Here Come the Dahlias

 Dinner Plates and Decoratives are opening up

Lady Darlene

Mai Tai

Bloomquist Jean

Mai Tai

Summer's End

Carrots

 The carrots are beautiful this year.  As usual, I grew them in a container in potting mix.  I have watered every day during this hot dry season.  The foliage is lush and green and not dying out from the bottom.  Yesterday I pulled a few and used them with the Early Jersey Cabbage to make fresh cole slaw.

Adding to the Riverbed

Last summer I wrote about making plans to add some color and variation to the one end of the big dry creek bed which used to have a straight line of RR ties holding back a low terrace. I wanted to add dark red and yellow, and add variation to the straight line that was caused by planting along those RR ties.  I purchased the plants this spring, but waited until we added more rocks before we chose spots and planted them.  These plants came in 3.5" pots from Bluestone Perennials and I planted them the same day in the large fiber pots with Miracle Grow Moisture Control potting mix and Espoma Bio-tone Starter Fertilizer which is awesome stuff.  They took right off, and the roots were filling the entire pot.

I've learned a few things over the past few years about planting in this situation. 

Plant #1 2019

When we initially planted this project, I was just using gallon sized fiber pots and I have since changed to using wider ones measuring about 11x10.   I initially only cut a large enough hole to sink the pot.  This hasn't been a big problem.  As you can see, most things are thriving ...

The down side to planting so restrictively is that when the more vigorous grasses try to spread, they strain against the surrounding road fabric, which doesn't hurt them at all, but it makes it completely impossible to divide them.  Plants with smaller bases, such as daylilies or the shrubs do just fine.  I have widened some of those holes but a lot of them are exactly the same as they were when first planted.

Our initial planting was sixty holes.  The year after we added almost two dozen more. I may have added one or two more single holes, but the change in the size of containers occurred between the first sixty and the next round of mass planting.  At this point we are cutting the road stabilization mat twice the size of the large container, removing the native soil (packed gray clay) and replacing it with a mixture of clean and fluffy native soil and potting mix.

I set the pot in the hole a few times to check the height.  Another thing I have learned is to plant them higher than you think you should because they settle over time.  Maybe not the first year, but by the second year the plant will sink.  This time we also removed the fiber pots because the plants were filling the container, but not firmly rooted into the fiber, and this saves us from having to look at the rim of the pot for a year which drives my husband a little nutty.  After a year or two the fiber breaks down enough that you can just pop the rim off right at the soil line.  In the mean time it looks like a pot sitting in a hole...

We pack the soil in and water well to remove any air from around the roots.

Then the gravel and rocks are replaced right up to the plant.  When the plant grows it will push the gravel away with no problem.

The plants I chose are:

Penstemon Onyx and Pearls

Penstemon Husker's Red

Pennisetum Lemon Squeeze

Pennisetum Karley Rose

Onyx and Pearls planted elsewhere

Husker's Red with some late flowers

The Penstemons have beautifully shaded red and green foliage.  When they bloom in June they will be quite tall but when they are through you can trim them down to whatever height suits you.  Both of these plants bloomed in the containers while I had them in the garden and they were very easy to care for.  I planted a few more in the river bed in spots vacated by Cheyenne Sky Echinacea.  I have no idea why those plants died over a mild winter.  They had done well the winter before, but I had them planted in threes and I lost 8 out of 9 plants. The one I salvaged was planted in another spot and is doing just great.

The Lemon Squeeze grass was my solution to the "yellow" color.  It is a bright chartreuse and should produce seed heads fairly early in the season as the Karley Rose does.  The Karley Rose was rescued from the warf where it was struggling with wet feet this year.  I replaced it with Niagara Falls Panicum which should do OK with wet feet.     

Here Comes the Food

 I have been picking cucumbers for a few days, but now they are coming in dozens.

Clarimore Zucchini, Sun Sugar cherry tomatoes and Bristol Cucumbers

A shout out to my husband for spray painting the strawberry cage making it look brand new,
I painted it a couple of years ago, but I used two cans of paint and he used seven!

I noticed today that my Button Bush is flowering!

This came mail order April 2023 in a 3.5" pot.  Now it is hip high and five feet across.

So cool!

Itty Bitty Bunny
very shy
and wiggly

Mid-July Vegetable Garden

 Here is a status report on how all of the vegetable beds are doing:

Peas and Lettuce
I have removed most of the dried pods for seed next year and these need to come out.

Cucumbers and Celery doing awesome

I have started picking slicing cucumbers

The second seeding on the end is flowering and setting fruit

Pole Beans
The paler green are the yellow wax beans Monte Gusto

Seychelles are almost ready to pick

Direct sown Durango Marigolds are beginning to flower

Dwarf Tomatoes

These should be the first to ripen
Patiently waiting....

Broccoli putting out a few side shoots

Still have three Cauliflower to pick, and some Early Jersey Cabbage

Indeterminate Tomatoes and Bell Peppers

Black Beauty getting some dark color

Pike County Yellow

Bloody Mary Nasturtiums

Sun Sugar Cherry Tomato

Herbs and Sweet Potatoes

Dara
(like Queen Anne's Lace or Wild Carrot)

DIill, Sweet Potatoes and Carrots

The Volunteer Bed
One Cucumber vine is a Pickler and the other is a Slicer
I have picked two from each.

There are at least five Cantaloupe set

Havasu Hot Peppers

Clarimore Summer Squash and Volunteer Snapdragons
The first few squash were not pollinated but I have now picked five or six

Dinner Plate Dahlias ready to bloom

Single and Collarette Dahlias

Lazy Lounging Rabbit
"Little Bunny Foo Foo"

Power Pole Project #1

The next door neighbors have a back-in area in their driveway that needed a rework.  The crane truck that removed the property line trees this spring dealt out some wear and tear, and then when additional work was done in their backyard, one of the dump trucks caught the end of the RR ties and the thirty year old wall gave up completely.  It is a short retaining wall that levels the driveway and keeps people out of the landscaping on the other side.  In NY state, residents are no longer allowed to purchase or transport used RR ties.  I'm not sure what makes them environmentally acceptable when they are under a RR track but deems them a hazard when they are lining your driveway, but that's the way it is.  Someone we know mentioned that they knew where we could get fragments of broken power poles for free, so we pursued that avenue and came up with enough to do this project and one for me too.

Removing the old ties

Digging a proper trench with the backhoe

We pulled out the three layers of old RR ties and cleaned out the trench first with the backhoe, and then by hand.  The wall was about twenty feet long, but we decided to shorten it a bit, making it easier to get big trucks past it in the future.

When we were done digging, we had a straight, level surface to start with and we lined it with some gravel to fill in any unevenness.

One of the power poles was cedar and fairly uniform in width its entire length.  With a chainsaw we cut lengths of pole between 14" and 20" long.  The idea was to randomly mix the widths and heights.

As we mixed chunks from both ends of the pole, we started plumbing and straightening the wall.

Just another inch this way...

We put a tall chunk at the end which will have reflectors nailed to it.

When we were satisfied with the pattern and straightness, we filled both sides with crushed stone.

Tamp.. tamp.. tamp..  more tamping

Water will fill in any little voids and firm up the gravel

Now all that's left to do is put the driveway back

The change in grade is about one foot

The driveway side will be low enough not to catch any bumpers

Now the neighbors are going to freshen up their landscaping with a rock garden, mulching with gravel which is very low maintenance.  The grasses are divisions from my own grasses on the other side of their drive.  For three hours of work and almost no material cost, the driveway is fixed and the landscape bed has an attractive backdrop.

Even with all of the work going on, I still had time to watch some butterflies.

Do you see that their are two on the Milkweed?

Don't overlook this little Azure