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No longer Neglected

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My poor garden, it hasn’t been getting the level of care that I normally give it this year. I’ve been so ill that I’ve been barely getting outside to work in the garden with the exception of watering it a couple of times a week. Thankfully it’s been raining often enough that I don’t have to be out there everyday watering.

Yesterday afternoon and evening I made an effort towards getting the garden under control again. All of the plants are growing beautifully with little help from me. The roses have been blooming their pretty little heads off, the Holyhocks are beginning to bloom and so on. However, without my assistance some of the plants were leaning on to others, crowding them out and making the garden look more than a little bit sloppy.

I spent several hours yesterday putting some stakes around floppy plants, tying them up with garden tape and just straightening them out. It looks amazing!

Today I plan to distribute the contents of my compost pile around all the plants and add some coffee grounds that we picked up from a local coffee shop to a new batch of compost. Then I’m going to put some red cedar mulch on all my flower beds. I’m a bit late in doing this but they say that if you have problems with slugs, and I do, you shouldn’t mulch until at least mid-June, and you should turn the soil a few times prior to that to keep kill the slug eggs. Better late than never. It looks so nice when the mulch is fresh. I’ll take some pictures.

My arms are, of course, a mess again after tangling with several rose bushes. Oh well, they’ve all been tamed now so they won’t get me as badly for the rest of the year.

Later, I’m going to make some alfalfa tea for my garden. No, the garden and I aren’t going to sit and relax over a hot cup of steaming herbal tea. Uh huh, this is a special organic fertilizer that I make several times each year, let it ferment, and then pour it on my garden when all the neighbors are asleep since it smells so god awful bad! Really, it smells so nasty but works so well. I put it on my garden at least 5 times last summer and I think that’s why I have giant roses, abundant blooms and a more than slightly over grown garden this year.

I’ll write up the alfalfa tea recipe later and make a post about it’s magical work.

In other news – As you know this site is still in it’s infancy. If you actually been reading this post I’d like some suggestions as to what you might like to see me write about.

I’m thinking about make a weekly or perhaps if I’m really ambitious a daily feature in which I write about a particular plant’s profile. The write ups would include photos of the plant, hardiness and care data, when it usually blooms if it blooms and planting advice.

Would you like to see plant profiles on this site? If you would, give me some suggestions as to what plants you want me to begin talking about. See my Whats Growing page for an idea of the kind of plants I’m familiar with.

Don’t forget that tomorrow is Green Thumb Sunday. If you’d like to participate by posting a garden, plant or nature photo on your site tomorrow let me know and I’ll send you the bl0groll code and add you to the roll.

Ok, got to get back to the garden. Hey isn’t that a song? LOL






War of the Roses

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It figures.

I finally manage to get out into the garden this weekend and of course it’s during a heat-wave. Needless to say I didn’t go out into the garden until late afternoon or early evening as I was waiting for it to cool down a bit.

Still, I made some progress!

The wind was blowing quite hard on Friday afternoon – probably bringing in all the hot weather that’s settled in this area. I noticed that my climbing rose- Antique89 was tipping over in the wind and was crashing into my patio table.

The rose is approximately 7 feet tall and has very thick canes. It was leaning over at more than a 45 degree angle. I quickly grabbed some stakes and my garden tie (plastic ribbon) and scissors and ran outside to fix the rose.

Antique89 rose and bud

While I was wrestling with the rose our boarder apparently came outside looking for me. She didn’t find me. I was under the rose! Hello! Roses don’t normally scream. That was me that was moaning and groaning as the thick thorns dug into the skin on my hands, arms and even my legs.I’d say that Antique 89 and Baron Prevost are probably the thorniest roses that I have in my garden. I’ll be working with all of my roses over the next few days and I’ll let you know if I find any other ones that fit in that category.

Unfortunately, since I haven’t been in my garden all that much over the last two months I have a lot of work to do and a lot of rose wrestling to do. I know, I know … this is the time of year that a gardener should be in the garden regularly, but I’ve been sick and just haven’t been able to get out there.

Much to my dismay and joy as well, the rose are growing as if they are on steroids. Must be all that alfalfa tea I put on them last year. They are huge! Since they are so large they are beginning to flop all over the place too.

Last winter as we prepared the garden for it’s cool slumber my husband thought he was doing me a favor by removing most of the stakes I had in the garden supporting many of my somewhat floppy roses. He did me no favors – especially now, since I’ve let the garden become somewhat overgrown. I’m going to have to climb right into the flowerbed and try to untangle rose branches and discover perennials that are hiding below them.

I’m proud to say that one half of the backyard garden has been tamed! The roses have been straightened, and the plants below them can now be seen. Half the beds have nice red cedar mulch on them. It’s starting to look pretty nice back there. I hope to get the other half of the backyard and the front garden done within the next two days. I still haven’t planted all those annuals though. I thought that I’d better tame the garden first so that I can actually see what areas are a little bare and need annuals. The rest will go into my planters.

I’m going to get my husband to take a picture of my arms tomorrow and if he does I’ll post it. I must have about 50 scratches on each arm – pretty much from the elbows down. They are burning and they look terrible.

Neglect

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I’ve been off work since the beginning of December due to a Crohn’s flare. I thought that since I was home I’d be able to putter in the garden and that it would look just lovely this year. However, I’m still not feeling all that well and I’m sorry to say that I haven’t been in my garden anywhere near as much as I’d like to be.

I purchased a number of annual flowers to plant in the garden at oh, the beginning of May. These plants are to fill some baskets – hanging and otherwise, containers and a few are to fill some empty spaces in my flower bed boarders. I purchased well over 300 plants! Just little ones, you know the ones that come in containers of four? Yep …. 300+ in total.

I managed to plant 9 hanging baskets, and put some marigolds around the border of our boulevard garden bed but that’s it. I still have many containers of plants to be planted.

My garden also needs some tidying. The roses are going wild since they are so much bigger this year due to our mild winter. I have to get out there and put some stakes in the ground and tie those unruly plants so they look tidier and straighter. I also have some red cedar mulch that I want to put down on the beds.

I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me and I hope to get most of it done this week before it starts to get too hot.

Wish me luck!

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