What Did You Do In The Garden?

[digitS']

all of them can use whatever organic materials i can scrounge to put in there.

Of course, it is the same in the big veggie garden but so much comes home and ends up in the small piece of ground allocated to veggies here. And, of course, there are kitchen scraps through the Winter from produce arriving from "elsewhere." They find a home but the temporary hoop house goes up over more than half the veggie ground sometimes before the soil is complete thawed -- and the succession plantings commence . "Turn over" is high!

 

[flowerbug]

shelled beans this morning and went "Ooh! Ahh!", picked the last round of hot peppers from the Sweet and Hot plants, but they were to give away because while i could eat them i didn't really like them. gave most of them to the person who gave me the plants to begin with so that sort of completed the circle.

went out and started getting the North Garden weeded and cleaned up for winter. of course as i'm puttering around in there i'm also transplanting some of the creeping thyme to fill in spots that are bare and getting weeds in them so they'll be eventually less weedy.

this is the same garden which contains spots of Irish Moss which i've tried to get to spread but what is really funny is that after i transplanted some spots of it and kept the creeping thyme from taking it over it ended up dying back last winter for some reason in the largest patch of it i had, but the the areas where it is covered and having to compete with the creeping thyme it is doing ok and now i have a completely new patch of it that has shown up many feet away from where it was before. so i may have somehow transplanted spores or bits of it and didn't know it. so for now on i'm just going to let it do it's own thing and see if it really spreads a lot more or not. so that experiment continues. it's a pretty plant and actually blends very well with the creeping thyme so you wouldn't know it was in there until it flowers or you look pretty close at it.

pepper plants and weeds got buried in that garden and i fixed up some of the border bricks and then transplanted some more thyme along that edge to hold up those bricks better as they keep falling down as the soil gets washed down again and again.

 

[Branching Out]

Yesterday was spent cleaning up the garden, and at the end of the day I sat down and collected seed from quite a number of different lettuce plants. Those that had leaves that were green with purple flecks were grouped in one envelope for growing out next year. However one plant caught my attention with its psychedelic purple and cranberry patches in strikingly beautiful saturated hues, so that one got its own seed envelope.

 

[SPedigrees]

one plant caught my attention with its psychedelic purple and cranberry patches in strikingly beautiful saturated hues, so that one got its own seed envelope.

Those leaves are really cool looking. I'd buy seeds that would produce lettuce like this!

 

[Phaedra]

Once upon a time, there was a tiny, tiny Japanese maple tree, that the previous house owner planted in a small ceramic pot. I transplanted it to this spot, and it grows very well and becomes three times bigger now.

However, the way it grows make it look a bit like a spooky creature.

So, it became one of my bonsai practice. I remember @Rhodie Ranch mentioned once about a garden who shaped his trees like larger bonsai plants. It might be the time to take a try.

Like my previous practices on the much smaller plants, I removed a lot of leaves and stems. It will take another two to three years to develop the shape, but I believe it is worthy.

 

[flowerbug]

weeding and did a minor project to clean a vent screen. as usual the minor project involved prepwork in getting the ladder out of the garage and while doing that Mom wanted some cardboard moved so while moving that there was a mouse nest and spider egg casings to clean up. so a half hour project really took an hour and a half.

cleaned out the birdbath and saw where some critters had moved some gravel so i squirted some water from the hose in their hole and one ran out another exit. looked like a shrew. last time i tried to trap these they didn't really go for the peanut butter on the traps. will check them again today and squirt more water and pile more gravel back up to discourage them and hope that gets them to move on to some other place...

 

[Phaedra]

cleaning, weeding, removing annual plants to feed compost heaps, and let bearded Irises check in their next spots to grow.

 

[SPedigrees]

I spent the last few days removing the last of the cages I had built 3 years ago to protect little seedling spruce trees. I stored the little 3 inch steel posts in the barn (although it's unlikely I'll have another use for them ever) and folded up all the pieces of chicken wire to be taken to the hazardous and other waste drop-off place (along with old cans of paint and spent batteries) later this week. This spot along a path through the woods housed 25 spruce seedlings, and 14 survived. Not sure if that's a good survival rate or not, but those higher up the path got very little sunlight, so that probably did them in. Removal of these materials and hauling them via wheelbarrow across the field to the house almost did me in! I'm too old for this.

 

[Phaedra]

Collecting lettuce seeds, they are romaine lettuce.

 

[digitS']

Ran the lawnmower over 1/4 of the big veggie garden and then, ran the tiller over it. .

Two hours and I'm not more than 25% done with a first step. It would be a very good idea if that ground can be tilled a second time this Fall. I may not be able to without sacrificing too much in the way of trips. The next part cannot be done because there are plants growing and producing. What needs to happen is to have some decent weather after a frost. We are only in the first week of October so there should/may be time but we are already running late for a season ending frost. Of course, the other alternative is to plow through producing plants. I will resist .

Mowed grass and turned on the garden water. BTW, I don't usually run the mower through the garden but it helped the tiller do its job and dang, it was quite a chore for that machine and the guy hanging on behind it!

Steve