Honeysuckle

I remember how beautiful and rare I thought honeysuckle was, when I was a girl growing up in West Texas.  When I moved to Virginia, it was one the plants I knew, and I wanted some in my yard.  However, I had trouble finding any to buy.  I also learned that here in Virginia, as well as many other parts of the country, it's not exactly something people seek out.  Rather, it's sort of an invasive weed.

It's beautiful, and it smells heavenly.  I feel a little drunk, actually, everytime I smell it.  Here, our honeysuckly grows huge and vigorous, and it's omnipresent.  In fact, I didn't have to do anything or spend any money to get some honeysuckle of my own.  I didn't even have to take cuttings.  It found me, and is taking over our back fence.  I must say that I don't mind a bit. 

I also don't mind the clovers that grow in our lawn, nor the purple flowers, nor the yellow flowers, nor the pretty tiny white daisies that show themselves each year.  And I love dandilions.  As long as its pretty and not prickly, it's welcome in my lawn.  If the bunnies and squirrels eat it instead of my vegetables, all the better.

Using compost and cardboard as a weed barrier

We had 3 cubic yards of compost delivered today!  That's actually the smallest amount of compost I've ever had delivered.  I get organic mushroom compost, which is supplied by a local company.  Last year, I actually did not order compost, although I had some left over from the year before last.  But I do like to add quite a bit to my beds each year, so I am very happy to have it again. 

I completed my first project with the compost: as a topdressing and mulch for my front flower garden.  Now, this area is really terrible.  I did a good job of digging out the bermuda grass and weeds the year we moved in, but there were a couple of seasons where I didn't weed at all (hard to weed when your toddler keeps running away from you), and it just got awful again.  So, I surrounded my annual seedlings and perinneals with paper and cardboard and spread compost on top of that as a mulch.  This is extremely effective in my vegetable garden, and I think it will be in my garden as well.  It looks quite nice right now. 

The bermuda grass is making me so crazy that I may have to resort to a chemical solution, but for now I'm going to give this a go.  I may add a wood mulch next month, so I can repeat the process, adding an additional weed barrier.  I find that the paper/cardboard is far more effective against bermuda grass and other weeds than a weed fabric.  I'll update on how it goes.  I'm hoping for a pretty flower garden this year, which I haven't had for the past 2 seasons! 

more spring stuff

• Another delicious lettuce, arugula, and radish salad today.
• I planted zinnias around my vegetable garden. Tiny seedlings and seeds. In two months or so, should have beautiful flowers.
  
• A bird is making a nest in a tree in our backyard--with my shredded paper mulch! I am so pleased.
  
• I put bush bean and cilantro seeds in the ground today.
  
• I noticed the bush beans I planted before are sprouting. Borage has also sprouted.
  
• The tomatoes and tomatillo are growing fast.
  
• The coneflower looks so comfortable, all tucked into its mulchy bed. I am really looking forward to seeing what they look like in a few months.
  
• I have tons of flower seeds to plant, so that the backyard is ablaze with blooms from early summer to frost.
  

Weekend Projects

Today, I went and bought landscape fabric to cover my little coneflower bed. I plan to rake off the mulch and paper, fertilize and add soil, put down the fabric, cut slits and plant my little seedlings (20). Then, I plan to put paper over the patch right next to the sidewalk where the grass grows extremely vigorously (will already have landscape fabric on it) and put a rubber mulch strip down on top of that. I am hoping that this will be a very, very low maintenance bed!

A couple of pink tulips are blooming. I'm not real happy with the tulips. They seem to be a mix that blooms at all different times, so I won't get a big mass bloom. I may cut off the leaves after they bloom and start with a new mix next year.

I think I'm going to go ahead and plant the peppers out tomorrow.

I've got to put one shasta daisy and one banana pepper seedling in peat pots.

I really want to plant some flowers. I have some ideas for a row of flowers around the edges of my vegetable garden space. I don't know how much I'll be able to get to until next weekend.

The shasta daisies got really unhappy in my seed starters, and I had to move them all to peat pots in a potting mix. The coneflower is still in my seed starter, looking very happy and healthy. I hope it remains so out in its new home.

I bought a new plant friend today, a greek oregano plant, at Lowe's. I originally tried to grow oregano from seed with little success. And then I read that its best to buy a young plant because you can't reliably grow a really tasty oregano from seed--each plant will taste a little differently. Also, I had plain oregano seeds, and Greek oregano is supposed to be the best for cooking. All according to Ed Smith of the The Vegetable Gardener's Bible, anyway.

I'll have to get a new clay pot for it. My perinneal herb collection now includes:

• peppermint
• spearamint
• sage
  
• garlic chives
• chives
• St. Johns Wort
• oregano

I got a nice new load of garden books at the library today. I wish I were less tired so I could stay up and read them. I have water my houseplants before I crash.

flowers and more

OK, let me say, it was a poor idea to use garden soil in my peat pots instead of potting soil. My cockscomb became very unhappy in the wet conditions, and then I let it dry out too much, and it got all wilted. Several of my seedlings died from drowning, and others died from drought. But some have prevailed. I planted several out in the garden and plan to plant more tomorrow. I hope that they will be okay on these cold nights Tues. and now Wed. But I feel like they're safer out there than they were in the poor conditions I was subjecting them to. Okay, only potting soil in containers. Yes, only potting soil in containers. (My blueberry bush is growing happily in garden soil in a container.)

I think I also prefer to use a special "moisture max" potting soil for my containers rather than the organic one I've been getting. I'm no purist.

My echinacea is still growing in my seed starter, and it looks very happy in there. I will be transferring it to peat pots soon, because I need to start getting it used to the outside world, and I need the space under the lights. Most of it can go. I will have 18 seedlings in all, which should fill up the area I have designated for it nicely. I was looking at pictures of it (coneflower white swan) on google images, and I think it will be such a lovely planting and perfect for that difficult spot next to the pavement. I hope it will smell nice as we walk by it on our way in out of the cars. My first perinnial flower to commit to...

Four of my chive seedlings are ready to go to their pot, so I will get them fixed up tomorrow. I'm ready to put St. John's Wort out there too. It is still very small.

I like the way all my clay pots look from the street. The herbs should be very striking when they bloom. The speariment looks crazy healthy. I'm glad it is so happy. The peppermint is coming in nicely too. It had a more difficult start than its cousin. It was put out in the heat of the summer and not watered enough. But it seems to have recovered from my initial neglect.

When we moved here, I wasn't so interested in flowers--only vegetables. I didn't know that most of my vegetables would be producing flowers! And my herbs. And I learned about how flowers would attract bees to my vegetables. I love the flowers that basically grow themselves, and those are the only ones I'm much interested in.

I tried some garden planning software tonight, a 45 day free trial. It was interesting, but I honestly prefer to make loose plans and then improvise.

weeds from plants?

Some of the little seedlings I see growing in our front garden I am pretty sure are weeds, but they also look like they might be pretty plants... I am not sure what to do. I guess I will just let some of them grow until I am sure. I am getting very, very impatient for my flowers to grow and bloom, but it will probably be another month before I see any flowers.

Sprouts appear

So, I planted up the one small bed in our front yard, leaving the larger bed for later. Right after I planted the first bed, we had 3 days of thunderstorms. The lovely soil which I had turned and mixed with a potting soil looked like concrete when it was all dried out. I decided that:

A) The seeds had probably washed away.
B) I hadn't planted enough of them anyway (probably true).
C) Plants can't grow in concrete.

But, you know, despite all of these problems, I have sprouts! I think my cosmos, dwarf sunflowers, and marigolds have all sprouted. The cosmos seems to be doing the best. Anyway, I planted more seeds in the other bed and beefed up the other side a bit too. I decided to forget about the blue star flowers and planted white alyssum instead. I also threw in some chives because I know how hardy they are and tossed in some shasta daisies as well. I decided it would be better to thin the garden than to not have enough plants.

The plants I am growing are really, really easy plants (marigolds are practically weeds!!). They should be "fool proof." We shall see... I feel like it is a bit late in the season to be starting plants from seed, but we only moved in a little over a month ago.

My son was excited about the sprouts, but the container plants are really more appealling for him. I killed our dill sprout, and he was sad about that today. Oh, well, we will try again.

In other news, my husband got the lumber for the 2 raised beds he is making for me (8ft by 4 ft by 8 inches high). I had originally planned on 5 of these babies. but the realization of the expense and upkeep required caused me to decided that I could get by with 2 beds just fine.

So, far I want to grow in my raised beds:

• miniature pumpkins
• green beans
• corn
• chives

I'll probably think of some more things too. I think I will probably not get started for another couple of weeks. I still have not figured out where the soil for these beds should come from or how much it will cost.

Also, there are several bunnies that visit the yard who will probably dig under our new fence and eat a lot of my veggies. May have to look for some creative ideas there. I am too much of a city girl to consider harming the bunnies.

Our Outdoor Plants

So far, I have part of our front garden planted. I am growing:

• Cosmos (yellow, orange, red)
• Dwarf sunflowers
• White marigolds
• Blue stars (if they come up)

I also mixed in some dill. But then we had thunderstorms, so I'm not sure if the seeds washed away? I'll be interested to see if any come up, and in the meantime, I'm going to try and get the other side of the garden planted. I may substitute lavender for the blue stars.

We have also started indoors for planting outdoors 2 different kinds of giant sunflowers.

• Sunflower giant sungold
• Sunflower giganteus

The sunflower seeds have sprouted! I can't wait to plant them outdoors, although I really want our fence to be built before I do. Hurry up, fence company.