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Tidying up the garden on a nice fall day

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Do you ever just go in your garden and start chopping away at the plants?

Of course you do, most of you are gardeners. Naturally by chopping away I simply mean you see a dead branch on a rose bush or shrub, some dead leaves here and there on other plants, flowers that need to be dead headed and so on.

Sunday was on of those days for me.

I went into the garden in the early evening and it was 10 pm by the time I came back inside! It’s a good thing we have one of those big security lights at the back of the house to light up the yard!

Several of our roses were overgrown and needed pruning. That’s what got me started. As I made my way through the garden beds I found many flowers that had started to go to seed so I got some of the small jewelry bags that I keep on hand and collected the seeds.

I’m keep the little bags of seeds that I collected open slightly so all of the moisture can leave the bag. I’ve also got to remember to put a few grains of rice in the bag to absorb moisture as well. There’s nothing worse than collecting seeds, sealing them up and then having them go moldy because you didn’t store them properly or because they weren’t fully dry when stored.

When the seed baggies are totally dry I’ll take them and store them in a nice cool place. Usually that ends up being the coolest corner of my basement.

Have you been pruning any of your plants? Collecting seeds for next year?

Oh … I overworked myself. I’ve got an aching back. One of the woes of gardening!






Do you put mulch on your garden beds?

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If you’ve been reading my garden stories you know I was a very very bad gardener this year. I didn’t complete my summer gardening tasks until last week! Those tasks included adding a three inch or so layer of shredded red cedar mulch to my garden beds.

Time and time again I’m amazed at what a difference mulching the garden came make. If you use an attractive mulch it makes your garden beds look nicer. I find it also makes your garden look tidier.

Other benefits of mulching include:

  1. It cuts down on weeds and the task of weeding since weed seeds can’t penetrate the thick mulch easily.
  2. Mulching helps hold the moisture in the soil so you don’t have to water as often.
  3. Mulch helps keep your plants roots cool.
  4. I find fewer animals digging in my garden beds when they have a good layer of mulch.
  5. Plants look healthier.
  6. It’s been said that red mulch placed around Tomato plants reflect certain light rays back at the plant and actually help make tomatoes grow better.
  7. The mulch eventually breaks down in the soil and adds nutrients for your plants.

Since putting mulch down we’ve only watered the garden twice and the plants look great. I did rain on Sunday though so you could say the gardens had three waterings. Prior to adding the mulch the plants were wilting in the hot summer heat within two days. The soil was just drying out too fast.

Now my plants were fairly healthy despite the lack of care I’ve given them this summer, but still, I can see an improvement in how they are withstanding the summer heat in the short time that the mulch has been down on the garden beds.

I’m not new to mulch. Ever since I put my garden beds in six years ago I’ve been putting mulch down on the garden beds by the end of each June. This is the first year that I did it so late and I won’t ever be late again. It really helps!

I finally caught up with most of my garden chores

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The other day, Monday I believe, Chris and I finally finished all the work in the garden that I’d been putting off for months. Ok well not all of it. I still have a few annuals to plant and some of the roses need pruning, but otherwise the garden is ship shape.

It feels good to have it all done!

We should have put mulch on the garden beds by the end of June. That duty was finished on Monday, along with a nice layer of homemade compost. Our plants should be very happy in this heat now that they have a nice layer of mulch to help hold in moisture around the plants and to keep their roots cool.

We pulled out all our solar lights – some still hadn’t charged yet this year! – and I placed them around the plants where they’d get some sun during the day to charge, but would highlight the plants at night.

Chris also pulled out all our torches. You know just like the ones on survivor. We place a few of those in the garden and add a mix of kerosene and citronella oil to the torches. The combo lights the garden and keeps mosquitoes at bay.

We’re having guests from Chicago this weekend and as long as the weather co-operates I expect that we’ll be out in the garden quite often over the weekend. We’ll probably have a barbecue or two, and if it’s nice spend the evening sitting outside at the patio table talking.

I’m so happy that the garden is done. Now I can finally sit back and enjoy it – this weekend.

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