Gardener's Log 03112024
Spring's progress and the artist's garden
We are rapidly reaching the point in springtime where things are happening all at once and I can barely keep track of them everywhere. My schedule has been prohibitively busy, so I have spent very little time in the garden, and sadly none just basking in the sun and enjoying. This coming week looks to be the same. However, that’s not to say I have spent no time at all out there. For one thing, I spent Sunday afternoon in that most American of tasks, mowing the yard.
Note I do not say lawn. I have very little grass in my yard, and what I do have is in the back. In the front yard, it’s largely a native wild geranium (Geranium texanum) with it’s soft, fringed round leaves that respond well to being walked on by forming a short carpet of green. In the less used parts of the yard, it’s taller and lusher. I set the mower as high as it will go, and groom them neatly level. They have supplanted the earlier Henbit almost completely, as it has been warm and the Henbit was green all winter but it can’t tolerate the heat. It will return in late fall. My neighbors with all-grass lawns are only recently getting greened up, my yard has been green all this time.
It is also a yard full of color spots. I am watching the daffodils fade fast, after a couple of weeks of solid blooms. I love them so, and I was so happy they recovered once I started to work in the garden again. The history of the house and garden was a long one of love and care, but the last few years were all neglect as the owner declined and family caretakers did nothing to maintain, let alone improve. I can see her, though, in what remains of the garden and in the excellent dirt I inherited from her work over the previous seventy years.
Perhaps the most excitement in the last week or so has been the fresh eggs! The first egg was laid on Leap Day, I missed checking for it, and on March 1 I had two eggs. Since then the Silver-laced Wyandotte (named Silver, in a burst of unoriginality on my part) has faithfully delivered a tiny perfect brown egg daily. The Cuckoo Maran, Belinda the Brave, has been laying darker brown eggs every other day or so, one of the Easter Eggers has been laying soft-shelled eggs and I am concerned for her, and finally one of the Easter Eggers delighted me with a green egg yesterday. The flock is beginning to earn their keep.
I have begun to set up the watering system which will mostly be automated to allow me more time for other chores. Right now, with seeds in beds, I’m out there daily making sure the top of the soil is staying moist enough to allow for germination. It doesn’t take long, but I also can’t skip it. I need to plant out seedlings from trays, so I can stop having to water those as frequently, as well. I must perforce be a lazy gardener, as I have so little time to spare it at this season in my life. I will set up as much to allow for benign neglect as I can. It rained last week, it may rain again this week, and for that I am very grateful.
Both peach trees are blooming. The plum trees are finishing up their blooms. Time will tell if they set any fruit. I know they had pollinators all over them, I took photos!
My garden is coming along. Herb-heavy, as it usually is. I’ve planted more potatoes than I should, but I can always share the harvest with friends. Same with onions, all of the sets I put in are thriving! I also planted some perennial onions (Walking Onions) to hopefully establish those. My strawberries… Did I mention the silly mistake I made? I ordered a set of 25 bare-root strawberries, forgot I had done that, and ordered another 25. I have strawberries planted simply everywhere. They are starting to bloom! I will have berries!
I’ve planted herbs by seed and plant alike. Some things don’t do well from seed, like tarragon. I’ve got vegetables seeded in as well, and the peas are starting to tendril. I should have planted more of them, I don’t know we will have enough as we love the sugar snap peas.
I was lured in by the appeal of started plants and acquired a couple of peppers. Then my son brought me more peppers. I shall also have peppers planted everywhere! I finally got all of the compost I ordered this spring moved off the driveway where I’d had it dumped, although I had to create a new garden bed to move the last of it. Oh dear. Whatever shall I do? I can laugh at myself, put the passionflowers in the back of it, so they twine up the chainlink fence, and then start to plant herbs and flowers in it, that’s what I can do. Probably a pepper or two as well.
In the less decorative, but vital, parts of the garden I have the compost bin made of pallets nearly full after an epic weeding session and then my son mucking out the chicken coop. I’ll have to make another next to it. I can’t go too far down the narrow space behind the garage, because I planted elderberries back there between the neighbor and the building, but I suspect they won’t mind compost neighbors feeding their roots one little bit.
Infrastructure may not be glamorous, but it is part of every garden, and my garden is going to be about beauty as well as utility. The backyard garden is for production. The front I envision becoming my cottage garden with complicated hedgerow surrounding a small hidden garden that is visible from the street only in winter. A project that will take years of refinement and planting, training trees and shrubs to intermingle in the ways that are natural to them and pleasing to my eye.
I’ve got growth on the Quince cuttings. These are very much an experiment on several levels. I haven’t grown from cuttings in years. However, it’s difficult to find Quince, and when you do find it in a mail-order nursery it’s expensive and out of stock. I took a wild gamble and ordered cuttings off eBay, not realizing where the seller was located. These came all the way from the Czech Republic, according to the postmark! They weren’t cheap, but he sent me seven instead of the promised five cuttings, very well packed, and it looks like I have a chance to get some solid rooted trees going. Fingers crossed! I really want to have a quince or two here in the garden.
2024 will be filled with flowers. I know it will, because I’ve planted so many, surely a few will survive!
Here daffodils were beginning to bloom in some sheltered stops last week. I just got my first ones two days ago, and it appears they are the first in the neighborhood. We did already snowdrops and alas dandelions -- then crocuses and dwarf irises. Scilly is blooming with the daffodils.