Let the garden madness begin!
May. 13th, 2007 05:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nonelvisWith the frost-free date (Memorial Day) rapidly approaching, the annual Garden Madness has struck the Boston area. You can't go near a nursery on a weekend without being stuck in a traffic jam. At 9:45am on Saturday, the parking lot at the Winchester Mahoney's was nearly full, and by the time I left, about an hour later, people looked like they were ready to knife each other for a parking spot.
I turned over the vegetable garden and planted pea, radish, and carrot seeds last weekend, but since I plan to put in most of the vegetables, herbs, and flowers next weekend, I had no choice but to weed the back garden. When we bought this house in 2000, the back garden was a tangled mix of Japanese knotweed and various ivies, but after clearing all that away, I planted tons of herbs and flowers, giving us a beautiful (and largely edible) garden perched on top of an old stone wall. Since then, I've let some of the flowers and other plants re-seed themselves, which seemed like a good idea at the time. Sadly, I know better now. But! The herb garden is still in pretty decent shape, about 75% self-maintaining (yay) and, after today, cleared out and ready for planting.
Every year I tell myself I'll photograph the garden to document what blooms when, and every year I FAIL. Of course, the fact that I am not that great a photographer doesn't help. It's also clear from looking at these shots that we could use a better digital camera. Still, these should get the point across.
My first radish seedlings! I'm very excited. The winter CSA spoiled us for good vegetables, and since we're splitting a summer CSA with three other couples, I want to make sure we have plenty of tasty, tasty radishes and carrots. Both veggies are being grown in a pot, partially for space reasons, and partially because the carrots need smooth, unrocky soil to grow straight.
Ground ivy, aka "creeping Charlie." When I first noticed this in the garden several years ago, I thought the little purple flowers were pretty, so I let them live. WRONG ANSWER. They are a weed, they are related to mint, and they are friggin' everywhere now. I probably filled an entire bag today just with ground ivy. Like the Japanese knotweed, you can never fully defeat it, but you can at least contain the damage.
The far left corner of the garden. This is where the echinacea lives, and I also planted some black-eyed susans there last year, because I'm from Maryland, and dammit, our state flower is really pretty. All the various coneflowers should be much happier now that the neighbor has chopped down the honeysuckle that was covering the left side of the fence and blocking the sun.
To the right of the echinacea, there's a big expanse of bergamot, and to the right of that we have the lovage and many colors of yarrow. The lovage should sprout very tall stalks with small yellow flowers in a few weeks; the yarrow won't bloom until late July or early August.
The yarrow gives way to the columbines and hostas at the center of the garden. The columbines are a deep purple and very double. They are just about to flower. Columbines weren't part of the original garden scheme, but with someone in the house who uses the screen name Columbine, they seemed appropriate.
Moving on to the right side of the garden, there's another hosta, more columbines, some valerian (oddly, none of the neighborhood cats seem to have figured this out), and two large and vigorous chive plants. This year, the chives somehow managed to migrate a chive-let about five feet to the right. I have no idea how they did this, nor, I think, do I want to know.
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columbina and I put in an azalea bed at the right side of the property line a couple of years ago so that we could cover up the ugly metal siding behind the fence. The siding is there because the neighbor's property is a few feet higher up on the hill than ours, so they need to hold in the dirt. Not the most attractive way of doing this, though, hence: azaleas. After the Hino finishes blooming, the peach-colored one to its right will bloom, followed by the pink one, followed by the giant rudbeckia that is taller than I am by the end of the summer.
A faked panoramic photo to give you an idea of what the backyard looks like. The seam in the photos is still somewhat visible, but I did fix the worst of it because I have some professional pride. The stone wall is about 40' wide; you can see the brick edge of the vegetable garden at lower left, and the azalea bed at right. That cleared-off dirt area at the far right of the garden was covered with ground ivy this morning. I am tired and sore, but I did good.
Thus concludes Garden Madness for May 13. Next week: tomatoes, hot peppers, cucumbers (and cucumber trellis-building), basil, petunias, snapdragons, zinnias, cosmos, and an upright fuchsia. Because I am clearly INSANE.
I turned over the vegetable garden and planted pea, radish, and carrot seeds last weekend, but since I plan to put in most of the vegetables, herbs, and flowers next weekend, I had no choice but to weed the back garden. When we bought this house in 2000, the back garden was a tangled mix of Japanese knotweed and various ivies, but after clearing all that away, I planted tons of herbs and flowers, giving us a beautiful (and largely edible) garden perched on top of an old stone wall. Since then, I've let some of the flowers and other plants re-seed themselves, which seemed like a good idea at the time. Sadly, I know better now. But! The herb garden is still in pretty decent shape, about 75% self-maintaining (yay) and, after today, cleared out and ready for planting.
Every year I tell myself I'll photograph the garden to document what blooms when, and every year I FAIL. Of course, the fact that I am not that great a photographer doesn't help. It's also clear from looking at these shots that we could use a better digital camera. Still, these should get the point across.
My first radish seedlings! I'm very excited. The winter CSA spoiled us for good vegetables, and since we're splitting a summer CSA with three other couples, I want to make sure we have plenty of tasty, tasty radishes and carrots. Both veggies are being grown in a pot, partially for space reasons, and partially because the carrots need smooth, unrocky soil to grow straight.
Ground ivy, aka "creeping Charlie." When I first noticed this in the garden several years ago, I thought the little purple flowers were pretty, so I let them live. WRONG ANSWER. They are a weed, they are related to mint, and they are friggin' everywhere now. I probably filled an entire bag today just with ground ivy. Like the Japanese knotweed, you can never fully defeat it, but you can at least contain the damage.
The far left corner of the garden. This is where the echinacea lives, and I also planted some black-eyed susans there last year, because I'm from Maryland, and dammit, our state flower is really pretty. All the various coneflowers should be much happier now that the neighbor has chopped down the honeysuckle that was covering the left side of the fence and blocking the sun.
To the right of the echinacea, there's a big expanse of bergamot, and to the right of that we have the lovage and many colors of yarrow. The lovage should sprout very tall stalks with small yellow flowers in a few weeks; the yarrow won't bloom until late July or early August.
The yarrow gives way to the columbines and hostas at the center of the garden. The columbines are a deep purple and very double. They are just about to flower. Columbines weren't part of the original garden scheme, but with someone in the house who uses the screen name Columbine, they seemed appropriate.
Moving on to the right side of the garden, there's another hosta, more columbines, some valerian (oddly, none of the neighborhood cats seem to have figured this out), and two large and vigorous chive plants. This year, the chives somehow managed to migrate a chive-let about five feet to the right. I have no idea how they did this, nor, I think, do I want to know.
columbina and I put in an azalea bed at the right side of the property line a couple of years ago so that we could cover up the ugly metal siding behind the fence. The siding is there because the neighbor's property is a few feet higher up on the hill than ours, so they need to hold in the dirt. Not the most attractive way of doing this, though, hence: azaleas. After the Hino finishes blooming, the peach-colored one to its right will bloom, followed by the pink one, followed by the giant rudbeckia that is taller than I am by the end of the summer.A faked panoramic photo to give you an idea of what the backyard looks like. The seam in the photos is still somewhat visible, but I did fix the worst of it because I have some professional pride. The stone wall is about 40' wide; you can see the brick edge of the vegetable garden at lower left, and the azalea bed at right. That cleared-off dirt area at the far right of the garden was covered with ground ivy this morning. I am tired and sore, but I did good.
Thus concludes Garden Madness for May 13. Next week: tomatoes, hot peppers, cucumbers (and cucumber trellis-building), basil, petunias, snapdragons, zinnias, cosmos, and an upright fuchsia. Because I am clearly INSANE.
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Your garden photos
on 2007-05-14 01:29 am (UTC)You might want to consider spray painting the chain link fence green, brown, or black so it blends more into the background. Or, you could do it bright red, purple, yellow, or blue (avoid green as it will always clash with some garden greenery) to m ake it stand out. Just some fun touches I do in my garden I wanted to pass along
Re: Your garden photos
on 2007-05-14 01:48 am (UTC)no subject
on 2007-05-14 02:35 am (UTC)Boy did it ever! It's rampant in my mom's garden now. Not that my family complains; they really like it. But it grows in every spot that nothing else wants to grow.
no subject
on 2007-05-14 01:05 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2007-05-14 01:08 pm (UTC)Just a reminder....
on 2007-05-17 05:41 pm (UTC)