Barefoot Kitchen Witch - In the Garden

More Flowers - 29 March 2008

I don't even remember what kind of flower this is, but I love the color.  We have these in various places in the front yard gardens.

And I can't resist water on plant leaves.  I don't know why - I just think it looks cool.  Above are some tulips in the Rose of Sharon garden...and below - a tulip in one of the front yard gardens.

All these were taken on Saturday.  Over the weekend we added some flowers to the window boxes and did more work in various gardens.  I started pulling the dead leaves and grasses off of the boat garden.  What a big project that is....

First Harvest - 29 March 2008

Really!  See those tiny little greens on top of this Warm Honey-Mustard Tofu Salad?  Those are little seedlings Bill thinned from the arugula, cilantro and red lettuce pots.  Aren't they cute?  And they have flavor - they taste like, well, like arugula, cilantro and red lettuce.  Pretty cool, huh?

Rearranging, Watching - 26 March 2008

Yesterday was a pretty good day to work outside, except for the wind, which blew dead leaves and other debris out of my hands when I was trying to stuff it into yard waste (is that what they're called?  Lawn & leaf bags?) bags.  But other than that, things went well.

I moved most of the violas, or johnny-jump-ups, out of the western garden in front of the house

into the window boxes along the front of the house here....

and here.

We'll add other flowers eventually, but for now these little bits of color brighten things up a bit. 

The roses are doing nicely...this is one we got years ago before we bought this house...there was a man in the neighborhood who had a greenhouse and raised plants and every August had a huge plant sale - pots and flats with all sorts of outdoor plants all over tables and planks in his hard.  It was like a treasure hunt.  Anyway, the flower of this rose is a bright, peachy-pink color - I'm still not sure if I really like the color, but the plant is incredibly healthy, so I don't think it's going anywhere.

And this is Mr. Lincoln.  Mr. Lincoln is a hybrid tea rose, very hardy, very tolerant of New England weather.  Bill bought this several years ago when he was trying to keep his late mother's roses alive and I think he needed something he knew would survive.  (His mom's roses have survived, too, by the way.)  Mr. Lincoln produces beautiful, fragrant red flowers - it's my favorite of the bunch.

Mr. Lincoln has long and very sharp thorns.  I know; one of them broke off in the back of my arm yesterday while I was digging up the violas.  Gotta watch out for that Mr. Lincoln.

And here's one of the many tulips coming up all over the place this year.  Bill planted a ton of them, and I'm really looking forward to when they all bloom.  I like the spiral here...

And finally - one crocus (out of the three) blooming so far.  These were also planted last fall.  Hopefully we'll get more, but who knows how many the squirrels may have taken.

 

Not sure if I'll do anything outside today - it's supposed ro rain at some point,  But I've cleared out all the dead leaves and things from everywhere except the boat garden and along the eastern side of the house.  Not much growing over there anyway, other than an azalea and some day lilies.  But still - they need attention, too.

That's it for now.   

Forsythia Blossom - 24 March 2008

Just saw this when I got home from the grocery store a little while ago...

That white fluffy stuff on the right is leftover "spider web" stuff from Halloween.  Seems we missed some.

Broccoli Rabe is In! - 23 March 2008

Bill planted the whole raised bed with broccoli rabe - it'll come up early - before we need to plant anything else - and it's one of my favorites.  So this is in, and the peas.  Yay, Spring.

More Buds - 22 March 2008

I refilled one of the bird feeders this morning and realized I hadn't even thought about the two lilac plants we've got in that back corner garden.

We have two of them back there, plus a Korean Dwarf Lilac in the front of the house.  I don't know what these two lilacs are, specifically, but they're purple, and they are two different varieties, as you can see by the two different types of buds they have....

Interesting, huh?

Re: Peat - 22 March 2008

Well, looks like it worked.

Bill worked the majority of the soaked peat moss into our main raised bed this morning:

So now we've got the raised bed compost mixture along with peat moss.  Things are off to a good start.

Browsing - 21 March 2008

While Bill was figuring what to do about the peat moss issue I took a quick look around the yard to see what else might be coming up.

Way in the back right corner of the yard we've got a couple of lilac trees and a crook-necked pole with several bird feeders on it.  Below the feeder we will eventually see a bleeding heart, a bunch of lilies, lilies-of-the-valley, and I don't remember what else. 

Looks like a few things are starting to poke through the ground...

And over in the Rose-of-Sharon Garden the tulips continue to poke up out of the ground.  That gorgeous purple hyacinth in the pot was a gift from a friend of mine.  It'll get planted either in this garden or one of the front yard gardens.  Still not sure where yet.

And over to the west of our house...the neighbor's daffodils. 

They seem to start coming up in January.  We recently figured part of the reason, besides all the sun from the east and south, could be that the bulbs are right up next to the house.  We've got a sage plant that took root in a crack between our driveway and the foundation of the house.  It flourished through the winter, and we were thinking maybe it was just warmer at the roots and didn't realize winter had hit.  So maybe it's the extra warmth that gets these daffodils going earlier than anyone else's.  Not sure if that's it or not, but I think it's possible.

We've got one huge narcissus bud of some variety in the front of the house - just to the west of the front steps.

Maybe it's got a double blossom or something - it looks so full.

And in that same garden - some more columbine -

And - one of the surest signs of spring - forsythia.  No flowers yet - just buds.  For now.

Next up - some early transplants.

All those sad looking irises came from the raised section behind the boat garden.  They just weren't doing well there, and I was afraid if I left them there another season, they'd die.  So I rescued them and moved them to the main iris garden along the side walkway (I really need to do a diagram of the yard, huh, just so people know what I'm talking about).  Anyway, I'll also be moving the rest of the irises in the boat garden - they just don't get enough sun where they are.  So that's an upcoming project.  Maybe next weekend.

And finally - the dark pink peony in the front yard is starting to come up.  Yay!  I love peonies.  I like the huge white one in the Rose-of-Sharon garden best, but this one is pretty,too.

So that's it for the moment.

This time of year I feel like I need to patrol the grounds at least twice a day - so much is happening out there.  Lots of quiet excitement.

Bringing in the Peat - 21 March 2008

In addition to the raised bed compost mixture we put in the gardens recently, Bill also got some peat moss to work in as well.  Problem with peat moss is that it's dry and compact, so he wanted to soak it well first.

Our kids' sandbox has been more like a sand pond through the winter because the lid was left off months ago and it filled with rain or melting snow.  But at least Bill found a use for it.  He set the peat on the water and hoped.

 

The next day it was still sort of floating there.  The very edge of it - the part touching the water - had absorbed a bit of moisture, but the rest stubbornly refused to.

So he needed to get creative.

First he tried turning the peat moss over, but that didn't seem like it was going to do much.

See?  You can see a little streak of the part that's soaked up water, and the rest is still dry as dust.

So here's what he ultimately did.

First he removed some of the peat moss and put it in a big old trash can we use for stacking firewood.

And then he put a cinder block on top of the peat moss to keep it weighted down.

And then he loaded it up with water.  You can see the water bubbling up in the back corner where the cinder block meets the edge of the trash can.

 

He did the same sort of thing with the peat moss in the sand box.

So we'll see how that works. 

   

In Which I Wax Rhapsodic About Manure

I hope it stops raining today at some point so I can go out and take pictures of the gorgeous compost on some of the gardens.

I know - oooooooh!  Sounds thrilling!

On Tuesday I picked up the kids after school/daycare and got them Happy Meals to eat on the ride to get a yard of compost.  Not just ANY compost, either.  It's the "Raised Bed Mix" - one of several types of compost you can get from Earth Care Farm.  The place (if you're into this sort of thing) is awesome.  Huge mountains of compost...good stuff, with - well here's an excerpt from their website:

COMPOST INGREDIENTS

We start with farm animal manure, such as horse, chicken, cow, sheep, goat, and rabbit manures. These we gather along with whatever bedding material was used, such as sawdust, wood shavings or straw. We also mix in elephant, camel and other exotic manures from Roger Williams Park Zoo.

Other raw materials added include: clean gurry (fish scraps), shell fish, seaweed, paper, wood chips, spent bark mulch, wood ashes, mulch hay, flower, vegetable, and shrub trimmings and also food scraps. Our major bulking agent is leaves which we receive from local towns. These ingredients are lended, mixed, and turned in an aerobically managed compost system on our certified organic farm. It takes approximately 18 months before the ingredients are properly cured and considered mature, finished compost.

Nice, huh?  So the owner loaded up the bed of our truck and away we went. 

Then I spent the afternoon clearing out dead leaves and other debris from most of the flower gardens in the front yard.  Mainly the irises, as their rhizomes need sun and dryness to flourish.  I transplanted a few that weren't doing all that well - hopefully they'll improve this year in their new spot.  The kids helped for about 3.4 minutes and then grew tired of all that manual labor.  So they played in the back yard or drew with chalk on the driveway.

When Bill got home he was all excited about the compost and got that truck bed cleared out pretty quickly.  Julia "helped" by standing near a wheelbarrow while he shoveled compost into it.  I would have taken a picture, but my hands were too muddy to touch the camera.  I really need to remember to wear gloves.

Anyway, Bill distributed the compost to the raised bed and to the other vegetable garden areas in the yard, and I added some to the windowboxes as well.

Eventually, it was too dark and too cold to do any more outside.  But things are looking really good.  Nice black compost out there...ready for planting.