Around the Garden

Yellow daffys and purple pansies

I thought I would just show a bit of the garden as it looks at the moment. Sometimes all I have time for is my Harvest Monday posts, so now you can see there is more!

In a front yard bed there is a dwarf Bonanza peach which I under planted with bulbs last fall along with some purple pansies. The yellow daffodils are blooming and look great with the purple pansies. Here is the post where I planted them, Daffodils, tulips & Pansies

My $2 Rose bush

Do you remember my How to Plant a Rosebush post? Here is that little $2 rose bush now. It's leafing out well and should bloom at least a little bit in a month or two.

terraced garden

I've been working on cleaning up and enlarging the terraces at the edge of the front yard. This slope basically faces northeast, so gets some early morning through mid-afternoon sun. I've planted some wildflowers,poppies, cilantro, snapdragons, sweet alyssum and clover in here along with bearded iris and three plum trees. That brush/manure pile in the front is over the sprouting stump of a honey locust tree which I'm trying to kill. It's the kind with vicious thorns on it.

west side

Here is the west side of the house, going along to the patio at the back. Not much happening here at the moment, but compare this to what it looked like in September, 2009!

cold frame and stone walls on the creek side

With the warmer weather last week I did a little cement work on the retaining walls on the creekside and built a new coldframe which uses two old shower doors I was given for the top. Needs a little refining, but should work for the time being.

This area is also going to become a new chicken/duck pen, with probably a little garden space. I will use the chickens to help make compost at the far end, then next year plant a small orchard of fruit trees and move the chickens to a new area to make more compost. When the retaining walls are finished I should have a space roughly 20x30 feet to work with here.

Around the Garden & in the Greenhouse

pea plants broken down by snow

Today was nice and sunny so I did a bit of work around the garden and in the greenhouse. I surveyed the damage from the snow storm last week.

The Bleushokker peas (in this photo) as well as the Sugar Snaps had some stems broken over by the snow and ice but peas are hardy plants and don't die from freezing. I'll probably just trim off the broken bits and feed them to the rabbits. Rabbits  happen to love pea plants.

freeze damage on lettuce

A lettuce bed covered with Agrobon frost blanket suffered freeze damage where snow sat for days on top of it and the leaves froze to the material.

Lettuce in the Snow

Another bed of lettuce which had been picked to ground level a couple of weeks ago had no frost blanket and so far shows no signs of damage. I think the thick layer of snow that was over it the first few days insulated it from the 22 degree nights.

Beets & carrots after the snow

The beets and carrots looked a little sad after the snow melted off of them, but they tasted just fine when I pulled them up. You can see there is still a little snow at one end of the bed (upper left corner of photo) and the soil is still frozen in some parts.

Dwarf Grey Sugar Peas in a tub in the greenhouse.

The greenhouse did get down below freezing some nights last week with the storm. Some little nasturtium seedlings froze to death. But almost every else is doing well.

Many things are sprouting up and growing. It gets in the 70's when it's sunny, though it can freeze at night, lately it's been just above freezing while outdoor temps have been just below freezing. One thing that seems to help is that the soil picks up a fair amount of heat during the day the surface is warm to the touch. I think this has helped the seeds sprout and the plants to grow. At this time I don't have any heat sink in the green house mostly due to lack of space, tho I'm thinking about at least using plastic milk jugs full of water.

Little Marvel Pea seedlings in the greenhouse bed

The Little Marvel Peas are sprouting up as well as a few other things.

onion seedlings in soil blocks

An onion plant left from last year and some radish seedlings.

Sweet Alyssum started in soil blocks and moved to plastic pots

Purple Pansies in the greenhouse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Old fashioned violet

Yellow Marble Tomato survives

A big surprise was to find that one of the Yellow Marble Tomato plants did not seem to have been frozen. It does lay over a couple of big rocks and perhaps they helped keep it warm enough, I'm not sure, but tomato season may not be totally over yet.

Don't forget to stop by and comment for Seedy Saturday's free seed giveaway. This week I'm giving away old fashioned hollyhocks, so if you have been wanting some for your cottage garden or to hide the compost pile, go on over and comment on this post to be put in for the free seed drawing.

Daffodils, Tulips & Pansies

Planting daffodil bulbs by the peach tree

I picked up a bag of 14 mixed daffodil bulbs and 14 mixed tulips. I planted the daffys on one side of the dwarf peach tree and the tulips on the other.

after planting the purple pansies

After I planted the bulbs I put in a drift of purple pansies along the edge. I'm planning this bed to be mostly flowers of different sorts to bloom through the year. In late winter I'll sprinkle some annual seeds over it like poppies and wild flowers to bloom in the late spring, then replace the pansies with marigolds for the summer.

Are you laughing at my bottle edging? A lot of my friends call this "The Drunkard's Path". :-)