Reseeding Annuals

Some of my favorite plants in my flower gardens are reseeding annuals.  I don't put down mulch specifically for their benefit.  If I did mulch the perennial beds they wouldn't be able to sprout.  Here is a pictorial list of most of them.  Some aren't blooming yet, like the sunflowers, and aren't included.  Maybe I'll do a late summer list.

1. Peony poppies - Papaver somniferum

2. Shirley poppies - Papaver rhoeas

3. Love-in-a-Mist - Nigella damascena

Year of the Striped Cucumber Beetle

Seems like every year I get a new pest in my gardens that I must wage war upon.  There has been the Saw Fly larvae which have made me pretty much give up on columbine, the Japanese Beetles which love my poor roses, the Squash Bugs which try to consume my zucchini, and various other annoyances.  I suppose the more I garden, the more the bugs are going to be attracted to their favorite foods that I just lay out for them to feast upon.

The new one this year is the Cucumber Beetle.  Never saw one in the gardens before.  They did some serious damage to my tiny tomatillo plants.  Then I surrounded the tomatillos with marigolds and they moved to the zucchini.  Ah, the poor zucchini, if it isn't Squash Bugs, it's Cucumber Beetles.  So far this year, knock on wood, I've only seen one Squash Bug and it was promptly squashed.  Heehee, squash the Squash bug eating the squash.  So far the Cucumber Beetles haven't found the cucumbers, despite the ominous name.

It takes a lot of resolve to not break out the heavy chemicals when you watch a pernicious bug chow down on one of your favorite plants.  I do believe in companion planting as the most effective way to battle a great deal of the pest found in the garden.  Many plants are helpful not as food but as either a repellant or camouflage for the food plants.  Others may attract beneficial insects to the gardens.  So you will find in my garden, planted among the usual food crops, marigolds, cosmos, nasturtium, borage, sunflowers, tansy and calendula.  Aside from the nursery bought marigolds I bought the other day for the tomatillos, none of them are blooming yet.  But you'll be sure to see a picture of the garden when they are.

The veggie garden today

Again, I apologize for being such an infrequent blogger.  Perhaps with practice, and less to do in the garden, I will become better.

Yesterday I planted two tiny tomatillo plants so therefore my garden is now completely full.  Here are some recent pictures.

This is the left half of the garden facing North.  You can easily see the flush of self-seeded cilantro that I will allow to remain for now.  Eventually it will have to come up once in goes to seed, becomes coriander, and is no longer of any use to me.  In the front beds from the left are: 1st bed, spinach; second bed, onions and radishes and carrots; third bed, zucchini and nasturtiums and fourth bed, peppers and tomatillos.

In the background you can see the self-seeded dill which I will also allow to remain.  I expect to have black swallowtail caterpillars on it at some point as I did last year.  The beans are just beginning to show their heads, as are the cucumbers and lettuce.  To the right in the back is the asparagus bed.  Behind all that is the self-seeded borage and sunflowers which will stay.  I love the borage for the simple fact that the honey bees love the borage.  The more honey bees I can get in there, the better everything grows.  The sunflowers are just really pretty.

This is the right side of the garden that is dedicated to the tomatoes.  Originally I planted 59 plants but one succumbed to the foot of the child who was helping me put on the straw mulch.  I also have a few basil plants stuck in there among the tomatoes.  The patch of red is the plastic red mulch that the Master Gardeners were asked to trial.  Supposedly red plastic helps the tomatoes grow better.

A close-up of one of the tomato plants; I believe this is a Rose heirloom.


And here is the new herb garden which is looking pretty good considering everything was moved this spring. Seems I made it quite a bit too small.

Kids and Gardening

I know why many people wait to become empty nesters before they take up a gardening hobby.  Kids just plain make gardening difficult.  First, babies leave no time for gardening at all.  You can try to bring the baby out into the garden with you but they get hot or cold, or bugs bite them.  So your only option is to have Daddy watch him while you sneak a few hours out pulling the weeds that are threatening to overtake everything.

Then the babies become toddlers and you think that finally you'll be able to really spend some time in your neglected perennial beds but you find yourself chasing the kid around the house or fixing this or that toy.  And they still demand food, drinks and a change of clothes after playing with your garden hose.

And with older kids you are picking baseballs out of your tomato plants, lamenting the crushing of a prized columbine from a wayward soccer ball and finding bike tracks crossing the border of daffodils.

But the kids love to help plant seeds and pick tomatoes and they bring you bouquets of dandelions.  So, I guess they're worth it.

The newly expanded and improved veggie garden

Just a picture of the veggie garden as it is today.  We expanded it by about 10 feet.  The posts will be for the indeterminate tomatoes, pole beans and cucumbers.  I'll add more pictures as I get plants growing in it.  Maybe once a month or so.

And since they are so pretty, a picture of some tulips growing in my obelisk garden that I took today.

Gardening practices I abhor

First off, a big thank you to my loyal reader who reminded me to write.  I really need to get better at that.

I just came back from a walk around my neighborhood with camera in hand to show you some of my biggest pet peeves in gardens.  This is a full blown rant, inspired by my favorite gardening blog, www.gardenrant.com and this blog post I read today:http://kissmyaster.blogspot.com/

1. Make compost, People!

The photo above shows the pile of black plastic garbage bags at a house up the street, all filled with leaves and last year's mulch.  I couldn't count them all but I estimate that there are approximately 50 bags in that pile.  The village will pick them up and supposedly compost them (although I've never found the compost pile, only the pile of woodchips they make.)  But they will happily pick up just a pile of leaves; they don't need to be bagged.  These are people who consider themselves gardeners and definitely do not have any kind of space constraints that would prohibit a compost pile.  Personally, I don't believe anyone is really a gardener if they don't compost.

2. Stop strangling your trees.

Everyone seems to think that trees can't stand up on their own.  But the truth is that if they are properly planted they will do much better if they are not staked.  Staking prevents the tree trunk from developing the strength to stand up against wind.  Also those wires often damage the bark and if left on too long, which often happens, will girdle the tree.  So how do you properly plant a tree?  Remove the burlap or wire wrapping the root ball.  I even recommend removing all soil from the root ball as well.  Roots will develop better if there is no difference in the soil it is planted in.  Dig a hole twice as wide and deeper than the size of the root ball or pot the tree is in.  Don't amend the backfill and water well making sure there are no air pockets beneath or between the roots.

3. Don't form a mound around the base of your tree trunks.

This example is also shown in the photo showing the staked tree although you can't see it clearly.  Mounding up mulch around the base of a tree is a bad idea for a couple reasons.  First, it encourages rot and insect damage to enter the bark of the tree which should only be exposed to air.  Second, it causes water to funnel out away from the tree, and this is especially detrimental to young, newly planted trees.

4. Red mulch is wicked ugly!

Not only is it ugly but it is artificially dyed.  I don't know what they use to dye it that red color.  I tried to google it but only found a company that would sell you the dye so you can dye your own mulch.  They say it is all natural but who knows what that means.  I also found a reference saying that red mulch is better at keeping weeds down than other mulches.  Hmm, wonder why that it.  I believe that red mulch also inhibits the growth of the plants you want to thrive.

Actually, I don't mulch at all, except with compost when I have enough.  I rely on reseeding annuals in my gardens and mulching would prevent them from growing.  Oh wait, I do mulch with straw in the veggie garden.

5. Why, oh why do you use pesticides?  

Don't those warning signs give you a freakin' clue?  I have nothing more to say about this or I might start frothing at the mouth.

Hot weather

It was over 80ºF today!  Unbelievable for the middle of April.  My daffodils were starting to wilt and I just came inside from watering them.  We've had an entire week of overly warm and dry weather.  Now, it could come in the last week and half of April, but we haven't had our usual April snow storm.  Granted, I hate those storms.  HATE them!  But I'm kind of freaked out that is has been so hot and dry this month.  Not warm, hot.  I've never had to water the garden in April before.  You know, April showers and all.

I also wanted to talk about a neat little flower I found in my garden yesterday.  That's it up there.  I've decided it is an Iris reticulata.  I didn't plant it and was astonished to find it.  I've never seen one growing before and I have no idea where it came from.  At only about 4" it is a wee tiny thing and very delicate.  I hope it spread some for me.  Kind of a whole If-You-Build-It thing.