Gardening News

(warning- lengthy and boring post, proceed at your own risk)

Gardening has been a touchy subject for me for several years. My Grandma Tommy was my mentor in flowers and gardening, and when she passed away I kinda gave up for a while. And the old saying, "One year's weed makes seven years seed", is so true. If you let things go for a year you will pay for it. I let mine go for several, and now I am paying the reckoning. If I can't get things under control this summer I may have to just take out beds. My fear is that in losing beds I will lose flowers and bulbs that aren't so much names to me, as the people they were passed down from. A garden, for me, is as much memories as growing things. To read more about my gardening memories see There is a garden in every childhood.

 One of my main problems that has gone on too long is wisteria vine. It is gorgeous to behold, but so invasive here in the south. My vine was thicker than my arm and was pulling my entire pergola over. I had to have the hubby chainsaw the main vine. Here he's using a smaller saw to cut out secondary vines.

 And it had so choked out my 15 foot smoke tree, that it is now cut down to painful stumps. The real horror is the small snaking vines that are covering the ground in every directions, squeezing out larkspur and hollyhock and re-rooting every few feet. It is such a terrible mess and a conundrum to fix, that I have just shuddered and averted my eyes for far too long. 

 This ripping and tearing began about a month ago. I was longing for spring, but the winds were still so bitter. Were you wondering what I looked like whist gardening? Well, perhaps you've seen those wonderful BBC movies where the heroine strolls out into the garden in a long white dress, a straw hat artfully arranged over her flowing locks. That's totally me...  

Oops, how did that picture get on there? ;) I kept going out in a dress, turning instantly back inside for a sweater, and then stomping huffily in once again to pull on my overalls. And, boy, was it ever windy! So instead of dwelling on my tragic flowerbed situation, I turned my mind to the vegetable garden. Our garden is 40x50, and has become far too large in the last few years. With an empty nest looming at May's end, I pared down my planting. The hubby suggested trying raised beds this year. Not just for ease of weeding, but to escape the dreaded Bermuda grass he has brought into the farm through buying hay from other people. There is a reason why it's folkname is "Devil's Grass". I loathe it with every fiber of my being and it is almost impossible to eradicate, short of a nuclear blast.

So here I am planting my 18 tomato plants. Hey, I downsized from my normal 22!! Behind me are the trial beds. My hubby delivers pipe, manhole covers, water meters, etc, for a living. These wooden squares are stackable to whatever height you want to make a box to hold the inventory on a flatbed trailer. He can have any they discard, and so we have free "raised beds" to play with. You can see it has finally warmed up enough to wear my farm dresses. I recently made another from this pattern that I will be showing you this week!

 

If you plant tomatoes, I have a tip for you, passed down from my pop. Always nip off the bottom two smallest leaves with your fingernails, flush against the stem. See the two (blurry) little ones?

There's one off. Nip them off and then bury the plant to where that part of the stem is covered by dirt. It might seem strange to bury it deeper than it was potted, but the spots where there were leaves will now grow roots, and it will anchor your plant even more sturdily into the soil. 

Here's my 'mater list: Mr Stripey, Yellow Pear, 2 Brandywine, Arkansas Traveler, 3 Lemon Boys, Mountain Pride, Black Krim, Yellow Jubilee, Orange Old German, Cherokee Purple, Striped Old German, Golden Girl, and 4 Park's Whopper. I couldn't find any of my very favorite variety, Orange Ox Heart. They are the most succulent tomato I have ever put in my mouth and I will miss the terribly. You can see that I have planted a number of yellows. They have less acid and have a wonderful flavor. And the Lemon Boy and Golden Girl are consistently my first and most prolific bearers. Hey, I hear you snoring out there! I know most of this will bore you to tears, Dear Reader, but remember that this is my journal of sorts. I often look back to prior years to remind me of things- what I planted that did well, what I made for Easter dessert, etc...

Here is a bed with a lattice set up to grow the pickling cucumbers. I have two beds of green beans, one cucumber, one squash. Then I have two beds with green onions, radish, five kinds of lettuce, and a mustard green that I saved seed of. Then there are two of taters, and one with broccoli, cabbage, and some Sugar Baby watermelon seeds to take over in summer.

 Past the tomatoes are now four more rows. One full row of Silver Queen corn and three half rows of it (the more rows, the more pollination). The other half rows are mustard greens, okra, and my beloved zinnias ;). Then 12 feet of gourds and a hill of pumpkins.

After that, I shifted my attention to the strawberry bed behind the house. Every year I have to replace berry plants that have died, and it only makes enough for my son and I to compete to eat.

 Yes, I wasn't kidding that it was actually a strawberry bed! Here is the proof, even making small nubbins of berries. But I only found 3 of the 12 plants that I had last year. And that's when I'd had it!

 I weeded, moved those three plants to the end, turned the soil, and then planted flower seed. This is to be my new cutting bed! I planted a row each of larkspur, bachelor's button, and nigella, then at the far end I planted Love Lies Bleeding. We shall see if any of it comes up. But if it does, what a delight to have a bed where I can just cut without thinking how it will make the flowerbed look. And with the fence already around it, the cats and dogs can't lay on them. Cross your fingers, Dear Reader, it has the possibility to be glorious!

Then I went around to the front of the house, to one of my very favorite beds- my herb bed. I use this bed almost every single day; I adore having my own herbs to cook with whenever I want. My sage bushes are pass-alongs from my Grandma Tommy and they remain all winter long, so that I can pick sage leaves for a roast or pot of beans even in January.

My husband, Duane, has a good friend named Dewayne. To keep them separate, I pronounce them Dew-ane, and Dee-wayne, respectively ;). I really love that guy, and on his last stay he brought me this awesome old cultivator. I told him I knew exactly where it would go...

On around the porch I have two beds enclosed by "granny wire" to protect them from flower-flattening dogs. I call it granny wire because you only see it around old houses.

 There was a lady in Springtown named Clara Blankenship who was a friend of Grandma's and mine. She had this all around her house. When she died at 100 and one day, her kids sold the house, and the very next time I went by all the fence was gone! Later I saw that someone has run off the road and torn through this same type wire at an old community building. I finally tracked down a person in the position to tell me that I could have it. They were just going to roll it up and throw it in the dump! Just looking at it makes me very happy.

 This birdbath was a Christmas present from the hubby. You know the best part? He found it abandoned at a recycling center down south and got it for free! I am really rubbing off on him ;). The birds have my fishpond and the creek to drink from, so I made drainage holes with a nail and planted this one.

 The lysimachia aurea will grow to trail over the sides in a golden cascade. And beneath it is a whole stand of my moma's Lilly of the Valley.

And here is the bed beside the kitchen porch. In the time since I was sitting in front of it in overalls, to now, the clematis vine has burst into bloom. This is Villa de Leon and it is not only a profuse bloomer in spring and fall, but it is the very best vine for north facing or shady areas.

Up in the "orchard" things are bursting. My pear tree is so laden with baby pears (the upright oval things) that the branches are already bowing down. I can't imagine when they being to swell...

The cherry is absolutely full. I need to get a net on it before the birds eat them all like last year :(

The Whitney crab apple is doing wonderfully. It  is not only a great pollinator for the apple trees, but it is a variety that has large, golfball-sized fruit that are sweet enough to eat out of hand. I may have enough to pickle this year! Don't make a face, when you pickle fruits, it is done with sugar, cinnamon, cloves, etc. They are a wonderful treat from my childhood, along with pickled peaches. The gooseberries are blooming, and the raspberries and elderberry aren't far behind. The grape vines are vigorous, and I can't wait to see all the fruits this year!

There is a lot of hard and depressing work to be done in the flower beds around my fish pool, but I am looking at all the spots that are brightening and blooming, and choosing to be joyful over what is good. And I am going to work with determination to gain control of my trouble areas and save all the precious plants that I can. A happy note is that my hubby decided to pay a bounty on thistle! He was going to pay the boys 50 cents a plant to dig them out with a grubbing hoe, but I said, "No way, Buster, that moollah is mine!" I chopped 152 one day, and 176 on another. Yesterday, hubby showed me that Lowe's was having a sale of 4 bags of mulch for ten dollars. We went and he got me a full pallet of 64 bags for my thistle money!! With mulch the weeding can begin in earnest! And I still have lots of thistle to chop (cue sound of hands rubbing together greedily, he he ;).

 This is going to be the year, Dear Reader. I am going to make the gardens back into a place my grandma would be proud of.