After a warm spot in the weather here (growing zone 7/Memphis, Tennessee, to be exact), it's gotten cold out again. Right as I was planning and replanning the best spots for everything -- the flowers, fruit, and herb garden to come. But I've gotten a little extension from the ever-changing weather around here. It's too cold to put out that tomato plant I brought back from Jackson. After searching around for good varieties for containers, I chose the Husky Cherry Red. Still, it sounds like a great wrestler name to me. So it deserves a chance to live by waiting to plant it in a few days, when it's finally warmer.
I've also chosen a few packets of seeds to plant around in containers -- I'll start with Heavenly Blue Morning Glory. Morning Glories always make me happy because the seeds enjoy a warm soak overnight, and then they like being thrown around like Jack's beans for the magic beanstalk. They don't tend to be choosy -- they'll come up in surprising places without much attention. So I'll soak those tonight and start by planting some around in the barrel of ivy left behind, and I'll even throw some off the balcony just to see if any make it around the ground floor apartments.
Guerrilla gardening is fun. So in that case, I'll throw some around the chain link fence around the back of the apartment, too.
Two other flowers I've chosen for The Yarden are a packet of Columbine (Harlequin Mix) seeds and Alysuum (Snow Crystals) seeds. After sitting out on the porch last week during the warm spell, I sketched and thought and re-sketched until I really just took all the fun out of where I can plant these, light-wise and spatially, with that blasted, two-ton, immovable half barrel full of ivy out there from the late 1980s. But I am just going to start somewhere, just like anything else, to see where it grows.
Another cool seed I found that looks cool is Lunaria (Honesty, Money Plant). I have no idea how to grow it, but it says it likes partial shade like I have here, so why not. It looks like a bouquet of white butterfly wings on the seed packet, so why not.
Maybe the most important growing experiment of the year will be seeing if I can grow a tiny, essential herb garden for my cooking addiction around here. I have had a huge success with growing basil in containers and in indirect light, so I picked up some Lemon Basil seeds. I've also got Italian Parsley and Chive seeds to try. It'll be interesting to see what grows (besides the immovable ivy) in this indirect light/partial shade environment.
That's all for now. Off to soak some Morning Glory seeds, and I'll be back soon to plant my wrestling tomato plant.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Monday, March 17, 2008
Time for the new Yarden.
If nothing else, let it be known that I am great at yardwork. If you need weeds pulled, bushes trimmed, grass mowed...well, okay, so I've only mowed a yard once. But if you need detail work done, I'm good, and I don't mind getting sweaty as long as you have something frozen and fruity for me to sip afterward in a bubblebath.
But when it comes to creating a Yarden from a whole lot of nothing, that's pretty new to me. Looking back on it all, I've always had a yard around to dig in. I'm fairly decent with a windowsill and a master at office-plants-turned-houseplants. But don't let me near an orchid, or it's curtains. Sure, I'm better at planting bulbs in a yard than watering plants on a porch. But as usual, I'm always up for a challenge.
I've done a quick research on this apartment complex I've moved into, and turns out it was built in the early 1920's. The architecture and carved details are still beautiful after all these years. It looks like it was bought and partially restored in about 1983. It also looks like someone planted four Bradford pear trees in the courtyard that are the biggest ones I've ever seen. Makes me wonder what makes this piece of land here so fertile or potent to grow trees like that to the size of these.
Somewhere along the 80's, someone dragged this half of an oak barrel up here and started a plant of standard English ivy in it. It's grown up the wall once, and through the railing, into the gutters. Fine with me. In fact, it helped me decide which apartment to choose of the two I looked at here. I stuck one of my iron plant cages in it, swirled in a strand of Christmas lights, and called it *whimsical garden art.*
It's a low-light condition up here on the second floor, but it's more light than the downstairs porch. So let's see what happens this year if I try a grape tomato plant in one of my big pots.
As far as tomatoes go, I cannot get anything special, exotic, or heirloom to grow in a container yet. I've brought home beautiful and delicate, little green hand-picked hopefuls and wilted them silly within a month. So, before the the American Society for Cruelty to Heirloom Tomato Plants heard about me, I decided to be kind and start smaller.
I usually start with a Bonnie's tomato plant because they are easy to find at a local Lowe's which works out great for my level of experience and patience hauling newly-purchased plants up two-flights of stairs; and in the past few years that I've grown tomatoes in containers, and used Bonnie plants, they've gone wild, producing tall. toppling plants that needed staking with big handfuls of grape tomatoes, without any extra effort from me. Maybe I'm just lucky and maybe tomato plants thrive best on the smell of fear.
Funny thing is, I'm not even crazy about tomatoes. But for some reason, I love trying to grow them. It's got to be the Southern woman in me. It's alright if you just don't tell anyone until I'm good at it. One day.
Another thing I like about choosing tomato plants is reading the variety names.
To me, they all sound like either wrestlers, exotic dancers, or superheros.
Tell me that's not fun.
So anyway, this weekend I'll be driving home for a doctor's appointment and to visit my mom. That woman could grow ferns in a snowstorm. She's one of the reasons I even started this blog last year, helping her clear out her own yard and start it all over again for another season. So as far as planning goes, I'll be looking to her for suggestions, and I'll haul them back to Memphis with me and get started.
I'm not sure she'd like the whimsical Christmas garden lights, but hey -- you've gotta start somewhere.
Saturday, March 08, 2008
Can you believe it?
March, and it snows.The new porch Yarden is covered in snow today.
But soon, I'll crank it all back up with potted plants.
This will be my first attempt in awhile at container gardening.
Just because you don't have a yard
doesn't mean you can't have a Yarden.
Container planting is another challenge in itself
which we'll get into this Spring and Summer.
And what's the best thing about porch Yardens?
No weeding.
I'm excited already.
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Cheers to February 2008, and happy late Ground Hog's Day.
If I thought about it much, I'd realize that I'm a lot like a groundhog - fuzzy, warm, brunette, and mostly keeping to myself. But the best part of being a groundhog is that I don't think about being a groundhog until February.
Something about the month of February makes me stick my head out of my wintery, gray, groundhoggy hole and poke around outside for my shadow. Yeah, I see my shadow, but I come outside anyway. Something grinds around the inner-workings of February that feels a lot like new growth, sprouting from the deep,dark to meet the light. I'm not sure what it is. But every year, it makes me start over, and I force bulbs.
So I'm forcing paperwhites in the sunniest spot in the kitchen window; but this year, I'm using a little booze to keep them from growing too leggy. No, really. A little alcohol in the water stunts their growth and keeps them from growing lanky and top-heavy. So, no flopping over this year (for the bulbs, at least). A little vodka water for the paperwhites, a little vodka cosmopolitan for me.
Something about the month of February makes me stick my head out of my wintery, gray, groundhoggy hole and poke around outside for my shadow. Yeah, I see my shadow, but I come outside anyway. Something grinds around the inner-workings of February that feels a lot like new growth, sprouting from the deep,dark to meet the light. I'm not sure what it is. But every year, it makes me start over, and I force bulbs.
So I'm forcing paperwhites in the sunniest spot in the kitchen window; but this year, I'm using a little booze to keep them from growing too leggy. No, really. A little alcohol in the water stunts their growth and keeps them from growing lanky and top-heavy. So, no flopping over this year (for the bulbs, at least). A little vodka water for the paperwhites, a little vodka cosmopolitan for me.
How to Stunt Paperwhites with Alcohol
- Pot your paperwhites in stones and water, as you normally would.
- Once the roots begin growing and the green shoot on top reaches about 1-2", pour off the existing water.
- Replace the water with a solution of 4 - 6% alcohol...
- Continue to use the alcohol solution for future watering.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
I don't get to update here much literally, but I actually do update this blog in my thoughts everyday. I'll have to get into more detail with new photos and stories next week. Having a blog on yardening is hard to do since you're mainly outside most of the time -- digging, weeding, planting and replanting, making birdfeeders out of twisted copper and feeding the birds. It seems endless, and it always grows back, but at least you have more beauty to share at the end.
Until then, I read a thought for the day and a story that I wanted to post quickly. I'll be back next week with updates and photos.
A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up.
Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away.
Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them.
But other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.
"A pure heart is like a garden with good soil." ~ Mary Ellen Main
Until then, I read a thought for the day and a story that I wanted to post quickly. I'll be back next week with updates and photos.
A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up.
Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away.
Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them.
But other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.
"A pure heart is like a garden with good soil." ~ Mary Ellen Main
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Time flies when you're making platelets.
For the most part, that is where I have been ~ off building platelets (thank you, God) while trying to think and not think at the same time. It's not as easy as it looks. Still sorting through the weeds in the backyard here (naturally, my mother's taken over so I like to stand back and mostly carry things around, rearranging here and there, and then noticing most things I have rearranged move back to the original location, so it's a never-ending job) and replanting the front yarden in Memphis. It was a flying trip but worth it. The roses hadn't been cut back properly, but four of five bushes are going wild in the face of neglect. Good. Not only did that ease my Garden Guilt over not taking an hour before on other trips to cut them back and shape them, but it also shows me what not to do to make them flourish. Only one bush got spindly and leggy. It was a miniature red rose that I'd planted on a lark, and it grew to epic proportions. I've been half expecting it to exhaust itself and die under its own weight, but as I removed the dead wood and reshaped it, I know it'll regrow itself strong and filled with sweetly scented blooms if I just give it time with itself and the earth.
The boxwood bushes need trimming, but I'll get to the last, I know it. It's funny ~ I'm halfway scared of bushes because you never know what's hiding in them. Garter snakes, a praying mantis or two, and hopefully a garden spider or two. Last year, Yardley showed up. He was a giant yellow and black garden spider. Not huggable, but I grew to love him and respect him, seeing him as a sign of a maturing, established eco-system in a tiny, experimental Yarden. I think Yardley was a "he", but I hope he was a "she". I'd like to see a baby Yardley or two.
Two or three years ago, I got tired of looking across the street at the friendly metrosexual's ever-changing landscape. I turned various shades of green with friendly heterosexual envy. "Man. Look at that tree...I don't know what it is, but I want one." All I had was the short, scraggly oak tree that was full of promise but lacking in overall pizazz. "You don't flower, do you?"I asked. It didn't answer, so I took that as a "no." My mom always said, "Flowers you plant for yourself. Trees you plant for other people ten years down the road." Tell that to the friendly metrosexual across the street secretly driving me crazy with his willows and flowering whatnots.
Even though I felt back about having the sad little oak axed, I picked out the prettiest flowering tree I could afford at the nursery, one that would to well in the sandy-soil of the Yarden. Really, I wanted a red Japanese maple, but they can't take full sun, so I read and heard. Instead I chose a snowgoose cherry tree and had the professionals amend the soil and plant it. Rest in peace, tiny oak, but the snowgoose cherry? It had to be done.
Every year the snowgoose does its thing, exploding with thousands of fluffy clumps of tiny white flowers, centered with bright yellow, all on a background of that fresh neon spring-green before the first good rain in late March knocks them all to the ground. Instead of letting the grass regrow over the roots around the base of the snowgoose, I've always liked digging a small rounded flowerbed there, trying different plants that like full- to partial-sun. Pansies and petunias work great any time of the year they are planted. When I see pansies poking their faces through a late winter snowfall around the snowgoose, I can't imagine why anyone would call someone lacking courage "a pansy." There's a bully's mind for you ~ shallow as a piepan.
I still know less about them than I did when I planted them, but I knew absolutely nothing about carnations when I planted them as edging around the outside rim of the tiny, round flowerbed. But they have lasted for two years now, producing at least two good batches of spice-scented bouquets of pinks, reds, and whites. Knowing even less about tulips, one year I even tried tulip bulbs in the little round bed, not knowing whether they'd grow at all, but they did. They grew up and flowered around Valentine's Day. A few of them actually wintered over this year and came up this Valentine's Day. That's what I like about planting bulbs ~ in my case, I forget about them until they grow back, defeating the odds most always.
Over the winter and early spring, the ring of carnations had grown thick on one side and lopsided and weedy on the other. The ground-feeding birds, my favorite trio of mouring doves, squashed the life out of the smaller, struggling plants, too. But as everyone knows for a fact, if you don't feed the birds, St. Francis will give you a pox of cold sores. Or is it ringworms? Well. it's something like that. Sure. It may not be true, but I'm not taking any chances.
A giant wadding of healthy-yet-sad carnation plants are budding fiercely, leaning toward the west as the others are dying out under the true north shade. In the end, they will all have to be replaced, but I will try to transplant some of the healthier ones to the other flowerbeds and see if they take. I can't cut back flowers that are on the verge of blooming, however moth-eaten they look from the street. (Take that, friendly metrosexual.) The challenge is now finding something small, affordable, and medium to dark green, preferably non-flowering, to replace the carnations as edging. "Mondo grass," my mom said. "Also, I don't want the word 'mondo' in it." It has to be small and manageable. That is the way I like it.
Oh yeah, and cheap.
So as a affordable attempt at the redo, I planted a ring of powdery white dusty millers close to the base of the tree, with a ring of orange and yellow french marigolds and lacey carmine petunias mixed in for variety. So besides the edging, I'm now looking for *something blue or purple besides a pansy or petunia, just for the heck of it* to mix around in the bare spots and borders, but I can't think of anything yet... Anyway, it should take the carnations a week or two to bloom out, so I can cut them and spruce up the inside of the house for a couple of weeks.
Anyway, for once in my life I can say my little Yarden looks the best on the block.
Sure, I'd like to think it's raw talent, but really, it's only because no one on my block plants flowers but me. I know. There goes the neighborhood, right? I don't understand people who don't want to plant flowers.
Well, my yard looks almost as good as the friendly metrosexual's yard anyway. But lately, his yard has been slipping a bit, so I'm not convinced he hasn't moved. Well, alright. If so, thank you friendly metrosexual, for opening my eyes to the endless possibilities of simple beautification with anything green and blooming, plus the friendly competition of a small Yardening. Even without the disposable income you obviously had, I hope I gave you a run for the money. Thank you for the inspiration, wherever you are. And wherever you are, please don't tell me. Because I'm on a budget always.
But I can't trade being outside, dreaming away over perennials and annuals. for slaving away indoors for someone else's temporary and monetary dreams. Violets and roses, that's all I think about all day anyway...
Hey, that's it! Violets, or violas ~ the purple ones, or blue and white. Flowerbed, done. Now, the edging...
So that's where I have been. Stringing lines back and forth between here and Memphis and trying not to feel like an egg with a cracked shell, but more like a wobbly bird just big enough to jump out onto a thin, springy snowgoose branch, seeing the blue sky above but keeping her eye on the cat on the ground. The weather has been so nice the past few weeks that I can't stay indoors however hard I try, knowing that the indoors turns a soul into muck instead of...mulch?
Ew. See? Time for everybody to go back outside. Personally, I'm not quite de-mucked yet.
But you just wait until it's hotter than as Hades outside, complete with those evil dive-bombing bugs and West-Niler type mosquitos who drink citronella for a good buzz. They spritz with DDT. They floss with cat's whiskers.
The boxwood bushes need trimming, but I'll get to the last, I know it. It's funny ~ I'm halfway scared of bushes because you never know what's hiding in them. Garter snakes, a praying mantis or two, and hopefully a garden spider or two. Last year, Yardley showed up. He was a giant yellow and black garden spider. Not huggable, but I grew to love him and respect him, seeing him as a sign of a maturing, established eco-system in a tiny, experimental Yarden. I think Yardley was a "he", but I hope he was a "she". I'd like to see a baby Yardley or two.
Two or three years ago, I got tired of looking across the street at the friendly metrosexual's ever-changing landscape. I turned various shades of green with friendly heterosexual envy. "Man. Look at that tree...I don't know what it is, but I want one." All I had was the short, scraggly oak tree that was full of promise but lacking in overall pizazz. "You don't flower, do you?"I asked. It didn't answer, so I took that as a "no." My mom always said, "Flowers you plant for yourself. Trees you plant for other people ten years down the road." Tell that to the friendly metrosexual across the street secretly driving me crazy with his willows and flowering whatnots.
Even though I felt back about having the sad little oak axed, I picked out the prettiest flowering tree I could afford at the nursery, one that would to well in the sandy-soil of the Yarden. Really, I wanted a red Japanese maple, but they can't take full sun, so I read and heard. Instead I chose a snowgoose cherry tree and had the professionals amend the soil and plant it. Rest in peace, tiny oak, but the snowgoose cherry? It had to be done.
Every year the snowgoose does its thing, exploding with thousands of fluffy clumps of tiny white flowers, centered with bright yellow, all on a background of that fresh neon spring-green before the first good rain in late March knocks them all to the ground. Instead of letting the grass regrow over the roots around the base of the snowgoose, I've always liked digging a small rounded flowerbed there, trying different plants that like full- to partial-sun. Pansies and petunias work great any time of the year they are planted. When I see pansies poking their faces through a late winter snowfall around the snowgoose, I can't imagine why anyone would call someone lacking courage "a pansy." There's a bully's mind for you ~ shallow as a piepan.
I still know less about them than I did when I planted them, but I knew absolutely nothing about carnations when I planted them as edging around the outside rim of the tiny, round flowerbed. But they have lasted for two years now, producing at least two good batches of spice-scented bouquets of pinks, reds, and whites. Knowing even less about tulips, one year I even tried tulip bulbs in the little round bed, not knowing whether they'd grow at all, but they did. They grew up and flowered around Valentine's Day. A few of them actually wintered over this year and came up this Valentine's Day. That's what I like about planting bulbs ~ in my case, I forget about them until they grow back, defeating the odds most always.
Over the winter and early spring, the ring of carnations had grown thick on one side and lopsided and weedy on the other. The ground-feeding birds, my favorite trio of mouring doves, squashed the life out of the smaller, struggling plants, too. But as everyone knows for a fact, if you don't feed the birds, St. Francis will give you a pox of cold sores. Or is it ringworms? Well. it's something like that. Sure. It may not be true, but I'm not taking any chances.
A giant wadding of healthy-yet-sad carnation plants are budding fiercely, leaning toward the west as the others are dying out under the true north shade. In the end, they will all have to be replaced, but I will try to transplant some of the healthier ones to the other flowerbeds and see if they take. I can't cut back flowers that are on the verge of blooming, however moth-eaten they look from the street. (Take that, friendly metrosexual.) The challenge is now finding something small, affordable, and medium to dark green, preferably non-flowering, to replace the carnations as edging. "Mondo grass," my mom said. "Also, I don't want the word 'mondo' in it." It has to be small and manageable. That is the way I like it.
Oh yeah, and cheap.
So as a affordable attempt at the redo, I planted a ring of powdery white dusty millers close to the base of the tree, with a ring of orange and yellow french marigolds and lacey carmine petunias mixed in for variety. So besides the edging, I'm now looking for *something blue or purple besides a pansy or petunia, just for the heck of it* to mix around in the bare spots and borders, but I can't think of anything yet... Anyway, it should take the carnations a week or two to bloom out, so I can cut them and spruce up the inside of the house for a couple of weeks.
Anyway, for once in my life I can say my little Yarden looks the best on the block.
Sure, I'd like to think it's raw talent, but really, it's only because no one on my block plants flowers but me. I know. There goes the neighborhood, right? I don't understand people who don't want to plant flowers.
Well, my yard looks almost as good as the friendly metrosexual's yard anyway. But lately, his yard has been slipping a bit, so I'm not convinced he hasn't moved. Well, alright. If so, thank you friendly metrosexual, for opening my eyes to the endless possibilities of simple beautification with anything green and blooming, plus the friendly competition of a small Yardening. Even without the disposable income you obviously had, I hope I gave you a run for the money. Thank you for the inspiration, wherever you are. And wherever you are, please don't tell me. Because I'm on a budget always.
But I can't trade being outside, dreaming away over perennials and annuals. for slaving away indoors for someone else's temporary and monetary dreams. Violets and roses, that's all I think about all day anyway...
Hey, that's it! Violets, or violas ~ the purple ones, or blue and white. Flowerbed, done. Now, the edging...
So that's where I have been. Stringing lines back and forth between here and Memphis and trying not to feel like an egg with a cracked shell, but more like a wobbly bird just big enough to jump out onto a thin, springy snowgoose branch, seeing the blue sky above but keeping her eye on the cat on the ground. The weather has been so nice the past few weeks that I can't stay indoors however hard I try, knowing that the indoors turns a soul into muck instead of...mulch?
Ew. See? Time for everybody to go back outside. Personally, I'm not quite de-mucked yet.
But you just wait until it's hotter than as Hades outside, complete with those evil dive-bombing bugs and West-Niler type mosquitos who drink citronella for a good buzz. They spritz with DDT. They floss with cat's whiskers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
