weekend update

Pictures look better when it's overcast. Big year for hollyhocks. The area between our and Bill's driveway is a hollyhock stockade, tall flowers around the edge, gravel in the middle.





Backyard panorama, now with party lights!


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So many hollyhocks!



Unearthed the one surviving winecups I planted last year! Plus 2 new agastache. Also note the bamboo cage to keep the dog out. It was originally 3 sticks, had to up it to 6, after she cut thru a few times. 😑 note the encroaching arugula (fine) and bindweed (ugh).



Daylilies



Dill and basil are doing fine, garlic still chugging along. I'm taking a gamble and not covering the tomatoes this year.

2018 wrap-up

So, here's my half-vast 2018 wrap-up post. Not many photos.

Front yard   Front door pot did well, except the dahlia croaked. Sweet potato vine and coleus basically took over, impatiens got kind of smothered.

Side yard   Just for laughs, here's the Maximilian sunflower that always takes over. That's what I get for scattering seed-head stalks under a canale. Note the one stalk trying to get into the bathroom.



Back yard   The east bed did pretty well. The May Night salvia and Dark Tower penstemon kinda smothered the pineleaf penstemon. Had to go in and cut them back, but I may have lost a few pineleafs. Grass plugs didn't entirely survive Taylor's digging. ಠ_ಠ Put up party lights!

Tomatoes did well, but as usual no real heavy production until September. Basil did great! Sage croaked. Only got a few Shishito peppers.

September 30 haul (Krim and Sungold).





October 8 haul (Krim, Sungold, thyme, Shishitos, chives).



October 13 haul, before predicted hard freeze. There were a TON of Black Krim, hiding in the foliage (for scale, that bowl is 13" in diameter).







As requested, shared with the in-laws. The greenish tomatoes were doing great, ripening in the guest room. Until the mice came for them. Rassafrazza.

Weather   On July 23, we got what the weather guys referred to as a "1000-year storm." 3 to 5 inches of rain (depending on which part of town you were in) in ONE HOUR. Our street looked like a river, the arroyos all ran like crazy. Lots of roads flooded, stranding cars on major roads in some places. It was wild and kind of scary.

weekend update

Tomatoes are getting too big for their wraps. So I polled The Tomato Lady about when it was safe to take off the row cover. She wrote a nice reply saying she'd do a blog post when she took her covers off! Basil is doing well.





I put out the yard sprinklers for the new grass, the existing grass, and to see what weeds germinate. Mostly pigweed and purslane. I was pleasantly surprised at the number of dead-looking grass plugs that revived with a few days of watering. Taylor continues to be a butt about digging up the "lawn."







East bed is filling in a bit more.

weekend update

Saturday   I finally put the row cover on the two tomatoes. Basically wrapped the cages and secured it with mini binder clips. Italian parsley has croaked. Maybe I'll pick up a pepper plant at the Farmers' Market for that spot.



Set up some sprinklers in the yard. Plan to do several rounds of watering/weed germination/hoe under, then seed grass. Hit the bindweed with the hoe.

I also plugged in the coleus I picked up Friday night at Albertsons (sigh).





Sunday   Rain! And hail! In between showers, planted poppy mallow by the little patio retaining wall, and the leadwort in the front-door bed.







Planted the grass and put up some janky chicken-wire-and bamboo-stake nonsense to keep the dog out of it.





The east bed is looking pretty good (fingers crossed).

weekend update

The employees-only area with the propagation greenhouse and demonstration garden behind the sale greenhouse
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Today was the last day of the spring sales at Waterwise, so I went over in the morning. Selection was pretty picked over, but verything was buy-two-get-one (same-size pot). So I grabbed the last four leadwort (Ceratostigma plumbaginoides) and two poppy mallow (Callirhoe involucrata) in the 2.5-inch pots. Leadworts (leads wort?) will go in the front door bed, not sure about the poppy mallow. Maybe in the backyard to fill in the blank place where some of the primrose croaked over the winter?

Also got eight 5-inch pots of blue grama grass (Bouteloua gracilis "Blonde Ambition"). They were buy-one-get-one. The plan is to divide each grass in two, so I'll have sixteen plug-type starts to fill in the bare spots in the yard the dog has dug up ... ? Will need to put up some temporary fence around them.

2018 Garden Fair | weekend update

Oh, hi there! This is Taylor, our new dog. She very much enjoys being in the backyard, digging holes in the “lawn” and the east bed, under our bedroom window. The crossed bamboo stick barrier that I put up there last summer to keep Cheyenne out provided zero impediment to her. I've acquired an expandable willow trellis thing to use as edging/fencing in an attempt to keep her out of there.

Also, Taylor had some ... disturbing? poops Saturday morning, so we hot-footed it over to the vet (she is doing well, got a wide-spectrum gut-bug killer and is on a week of colon-soothing pills). I ended up missing prime tomato-buying time at the Garden Fair while waiting at the vet (Bram missed helping set up for Free Comic Book Day at Big Adventure Comics as well). Luckily, my in-laws were there first thing and picked up the requisite Sungold and (lacking any Robesons available for purchase) Black Krim tomato plants for me. They refused to disclose the price, extracting only a promise of tomatoes as repayment. Hopefully the row cover I ordered will thwart any Curly Top Virus-spreading bugs.

I did, however, go over to Waterwise on Saturday to get (in retrospect, probably too many) perennials for the east bed:

• 5 Penstemon pinifolius
• 3 Penstemon "Dark Towers"
• 3 Sedum spurium "Dragon’s Blood"
• 3 Salvia nemorosa "May Night"
• 3 Agastache "Desert Sunrise"
• 3 Agastache rupestris "Glowing Embers"

Why do all these cultivar names sound like they're from a Dungeons and Dragons campaign?



Dug in 2 bags of mushroom compost, and set out the pots. Will attempt to plant them after work sometime this week. Need mulch — gravel, preferably.


[click for larger]

weekend update

Backyard: Raised bed: The tomatoes are doing well, got a few Sungolds starting to ripen up. (Full disclosure, I picked 2 ripe ones already last weekend.) Basil is going like whoa, including a couple of Thai basil plants I picked up at Big Orange (to replace the dearly departed Persian basil). Thyme is back, chives are still chugging along.





Yard: Sigh. Dog decided her new spot to dig up and lay in was along the edge where the grass plugs went in. I've done 2 more Office Arugula Giveaways since the first one this season. The arugula is starting to flower, and gets more stemmy/less leafy as a result. I think I need to scalp it, in hopes of getting some more new growth. Sorry, bees!





Front yard: Front door bed and pot: Good news, one of the Ann Folkard geraniums seems to have resurrected itself (barely)! Neither came up in the spring, so I thought they'd both died. Bad news, one of the new Ruby Port columbines was doing fine, then just up and croaked (??? wtf?)



Front door pot is doing OK, even though the coleus is kind of buried. Impatiens could put out some dang flowers, already.

Sidewalk bed: The primroses and flame flowers I got at the Garden Fair are doing well! I also ordered three blue honeywort plants from Annie's Annuals. They describe them as “insanely easy to grow.” I've been watering them pretty regularly, and they seem to be doing OK — I saw the first bud this week!

weekend update

Backyard: Cleaned up the raised bed. Pulled all the tomatoes, except one Sungold for now. Also left the yard volunteer arugula — they're still (!!!!) full of bees, and I hate to cut them back while it's still warm enough for the bees to be stocking up for winter.

(UPDATE: The bees were probably our backyard neighbor's — didn't know they'd gotten a hive!)

Before-and-afters:











Late Sungolds:



Arugula and bees!







Fennel seeds:



Front yard: Front door pot:



Blackbird euphorbia and hens-and-chicks out by the mailbox:





Final diagram for the front door bed. Names in white are new plants, names in yellow are survivors from last year! [click for larger]