How does your garden grow?

If you visit this site often, you'll realize that I am kind of an accidental gardener. I try things out that I see on TV or read on the web. I am very interested in plants and organic gardening so I am always trying to learn something new to try out at home. I see gardening as a kind of therapy. I am usually out getting dirty early in the morning or after work if it isn't too hot.

I realized that up until now, I usually post about the garden without including a lot of info - mostly pictures. I figured it was about time I departed from that and shared some of my successes and some of my problems (usually occurring simultaneously).

I don't use chemicals in the yard. I have started putting down blood meal and I use my own compost but that's about it. I hand weed, use a push mower, and get water from my rain barrels. Most people think I'm crazy. I don't consider myself to be on the forefront of anything "green" and frankly, I think it is laziness that keeps me gardening this way. I would loose track of chemicals and fertilizer and such and probably end up killing myself or my plants. Same with the motorized gardening equipment. Shovels are dangerous enough for me. I am guessing that the folks before me did something magical to the soil in this place because it doesn't seem that I need to do much for the plants to do well.

My yard has about four main areas where I garden. The easiest (and most rewarding) part is the raspberry border along our back fence. I cut this flush to the ground in November and then in the following year, I get two crops of raspberries. One will come in another week or so and then a second will arrive in early September. Besides embellishing the fence this year, I don't do much in this area of the garden.

I also have a vegetable garden and then two flower garden areas (one in the back and one in the front). The vegetable area is usually not too exciting: squash, tomatoes, cucumbers and this year we have peas and will soon be harvesting garlic. I pulled up our first garlic today and it still isn't ready but I'll use it in pesto tonight. You allow the garlic to flower but fold the flowers back so that energy can be diverted to the bulb. The flowers are also tasty in pasta dishes. I use a red variety (see how the stem is kind of pink) of garlic and plant cloves about 9" apart. Each clove will produce a full head of garlic.

Next to the veggie garden, I tried something new this year: potted lettuce. I have bib, romaine, kale, and chard all growing in pots. The optimistic side of me said that this would help keep it away from the rabbits. I'll let you know how it all does. So far, after two weeks, it all seems happy.

Across the yard is a small herb garden: basil, rosemary, and nasturtium. We have a mint patch that we are letting go crazy as well. Basil does extremely well in our yard. These 12 plants will produce more than enough pesto for the summer.

I compost. I am starting to think that I am not a very good composter. I put all my yard waste and all of my veggie waste from the home as well as coffee grounds and egg shells into the compost heap. I layer this and then turn it every week or so. The reason that I am calling my compost skills into question is that I am starting to get some odd (nice, but odd) plants around the garden. Most notably, I have squash plants sprouting in every area of the yard. I also have a few strawberry plants popping up and now tomatoes. I was told that seeds would not survive in the compost but I must be doing something wrong because they are obviously surviving. I am going to pull most of this stuff out but I am going to let the squash in the front yard go to see what happens - it might even look nice up there. If anyone has any idea what I'm doing wrong, please let me know. Oddly enough, no weeds have started sprouting up this way - only fruits and veggies. So far, I consider this a minor nuisance but maybe it will have it's own rewards later on.The back yard flowers are primarily perennials that I planted last year and the year before. I am particularly proud of the hollyhocks. They were started from seed and got about 2 feet high last year but never flowered. This year, they will top out above 4 feet and are about to flower. The anticipation is killing me. I moved the lilac next to them but today I dug it out and moved it away because the hollyhocks were getting too big and stunting the lilac. I hope to eventually transplant a clump of these out front. When they bloom, I'm sure I'll be bragging about them on the site.

I also have two trellis with clematis on it and hanging baskets. A funny thing happened this year: one of the clematis got blown off it's stem in the spring. A brand new plant came up but it seems healthier than the one that was there before and fuller than the one that did not get damaged. These are starting to flower. This is a pic of the one that got no damage. The one above is the other. Should I cut these back every year? I need to do some research.The front yard saw a big transformation this year. I designed it to be like a woodland path. I know, there's no woodlands but hopefully it will eventually grow up and feel more "wild". Many of the plants are left-overs from wildflower seeds and perennials (blue bells, forget-me-nots, lilac, black eyed susans, etc.) I put in last year. I am still trying to identify everything. If anyone knows what those pink phlox-like flowers are, please let me know. They have kind of a furry top with great flowers. These and the forget-me-nots are everywhere but I would like to control them a little better so they look a little more deliberate.

This year, I also started five new patches of flowers. They are all doing well and if the hollyhocks are any indication, these will look great in another year. One patch is echinacea, another foxgloves, another is lupins, one sunflowers, and finally (and I know I will catch hell for this from some of the housebloggers) I planted a patch of morning glories up front to grow up one of my columns on the porch. For background on the morning glories, just click the keyword in the sidebar and you can read the controversy. I saved seeds from the ones in the back. I still maintain that these morning glories are pretty spectacular and unlike any I've seen - they should look great out front. If anyone wants some morning glory seeds, let me know.

The intent of the front yard design was to have it expandable to the entire front yard and to create a fun place for my daughter to play and an easy way for me to tend the garden. It is fun and hopefully will continue to grow along these lines striking that odd balance of "wild" and "planned". I hope that I can do this without buying any more plants though. Between the front and the back, I think I have over 20 different varieties of perennials - plenty to fill the yard, I think. Right now, it is not very photogenic but it looks good in person and I bet it will look great in a few months.

The yard work is "done" for the year

I finished the yard work this morning by completing the flower bed expansion in the front yard and I am done planting. I put in an herb garden (mostly basil because we eat so much of it) and I finished the basket transplanting in the back. Note that the eaves and fascia is still sorely in need of repair. I guess I know what my next project is... I still have to put in veggies in the back and a basket to hang in the front and then there is the daily weeding and puttering that I do but that doesn't approach the effort that this weekend took. It's wild to see how much the place has changed in a couple short years (the "before" photo was taken in spring of '06). It will look even better once these plants and the lilac bush get some height. I still think a dogwood would look great out front but I ran out of landscaping budget so that will have to wait another year for that.

A full day in the yard

I spent about 12 hours in the yard trying to do some major overhauling today. I made some progress on the back and got about half the front yard done. I stopped work because it started thundering but then the sun came out again. I didn't have the energy to finish so I did an art project for the back fence with my daughter instead. With the art windows and the hanging baskets, I think the fence looks nice. I am sure in some circles, folks might think it looks trashy but I think it brings an air of elegance to our plastic-filled yard.While working in the flower beds, I added a lot of the compost I have been making (actually, the little worms and other things have been making it, I've just been putting the stuff in there to help it along). The compost seems to be a huge success. It is litterally infested with earthworms. I swear that there were a few in there that scared me - HUGE. I tilled it into the beds I dug up. My wife exclaimed, "thank God we don't have boys." Hopefully this will make for happier plants. I think I moved about 25 3 gallon containers of the stuff. Not bad for one year's worth of kitchen and yard waste. Time to start over. I prepared for the day's work the night before at a local "temporary" nursery buying plants, mostly perennials. They had some really nice plants labeled native. I got some more black eyed susans, delphinium, and shasta daisies. I got three of the native plants but I can't think of their names. I better keep the little tags with them so that I can remember what they are in the future. As they flower, I'll blog about them. I want to throw down some more seed but haven't done that yet. I filled in here and there with some marigolds and alyssum and otherwise made do with transplanting what I already had. Can't wait until everything takes root and is bigger next year.