Strawberries and Roses and Other Things Too

So, an update! I've had several days off work, and I'll have a few more, and mom and I have taken the time to get our ornamentals planted this year.

We can't plant the garden for another two weeks according to the Almanac and the weather patterns we're experiencing, but we were determined to plant something. So we picked up some vincas, impatiens, pansies, and a very fragrant dianthus from the garden center to bring home some color to the flower bench.

I also grabbed a pack of 12 assorted oriental lily bulbs from the store. I love the oriental lilies, and I was going to pick some up from The Lily Garden, but I just couldn't bite the bullet on those prices. Perhaps in the future if there are one or two varieties I'm missing or I particularly like, I'll grab some from there. Nevertheless, that's a great site to browse for identification purposes.

As for other garden updates:

The tomatoes are up and growing strong! At the lower right, the pepper plant has made an appearance at 2 wks 3 days.

The strawberries are blooming! I'm honeslty surprised to see them do so, as I was certain transplanting messed them up for this year.

We've added a hummingbird feeder to the garden! It's standing next to my beloved Don Juan rose. We've had one brief visitor to it in the 24 hrs it's been up.

And finally, the roses are making roses! Pictured here is the biggest rosebush in my yard, a Sarah Van Fleet.

Link Spotlight and That Purple Thing

Wanted to share two things which are actually one thing just two ways.

I subscribe to a fun newsletter called "Now I Know," and this morning's article was on an intriguing plant called the Burning Bush. This perennial herb can be set afire! Well. Sorta. Check out the link, here.

I've spent way too much time on this website; The Helpful Gardener really is just that. It's got to be one of the most concise and streamlined source of gardening how-to's, when-to's, and why-to's.

While I was browsing the site, I found a list of plants known to attract butterflies. So I start clicking through, and I stumble across the Aster. Check out the pic below!

See that? For a few long moments I thought someone had walked up into my yard and taken a picture of The Purple Thing growing in a flower box on my front porch!

Let me tell you the story. Two years ago, in 2011, mom and I picked out some daisies at the store to plant in our flower box.

2011

See the green clump at the far right? We thought those were just another sort of daisy. They were inch and a half wide bright purple flowers. Cute, right? So we planted them. The colorful daisies never made new flowers and eventually died, and that clump in front never bloomed beyond the few flowers it came with. We thought 2011's flower box was a bust. Bah!

We were lazy and didnt clean it out. And when spring of 2012 rolled around, the Purple Thing was still alive. And in late January... February... March... it was blooming! When everything else was dead, that Purple Thing was covered in flowers.

2012

This picture above is from May, 2012. And you don't see any flowers on it. That's cause it stops blooming when it gets hot! And That Purple Thing doesn't like us to take care of it either. If we water it, it tries to die. If we fertilize it, it sulks. Know how we found that out? We planted those little annuals behind it; the more we tended them, the more the Purple Thing hated us. So we stopped bothering with it, the little annuals died, and the purple thing hunched there all summer long.

So now it's spring, 2013. Look. Just look:

2013

2013

You see all that? This is March; that Purple Thing has been blooming for well over a month. And it's covered in more buds just waiting to open. The greenery is almost touching the ground in the left picture. The bees and butterflies love this thing! We don't water it, we don't feed it. Mom has decided she wants to cut it back this year since there's a lot of dead material in the center of it, so in the summer when it stops blooming, we'll do that.

So today's lucky find is that I may be growing (not growing? letting grow?) an Aster in my flower box. We're not going to plant anything with it this year, since it likes to be left alone. The main trunk of this plant is easily three inches wide. The only curious thing is that the growing instructions on the Aster's page don't match what we've been doing, hahaha. But why teach an old flower new tricks? It brightens dim, cloudy winter days with incredibly vivid purple flowers that tend to close up around 4pm and open again for the morning.

If anybody has any other thoughts on what this could be, I'd love to hear!

How To Build A Grow Light

So the seedlings are sprouting! The first two popped up last night, at exactly 7 days. They were the Roma and the Cherry. Naturally, now that I have seedlings craving the sun, we've got a cold front plus three days of rain coming in.

This just wont do. So I went to the internet for solutions. I needed a grow light. I do not have the money for a grow light. So I needed... well this:

The light is about an inch above the top of the box, which puts it about two or three inches away from the tallest sprout. Whatever the distance, the left side is the height of For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Three Musketeers, Robinson Crusoe, and As I Lay Dying. The right side is the height of The History of Art, The Return of the Native, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, The Scarlet Letter, and one I cant recall at the moment.

The light is one I had sitting around (or rather, dad had sitting around in the shop). And presto. Grow light. The set up was inspired by this article here, via Yahoo.

I'm very hopeful. I may combine this with my idea to put the tray on the air vent to warm the grow pellets. Grow light + warmth = happy tomatoes? I'll give it a shot and report back if I get brave.

The Mystery Plant

So, I mentioned the mystery plant.  Last year when my folks picked up the four roses on the front of the house from a small nursery, the pot that contained the biggest rose (a Sara Van Fleet) also came with a hitchhiker - a small lilly-looking plant. The nursery lady sent it home with the folks, and we decided to pot it up. 

It grew and grew, and then it died. I completely ignored the pot all winter long. It was left under the carport where I was wintering other plants, but I didn't water it or really even think about it. 

Until I was transplanting the strawberries... 

I needed extra dirt, and since my budget is pretty limited, I tend to use recycled dirt in the lower halves of pots. And there was the mystery plant's pot sitting there with all that dirt. I started to scoop out the dirt, but when I got halfway down into the pot, I discovered these glossy roots with thick bulges. I discovered the bulb root! And it had spread through the entire pot. So I hastily recovered it and started watering it. Now I have 10 sprouts coming up.  

These pics are dated Feb 28 and March 16th, respectively. It seems to be growing quite happily! Last summer I saw a plant in the store that resembled this one. I think it makes a yellow or an orange unscented flower. We shall see.

Finishing the Flower Beds

Busy busy. We mulched the front beds.









Then we finished the flower beds around the back.

Then we planted the final hydrangea. Mom grabbed some hyacinths. I love these plants; they smell incredible. I first encountered them last year at the store. We walked in, and this honeysuckle-like scent hit us in the garden center. We followed our noses all over until we found them. For weeks we enjoyed their fragrance, and then they died. We tossed 'em. Yes, I know. I'm cringing still. We were very upset, and hadn't done our homework to know that it's routine for the plants to die back in late spring/early summer after they're done blooming.

So now we have 15! Last year I bought two stargazer lilies, now I have 12. And I had one Mystery Plant, and now I have 10. So if I'm starting with 15 hyacinths... heh heh heh. (This is why I'm not allowed to plant bulbs in the yard.)

Starting Over

So, bad news. I ended up with an infestation of gnats.

You know how a dog looks who's covered in fleas? That's how the surface of my potting soil looks. I think I discovered the infestation too late to effectively get rid of it AND save my seedlings.


Here's why: 

You see these two pics on the left? I took them tonight. These little plants are approximately 5 weeks old.

Now check out the picture under it, courtesy of Victory Seed's page on starting tomatoes from seeds. The plants pictured there? 16 DAYS old.

There is something rotten in the state of Stephanie's garden.

The best my research has indicated, the gnat larvae are probably feasting quite merrily on the roots of my plants; they haven't grown in a long time, not since putting on the nodes for their first leaves; a snap of warm weather allowed me to keep them outside for a long stretch, during which time they probably picked up the gnats. I didn't notice til a day or two ago when my house started filling with gnats because I was bringing them inside with the seedling pots.

 I did my best to get the gnats out of the soil. I even used pesticide dust to try and kill them. To no avail.

So, the game plan has changed.

I'll be buying a tomato green house seed starting kit from the store tomorrow night or so, and starting another batch of seedlings that way. With all luck and fingers crossed, I'll get healthy seedlings like the bottom picture in close enough time to plant.

It's disheartening to see 5 weeks worth of effort ruined in about two days.

That's all for now.

Building Flower Beds

Check out what I did today! Last spring my family was able to plant 9 gardenias, 1 azalea, and 7 rose bushes. Unfortunately, three of the nine gardenias didn't make it (and yes, I'm giving the stink eye to these two midget dogs across the street who like peeing on things). The azalea nearly died too because of a huge drought we had in the hottest part of the summer. Only a few parts of it are left (but the parts left are blooming! If blooms happen, there will be pictures).

So today we replaced the three gardenias, transplanted the azalea to a sunnier location, and planted a hydrangea in its place. There's another hydrangea earmarked for a spot by the deck, but we didnt make it that far.

But the biggest thing we accomplished today? We built the flowerbeds on the front of the house. Photos!

Before - 

The corner of the house and the gardenias Right.

The rosebushes, Left.

The corner of the house again on Right!








The rose bushes again, on left!

All that's left now is to fill in with the mulch, but the work force (me and the parents) got tired. 

That's all for now!

Things are starting to grow!

Bulbs are my favorite type of plant. If I had a garden and was only allowed one type of plant, I would be hard pressed to decide between rose bushes and bulbs.

There are a hundred billion types of bulbous plants out there; my particular favorites are lilies. And my specific favorite lily is the humble day lily.

Day lilies are garden workhorses. They take a lot of abuse and give you nothing but good returns. They can handle poor soil and irregular water, and they are generally very low maintenance plants.

I planted a clump of Stella d'oro day lilies last spring; they were gorgeous! They even had a faint fragrance. They died back very early though, and I was honestly concerned they wouldn't return. But I cleaned out the spot they were planted in, and look what I found! Day lilies sprouting.

Last spring while buying plants, mom and I were drawn in to the heady fragrance of some oriental lilies. They were pink with dark pink spots and white stripes. They bloomed for a long time and filled the air with a perfume that almost knocked us off our feet. Then they died back very early. Concerned, I did my research and found out they were really summer-blooming lilies that had been forced into early spring bloom to lure in shoppers like myself. So.

But they're coming back now! Believe it or not those scraggly looking shoots are the oriental lily. Ignore the pot of onions. That's another experiment for another post.

That's all for now. I'll have pictures when things start blooming! It's so refreshing to see the first greenery of spring.

Meet Jack

So, Jack is my 10 month old cat. He likes to help with things. Like laundry. Or sewing. He especially likes gardening.

Jack has a green thumb.

Jack ate my pepper plant today at lunch. I guess he was hungry. He did not apologize.

The short of it is I am now down a pepper sprout. I've started another one today; the last one took two weeks to sprout. I'm aware how far this puts me behind on my planting timetable, but it is what it is.

Jack's lucky he's cute.

The Gift of Herbs

Last summer my sister's friend was very thoughtful and gave me three herb plants. They were two mints and a rosemary bush. I had no idea what to do with them.
I could tell immediately that all three were in containers that were far too small for the plants' needs, but I figured that they'd been potted that way intentionally as containers just to transfer them in.
But I didnt have time to do the repotting; I was barely keeping up with my garden's typical demands, let alone figuring out the proper care required by mints and rosemary. Plus last summer was a very hard time for my family.
Needless to say, my inability to devote enough time to my garden last year meant I almost lost all three plants.

The first mint, the Kentucky Colonel mint, required immediate transplanting, since it wouldn't even stand up straight. The pot tipped over due to the height of the plant, and so many roots had grown through the bottom I couldn't just set it in the garden with everything else. So I stuck it in a pot with some recycled dirt and called it good. This mint, thanks to the extra space it got right off, has fared very well.

Here it is beginning to send up stems on new growth.

The second mint, a Chocolate Mint, didn't fare very well. It was very cramped in the roots department, so cramped that there wasn't even much soil left in the tiny pot it was in. The soil that it was in wouldn't hold water and the drain holes in the pot were far too large. Both of these problems meant that water went right through the plant, and slowly it began to die from under watering. The Chocolate mint is definitely my favorite of the two, and I was distressed to find that by the end of last summer there were only a few leaves left on what had been a very healthy plant. So I found a day, grabbed the last of the potting soil left from the whole year, and repotted both it and the rosemary.

I was astounded at how quickly the Chocolate Mint recovered. Within days, there were brand new leaves showing on top of the soil. Within a week or two, the top was green and runners were going everywhere. Unfortunately, as seen here, it didn't enjoy the winter cold. But it's coming back up for me, nevertheless. Hopefully with some TLC this year, I can have a very lovely mint plant once more.

The rosemary very nearly suffered the same fate as the poor chocolate mint. The pot it was in was about 6 inches wide and about the same deep; the root ball was about the second most pot-bound plant I've ever seen. The soil it was in was poor, as well. But this hardy plant only lost the tips of a few branches to yellowing and browning. After all that neglect, 95% of the plant was still green. All of the new growth happened in late late summer after I repotted. It's come through the winter as if unbothered by the cold. The only trouble is the plant had an unpleasing shape to begin with, and the new growth has compounded the rather... unattractive shape.

My goal for this year is to trim and shape the bush into a more... bush-like appearance.

I noticed the scent of the rosemary turning bitter through the winter months; the sunshine I've been able to give it in the past week or so has sweetened the fragrance a good deal.

I'm unhappy with all of the pots that these herbs are in. They were done last-minute and with the scraps of what I had left at the end of the season; therefore these were the last pots I owned at the time. I want shallower pots for both mints; preferably something shallow but very wide, to accomodate the spreading surface roots of both varieties. However, I may end up electing for a slightly deeper pot for the KC mint, as it has a distinct upright shape that may necessitate the balance and stability of a bigger pot.

As for the rosemary, it may sit where it is for a while. That's the biggest pot I own, and my garden plans for this year may mean I dont have the funds to just hop over to the store and grab a pot for it until later.

Overall, I have been happier than I ever imagined with these three plants. I never knew how rewarding it was to have aromatic plants in one's garden. I can brush my fingers across the spines of the rosemary plant, and someone standing two feet from me will smell its heady fragrance. These plants are forgiving and tolerant of a busy schedule and troubling life events; they keep on rewarding you with their rampant growth and wonderful aroma despite it all.

Enough sentiment. I love 'em. I plan on adding a few other herbs to my garden this year. Maybe basil. We'll see.

That's all for now!