Garden Report
The endless rains of the spring are over and I’ve gotten a chance to finish weeding and survey my situation.
I did my front perennial bed last weekend. My husband was very distressed when he saw how much I’d pruned, but the black-eyed Susans and purple coneflowers had gotten totally out of control and were crowding everything else out. I did pull out one coneflower that looked pretty bad and put one of the thriving rosemarys in its place. Success stories first: the Susans and the coneflowers, the rosemarys, and the purple sages are all doing great. The three lavenders I planted this spring are also growing (though they did not flower — boo hoo!) One of those three is the one that the critter ate! It came back! So I will be pleased and amazed if it continues to grow.
Now for the failures. The lavender plant I thought was doing so well suddenly curled up and died in the space of a week! I am so disappointed. I had the opportunity to chat with one of our county’s Master Gardeners and he suspects that it might have drowned. (My soil is clay, and I did not double-dig the flower bed as I did with the vegetable beds.)
I am also worried about the lamb’s ears I planted this spring. I planted eight for the front border, and they looked so nice and seemed to be doing well. But now one of them is dead, another one has only three healthy leaves, and another three have a bunch of yellow and brown sickly-looking leaves. I put soil amendments in when I planted them, so I hope it is not another drainage issue. I may be visiting the Master Gardeners again this week. I fertilized with kelp extract this morning, so I hope that helps.
As for the vegetable beds, the rhubarb continues to survive (I want to put some manure on it) and I am still cutting good lettuce. The carrots are thriving too — the last one I thinned was about an inch long — they seem to have liked all that rain!
Best news is that the tomatoes are finally doing something! The two Romas have blossoms and one of them has a tiny green fruit starting to form. Hooray! I also planted a tiny watermelon on a whim, and it has blossoms now too. I lost my first basil seeds when they washed away in the rain, but I have two little plants that weren’t washed away, and some of the seeds I replanted have started to sprout. So perhaps I will be making and freezing pesto after all.
My other big news in the garden department is that I finally have started composting! I have not yet found a good place to put it — it’s right in plain view of the house — but I can always move it.
I had wanted to compost for a while but aesthetic considerations held me back. Compost piles should not smell, but they are a little unsightly, and I couldn’t find a place to hide it (our yard is not very large. If the Misguided Handyman had only built a smaller shed instead of the giant barn, and sited it a little bit further from the fence, there would have been a perfect space right there.)
I saw a Rubbermaid composter at Home Depot the other day. This item certainly addressed my concerns about aesthetics, but I don’t have $89.00 lying around at the moment. But I was back on the compost kick, so I searched around a little more and discovered that the county has compost bins for free. Nothing as elegant as the Rubbermaid composter — the free one is basically a length of PVC plastic with big holes for ventilation and small holes for fastening the thing into a tube — but the price was right.
We set it up yesterday. The instructions suggested elevating it above the ground to improve air circulation, so this morning I went back to Home Depot and shamelessly mooched a pallet junked in the parking lot. My plan is to put some landscape fabric on the pallet (to keep the compost from falling out) and then plop the bin on its little stage. We still have lots of fallen leaves behind the shed, so that should be a good start for the compost.
Some Lessons Learned so far:
1) Start as many plants as possible inside! I am going to try setting up a plant light this winter to help make this possible.
2) Eggshells, eggshells, eggshells! Tomatoes love them, but I also learned that if you crush them coarsely and sprinkle them on the surface of the ground, they will ward off slugs. (I had a problem with slugs under the lettuce.) I don’t think I will ever throw an eggshell away again.
3) Get those Master Gardeners on speed-dial. I wish I had consulted them before I planted that ivy; they warned me that it is considered an invasive non-native around here (Vinca would have been a better choice.)