Garden Planning Time!

Veggies and Flowers And Fruits, OH MY!

Windsong Glads from
American Meadows

I just placed my American Meadows order (What on earth possessed me to order more gladioli? and hot pink ones, at that!?), and I've got about a dozen things in my Seeds & Things shopping cart waiting to be paid for, including some wacky things like pointy cabbages and purple carrots. So exciting! I can't wait to get started gardening this year. BUT, I'm finding myself with a lot of questions before I get started. Maybe you can help me?

Pointy Cabbage
Seeds & Things

First question: Does anyone know where to get decent quality burlap bags- preferably used for non-icky things, like potatoes, corn, or horse feed? I miss growing my own potatoes and I love the burlap bag trick.

Second question: Do you hate snails? I want all your snail slaying suggestions that don't include laying my garden an inch thick in snail bait. They apparently don't like beer (the little slugs do, though!).  I've been going out at dusk and hunting them, but mostly that feels like an exercise in futility as the numbers seem to be increasing, not decreasing.  If you have suggestions, I want to hear them!

 

Last question: Has anyone tried mounting a window box on a spray-stucco wall before? Any suggestions? I want to be able to reach out the kitchen window for herbs and greens, but the more I look at logistics, the more I get a headache.
 

I think that's all the questions I have for now. Maybe. Here's the front walkway this week! The Tete-a-Tete daffodils are going CRAZY and the Blue Ribbon Dutch Iris are starting to open. At the very end of the walk, right before the driveway, the hyacinths are in full bloom and smell amazing.

 

Crocuses! Or rather... Croci.

... But Croci sounds kind of silly, so we'll just take one crocus at a time.

Last fall, we (meaning mostly Scott) had our old broken concrete sidewalk stripped out. We replaced it with a fun walkway made of  broken chunks of marble composite countertop (We love Urban Ore in Oakland!) and lined with river-rock. We're pretty pleased with how it came out.  The great challenge was not disturbing the bulbs that were growing along the walkway.


Yellow Tiger Crocus

From the foliage that started coming up mid-January, I was guessing that the Dutch iris and the  Tete-a-Tete daffodils survived just fine, but there was no sign of thin grasslike croci coming up.  I'd just started to despair when I walked out the door last week, and there they were! Nestled in amongst the sweet alyssum, tiger crocus were blooming. These delicate beauties have sweet brown stripes and their foliage is variegated, making for interesting texture. Sadly, it seems that only four survived the landscaping project.

Pickwick Crocus

And then there were the Pickwick croci with their white petals and purple stripes. Again, only a few seem to have survived the devastation of the sidewalk so they'll have to be ordered and replanted again next fall.
I just love the way they go with the burgundy sweet allysum. You'd think I planned that, or something. Yeah! That's what I'm going with. All perfectly planned for maximum effect. I did it on PURPOSE. (That's one of the problems with being a wildflower/bulb person. Once you admit it, everyone knows you didn't plan anything, but just kind of put some stuff in the ground and hoped it came out okay.

The last bloomers were, surprisingly, the ones I thought we'd killed off! These little yellow charmers are from the American Meadows Wild / Snow Crocus Mix. The past two years have seen many purple and yellow blooms: I had lots of white the first year, but they never returned.  This year, only three lone yellows bloomed, so I'm seeing a fresh planting of these coming up next fall as well.  

My favorites, the tough little Crocus Minimus that I have planted in the front bed by the sidewalk, didn't do well this year- lots of foliage but only one bloom- and I failed to get a good picture of it. I think next year I'll mulch the front bed late in the summer, and see if they do better. Otherwise, gee... I'll guess I'll have to pick out more crazy little crocus for the yard! (I'm leaning towards Ruby Giants and Lady Killers for a pile of purple!)

Wild Crocus Yellow

Winter is Here? Already?

Okay, as some of you know, I had surgery on my back in May. That resulted in six weeks of lying on my side, followed by six weeks of returning to work part-time, and physical therapy that finally ended at the beginning of November. 

It also happened that during this time, we had our driveway jack-hammered up and only replaced half of it. There's a grand plan for retaining walls, a bio-swale with native plants, topped by a full vegetable garden!

There's only one drawback. I can still only lift about twenty pounds. Bending and twisting are verboten. So, needless to say this is a VERY slow process and somehow, winter came last week, along with torrential rain and dry sharp cold.

What's a girl to do when she can't build a wall, dig a hole, or turn soil?  I've decided there's only one thing to be done! Sheet Mulch! On Wednesday night, I intend to raid the scrap cardboard pile at work giving me ample 'starter' cardboard for the rest of the Holiday weekend.  San Leandro Garden Center has bulk mushroom compost at reasonable rates, and if I ask very nice, they'll bag and load it for me. They are so sweet there.

If anyone has great ideas for making the most of a sheet-mulching on what will next spring be the vegetable garden, please let me know!

An Un-Garden Blog?

As some of you know, I've had ongoing back problems for awhile now. As a result, I haven't been doing any gardening at all. (Or yardwork, or landscaping, or really much of anything except spend a lot of time on the floor with ice packs.) I finally had to swallow my pride and hire someone to help me out.

I didn't want just anyone. I didn't want some guy with a lawn-mower racing all over my yard, or spraying pesticides or chemical fertilizers everywhere. I also didn't want someone who was going to charge me a fortune for work I didn't need. And most importantly, I wanted someone who loves soil, who loves growing things and understands that their cycles are an important part of our lives.

I found Sandra. (https://sites.google.com/site/cagardensbyanativecalifornian/home)  She's exceeded every expectation. And while I feel horribly guilty about limping about the house while she's out working so hard, I'm so excited to see my yard looking once again like something I can be proud of.  She uncovered surprises I'd forgotten I'd planted or that I thought wouldn't regrow.

One of the best things about being a wild-flower/bulb person, however, is that even in terrible states of neglect, something will grow and bloom and shine, and I'll have some pictures up later of those.

Flowers and Fruits and ... Ugly Bugs?

Sweet Summer Cherry

                There is a moment in summer when the gardener spots that first gleam of red hidden beneath the foliage. She stops, maybe squats down to look more closely.  The ground is warm beneath her feet, and the scent, that unique raw smell of growing tomato plants surrounds her. (If you've smelled it, you'll understand. If you never have, the closest I can come is the flavor of a green tomato mixed with sunshine and fresh flowing water.) The fruit slips into her hand at the lightest touch, and there it is, gleaming tantalizingly in the sun: The season's first tomato. 

Needless to say, immediately after photographing it, I consumed it!

Buoton De Rose Begonia

In the flowerbeds, my "Shady Garden" out back is turning up begonias and lilies. I just seeded a whole heap of China Aster around the birdbath, too, so hopefully we'll have some late summer color coming on.

Sadly, out front, the poor gladioli are having a fairly short season and between the afternoon heat and the ravages of the katydids, aren't looking so good.  Where is my mantis! He saved me last year, but I've seen neither hide nor probiscus of him this year!

Gladiolus- Prosperity

My favorite pink/white bi-colors are going now, with the yellow and purples coming into bloom right behind them.
The most stunning gladiolus in my current collection is the white Prosperity from American Meadows. Simply GORGEOUS! White with just a hint of peachy yellow blush. It was supposed to be blooming with the Ravens right now, but the katydids have chompedchompedchomped up the poor Ravens so I don't know if they'll bloom at all.

But the big thing today was this...

These funky leaf-blisters are all over the poor manzanita bush. It looks like something rolled the edge of the leaf up to create a bubble (which I now know is called a 'gall') with sickly reddish color and livid nasty pink veins. Now maybe I watch too many alien horror movies, but these things look like they could start breathing on their own at any second!

Curious, I broke one open and about a gazillion little greenish-black bugs crawled out!  EW! BUGS! (Okay, 'gazillion' is a kind of wide estimate. Maybe not so much with the accuracy there.)

Okay, what are they?  I thought hunting them down would be hard but a quick Google-hunt refined down to "manzanita leaf bug" found them. And sure enough, they are... TA DA!  "Manzanita leaf bugs".  Needless to say, that was somewhat anti-climactic.  They're actually called Manzanita Leaf Gall Aphids, aka Tamalia coweni.

Nothing I'm seeing says that they do real harm, but I'm not feeling overly generous to them at the moment. In fact, I think I see a wonderful career in Green Waste Management in their future.

In the Veggie Garden

Veggie gardening in limited space is always a challenge. I grew up with vegetable gardens that covered half an acre tilled into a perfect rectangle, with neat long rows of plants side by side, so when I first started looking into urban gardening, I was impressed that people were growing food in such small spaces.

My vegetable garden is about ten feet by sixteen feet, sloped at an angle. Before we took it over, it was covered with nasty flowering shrub, which, fortunately for us, had done much to mulch and protect the soil beneath it.  I was pleased to find good loamy soil under those hideious shrubs, but I was still hesitant when I planted those first seeds this spring. In fact, I was feeling downright brave when I purchased tomato plants. They looked so small and fragile, and I was going to just stick them into the dirt?

Fear and hesitation has given way to pride and joy when I look at my little urban garden! It surpasses my wildest dreams. The snap peas and the pole beans are unbelievable in their profilic attempts to take over the rest of the garden. The zucchini has already gotten out of control, and the tomato plants are four feet tall and covered in blooms and burgeoning fruits. Planted in amongst everything else are onion and garlic starts, bush beans and dwarf peas, radishes and carrots; I just tucked the seeds wherever there was an opening.

It seems so silly now to have worried so much!

Gladioli!

I like to pretend that glads are the cavalry vanguard of the garden army.  As soon as the soil warms they gather for the fight, waiting for the sun to hit the earth. And then they shoot straight up, their long and slender leaves arrowing towards the sky like a sword held aloft. When they draw their stems, waving burgeoning green buds like standards, it serves warning to any interlopers in the garden that they are about to charge. The blooms gallup up the stems, first the lowest flower, and then the next, and so on, until as the first blooms die, the last ones burst to life for one last show of courage.

Last year, I purchased a bag of mixed bulbs from American Meadows. It was my first time ever growing gladiolus and it was love at first sight.

This year, I wanted something really bright and intense to 'hide' the vegetable garden from the sidewalk. I jumbled up two sets of bulbs and planted them in batches of five throughout March and April. VOILA! AMAZING!


Orange Flame

So bright and shiny!
These were on sale at Home Depot, so I figured 'why not'? I thought these were supposed to fade more to yellow, but who cares! They're HUGE and they just glow when the sun hits them.  For a special surprise the flower-seed mix I tossed down over the bulbs put up a huge explosion of baby's breath, giving a wonderful white backsplash to accent them.







Black Walnut

Absolutely spectacular!
These are my absolute favorite so far! Keep in mind that I've got four more varieties waiting to open, and I'll probably say the same about them all. The petals are dark red with almost black stripes on the tips of the satin-like petals. The pictures don't show it, but the texture of the petals is like velvet and the sun makes them glow.