You Say Tomato, I Say Tomaato

Well, actually you say Bermuda Grass and I say wire grass. The local gardening guy in the RTD often says that if you love the way your lawn looks with this southern bent grass, you call it Bermuda, but if you hate having to constantly pull it out of your flower beds, you call it wire grass. I would be the latter.

One of the few garden jobs that I truly hate is weeding out the wire grass. I have worked diligently to get good quality ground covers established in nearly all our beds so that they will make it unpleasant for the wire grass. You do know, don't you, that part of the role of ground covers is shading out the weeds and making it easier for them to just go somewhere else. Most of the beds are in pretty good shape, but the large bed in front where the oak used to rule is the worst one I have. Last week I sprayed with Round-up, so that this morning I tackled the remaining grass. There's only one way to do it - hands and knees with a good digging tool and lots of elbow grease. Fortunately, I had less than a quarter of it to do, and two hours later it looked really good.

That's the sort of maintenance that can make gardening less fun, but then one has to look on the good side. It looks great when it's done and I normally only do it once a year. That particular bed is in bad shape now because of taking down the oak. The falling branches and pieces of trunk made holes in the ground and gouged out small plants, so I have a bit of clean up to do, but by spring it will look much better.

The new plan for this space is to encourage the mini-St. John's Wort to fill in to cover the rest of the ground. There are two volunteer dogwoods already growing there - one nearly in the center and one more toward the center of the yard - which we are leaving. [If you look carefully, you can see the larger one "above" and just to the right of the planter in the photo.] Our experience at the old house was that in five years we had a decent-sized, blooming dogwood, so we hope to be as successful with these two. The one we transplanted into the boomerang last September has grown nearly a foot already, so we have reason to be hopeful. For the short term I am planning to put some good dirt from the compost pile in the gouges and then get a small load of mulch to cover. That will help impede the grass.

For the very short term, I've put a huge urn on the tree stump and filled it with summer blooming flowers. This one was actually in the back yard, but not getting enough sun. Did a bit of damage to the fox glove when I moved it - hence the drooping stems. I keep hoping they will straighten up, but they'll be pretty when they bloom anyway.

One other small problem we are watching: both dogwoods have mildew. I have already started a weekly spraying with copper sulfate (Andre Viette says that is the way to go.) It is only in recent years that dogwoods have gotten mildew, and the younger ones can be killed by it. Ours are only two years old, so I am watching them. Am also spraying all the garden phlox. It's also very susceptible.

Status Update

Thought it would be interesting to see what six weeks of work, rain and sun can do to the garden. If you were around on April 14 you saw a very different view of the garden [above]. I was pleased with the good shape the garden was in - in general - but as you can see, it was just beginning to grow. Perennials were starting to come up and shrubs were greening up, but you can clearly see the paths and the structure of the space. The grass looked good, that not much else.


Now add some good, rainy growing season and this afternoon it looked like this:


Unfortunately, I took this photo a good bit later in the day than the first, so the shadows are very different but you can see how lush everything has become - and we are just beginning to get blooms. Look how full the crabapple tree is, and the hedge at the back - you can hardly see the shed and house behind us now. The tower for the watering stand is nearly hidden by the Virginia Sweetspire. The round lily pond in the front is completely hidden behind daylilies now and Agnes appears to be hiding, too. The semi-circle path is still obvious, but there's lots more growing there. I moved the gazing ball to the front because it had gotten completely hidden.

After a hot humid day, it suddenly cooled off a bit late this afternoon and I was able to sit out by the fish pond and read - for the first time in weeks. It was cool and calm and a place to rest. That's the payoff for all the hard work.

On Saturday we had our extended family for a cookout on the deck - eight adults and four children; the latter ages one to five. It was delightful to see the children playing in both the yard and garden. The pond was a draw for them, especially at fish feeding time, but they ran in the grass and hid in the garden. The best part of all, tho, was the three year old boy running back and forth down the paths - in his diaper! He was just tall enough that his head would pop up from time to time as he ran, as if a mini-streaker had arrived. We thoroughly enjoyed seeing him, and delighted to watch the little ones entertain themselves with next to nothing but their imaginations. Another reason for the garden: It's a place for children to play.

Hope you've had the opportunity to work in your garden and are starting to reap the rewards. Happy digging!

And that's what the garden is really for - the enjoy.

What's in Bloom?

I've been so busy with the Big Project that stuff has burst into bloom and I've not been updating you. It seems like everything is blooming at once.




First, the "red" yucca finally bloomed. Altho it had a lovely red streaked stem, the flower is just as creamy white as any other yucca. It is an unusually pretty plant, tho, with the variegated leaves and the red-striped stem. We have a second one that continues to struggle, but at least with this one blooming, there is hope for the other one - next year.




The small day lilies are bursting. We have 'Happy Returns' which is a butter yellow, rather than the more popular 'Stella d'Oro' which is a gold. These are about half the size of "normal" day lilies and are rebloomers, so we will have them thru the summer.




The yarrow is starting to bloom. We have a pastel mix, rather than the more familiar gold. We've naturalized them around the pond and used them as filler wherever I need some additional color. Altho there are pale yellow, cream and pink, there is also a dark pink that provides a nice pop of color in many places.





Today I cut the first bloom off one of the hydrangeas. It's also a rebloomer that Mother gave us for Christmas one year. We also have a spirea that has lovely pink blossoms. It looks like a cloud of pink all around the shrub.




Most of the pots of annuals are doing pretty well, except that the (!$&^*#@ chipmunks keep digging up some of the plants. I put back two or three every day, so they are not growing very fast. And the waterlilies are all blooming. We have a pink one and a yellow one in the fish pond and another yellow in a small round lily pond. The latter is blooming like crazy. It's out in the middle of the yard, so I think it gets more sun than the fish pond, and the flowers seem to like it.



Like all good gardens there are some surprises, tho. Apparently the birds planted these hollyhocks by the mailbox. I suspect the paper delivery man is not too thrilled with them, but they came as a lovely surprise when they popped up this spring. These were originally planted at the very back of the back garden and mostly were two shades of pink. Somehow one of the white ones managed to plant itself here - in practically no dirt, but a perfect spot.



Basically, it's lush and growing beautifully. With all rain in March and April, everything has come to full life a little bit earlier than usual. Part of it is the maturity of the plants, or course, but it already looks like it normally does in mid-June, so I guess we are about two weeks ahead. Today I've given you a look at the individual stars. Maybe tomorrow, I can give you the big picture. Happy digging!




ps: Mitchell's vegetable garden is also thriving. The lettuce is exploding, but everything else is just growing normally. He has also put in one of those upside down tomato plants. He has many little tomatoes - both on the regular plants and on the upside down one. I think we could begin harvesting lettuce any time now.

Let There be Xeri!

Well, it's done. After two weekends of hard - and I do mean difficult and heavy duty - work, I have my xeri-garden. As you can see, it doesn't look like much ... yet. I have been telling you not to get too excited, because now the plants need to grow. I hope I have given them a good start. So, here's the last step, which I finished this morning.

Fortunately, it was a pretty day with very overcast skies. Altho the temperature was already 70 degrees at 6:15, the cloud cover kept it cool to work. Last night I laid out the bed on paper. This is always a good idea when you are working either with lots of different kinds of plants, or when you are working with a big bed. I had both. I had 22 pots including nine varieties, plus ground cover to fill a space that is 64 square feet. To lay out the space I used graph paper and the tags from the plants. The way I do it is to make a list of the plants including their height, width and color [from the tags]. Obviously, you want the shorter plants in the front - duh - but the width determines how close together or far apart you want to put them. A plant that is 8 inches tall x 10 inches "wide" will fill a circle with a 10-inch diameter. So, if you want your plants to fill in the space fairly tightly when they are mature, you need to figure out how far apart to put them. I like about two inches of "overlap", so for those 8 x 10 plants I would put them 8 inches apart instead of ten (10 - 2 = 8). And, of course, you want to consider color. My bed is primarily blue, violet and pink, but with white and a soft yellow to break up the pastels.

I started by setting the pots out according to the plan. You will always want to move a few around when you see how they look. Then I started at the left end at the back and moved left to right and back to front digging and planting. It is very easy with a new bed like this. All the dirt is soft and easy to dig. I waited until they were all in place before watering the bed. I watered twice and will do it again this evening. In addition to the plants I have bought, I pulled a Sedum telephium 'Autum Joy' out of my existing garden and divided it into four clumps for this garden, as well as six or seven clumps of Sedum spurium 'John Creech'. The latter came from Garland's garden nearly 10 years ago and is all over my garden. It's probably my favorite sedum.

If you look at my plan (at the bottom of the post) you might notice that there is about a third of the bed that is mysteriously "blank". That's because I over-built! Truth be told I really didn't realize how big this bed would be. The part that is now filled is about what I had in mind, but I built it much larger, so what to do? Eventually I know that there will be plenty of volunteers and other plants to add, but for now I have filled it with annual plants for color. I may use it next year for a cutting garden, or let Mitchell use it to augment his vegetables.

So, what did I plant? I keep saying this is a xeri-garden, but it is also a hummingbird and butterfly magnet as well. All of the plants can get by just fine on small amounts of water and none of them like to stand in water - hence all the sand and gravel in the bottom of the box to help the water run thru and off down the slope of the yard. Working from the tallest in the back to the front, here's what you will find:

Agastache x 'Ava' - Ava Hummingbird Mint. This grows up to 4 feet tall (so it's next to the fence for support if it needs it). It's a rose pink and will be covered with blossoms from mid-summer until fall.

Penstemon barbatus 'Elfin Pink'. Two feet tall and a bright pink, this is reportedly one of the easiest beardtongues to grow and a hummingbird favorite, and it's next to:

Penstemon smallii 'Violet Dusk', which is also two feet tall and pale purple. It is already in bloom.

Oenothera fremontii 'Shimmer' and Penstemon 'Blue Lips' are at the front. The former is a pale yellow and the latter is ..... pale blue. They are only 10-12 inches tall, so nice for the front. Blue Lips should bloom in June and Shimmer much of the summer.

Thymus serpyllum 'Coccineum', Red Mother-of-Thyme is the ground cover for the left front corner. It will form a carpet and trail over the edge of the box.

Salvia 'Snowhill' fills in behind the Elfin Pink. It is a little taller and white. This, too, is already in bloom, so I get some more instant color from it. The white looks good against the grey fence.

Sedum 'Autum Joy'. I put two clumps in the back left corner. The greyish color will be nice with all these pastel flowers, and the bloom is a bright, bright pink that fades to a pretty brown in the late fall. These plants look terrible at the moment. They would have done better to have been transplanted in the early spring - like early April - when they were short. I think they will eventually make it, but they will not be much to look at this year. There are two more at the far right end of the planting.

Nepeta Walkers Low - Catmint. There is one plant tucked in between the Violet Dark and the sedum at the far right end. This is a clear violet with a slightly grey foliage, so another nice combination with my pinks and purples. It is already 15 inches tall.

Sedum 'John Creech'. As an after thought I added this groundcover along the front of the bed. It forms a lovely two-inch tall mat and will trail over the front of the box.

The last plant that went in was gift from my next door neighbor - a passalong plant. It's an annual or biennial that grows "wild" in her yard, and before weed killer grew wild in my yard. Remember that many "flowers" are simply domesticated weeds! It's in the lamb's ear family and has a lovely deep cerise flower. It will self seed, so will make a good filler in this bed and help with the wild look that I hope to have in a couple of years. When I remember it's name I will tell you!

So, that's the Big Project - all done, except the growing. I feel happy to be finished, but a little let down not to have something on the horizon. Unfortunately, the next project is more in the keeping-up-the-house variety. I'll take some pictures in a few weeks to see if we are making any progress. Happy Gardening!