Ready and Waiting

 We have been stuck in a warm, rainy weather system that won't go away.  In the past week we have had about 2.5" of rain on top of 6 inches in April.  It's wet.  But... it could be snowing.  It could absolutely be snowing.  So I'm OK with it.  It is just the first week of May after all.  And, if I had a traditional in ground garden and was either waiting to till, or had tilled and was trying to work in the mud...

Cole Crops are thriving

My winter project of a wire mouse excluder has been working.  I planted sunflower seeds and put the wire cover over them, shoving it down into the soft soil and weighing it down.  If they don't come for sunflower seeds, they should leave squash seeds alone too.  I haven't even had to resort to adding dryersheets.

Little baby sunflower seedlings

Last year the mice ate all of my sunflower seeds so I am looking forward to having some this year to attract the finches.

Carrots have germinated

The cold frame is chock full of plants.  There are my seedlings, annuals from the Amish greenhouse and mail order perennials that arrived.  I am about ready to start planting things out even if I have to keep frost covers on them because I have more seedlings to move out and some of them should probably be potted up into larger pots for a few weeks which will take up even more space.

I have all of my containers moved out and filled with potting mix.  I think I will actually have enough potting mix to do what I planned with maybe a little left over for wiggle room.  I've used about 150 gallons and still have ten 3 gallon containers to fill for micro tomatoes.

I ended up having to buy Candy onion starts from the greenhouse.  Mine didn't amount to anything, but I will make adjustments and try again next year.

And Oh My Gosh! at least one of my seed potatoes has survived the constant soaking and is erupting through the soil.  I had just about given up on them.  I figured they had all rotted.

The apple trees are in full bloom.

And we are finally trying to grow grass to correct the shape of the landscape bed where we took out the Lilac bush and planted the apple tree.  

If nothing else it has been excellent grass growing weather.

This Year I'm Gonna.....

 Every year we go into the gardening season with some goals.  This year I am going to stick mostly to the standard plan.  Peas, Beans, Tomatoes... the usual.  But there are always little fun things that we add or concentrate on that make each season a little different from the rest.  The cake mix is the same, but the frosting can be a little creative.  I have several new ideas to keep gardening exciting this year.

Last fall we took a trip to North Carolina.  We visited an amazing Garden Center which was all decked out for autumn planting.  That's something that our local nurseries do very sparingly because our snow can start in October, but this place had pansies and pumpkins and gourds by the truckload.  They also had some beautifully potted ornamental peppers.  Oooo... I would love to have ornamental peppers on the deck in the fall instead of the usual Chrysanthemums.  I've grown them before and I already grow peppers in pots every year.  It seems a natural choice.  So I added three different types of ornamental peppers to my seed lists.  The best part about them.... they are too hot and spicy to be palatable to deer.  That oughta teach 'em!

I used to grow a lot of eggplants.  Sometimes three or four varieties.  The flea beetles finally took the fun out of it and I haven't grown any for the past four seasons.  The last time I grew them, I put them in containers up on the brick patio which was fairly manageable and the plants didn't sustain too much damage.  But they weren't really productive.  This time I am going to try a variety bred specifically to thrive in containers.  This should be every bit as ornamental as the peppers.  And the eggplants are single serving size which is also helpful.

Little Prince Eggplant

There are a couple of things I am going back to.  Last year I sort of took a gardening break and eliminated the crops that are a bit of a challenge in raised beds The main one is sweet corn.  Last year I didn't grow corn because I was tired of watering it every day.  And I was grateful all summer because it was a very dry summer and it would have used up a huge portion of my water resources.  But yet again, I was disappointed in the taste of locally grown sweet corn.  I even tried a new farmstand.  The neighbors were very complimentary of the sweet corn there so I bought a dozen.  They were even sh2 super sweet varieties so I was very optimistic.  They were exactly what I would have chosen to grow myself.  The ears were huge and beautiful and the taste was like... cardboard.  How does one mess up sh2 sweet corn?  The husks were fresh.  They didn't appear to have been sitting around for days.  Did she plant them too close to non super sweets?  That has to be it.  If you do not isolate sh2 from the non super sweets by either pollination time (14 days) or 200 feet (some sources say 350 feet!), then the cross pollination will ruin the taste of the same year's crop.  You can't trust nobody anymore.  I guess I'm going to have to do it myself.

The other thing I am going back to is white potatoes.  I like to grow potatoes in containers, but those are also a huge resource hog.  Not only water but potting soil too.  I do have some room to plant a small crop in the ground.  I do not have a great place to store potatoes over winter, but I love new potatoes so I will concentrate on that.  I'll grow myself some nice new potatoes and not worry about growing a large crop to store.

And my last main gardening novelty is going to be something I have never tried before and that is Dahlias from seed.  And I'm not buying seed, I am using seed I collected from my singles and collarettes last fall.  You see, when you dig Dahlia tubers and divide each year you get a clone, or exact copy of the same plant.  If you allow them to cross pollinate freely and collect the seeds, you have absolutely no idea what color or characteristics you are going to get.  That is how new Dahlia varieties are created.  Yes, many breeders purposefully isolate and control crosses to breed for certain traits, but some also leave it to the bees.  And that's what I am going to do.  Maybe I will get something fun and unique that I can save year after year.  It sure is cheaper than buying a dozen different tubers to get a pleasing color range in the flower bed.

These are the plans that keep me going through the long winter months.  I am looking forward to new potatoes in early summer, hot days of watering the corn patch, and the anticipation of each new Dahlia opening to reveal a surprise.

Planning for Next Year

 Throughout the year I make mental notes of what needs to be divided, relocated or replaced.  Late summer is when I start to divide and relocate.  If something needs to be replaced, I have to make plans for adding something next year.  Sometimes, the garden bed will look so different in the spring that it is difficult to picture what you knew needed to be done when you could see the garden bed in its summer state.  That is where photos come in handy.  This is the area around the Gala Apple Tree that I planted in the spot vacated by the old Lilac bush.  I have put a few things here - divisions of Primrose, a relocated Peony, a newly purchased Amsonia.  I still have two spaces that need a summer perennial.

 

I took the photo to remind me, and I placed a blue arrow where I want to put something mid-sized and blue,I think Caryopteris.  Secondly, something very deer proof, due to its vulnerable location, and reddish, I think Burgundy Bunny Fountain Grass.   I will put these plants on my Wishlist and wait to see if they go on sale sometime before spring.

I went through this same process last year, making the plan for the east end of the Riverbed, and carrying out the plan this summer when we planted four perennials.  It has taken nearly a year for the plan to come to fruition.

The end result of adding "red" and "yellow".  Next year it should be more dramatic.  Then I can judge if I need just a little something more like Black Eyed Susan.

It will be at least a year before my plan to fill in behind the apple tree can be appreciated, but it is always nice to have a little space to fill in the garden.

Lemon Squeeze Fountain Grass the "yellow" element recently planted

Thinking of Containers - and Shopping

 One of the favorite past times of gardeners in the cold winter months is shopping.  Seeds, tools, seed starting supplies... live plants to be shipped later.  

One of the containers that I am looking forward to most this year is the shade container I had by our firepit last year.  It was all Coleus that I started from seeds.  Cheap plants!  And I still have seeds, so this year they are technically "Free Plants".  I love the palette of red, black and chartreuse.  They got pretty big and I think adding some kind of support in there would be a good idea.  That way when they get too big late in the season I can use string to hold them all together.  I pinched these back many times earlier in the season.  That only encouraged them.  They are the "Giant Exhibition Mix" from Harris Seeds.

(that is a 16" container under there)

Last year this planter was in the spot indicated by the center arrow.  And I want to do two more in the spots indicated by the other arrows.

The containers I am using are 16" Bombay planters that Walmart used to sell.  I have a pretty good selection of them and wish I had more.  If I ever see them again I will buy as many as I can haul away!  They have held up so well.  I have them in four colors and each year I clean them well and store them away.  They are just as shiny today as the day I bought them.

The Bombay containers back in 2016

So for the center support I have had my eye on this Verona Obelisk from Gardener's Supply.  A couple of months ago I got it half off.  They are normally over priced at over $60. Yikes! I thought $30 something was a great deal.  When I received it I wished I had ordered more.  It is pretty well made and it even folds flat to store. Technically, it is a flimsy little thing.  But it is a heavy, well made, flimsy little thing.

Then one day, as I was shopping around, I found these at the At Home website.

For $14.99!

They are a similar size, but just a bit shorter.  They are made the same, but the centers are actual circles instead of ovals.  I bought two.  Even with shipping they were an excellent value compared to the Gardener's version.  

This is what they look like side by side.  I will use the taller one in the center container, and the shorter ones on each side.  

I can't wait for the day when I can pot these up.

Deciding What To Grow in the Vegetable Garden 2024

Now that the new seed catalogs are showing up in the mail, it is time to start thinking about what to grow next this year.  Again, I am using only half of the raised bed garden for veggies and leaving the other beds for pollinator friendly annuals.  I am not making many changes from last year because things went pretty well.  As always, I will do a few things differently.  I am in the mood for some fun tomatoes.

Peas, Beans, Cucumbers, Zucchini, Lettuce, Carrots:  I am doing everything exactly the same with one minor tweak.  I am going to plant my row of pole beans in two stages.  I will start in the center and plant half of my yellow and half of my green varieties.  Two weeks later I will finish off the ends of the row.  I had plenty of pole beans all year, but there was a two week lull towards the end of August, then they began blooming again.  I want to see if I can stagger their recovery period by planting at different times or if it has more to do with weather.  And I want to plant a little more of the green Seychelles than the yellow Monte Gusto because the Monte Gusto is just such a heavy producer compared to the Seychelles.

Cucumbers 2017

Tomatoes:  Although I have been planting my main crop in large containers, I still end up with a few plants in the ground.  I am going to try some more dwarf varieties in the containers but I am planning on six indeterminate plants in a raised bed using the Florida Weave method of support.  For the past couple of years I have stuck to one red variety, one yellow or bi-color, and one black or brown variety.  This year I also want to have a green and a blue variety.  It has been years since I had fun with colored tomatoes.  I also plan on buying an Early Girl plant.

Blue Beauty Tomatoes 2018

Peppers:  I am not changing anything about my two pots of hot peppers, but I am going to buy some bell pepper plants and plant them along the tomato plants.  Peppers like some filtered sun and planting them at the feet of tomatoes works well.

Bell Peppers 2019

Cole Crops:  Last year I purchased all of my cole crop plants.  The cabbages were fine, but I really missed having the yellow cauliflowers.  So I am going to go back to starting all of my plants.  This adds a month to my gardening season, but it also makes it more rewarding.

Flame Star Cauliflower

Sweet Corn:  As of right now, I am not in the mood for sweet corn.  I am not in the mood to water it every day and turn on the electric fence to keep the coons out just to yield four dozen ears, no matter how awesome they are.  I think I will take a year off and buy from the nearby farm stan.  I have many months to change my mind.

Cantaloupes:  Again - a huge commitment for a non-guaranteed return.  Last year we got most of our rain just before they ripened which watered down their taste. Weeks of excellent weather, then days of counter productive weather at just the wrong time.  I am not sure I want to water them every day and cover them every night just to get a dozen ho hum melons.  I still have seeds.  I may plant a few, but they are not high on my list of goals this year.

Sweet Potatoes:  My variety is called Mahon Yam.  It is only sold by Johnny's Seeds.  For years they were getting about $24.99 for 25 slips.  That was pretty pricey, but the variety grew really well for me. In 2022 they went up to $37.00 so I learned to start my own slips.  I wasn't going to pay $37.00 plus tax and shipping for a small harvest of sweet potatoes! Especially since not all of the 25 bedraggled, mail order slips could be expected to take. Out of curiosity, I checked the price this year.  $45.25 for 25 slips.  Holy Crap!  I will again start my own slips.  Last year I tried seven gallon containers, which were easier to keep watered than grow bags, but they weren't really deep enough.  I am going back to the 25 gallon grow bags. 

Sweet Potato Slips

Regular Potatoes: Also a no this year.  Growing your own potatoes is easy and cost effective if you put them in the ground.  If you put them in grow bags they are quite a bit of work (and can be expensive in terms of soil) for a marginal return.  It is still the best way to get some new potatoes though.

Herbs for Butterflies:  Last year I chose a random raised bed,  one where the soil was under preforming for food crops, and planted Parsley, Dill, Basil and Dara.  It is becoming a "perennial" herb bed.  The Parsley will winter over and should flower this year and planting Dill in the same place each year is wise if you don't want to fight volunteers all the time. Last year wasn't good for Dill, so I will buy extra seeds. I plan to put my Rosemary and Sage in this bed this year and also try Valerian which is another pollinator friendly, perennial herb.

Valerian from Victory Seeds

So that is my gardening plan for 2024.  I have most of my seeds, but I will probably be placing two small orders to fill in my cole crop seeds and to add a couple of fun tomato varieties.  Cabbages and Cauliflowers will need to be seeded in mid-March.  Until then, I can pour over these catalogs and dream of warm, sunny days.

Happy New Year!

Cutting Out the Ugly

 That's what I've been doing.  We are on the brink of tearing out a lot of the garden for autumn, but for now I just start each day with a muck bucket and a pair of snips and I trim out anything that doesn't look nice.  That could mean anything from just deadheading Dahlias to lopping off a wheelbarrow load of Sunflower tops and overgrown Cosmos.  We have just reached the end of a two week dry stretch which culminated in several hot, oppressively humid days.  We are now entering a break of cool weather with some rain and I won't have to worry so much about watering annuals to keep them looking nice.

The grasses in the dry river bed are heading out.  Above is a Pennisetum Foxtrot.  This is the second season for this plant and it has finally filled out and reached its full height of four feet and is putting out these fun little fox tails.

One of my stand out Dahlias this year is the new to me "Ice Tea" which always has a dozen or more blooms on it.

It began flowering as a rather monochrome, ball style dahlia, but later in the season it is showing some good, dark eyed color and looser, decorative form.

Another favorite is the Mai Tai (above)  This is a big, impressive plant with close to ten blooms at a time.  Not bad for a first year single tuber.

Summer's End

I am deep into planning for next year's garden.  I have my layout finalized and am already placing seed orders for things that are available now and going through my inventory to make sure I have everything set for next year.   I use a spreadsheet and create icons for each of my containers, plant supports and required row covers so I know I have the proper equipment to carry out and support the plan I've made.

 I have a list of fertilizers and such that I need to restock so I can budget for that in the spring. I have placed orders for spring bulbs and those will be arriving the end of this month so I will be able to enjoy planting again.  At the same time that I am cleaning up the detritus from this year I will be putting new life into the soil for a fresh, new spring.

Managing Expectations

 This is the time of year when I can get overwhelmed by the enormity of the task of keeping things alive.  All it takes is one bad day.  One bad decision, one lapse in judgement and you have a situation where you have to make significant changes to your plans and gardening expectations.  For the whole year.  Compound that by making commitments to other people.  Then you have to manage their expectations as well.   

Now don't get me wrong.  There have been no gardening catastrophes.  The people I have made promises to wouldn't be terribly upset if things went wrong.  But it troubles my mind and makes me worry more.  I no sooner thought "I hope I don't have any trouble with damping off" than Elsie's tomato seedlings started keeling over.  It was as if I had summoned the negative energy.   And I adjusted quickly.  And now I have a lot of nice little plants.  But this time of year you have to stay on your toes and pay attention.

It was time to start moving things out to the cold frame.  That mess up there ^ in particular.  On the right is a tray of Celosia and sweet peppers.  Growing well.  Need to get out of the way.  To the left are marigolds.  Those were supposed to be germinating out in the cold frame.  But the weather has been too changeable and they were (wisely) biding their time.  So I brought them in to give them a kick.  Now they need to go out.  Unlike the wimpy tomatoes, the Marigolds all had nice roots.

That's what you want to see.  Nice little green leaves right in the center of a tidy cell.  That's not that easy to achieve.  The tomatoes (below) were too leggy.  I missed the best window for transplanting them as I waited for the weather to break so the Peppers, Celosia and Marigolds could go outside, freeing up enough room for a large tray under its own light.

They transplanted OK.  There were no roots to speak of.  In fact, the upper left cell pack in the tray as pictured below had no roots at all!  As I broke seedlings I set them aside and put them all in one cell so I could watch them.  They wilted that day, but its hard to kill a tomato seedling (unless you damp it off then all bets are off) and by the next day they had adjusted and stood back up.

I also had extra of my father's favorite tomato (the Barlow Jap that my PaPaw developed) and two dozen of Elsie's that I seeded the day their brothers damped off.  We all do it.  We plant too many them we can't bear to kill them.  They may as well go out in the cold frame with the Marigolds.  I can keep an eye on two trays as easily as one tray.

These were at the right stage for transplanting.

These were way past time.  But they had good root systems.

May weather has finally straightened around.  Everyone has been complaining that spring is late and Mother Nature is a kook.  As a gardener, I think I have more realistic expectations of April.  I know that a week of summer weather in April does not mean summer is here and the weather will continue to trend upwards.  Anything can happen.  It can freeze in June.  I would don't mind a wet, gloomy April so things can grow and get a good foothold, but when May arrives I want no funny business. I can tolerate some cold nights, but I'm ready to get going.

I spent all day yesterday tidying up after a week of cool, wet weather.  Today I need to go around and apply slug bait and reapply deer repellent.  My perennials arrived from Bluestone Perennials this week and most of those can go in the ground now.  Then I may see about getting my dahlia tubers out of storage and into some trays in the cold frame.

Surviving Winter - Best YouTube Channels

 Here we are in the depths of winter.  The best we can do is plan and dream.  I am still over a month away from starting even my earliest seeds.  I have received all of my essential seed orders and am now just indulging in an occasional order to build my inventory and enjoy a tiny bit of retail therapy.  I am putting off buying new supplies just yet but I did go to the Dollar Tree and buy a dozen wire waste baskets which I use to shelter seedlings.  Up to now I have only used the short version which are fine for new transplants but this time I scored the tall ones which will be excellent for protecting larger plants and supporting row covers.  I even tried a little winter sowing with some leftover snapdragon seeds in a milk jug just for an excuse to put my hands in soil.  

This is my second winter of retirement and I am not having any trouble staying busy.  The weather has been mild but dismal and we are currently going through a bright but cold snap.  I am having to carefully monitor the temperature of my stored dahlias in the basement bulkhead, but it is worth it to see the sun again.  For the past week or so I have been working on updating our drapes.  I put an Audible book on, make myself a latte and putter slowly through through measuring, ironing, hemming and stitching.  I know just enough about sewing to frustrate myself and do it often enough that I believe (erroneously) that I will remember how to work the machine. Just when I work out all the kinks and get good at it again I come to the end of my project.  I am having to shorten the lined drapes from the top which is simple enough but the door treatment I created from scratch including hanging new hardware.

This is beautiful fabric which is nice to work with and I am very happy with how it turned out.  After taking down my old faded, unraveling calico attempts from almost twenty years ago I was determined that the finish on this panel would match that of the beautifully made panels that I got from the now defunct Country Curtains.  You can still get these drapes from Vermont Country Store who bought out the business from CC.   I purchased these exactly five years ago when CC was going out of business (at a 30% discount no less) and am just now getting around to hanging them.  Which is a shame because they do so much to update and brighten the room.  Next I need to freshen up the curtains on the living room side.  First I am going to try rehanging the existing panels by changing them from gathered rod pockets with a header and hold backs, to adding rings and letting them hang straight.  If that doesn't freshen them enough I will add lining and if it still doesn't help I have swatches on order.

Now enough about my drapes, and back to gardening.

When I don't have an active project, I could while away the hours watching documentaries on YouTube.  I pay for a subscription so I don't have to watch the ads and I get many, many hours a week of entertainment for less than 50 cents a day.  For starters, there is virtually unlimited music options.  I usually begin my day with a workout video. I could spend hours studying the socioeconomic affects of climate change in the year 536 A.D.  or the reason why the color blue was the last one to be named.  Each week I spend a little time in the world of Tolkien thanks to the many excellent channels devoted to in depth study of all of his works.  And if you just need a simple pick me up there is nothing better than watching funny animal videos.  Quirky cats and baby goats will brighten anyone's day and anyone who has trained horses can feel relieved that they never had a truly uncooperative horse.  

Of course my main interest is gardening.  So here are my Top Five YouTube Gardening Channels to get you through to spring.  The main reason I like all of these channels is that they are gardening (for the most part) in zone 5 or just on the edge, as I am, and they focus on outdoor gardening and vegetables, the things I am most interested in.  They also take a lot of time and effort to edit their videos making them very enjoyable to watch.

#1 Garden Answer:  Garden Answer is actually the number one English speaking garden channel on YouTube by number of views.  They garden in eastern Oregon in the high desert which has recently been reclassified from zone 5b to zone 6a.  This husband and wife team started YouTubing as a hobby because he wanted to edit videos and ten years later they have both quit their day jobs and also employ full time garden help and an excellent video editor.  They work their butts off and put a great deal of their YouTube proceeds back into making daily content which ranges from landscaping, planting an orchard, extensive vegetable gardening, a cut flower garden and seed starting just to name a few.  Sometimes the videos feature her families garden center so you can see behind the scenes of what it is like to run a large nursery and garden center.  I like to live vicariously through them and would never want to plant on the scale they do. Here is an example of one of their project videos which involves designing a formal English garden around their (very expensive) glass greenhouse. I found them first when looking for raised bed gardens similar to mine.  This channel is so popular because of the wide range of content and down to earth friendliness of the couple.  She is out there almost every day with her hands in the dirt getting things done.  I watch it daily because I don't want to miss some fun little project or tidbit of useful information. They also have a second channel where they answer viewer questions each week.

#2 Susan's in the Garden:  Susan's is a much smaller, low key channel.  She gardens in the Pacific Northwest Spokane Washington, zone 5b.  Susan has a raised bed garden much like mine and she has the same mindset towards pest protection as I do.  She has a good volume of content and also covers some perennial gardening and bird watching. She has put out a couple of excellent books The Vegetable Garden Pest Handbook and recently The Vegetable Garden Problem Solver Handbook which is still in the preorder stage and will be released next week.  I get a lot of ideas from her for dealing with climate and pest challenges and I am really looking forward to this latest book.

#3 The Impatient Gardener: Erin gardens in zone 5b Southeastern Wisconsin within a (literal) stone's throw of Lake Michigan.  Once again, she has a raised bed vegetable garden almost exactly like mine and I've learned a lot about growing Dahlias from her.  She is also very good at testing and recommending tools. She still has a day job (at a sailing publication) but she has a very practical approach to both landscaping and vegetable gardening, puts out a lot of good content and takes a lot of time editing.

#4 Huw Richards: Huw gardens in England so a little milder climate then mine and he also likes to grow all the traditional, sustainable English root crops like Jerusalem Artichokes and various beets which aren't of a lot of interest to me.  But if you want to spend some time in a traditional English vegetable plot, his videography is excellent and can transport your mind to a beautiful place.  He posts about once a week and does well keeping content going in the off season. I first found Huw when I was studying up on growing potatoes in grow bags.   His overall gardening philosophies match mine very closely.  He practices no dig and waters with collected rainwater and has product lines that ship to the US and books.  Plus, he's just so darn cute.

#5 Gardener Scott:  Scott gardens in zone 5b in Colorado.  What I like about Gardener Scott is his scientific approach to growing conditions.  He has a lot of good, basic growing content and would be excellent for a beginner vegetable gardener to follow and get off on the right foot.  The content can be a little dry and rudimentary but every now and then I pick up a good tid bit.  It puts me in a good mind set for gardening.

Honorable Mention:  I follow these channels religiously, but they don't apply to my gardening as directly as the first five do.

    Gardening with Creekside is a landscaper, nursery and grower in zone 7 Dallas, NC.  Their channel focuses more on varieties that do well in the hot southern climate and vegetables are just an occasional side line.  They put up a video a day through the week and I skip the ones that focus on what they have to offer for sale at their nursery.  But I do enjoy seeing new varieties and some of her care tips translate very well to what I have going in the landscape.  What interest me most about their channel is the production end of things.  They start with plugs from Proven Winners, and grow them out to a saleable size.  They are increasing the production side of their business and recently purchased a machine that fills the containers automatically.  When they vacation they often visit other growers so you get to see some of the behind the scenes of what goes into getting annuals and perennials to your local retailer.

    Charles Dowding is another traditional English gardener without the modern charisma of Huw Richards.  Still he offers great insights to composting and no dig gardening.  He presents projects in a complete start to finish video as opposed to a daily Vlog update and does a lot of comparison experimentation to support his theories. He has decades of practical growing experience and if you can lower your blood pressure enough to follow along at the pace he talks, there is a lot of good information to be had.

So those are my top gardening resources that I visit daily to get my gardening fix.  Seeing what everyone else is doing in their gardens helps keep me on schedule without having to give it too much thought.  Now I have to get back to my drapery adjustments.