Thursday, March 14, 2024

The Garden Begins

 My wonderful landscape guys arrived early today and began to dig out that front sod bed, in preparation for my flowers and trees. Yay!! So very happy.
They made quick work of it, and were done before I came home from bible study. A lot of that sod went into a 'break an ankle' low spot, and will fill in with Bermuda grass, with no help from anyone.
 I asked for enough compost to fill my veggie beds in the back of the house. But I only got as far as filling one 100 gallon bed, before I gave out. Tomorrow it is supposed to rain all day so I was prepared to cover the remaining compost and save it for another day.

 Here's the first of many bag gardens. At this time it is 100% compost but I will augment it with perlite and coir fiber and fill other bags from this 'mother' bag. It's from Temu and is 48" wide and a foot deep. 

 Here's one coir block which I let sit in water until it broke down. It took over an hour, but we went to Home Depot and Walmart in the meantime, so no biggie. It's very fine fiberour stuff and will be lovely in the bags, holding water better than just soil.

 While at Home Depot I spied these gorgeous orangey Heuchera, to insert among my baby hosta. In the white pots are Stella D'oro daylilies which will go in soon.

 But this is the best part. All that weedy sod is gone, or shall I say, moved to another part of the yard. This will be my Japanese Maple tree spot, with sunloving flowers surrounding it all. So thrilled to have this emptied and filled with good compost. I can get really excited about dirt. 

 Here's the previous low spot. So much safer now.

 And my lettuces continue to charm me.

Catching Up

I've been having a bit of a staycation, just being lazy and enjoying the warm Spring sunshine on my front porch. Basking in it while the air is still cool, and storing up Vitamin D, if that is a thing.

In the afternoons, I knit a pair of socks from some really luxurious Zen Yarn Garden sock yarn, merino, cashmere and nylon. If I had purchased this yarn at the store, I would have paid $34.25 for the skein. But nooooo! It came from an estate sale and was pennies instead.  I used a toe up pattern and then finished with a stretchy bind off, which looks better on the foot than pictured here. Because the yarn is hand dyed, the second sock is a different shade, but matching is overrated, I always say. 


I was also working on my new poncho pattern when I ran out of yarn, again. This time tho, I found a fellow knitter on Ravelry who was selling just what I needed and it soon appeared in my mailbox, and I will get back to this project as soon as the weather gets nasty. 
 I've moved out the plants from my laundry room greenhouse but still have my sweet potatoes in water. I will have more than I need of slips to plant and will have to find another gardener who wants to grow these Beauregard beauties. I've grown these before and was amazed at how huge they will get and so abundant. Absolutely no hassle from pests and they love the really hot summer temps. 

 Just this morning I decided to sow some more seeds and prepared my peat pots with potting mix. I am soaking them at the moment and later I will decide what to plant. My lettuce in eggshells are doing great outside and have begun sprouting their second sets of leaves. Today the high will be 80 degrees, a fluke, and then rain like crazy tomorrow, which is just perfect. 
Yesterday I got ambitious and swept the carport and brought out tables and chairs and the plastic rug, to cover the greasespot, common to all driveways. We had lunch and then I read a bit in my loungechair before drifting off to sleep. 

 My friend Patsy and I are making socks with another fancy schmancy yarn from that same estate sale. More cashmere/merino/silk this time. Who would wear socks made from this 'expensive' yarn? We will!

Monday, March 4, 2024

Planting Day

 O yes, these little egg cups are just the perfect incubator for my lettuce seeds. I put them directly outdoors for the last four or five days, during the rain and cloudy days. No matter, they have sprouted! I can count the individual plants, by color, and am so pleased, as you can tell.
I loaded the shells with the potting mix that came with my bulbs, and just spritzed them with water. The rain did the rest. It was gentle at first, and soaked the tray well.  I will put these in the ground soon, and may even pinch out a few, choosing the sturdiest seedling to keep.  Seed starting outdoors is so much easier than setting up lights etc, indoors.  'Course it's easy with hardy stuff like lettuce.

 In this tray I have six calla rhyzomes of various colors, probably yellow. And three living hosta (Olive Bailey Langdon) and one dead one. My growing zone has changed this year to 8a from 7b. Global warming I guess. In the past I have overwintered calla lilies effortlessy, just leaving them in the ground. The micro climate where I will plant these (today!!) is pretty safe for them.

 This is a pink bearded Iris, one of three which were dry and brittle and looked hopeless when I opened the package. But after soaking them for over a week, look at those green shoots and long roots! I may go buy some more. 3 for $5.42 at my local Walmart. Can't beat that price. At our fancy schmancy nursery, a potted iris goes for like $9 each.

And nine more hosta ready to go into the hosta bed. Patroit and Stained Glass.

 And this is the hosta that gave me hope. I ignored it since last August, never watering it and expecting it to die. But noooooo! It spouted visible nodes weeks ago and now we have green leaves. So thrilling. It is a biggie, and lime-y yellow green which will contrast nicely with the darker greens and white of the other hosta. I counted thirteen leaf nodes altogether. Woowoo!

 This is a collection of just sprouted Dutch Iris. You may not be able to see their slender stalks just yet, but they are there. 

 Asiatic Lilies, 2 out of five have sprouted. Disappointing, but soon they will be on sale at Lowe's, once the blooms have faded, and I will get bunches of them. I live closer than ever to Lowe's now, heehee. 

 Indoors in my laundry room greenhouse, I have sweet potatoes sprouting and roots are visible. These will become slips which I will get in the raised beds once soil is made available at my local stores. 
On Wednesday my lawn guy, Audelio, came to look at my lawn and has agreed to dig out the sod in my future flower bed, and load it up with new compost and top it with mulch. This won't happen until next week, but I am so happy to know that this job is not gonna be the ruination of my knees. We have several places in the yard that once were tree filled and now are big empty holes. He will fill those up and make it safe to walk around without falling in or spraining an ankle. Speaking of trees, we don't have a single one. That won't last. 

Monday, February 26, 2024

Seed Starting


Here's what I am planting. All the info is on the back of the package. 
 And here is the seed starting tray. Recycled egg shells and egg carton. The front row is where I thought ahead and carefully snipped off the top of the shell, whereas the next row was just the remaining shells when I didn't consider planting in them first.  I have another one and a half dozen eggs in the fridge if these turn out to be a good idea. The potting mix inside came from the bulbs and roots of the other plants I bought, so essentially this is a free exercise. I'll keep you posted on how they do.


 I got these white ceramic pots from church, for free, and popped my elephant ears in them with some water, to encourage rooting. I am already seeing tiny tips of green on the 'nipples' of each of these. 
Speaking of green, I bought an expensive large hosta last year from Lowe's and never planted it at my last house. It got ignored pretty much in the move, but I did bring it along to this house and continued to ignore it, not watering or planting it at all. But to my delight, and just at the right time for my planting enthusiasms, it is popping up with 8, count 'em, 8 sprouts. I will be putting the plant in the ground today. It will get to 74 degrees and be warm all week, including warm nights. ( Yay Tennessee!) Rain is coming, so I am so happy to get my trowel out and dig a bit. 




Friday, February 23, 2024

Laundry room greenhouse

 Peat pots filled with hosta roots. And a plastic bin with calla corms which had sprouted, so I quickly potted them up, covering the tiny sprouts. A bag of Stella D'Oro roots sits there waiting to be planted in my porch planter, outside.

 These dried out pink Iris, are now showing signs of life at the root end. I have them sitting in a bit of water, and voila, they woke up. Next to them are some more hosta roots just starting to show green.

 I believe these are day lilies, but are they ditch lilies or something nicer? I dug them out of my front garden-bed-to-be, and just plunke them down on a wet corner of my tray. They're enthusiastic, but I am not replanting yet. Or ever. We'll see.


 Three out of four of these Hosta Olive Bailey Langdon look promising. The one root had a sprout but it got knocked off, so I await the possibility that the root will push another sprout up soon. Gardener's have faith...

 Stella D'Oro needs water and soil. I expect to see leetle green sprouts from those peat pots in a few days, Calla lilies. 

 Two out of five Asiatic lilies have sprouts. Not so sure about the other three. 

Friday, February 16, 2024

Potting and Soaking

 Today I decided to open and inspect the perennials I bought in bags from Walmart. They are available everywhere, like Lowes and Home Depot but I happened to be in WM the day they first went on sale. It is important to get there early before they die in the packages, which has happened when I bought them later in the year.  In the egg carton I have 32 Dutch Iris, Miss Saigon, which all but two look very healthy and some have even shown their first sprouts. They are sitting in a bit of water just to encourage life. In the pots at the top of this tray are four Patriot Hostas and at the bottom are six Stained Glass Hosta. Those all have huge long roots so I am excited to get them going. 


 

In the middle are five Oriental Mix Lily bulbs.  Only two look really healthy, but you never know. I saved my receipt if they don't make it.  Then in the next picture are three Calla Lily corms, which look fabulous. Lots of buds are visible and no gross fungus on them, Yay! I may buy more of these. No color is listed on the package, so who knows, but I will guess it will be yellow. 



 Then I am again trying Tennessee Ostrich Ferns. Two have lots of curled fronds ready to green up and the other two, meh. People are always telling me that ferns will take over. OK. Let's prove it. 

 If you could recognize these roots, you win the prize. These are Hollyhocks! Giganto roots, so I am excited to try these in my garden. I grew some back in IL but they got some sort of disease, making the leaves gray and dried out. I am hoping they have fixed this in the intervening years. Doubled flowers, no color specified. But healthy lookin', no?

 Then three Bearded Iris, Cherub's Smile, in PINK! Very dried out rhizomes, but I guess that means they didn't get moldy on the way here. I'm soaking them for a day or two to revive them. One of my neighbors iris are up six inches at the moment, so I am hoping to get these in the ground as soon as the bed is prepared. Not jumping the gun, since I assume it will be weeks before that will happen.

 And what can this be? It is four big roots of Bleeding Hearts. Yay! I love these plants and hope they take in my new garden. Two have long sprouts already, in white, and hopefully they will green up now in my sunny laundry room. 
Here's my beauty from 2011. Sigh. I've been trying to get one that rivals this guy ever since. Maybe this year.



Still in the package, 9 Stella Doro roots. I kinda think they will just go straight into the garden, as I  have faith they will do well here.  I am hoping to get some Southern Comfort heucheras and a Celandine Poppy...but I may have to order them. My shade garden will be glorious if it contains plants like these.

Thursday, February 15, 2024

Bags on Board

The rectangular bed and the big 100 gallon bed are opened in my living room. The round one looks like a deflated ballon, but it will be upstanding when filled. The rectangular bed is 48"x 24" by 12"deep. 
The round one is 50" in diameter and 12" deep. All the big round beds are already sold out on Temu. But I got three more smaller versions, 3' in diameter. I think this is enough of a garden, but wait, there's more! I also got ten 30gal bags.



I am considering ordering bags of soil from Lowe's or Walmart and having them deliver. We'll see what that entails. 
 Here's the first big project in the front of the house. I want to remove all the sod, which is mainly weeds and Bermuda grass, and then fill it with new weed-free compost and top soil. We had a good two days of constant rain, which makes the hard-as-rock ground much softer and to test it, I got out my spade and began to dig.

 Fifteen minutes of digging and I had my wheelbarrow full. Where to put this stuff? In my back yard are big holes from trees that were removed before we bought the house. I am filling those with this sod. Dave woke up from his nap and I showed him how easy it is to pry up a chunk and he tried and of course it worked. I asked him if he thinks he might be able to do this for me, a little at a time, day by day, and he agreed. We'll see if he remembers this when next I ask for his help. It is supposed to rain tomorrow, so we'll have to wait a couple of days.
 

 I uprooted a bunch of daffodils and put them in this porch rail planter. They were in the middle of the bed and I needed them out of there. But I couldn't get them all as some have grown right through the edging. They may get sacrificed.  
My sister called and asked me if I was going a little crazy and did I need an intervention? Possibly, but it is all flexible at this stage. She is concerned that I will again get overwhelmed at the end of summer and wanna quit and sell my house. It seems to her that this has happened before, several times. But that isn't exactly the case. 
We had to move for other reasons, and I was overwhelmed for sure, but it had more to do with not being able to properly care for Dave, the house, the dogs and the garden. With this smaller house, which is so much easier to maintain and with this less fancy-schmancy neighborhood, I am not so pressured to have a perfect yard. 
Also she is worried about the chickens who live in the house behind me. They occasionally come into our way-back, but so far haven't ventured into the area I want to plant. If they do, I have plans to protect my plants. Luckily we don't have deer, rabbits or chipmunks, and so far no sign of moles or voles. I am hoping I have finally found the right spot to make this garden work.