gardening

Seasons Are A-Changin’

April 19, 2013 by Leah Leave a Comment

I should be washing the stained dishes piled in my kitchen sink that have been sitting there since having a friend over for dinner. I should be packing for my trip to Long Island on Saturday. I should have taken Benadryl because my nose is running away with itself thanks to spring allergies. I should be praying for my friend with cancer. I should be praying for the family at home who just lost a loved one to cancer. I should be figuring out how I’m going to revise my department’s budgets at work so I can have everything turned in before my trip. There is so much on my mind and lots of things I should be doing, but I need to sit a spell, let my brain wander.

I went to a friend’s documentary screening tonight at the Nashville Film Festival. It was fabulous. The film is called Nashville 2012 and highlights stories from the city that really gave me a new perspective on the life that exists here. I cried on the drive home, in the dark, being tossed by the winds of the coming storm headed our way tonight. There is so much I don’t know about life. So much that overwhelms me with awe. Peoples’ stories are mind blowing if you take the time to sit and listen. Even the most ordinary among us has a history. I hope that as I grow older, I remember to listen, to hear what is not spoken, to see what lies beneath the surface.

Spring finally came and blew me away with its splendor. The cherry tree in my backyard was breathtaking. The tulips at Cheekwood put on such a show, displaying the colors of the rainbow as they were intended to be shown. My seedlings are struggling to survive and I’m holding out hope that they’re going to make it. I walk around my yard every morning, anxiously checking on the plants, spraying the dratted aphids on the daylilies, watering the one drooping armeria, dead-heading the blooming perennials, fretting over the beet seeds I planted, worrying about whether I need to re-pot the Japanese maple…this yard will bring me such joy and be the death of me all at the same time.

Pictures really are worth a thousand words, and I could blather on, but I’d rather show you the magic happening around here.

The little seedlings have grown up a bit since putting them outside in the sun, but boy are they behind schedule. I feel like a failure. Next year I am definitely buying a grow light. No more depending on the intermittent sun of early spring.

Cheekwood Botanical Garden aka the place I go when I need to be surrounded by a bit of beauty.

Euphorbia!!!

The weather here is still weird. I might try to put some seeds in before I leave, but the evening temps will still be down in the 40s. No idea what’s going on, but it needs to stop. I’m excited to go home (as in the place that still feels like home to me), but I also feel like there is so much to do here and so little time. It will be wonderful to sit by the water, to shut the brain off from numbers and open myself back up to creativity again. For now, I need to go take care of some of the things I should be doing. The rain just started pouring down and the laundry just finished spinning.

Emerging From Hibernation: Seeds, Trees, and Planting Fever

March 18, 2013 by Leah Leave a Comment

It was 72 degrees on Saturday, which meant that after being stuck inside all winter, things got a little crazy. In an effort to completely forget how stressful last week was at work, I threw myself into projects around the house. It worked. I forgot. I even forgot how stressful this upcoming week is going to be by:

weeding all the beds surrounding the house and cleaning the dead leaves from around the peonies and irises that are coming in.
redoing one side of the front walk (more on that later).
spreading more humus (not hummus) in the garden, along with 25 pounds of lime to help with acidity issues. Rob re-tilled the garden and we are officially ready to go.
painting the trim in the guest room and re-painting the trim the bathroom. I would have taken a picture, but I couldn’t lift my arms. How Michelangelo survived the Sistine Chapel, I have no idea.
removing all the ugly white gravel and plastic mulch surrounding the whiskey barrel planters by the patio (this will be a separate blog post when it’s finished so you can get the full effect).
chatting with not one, not two, but 6 different neighbors who walked by. I love how friendly everyone is! One of them said his wife would have come over to say hi, but it was her special time of the month and, “Well, we know you ain’t lazy because you’re out here all the time working on stuff.” If he had seen the inside of my house at that moment he might have changed his tune.

Tonight, I am sore and tired, and so thankful that numbers were not on my brain during my days off. I am a firm believer in the separation of work and home life. So I freaked out on Saturday morning when I walked in to the laundry room to find MY FIRST TOMATO plant poking up through the soil! YAY!!! And the chives were also coming up, but whatever, those are
easy, it’s the tomatoes I’m really worried about. By the afternoon
several more little plants were showing up. This is promising! Look how tiny and vulnerable they are.

Now I have to watch out for fungus gnats, which are carried in the soil and emerge as plants are watered and growing. Also, damping off, which sounds like an STD for plants, but just means that they rot at the base of the stem and then die, a tragic end for any seedling.

So, let’s chat about the front walk. When I moved into the house, I redid the front walk by tearing out the ugly red begonias the landscapers had planted and planting all the perennials I’d been keeping at my apartment. You can revisit that adventure here. So on Saturday, I tore out the other side of the walk, removing the old mulch, gravel, and leftover liriope (lee-ree-ope). Ugly stuff. I fought a battle with those plants, but they finally admitted defeat and came out of the ground. I transplanted them to a side garden, but I need to come up with another solution…maybe around the base of some of the trees. Not sure yet. Here is the lonely, sad side of the walk, sans pretty flowers.

I went to Lowes and fell in love with these little pincushion plants called armeria (ar-mee-ree-a).

The “specialist” in the garden center at Lowes could tell me nothing about this plant other than, “My wife and I have these and did nothing to them and they grew.” When asked about pruning the apple trees I’d purchased there last fall, he replied, “You should look online about that. You’d be surprised what you can find on the internet these days.” Now, all of you have heard me rant about the garden centers around here and the lack of trained staff therein. I told my dad tonight that I immediately discredit someone when I realize they know less about plants than I do (I have a lot to learn). It’s not until someone says something that proves they have legit cred when it comes to gardening that I get excited. So I left Lowes and went online to check out armeria and apple tree pruning. Online armeria are described as “moderately difficult.” Drat.

Armeria are small, compact, and have fun little clumps of pink flowers. They can supposedly tolerate full sun, salty climates, and resist deer. I’m skeptical. I wish plant labels would specify the type of “full sun” a plant can take. Like, are we talking about a Long Island full sun, a Texas full sun, a Tennessee full sun??? Because let me tell you, I literally watched plants fry in the sun last year. Fry. Like a chicken finger. Or a kale chip (for all you vegetarians out there). The summer was brutal, and I dread to think what this summer has in store for us.

So if the armeria lets me down, I might consider hens and chicks, but let’s hope they can take it. This is how it ended up looking. Mini pine chips make everything look better. Huge fan of the pine chips.

The purple leaf plums in the front yard are just starting to bloom. They are beyond lovely! It is so exciting to finally be able to experience the house in the spring and literally watch it come alive.

More flower pictures to come!!! Daffodils are about to start blooming, tulip bulbs are sprouting, allium bulbs have surfaced…it’s about to get real, people.

Gardeners Really Do Know All The Best Dirt

March 7, 2013 by Leah 1 Comment

This past Saturday it snowed, so Sunday seemed like the perfect day to break ground for a vegetable garden. Rob was able to borrow a tiller from a friend and we set to it. Once again, like every project with this house, I thought this would be an easy task that would take like 30 minutes max with a crazy big tiller…no.

I decided that I wanted to do a 12′ x 18′ plot, which would provide plenty of room for several types of vegetables, but also not be overwhelming to keep up with. When I laid the bamboo out in the yard, the space looked very small to me, but when the tilling started, I thought, “Oh man, what on earth am I getting myself into?” Pun possibly intended.

The soil in my yard is a nasty mixture of clay and rocks that doesn’t lend itself to digging. It took about three rounds of tilling to get the soil to a workable consistency before adding amendments. We also discovered a lovely 12″ diameter concrete footing on the edge of the plot which caused some internal swearing and readjusting the layout in my mind. As Rob tilled, I was raking the largest clumps of grass and roots in an attempt to delay the inevitable onslaught of weeds.

Since the soil in these parts is so rough, we added some organic humus (not to be confused with hummus, which is pronounced differently) along with some good old fashioned horse shit. That’s right, nothing gets those veggies going like a healthy dose of manure. It looks like Rob is doing all the work in these pics, and it would have been an impossible task without him, but I promise I was helping! I have the muscle aches to prove it!

So this is what we ended up with. A lot of weeding still needs to be done, and I plan to also add some lime, and possibly some more of the organic humus (not hummus) to soften the soil up a bit. Right now the soil is most likely having acidity issues due to its clay-like nature and pine needles from a nearby tree. The lime will add a bit of alkalinity that will enable the plants to better absorb the beneficial nutrients from the dirt.

The soil will be able to sit and relax until April 15th, when the growing season officially begins in Zone 7. So what am I planting??? Sweet Slice Cucumbers, Heirloom French Zucchini Ronde de Nice, Heirloom Icebox Watermelon Doll Babies, Nickel French Filet Bush Beans, True Lavender, Sun Gold Cherry Tomato, Giant Belgium Heirloom Tomato, Cherokee Purple Heirloom Tomato, Chives, and some Basil seeds my Uncle John smuggled from Italy. Most of the seeds were ordered from Swallowtail Garden Seeds, some were purchased at Yarrow Acres, and the rest fell into my lap. I’m terrified. I suck at growing seeds. I can keep plants alive, and can find my way around a garden, but seed starting is a whole different ball game, and I can only hope these things survive. Here’s the arsenal.

Used berry containers, used pots from the Hens & Chicks, and a flat of small pots given to me by a friend. I broke down and got seed starting soil, which I hate. The stuff is so fine that when I tried to water it, there were lots of bubbles and the water was draining through the soil, but not actually making it wet. ARGH! So I gave up on the watering can and started using the sprayer in the sink. What a mess.

The seeds were also so tiny, I was having multiple heart attacks trying to plant them just right. Tweezers ended up being the tool that saved the evening.

I have nowhere in the house to put these seeds where they’ll get adequate light other than the laundry room, which is not a south-facing room…it’s also not heated. I’m going to put a space heater in there at night and see what happens. Not a totally ideal situation, but I’m hoping the warm weather gets here soon.

Now I wait to see if this endeavor is a total failure or not. It’s quite amazing to think that towering plants can come from such tiny seeds, but I’m excited to see what happens! The beans, cucumbers, zucchini, and watermelon will be directly sown into the ground in April. The prospect of being able to grow food is such an amazing thought, especially since I’ve been particularly discouraged by the supermarket produce sections of late. Books like The Dirty Life and You Grow Girl have inspired me to want to use the land I have for something beneficial. Gardening is a physical effort that gets the body moving, a spiritual effort since many events in life are related to growth, and a mental effort since a bit of learning is required. I think the quote that sums it up best for me is, “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” Thank you, Cicero!

Hens And Chicks: What’s The Fuss?

February 28, 2013 by Leah Leave a Comment

As much as I would love to buy chickens and all sorts of cute barnyard animals for the yard, my coworkers have forbidden it. They yell at me and say I’m crazy when I send adorable pictures of barn-y creatures over the work instant messenger. You’d be surprised by what you can find on Craigslist. Adorable little goats, miniature donkeys, mules, guinea fowl, Rhode Island reds, horses, ponies, and pot belly pigs have tempted me, especially with the shed/barn in my backyard. But alas, the hens and chicks I refer to are of the plant variety.

Last year I went on a plant buying frenzy in June, which is way late to be going on a plant buying frenzy in Tennessee. By that time of year, most of the plants at Home Depot and Lowes have been fried to bits or they are completely out of what you want. The True Value garden center actually exceeded my expectations with a few things, and John Deere and Hewitt’s were just way too expensive for what they were selling. No, I won’t spend $14.99 on a hosta that has been trimmed to a bloody stub because someone forgot to water it, thank you.

One of the things I couldn’t find anywhere last year was Hens and Chicks. They are like the holy grail of succulents. All the garden centers were out of them, so when I saw a big display of them at Home Depot last week, I snatched them up. As I was driving home I realized it’s still cold winter, and planting succulents at this time of year is stupid. No matter, I had my chickies.

Hens and Chicks thrive in crappy soil. Imagine the driest, sandiest, rockiest, ickiest soil that normal plants wouldn’t be able to live in. Got it? That’s what the chickies like. I’ve also read that they don’t like to be fussed over. This is a little upsetting because I really love fussing over plants. I over-fuss. Apparently one is not supposed to water chickies too often, except when you plant them. That’s when they get a good long drink that will see them through seasons of unfussiness.

After looking around at very expensive pottery planters, I stumbled upon a little gold mine at Big Lots. I wouldn’t recommend buying many gardening related things there, but they actually had a great selection of planters that were less than half the price of the other places I looked. The pots were $8 apiece and the green one is an old Pottery Barn Outlet find that was hanging around. I got some cactus soil and added a bunch of white rocks that were dumped next to the patio by the previous owners. This is what happened.

I hoped that by adding the rocks, the plants would feel
like they were roughing it and, you know, be inspired to persevere in
their difficult circumstances. I watered them well and set them on the front porch so they wouldn’t get rained on. Then I started worrying. Did I water them too much? Do they feel too fussed over? I’ve been ignoring them for a few days, haven’t even gone to check on them once.

A few years ago I discovered that I have a knack with orchids. This is weird because lots of people buy orchids from the grocery store and kill them in no time. I think this is due to over-watering. Two of the ones I have are now in their fourth year of re-blooming thanks to a cranky orchid grower I met in Florida a few years ago. She said the secret to getting a phalaenopsis orchid to bloom again is to put it through a cold spell. When the weather reaches around 45-50 degrees at night, around October or November, put the orchids outside for two weeks, then bring them in and treat them like normal. Before you know it, they’ll be sprouting a new stem with buds. It’s amazing. Every year it works without fail. But I enjoy fussing over my orchids, misting them every now and then, turning them, fertilizing once a year, chatting with them…so I’m trying the opposite strategy with the chickies. Hopefully they’ll make it. Hens and chicks overwinter in Tennessee so I’m not too worried about the cold, but I am a little worried. Just a little.

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