Diary of a Novice Gardener

Springtime!

2008-04-18T07:55:00.000-07:00

Spring is back, and so am I. I frankly confess to being the world's worst blogger, but hey, I'd rather just have fun with my blogs than see them as work; hence the occasional seven-month lapse between posts. Ahem.

So yesterday, I stopped by the grocery store to pick up a couple items, and when I walked in I was confronted by all these dying pansies on sale. I just hate it when grocery stores do this to flowers; they get a ton in, a month too early, then neglect them so that compulsive gardeners like yours truly are forced to buy them and try and save their little lives. We now have what will soon be a lovely pot of pansies sitting on the bookshelf in our front sunroom, much refreshed by a long drink of water and waiting for the day when I plant them in one of the planters near our front door. I think I'll put snapdragons and petunias in the other planter.

Since I've learned the hard way to actually respect the May 15th frost date - challenging though it is, when faced with these gorgeous mid-60s weekends like this one - I've been entertaining myself by plotting what we'll plant when we can finally do so. I'm looking forward to more morning glories over the trellis and along parts of the fence. For produce this year, I'm planning tomatoes, squash, zucchini, peppers, perhaps some spinach and lettuce, and I might even try some snap peas. I want to plant some more herbs, too, in planters that I can bring into the sunroom over the winter. We already have a little planter with chives that serves us well.

The iris are starting to come up strong, and already I can see that I'm going to have to do more dividing out this year. Since I never got around to planting that border of iris along the south side of the fence, it seems like a good opportunity. Not to be callous, but one nice thing about having such an abundance of iris is that I don't really have to worry that much if the transplants don't take well - there will be plenty of time and plants to try again in the future.

I'm also going to have to tame the woodbine once again. It grows over itself so thickly that in spots you'd think the fence would just collapse under the weight. My BB worries that I'm somehow hurting the vine's growth, but frankly I've not seen anything yet keep woodbine from growing like crazy.

Confession of the Slacker Gardener...

2007-08-25T21:36:00.000-07:00

Our poor gardens are somewhat of a mess right now. It's only thanks to my BB that they're in any shape at all. In fairness, the reason I've been slacking on the gardening is that I'm working three different jobs - soon to be two, though, so perhaps I'll have a little more time to spend outside.

Happily, we are managing to keep some squash, tomato and pepper plants alive. The squash is producing nicely - yellow squash, mostly, and some acorn squash - and the Roma tomato plant has two green tomatoes that are so far doing well. One of the pepper plants is slowly starting to produce - I'm getting antsy as August is nearly over already. I have to keep telling myself that as long as global warming doesn't screw up this fall too badly, we should have another six weeks of potential harvest time.

In other news, the thyme we planted in the driveway project back in May is absolutely thriving. It's wonderful. I'll try to post an updated picture, because it's just lovely. :)

Now In Bloom...

2007-07-27T20:35:00.000-07:00

No pics yet, but there's a lot going on...

The various squash and zucchini plants are blooming and getting baby veggies. This is such a great phase of growing squash and zucchini. We have way too many plants, but that's okay... I love my triple chocolate zucchini bread! I'll have to post that recipe on my cooking blog.

The hollyhocks have been blooming for at least a month now. They're so tall! More than six feet, some of them. We have pink, medium pink, dark pink, red, and white. They're so lovely. The hummingbirds really like them too.

Speaking of hummingbirds, I've been impressed with how brave they are about coming to feed. We moved our feeder to our deck, and it's getting a ton of traffic; last weekend, I was walking over to water a potted plant on the deck rail and was about five feet from the feeder when a hummingbird flew away from it. I stopped and took a couple steps back, and sure enough, she came back down and drank from it for a couple more minutes. Very cool.

Anyway, we also have daisies, some gazanias, the yarrow's still going strong, the Scottish harebells are going strong, the apples are coming along, we have something pink that I think might be butterfly weed, we have small grapes on our grapevine, the thyme we planted in the new driveway is thriving, and all's right with the world. We've also been working on building a planter to attach to the side of the deck railing, and I'm going to plant a mixture of herbs, vines and blooming flowers in it.

I'm excited about the planter. Last weekend, we sanded the boards and bought some necessary supplies; this weekend, we'll stain the boards and hopefully get the structure built, then next weekend, we'll attach it to the deck. Neither of us has a ton of time to give to home projects every week, so we've just been trying to chip away at the projects on Saturday mornings. It's a fun way to spend time together.

Summer in the Garden

2007-06-27T21:32:00.001-07:00

Weeds, weeds, and more weeds. We spend a lot of time pulling weeds. It's good, though; it's a great workout, and sort of meditative/theraputic at the same time. I've finally learned to wear sunscreen.

The gardens are, as always, in transition. The roses are completely gone. The peonies are gone. The poppies are gone. Most of the iris are gone.

The bachelor's buttons are going nuts, each trying to outdo the others, and look beautiful with pink, purple, and white all mixed together. The hollyhocks keep threatening to bloom, but haven't yet followed through. The snapdragons I planted, red and yellow, are doing nicely in the far corner. The yellow columbine's full of little Matrix-reminiscent blooms. The wild geranium and other geranium-mix are both blooming, light and dark purple, respectively. The Scottish harebells are waving their lilac bells. The daylilies are just starting to bloom. The sweet peas are draping their pink flowers across the chain link fence. We have some cool medicinal herb called borage, which has tall spikes of white flowers tipped in a sort of neon purple. I'll post a picture soon.

In the meantime, we've been on more hikes, and seen so many lovely wildflowers! It's really a fantastic season this year. Here are a couple pictures from our recent hike in Bear Creek Park, along North Cheyenne Creek.

Rainy Day

2007-06-04T05:49:00.000-07:00

The weather in Colorado has a wicked sense of humor. And, apparently, is on the Internet; I wished for another sunshiny day, but got thunderstorms and hail instead. We got in a couple hours of weeding Sunday afternoon, no more, partially because of our willingness to work in the rain. But we made some progress, I'm happy to say.

Sunday morning, we went on a nice hike along the Ute Trail to the Entemann, then up Red Mountain. With all the snow and rain we've had this year, the wildflowers are blooming like crazy. I took a few pictures and used them to identify the flowers online. Here's a brief tour:

Arrowleaf balsamroot (try saying that ten times fast) is the yellow flower in this picture, and Rocky Mountain penstemon, a member of the delphinium family, is the purple wildflower shown.

The most prevalent colors on our hike, by far, were yellow and purple. Here you can see some cinquefoil.

There were lots of these beautiful wild snapdragons, called butter-and-eggs. To the right of the butter-and-eggs is a narrow leaf yucca, a plant you'll see all over the foothills of Pikes Peak. There are actually more than 800 varieties of yucca, and a lot of them live in the Southwest, but narrow yucca is one of the most common around here.

It's hard to say whether big patches of one flower are prettier than several different kinds of wildflowers mixed together. Here are some Rocky Mountain pentstemon with butter-and-eggs.

Here's a more detailed shot of a Rocky Mountain penstemon.

There were tons of these lovely little daisies. I couldn't decide whether this is a Coulter's daisy, ox-eye, or fleabane. I'm pretty sure it's an ox-eye or a Coulter's. Whatever their name is, they're very cute and cheerful.
The evening primroses are beautiful. The blooms are one of the larger ones you'll see on the trails. They seem to like sunny slopes especially.

Indian paintbrush is very cool, with interesting long, narrow, cylindrical blossoms. The red wildflowers are a little fewer between, but they stand out more. Indian paintbrush seems to favor sunny, flat spots, and it can grow to be more than a foot tall.
One of my favorite Colorado wildflowers is the thimbleberry. This grows as a low shrub in the shady mountain forests. Its big, delicate white blossoms reminded me a bit of dogwood flowers. Lovely! Apparently, some people make jam with the bright red berries it gets, but I've yet to see thimbleberry jam at a local farmer's market.

The Western wallflower is quite pretty, too. They're easy to spot because of their distinctive, bright yellow clusters.

Last on our tour is the wild geranium. Their blooms aren't as showy as many of the other wildflowers, but if you keep an eye out, you'll see them all along the trail. They have a relative that's a really annoying weed, one of the types I wrestled with in the rainstorm yesterday. We're trying to get those out of our yard, and cultivate the pretty wildflower type in one or two of our gardens.

Baby Steps

2007-05-21T06:29:00.001-07:00

I hadn't realized how busy I'd been with work until I looked at my garden. Still don't have our veggies planted, except for one or two peppers. This weekend, I pulled some more weeds, added to the flagstone path around the deck, and moved some random, junky blocks of concrete out of the back corner of one of the gardens.

The iris are going strong, with the white flag iris getting ready to bloom any day. The dark purple ones look so pretty. Some of the yellow roses have big buds on them, too.

Most of the plants I put in last weekend, like the sage and the snapdragons, seem to be doing pretty well; likely thanks to a run of evening thunderstorms several days this week. Some of the woolly thyme is looking a little brown, but I think it's just a little initial die-off. It seems to be establishing itself, for the most part. The sod is looking good (and still a different color green from the crabgrass that dominates our lawn).

I'll be traveling this coming weekend, too, so I'll have to make time for weeding in the mornings and evenings, weather permitting. Good thing I've been waking up early. That way when I do have a little more free time, we can go get the veggies and get them planted. My mom calls this approach "eating the elephant one bite at a time".

Too Much Fun!

2007-05-15T21:14:00.000-07:00

My, how time flies. After several days at a conference last week, I returned home on Saturday evening just in time to see all the great work my sweetie did in the yard while I was gone. It looked good, but we've got plenty more to do. So for the past two days, I spent at least 10 hours working outside. My entire body was sore today, but it's worth it! I pulled gallons of weeds, divided some of the iris (plenty more to go), and planted a few plants with more to come.

Some of the plants I put in are a pretty East Friesland sage (pictured above), snapdragons, a couple of leftover woolly thyme, and a peony. Mother Nature was very obliging today with a daylong, gentle rain to help my new plants get started. This weekend, we'll pick up some veggies too.

The lilacs are blooming in a frenzy, and the iris are starting to open up too. So far, just the yellow and purple iris are opening, but soon we'll have many other colors. I'd never realized how fast iris propagates until I was dividing mine, and found out all my neighbors are trying to give their extra iris away too. Once I've replanted what I want, I'll take the rest into work and give them away.

I spent almost a full day just weeding the southern side of our property, outside the fence. We have a low-ish rock wall surrounding the yard, with a chain link fence that starts about two or three feet above street level. It was choked with weeds before, but it looks so nice and clean now. We're going to use the leftover gravel from the driveway project to fill in the gap between the rock wall and the chain link, which is set back about a foot from the rock wall, and plant iris along the fence. Together, they should give a nice, clean, easily maintained effect. The irises don't need much water, and the gravel will help serve as a weed barrier. The best of both worlds!

The Driveway Project

2007-05-07T19:14:00.000-07:00

We spent a fun weekend landscaping in the rain, redoing an ugly strip of gravel driveway that stretched into our yard. My BB (best beloved) got the brilliant idea to shovel all the gravel out and put sod down, with strips of paving stones to make tire tracks. Then I had the corollary idea to put a pretty ground cover plant and smaller gravel around the paving stones.

We had fun picking out the paving stones, gravel and plants. By comparing prices and doing some smart shopping, we ended up spending only about $180 on materials!

It took my BB several days of hard work to shovel all the gravel out. Then we used some topsoil to level the surface out as much as we could, given that we're at the base of a hill and some slope is inevitable. We measured and laid out the paving stones, on top of some 20-year weedblocking tarp, which I frankly hope lasts at least five years. Then we put the sod down.

That was a good first day. At times, our progress was hampered by the thunder and lightning forcing us to go inside. But eventually the rain would taper off again, and we'd go back out to keep working. After a while, I finally got too cold and damp, but the BB stayed out and finished the job.

On Sunday, we went to get the plants, some soil for planting them, and gravel. We ended up going with a nice white & reddish mixture of gravel that complements the reddish cobblestones. For the plants, I chose woolly thyme. Not only is it a sturdy herb that gets pretty little pink flowers, but of the four types of ground cover I planted in another path last fall, only the thyme and one other survived. So I knew we had a good chance at keeping it alive. They need low water and thrive in rocky environments.

We came home and planted the thyme, cutting holes in the tarp where we wanted the plants to go. The paving stones were two inches high, so we put down a layer of soil about an inch deep, then put more soil around the plants as we set them in the ground. We covered it all with the gravel. It turned out looking rather lovely!

Then, because Colorado springtime has a wicked sense of humor, not three hours later it was snowing. Honestly, you would think the landscaping projects you undertake in May would remain snow-free for at least a few months!

The First Year

2007-05-02T21:12:00.000-07:00

So what occupies all these gardens? The first year was a joy of discovery, identifying what previous owners had left in beautiful legacy: a plethora of white and purple lilac trees; a cascade of yellow roses that would love to take over; iris in deep purple, yellow, white, burgundy-and-gold, and light purple; two apple trees, whose lovely white blossoms are currently blooming; red tulips, already come and gone this year; Oriental poppies; purple clematis; mint, mint, and more mint (sigh); hostas; a crabapple bush; a forsythia bush; a peony bush; Virginia creeper lining much of the fence; daylilies; hens-and-chicks; bachelor's buttons; hollyhocks; columbine; something I think is a flowering quince; something I think is an Oriental cherry (pictured right); and I'm quite sure I'm forgetting some plants.

The gardening season in Colorado officially begins around May 15th, and officially ends in September, although sometimes if you're lucky, you can stretch into October. Since we moved in at the end of July, we waited until the next spring to really start our efforts. (Plus, I had a lot of reading and research to do!)

So what did I plant, that first season? Cosmos; morning glories; phlox; petunias; pansies; Tahitian daffodils; poets' daffodils (as a poet, I could hardly resist); Irish belles; snapdragons; daisies; lavender, which promptly bit the dust; more lavender, in a different spot, which also bit the dust; still more lavender, in a third spot, which survived and came back this year; a geranium; and a vegetable patch to serve as our 13th garden. I was born on a Friday the 13th, so 13 is my lucky number.

In the vegetable patch we planted beefsteak, cherry and Roma tomatoes; two zucchini plants (all you experienced gardeners got a good laugh out of that one, I bet); acorn squash; cilantro; basil; Anaheim peppers; bell peppers; jalepenos; spinach; and chives.

Ya know what we got out of that vegetable patch? A whole lot of zucchini, a little basil and spinach, and a few Anaheims and jalepenos. I've got a killer recipe for double-chocolate zucchini bread now, though.

Why didn't we get more veggies from our lovingly tended patch? Because I planted the seeds in the ground. In Colorado, in a gardening zone that starts May 15th. Yeah, all you experienced gardeners can stop rolling around on the ground and wipe the tears of laughter from your eyes. I know better, now. Now I know all about starting the seeds a couple months before you want to plant the seedlings outside... or, failing that, not being such a purist and just buying seedlings at my friendly local nursery!

A Menagerie of Gardens

2007-05-02T20:00:00.000-07:00

We love our home and yard. They're quirky, all right, but we're into that. Our home is a 1918 Craftsman that sits on what I call a "peninsula lot", because streets wrap around the lot on three sides. We're actually on two small lots combined together, with our home sitting on one lot, back from the street. That plus the peninsula factor makes for a whoooole lotta yard.

There are two gardens on the north side of the house. There are seven, count 'em, seven gardens just within the fenced yard, on the east side of the house. That doesn't include a long wraparound garden, what I call the perimeter garden, that runs along the inside of the fence all the way around the peninsula. There's another gardening area on the south side of the house, largely mulched in as a dog run, and yet another garden to the right of the driveway. Then there is the gardening ledge along the entire outside of the fence, even longer than the perimeter garden. Oh, and the little "alley" behind our house on the west side, too.

Whew! Are you tired yet? I sure am. We could literally weed our gardens going in a circle all the way around the house, and by the time we returned to the starting point, the weeds would be a foot high. Suffice it to say that it's a never-ending labor of love.