Phaedra's 2021 Garden

[Phaedra]

I am a daylily hybridizer that started just as you are starting. It took a few years to see a bloom and then I was hooked. Now I am a backyard daylily grower tat has achieved some local notoriety. Just be careful. It is addictive. Haha. It is my life now. And my husband is on board with it. Join the American Hemerocallus society. $25 a year and you get a few gorgeous magazines a year that are very informative. Germinating the seed is easy. You need to chill them. Just google it. There is a trove of info out there. There are many different styles of germination . I can get a bloom in 2-3 years now. I will post a new cultivar or two. When you control the pollination yourself the results are amazing. Have so much fun.

Thanks for your sharing!

When we bought this house, I realized that the previous house owner planted a single color (yellow) daylilies in a specific small corner in the garden. I didn't pay much attention to them because there were too many plants in this garden.

Those daylilies come back every year, and their tribe grows more vital.

This year, a new patterned one attracted my attention. I didn't know where they came from, but they are showier than the yellow ones. The seeds I have collected are from this new one.

I don't know if I am capable of doing the breeding like you, but it is absolutely an interesting task for the future.

 

[Phaedra]

I love this view in the greenhouse when the sunlight comes in at about 10 a.m. Everything inside the photo witnesses my learning of gardening.

After the weekly grocery shopping routine, I cleaned up one raised bed in the front yard. Both the perennial residents (Peony, Jacob's ladders) and annual ones (cosmos, snapdragons) are fading due to the low temperature and the much short daylight.

So I cut them back, added some new tulip bulbs, and then covered them with about 10 cm of homemade compost. I initially used this kind of stacking system for compost, but now they are planters for cut flowers.

Then it's time to thin out the young veggies planted in the containers. I harvested the bigger leaves outside and removed their cotyledons for chickens.

The plan is that they will stay and grow in the greenhouse. So far, so good.

After tidying up, they are sent back to the shelves.

Another tray - I majorly clean up the "Green in the Snow."

Not bad at all. The thinning, cleaning, and harvesting are proceeding in parallel. I have about 250g of fresh young leaves for the next meal.

Another tray of lives - I am always enchanted by the seed germination. For me, they are lives, not much different from the livestock. It is just more difficult for us to communicate with them or even imagine the ways we can communicate with them.

Maybe that's what makes being a gardener charming and challenging - we are trying to work out an essential part of our life with other lives.

 

[digitS']

Maybe that's what makes being a gardener charming and challenging - we are trying to work out an essential part of our life with other lives

It should be with everyone's existence - gardening or not.


Steve

 

[Phaedra]

It should be with everyone's existence - gardening or not.


Steve

Yes. Gardening offers a lot of opportunities to learn and advance.

 

[Phaedra]

I cleaned another two raised beds this afternoon - just cut back the lilies and dahlias. After these raised beds no longer acted as open composters, they became planters for my cut flowers. Each layer is 15cm high, and the below photo was taken after I filled it in this early spring.

Lettuces, broad beans, lilies, dahlias - these planters have already produced so many goodies for us in 2021. It's time to prepare them for the winter.

I didn't dig out dahlias here. After putting new tulip bulbs, I added about 15-20 cm homemade compost and trimmed branches and leaves as a protection layer.

It needs a lot of compost, and thankfully I have decided to make our own from the beginning of February.

This one is done. I will finish the one next to it in 2-3 days.

Earlier I planted some garlic cloves in such containers and will let them stay in the greenhouse. Although nothing has come out yet, roots are growing quite quickly.

Tomorrow I plan to propagate more cuttings: willow, box, and lavender. I only propagated two hydrangea cuttings last year, but look at them; they are fully transformed!

I didn't even expect them to survive. After cutting and inserting them into the small containers in the 2020 autumn, I forgot entirely and left them outside for the entire winter. When I found them again this April, I was so surprised to see the buds.

And this is how they look today.

Here are two young lavenders I sowed from seed this spring. Others that I transplanted into raised beds in another area are also thriving. I feel good to see them grow well and want to try cuttings as well.

 

[Phaedra]

I didn't know our chickens love Dahlia leaves

 

[catjac1975]

With

Thanks for your sharing!

When we bought this house, I realized that the previous house owner planted a single color (yellow) daylilies in a specific small corner in the garden. I didn't pay much attention to them because there were too many plants in this garden.
View attachment 45063

Those daylilies come back every year, and their tribe grows more vital.
View attachment 45064

This year, a new patterned one attracted my attention. I didn't know where they came from, but they are showier than the yellow ones. The seeds I have collected are from this new one.
View attachment 45065

I don't know if I am capable of doing the breeding like you, but it is absolutely an interesting task for the future.

With only 2 types of daylily, whatever the bees did to pollinate might not be too different. But, you never know. My first beauties were from the bees.

 

[flowerbug]

garlic might need the cold to grow well, but i'm not sure if you're growing it in the greenhouse for the leaves to cut in the winter or just trying to get it to grow for the next season and having garlic cloves?

 

[Phaedra]

garlic might need the cold to grow well, but i'm not sure if you're growing it in the greenhouse for the leaves to cut in the winter or just trying to get it to grow for the next season and having garlic cloves?

Yes, these are mainly for the greens. However, I also want to see if it is practical to plant them inside the greenhouse and transplant them next spring. Last autumn, I planted some directly outside, but none survived. I don't know that's because they grew already too much before the frost repeatedly hit, or for other reasons, they were all destroyed after winter.

The greenhouse is without heating, so it is more like a cold-frame planting environment. It's an extension of the main building so that the temperature can be a few degrees higher than outside. Another advantage is to avoid too much moisture. Last winter we had so much rain.

 

[Phaedra]

While working, I always listen to either the German news, gardening podcasts, or background music. Recently so many people are talking about changing some conventional gardening works to save time, money, energy and offer more for the wild lives.

Mow less, stop using peat compost, stop buying petrol-powered tools, keep some long grass areas, so insects have food and shelters, prune trees and shrubs properly, so birds have food during winter, etc.

During the first 40 years of my life, I never had a garden. So I am green and keep learning from trial-and-error. It's never too old to learn, and we all can contribute from what we are capable of right now.

A blackbird (looks like a female one) enjoyed some fruits on the Japanese barberry (Berberis thunbergii), so lovely! Blackbirds used to cause a lot of trouble in the early spring, especially when the transplanted seedlings are tiny and the raised beds look empty - few blackbirds can destroy almost everything. This spring, I started to cover seedlings with fleece, which offered sufficient protection against frost and blackbirds. As we have a pond (for lotus mainly, no fish), many birds come to drink, take a bath, play every day. They also have easy access to different fruits.

When the weather is good, for 5~6 sunshine hours, the solar lamp can provide extra light for the young plants.

Well, trial-and-error