2021 nursery trip

Nurseries are back open. Tag the Greeter Dog is still greeting.

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Petunias and coleus for the front door pot. Marigolds, chives, and basil for the backyard.

oof

Well, COVID-19 has eaten all my traditional spring gardening outings. The Spring Garden Fair is cancelled, and per order of the Governor, all nurseries are closed until at least April 30 (to be re-evaluated then). The garden centers at Big Orange and Big Blue are still open — I may brave Orange to get a few bags of my usual mushroom compost.

Thanks to Jannine Cabossel over at giantveggiegardener for the updates, and leads on alternate plant start sources!

How about some pictures? All the dead growth from last summer in the east bed was bugging me, so I took down the bamboo "fence" and cleaned everything out the other day. What day? Who knows anymore? I've been at home (except for dog walks) since March 22 and working from home full time since March 16. The plants don't care about coronavirus tho. The earth tilts on its axis, days get longer, the plants come back. 💚

Before



During (oh, hi there, Philadelphus!)



After

2019 Garden Fair | weekend update

Garden Fair! Construction is finally done at the fairgrounds, so all the exhibition spaces were back. However it seemed like fewer people and vendors. I guess the past 2 years have taken a toll. Met up with Janet who, based on my stories of previous years' crowds, also thought it seemed sparse.)

But the Farministas were back! I got the usual Robeson and Sungold plants! Plus 2 dill starts! $18 (tomatoes $6 each (price hike!), herbs $3 each, no discount for multiples).

On my way out, I gave Janet directions to NM Plant Co (she was looking to get many many geraniums). Then I headed to Big Orange, got some new gardening gloves and 2 bags of mushroom compost. Swung by Plants of the Southwest, but didn't get anything. Need to get a new straw bale for tomato mulch.

Last stop was Waterwise, ended up with:

• 2 Salvia pachyphylla "Mulberry Flambe"
  
• 3 Callirhoe digitata Winecups
  
• 2 Echinacea purpurea "Pow Wow Wild Berry"
  
• 1 Salvia greggii "FlowerKisser™ Dark Shadows" (purple)

This year's cultivars all sound like nail polish colors, or maybe fruity cocktails. I plan to put them all in the front sidewalk bed.

Weeded the side yard, and some of the back yard by the shed. Then had to get ready to meet friends up at MoIFA for the big Girard exhibition preview. Drinks and buffet dinner afterwards at SFI.

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.


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weekend update

Back yard: Northeast bed: T — friend's father-in-law — came by Saturday afternoon with his chainsaw. It was hot out, but stump was in shade, so not too bad. Everything was working great, until the saw ran out of gas and then had vapor lock from the heat and wouldn't restart. T had got most of the stump out by then though, and was able to hack the rest loose with the pick mattock. 14/10! Above and beyond, T! 👍



Stump remains, and the removed parts filled one of those Big Orange 5-gallon buckets:





On Sunday morning, I went out to shovel the pile of dirt back into the bed, then dig in sand, mushroom compost and Yum Yum mix. I got as far as shoveling the dirt in and dumping the other amendments on top before it got too hot and I had to go inside.

Waited until dusk-ish to mix the dirt and plant the mockorange, penstemons, agastaches, and columbines. Finally! Aside from not being able to get a proper "after" photo, I highly recommend evening gardening! I'll be looking into getting some crusher fines/gravel for mulch. The penstemons especially like a dry mulch.



The accent rock is the only thing you can (kind of) see! 😂

weekend update

Back yard: Northeast bed: ugh. This bed. So, first, had a snafu sourcing a good-quality farm jack in town, so I ordered one online from Big Orange. It came in on Tuesday, Bram and I picked it up Wednesday evening. Thursday after work this happened:



Then the rope broke. Boo. Got some chain on Friday, then tried unsuccessfully on Saturday and (with Bram's help) on Sunday to extract the dang stump. Chain shenanigans, wrong jack placement, wrong 2x4 support placement, dirt too compacted (around the stump), dirt not compacted enough (under the jack/supports). Each attempt took like five minutes to reset the chain and/or jack. There were tears (me, not Bram). Plus it was too hot, and working in the full sun was killing us.



Stump wouldn't budge. I assume there must be some king hella taproot that goes all the way to Subterranea.



New plan: I've excavated more around the stump and have offered to give the jack to a friend's father-in-law in exchange for him bringing his chainsaw over and cutting the Stump From Hell off as far below grade as possible. Then I backfill, amend the soil and finally get those poor plants in the ground. *fingers crossed*

weekend update

Front yard:
Planted in the sidewalk bed: 5 Dakota verbena; the 2 sages from NM Plant Co; babies offsets from the pot o'hens'n'chicks. Cota came back. Transplanted daisies have varying levels of vigor.



Front door bed: some things didn't make it — Ann Folkard geranium, one of the Richardsonii geraniums, one of the leadworts (leads wort?):



I hacked back/pulled up some of the prairie sage gray sagewort to give the new plants more space:



Back yard:
Planted the three chive starts from NM Plant Co:



Who wants chowdah? kale?



Giant colony of hollyhock volunteers back by the shed. The dog, she is only there for scale.

weekend update

So, the front-door bed, then. Ultimately, I. HAVE. PLANS. for the front of the house, both landscaping-based and someday-I'd-love-to-have-a-proper-front-porch-based. Usually you do any hardscaping/building first, but I got tired of waiting for that stuff to happen. So over the past few years, I've been haphazardly plopping plants in the ground near the front door. Most have croaked, leaving only prairie sage gray sagewort and a few bluebell bulbs (both of which came with the house).

The first step in my plan for the front door bed was to transplant the surviving-but-not-thriving daisies and sages to the sidewalk bed. They've all weathered the move, and have even thrown up some new foliage.

Next: figure out what to put in their place(s). I wanted a mix of perennials that wouldn't require much fussing. They needed to be relatively shade- and low-water-tolerant. Eventually I settled on a mix of hardy geraniums (cranesbill), columbine, and leadwort. Final plant list:

• 3 @ Geranium richardsonii
• 1 @ Geranium procurrens × Geranium psilostemon ‘Ann Folkard’
• 1 @ Geranium phaeum ‘Raven’
• 2 @ Ceratostigma plumbaginoides Leadwort
• 2 @ Aquilegia vulgaris ‘William Guiness’ columbine
• 1 @ Aquilegia rockii Columbine
• 1 @ Aquilegia vulgaris plena ‘Ruby Port’ columbine

Here's my very rough sketch:



Been plugging in plants over the past couple weeks as they came in. Here's the planted bed — sticks to mark locations, so I didn't trample stuff (also to know where to look in the spring). The remaining prairie sage gray sagewort can stay until the new plants (hopefully) fill out.


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All the flowers are white and/or shades of and blue/purple/pink. The Ann Folkard geranium is supposed to have very chartreuse-y foliage, and of course the leadwort gets those nice red leaves this time of year.

Here's a silly Photoshopped version (thanks, Google images!) of what I hope it will all end up looking like — not that they'll all be blooming at the same time, ha ha!:


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to-do list - spring 2012

Hey hey! It's spring again! Time to do stuff:

• prune back yard chamisa 3/26
• prune front yard chamisas 4/1
• deadhead back yard perennials 5/6
• deadhead front yard perennials 4/1
• prune sage 3/26
• get some mushroom compost 3/31 + add to raised bed 4/1 + south-facing bed 5/6
• run out south-side rain barrel(s) to the apricot tree 3/31
• run out back rain barrel to south-facing bed 5/6
• un-upend front rain barrel 3/27
• set up soaker hoses + sprinklers 4/1
• buy strawbale for mulch 3/31
• hit backyard bindweed with Roundup 4/6
• buy 3/31 + sow grass seed
• buy 3/31 + plant chives 4/1
• buy 3/31 + plant thyme 4/1
• buy 4/30 + plant basil 5/6
• buy + plant dill
• buy 4/30 + plant flowers for front container 5/6
• buy more tomato cages 3/26
• buy 4/28 + plant tomatoes 5/6
  (2@ Robeson, 2@ Sungold from the Eulalio's Farm ladies at the Garden Fair)

weekend update: last tomatoes

It's supposed to maybe snow (!!!) next week, so I tackled shutting down the tomatoes Saturday.

The Sungolds were, again, just monstrous. I ended up cutting the plants apart into manageable sections, just to make composting easier and also to make sure I didn't miss any tomatoes.



There were enough ripe ones to make a small tomato salad for me and Bram on Saturday, and to top two pizzas for dinner with Jim, Stacy, and Bernice on Sunday. I separated the rest into three groups: mostly yellow/will ripen soon; yellowy-green/should ripen in a while; hard, white-green/probably won't ripen. I'm thinking of maybe making the dilled green tomatoes recipe referenced recently over at You Grow Girl.

In dismembering the behemoth Sungold, I discovered a few green Robesons, and one red one in the back that had all but rotted on the vine (sob!) I think the plan for next year will be to relegate one Sungold (or maybe two?) out to the south-facing side bed, and put two Robesons in the raised bed.

no seeds this year

Been getting all my seed catalogs. But I still have seeds from two years ago I've never planted, AND the ghetto seed-starting setup is such a pain, AND the sungolds did so well last year.

So, I'm not going to order any seeds this year — just buying starts.

weekend update

Saturday: Moved the potatoes to a big plastic pot — the dog was sleeping on the potato bag! Too flat and inviting, I guess. Straw mulch on top.

Picked up supplies for a small (2) straw-bale setup in the side bed. Set up the 2 bales, topped with mushroom compost, set up soaker hose on top of compost, and more straw on top of that. Watered that all down.

Bought + planted some cosmos starts for the front bed — neighbor cats stay away!

Added mushroom compost to the raised bed, where the tomatoes will go. Set up 3 walls-o-water there. New straw mulch.

Hit the bindweed in the patio with some Roundup — we've been advised that's the only way to really get rid of it.

Bought and potted up a little mint plant. Bram: "Oh, hey! A mojito tree!"

Bram mowed and weeded dandelions.











Sunday: Roundup seems to be doing its thing on the bindweed. Die, bindweed, die! Now I need to pick up one of those big sprayer vats of it and do the rest.



One of Bram's coworkers had a bindweed horror story about how it had grown up UNDER someone's foundation and into the house. It has an urban myth vibe though, I think it happened to someone's brother-in-law's cousin's neighbor's mom or something.

straw bale beds

A few weeks back, I picked up a copy of Fine Gardening from the magazine swap rack at the Santa Fe Library. There was an article by Amy Stewart of Garden Rant about raised, straw-bale gardens. When I saw the article, the photo in it looked familiar. Then I remembered her recent post about having to wear "nice" clothes for video shoots about gardening:



Sure enough, there's a video with Amy talking about her straw bale garden. Some more digging (ha ha) turned up Amy's original post from back when she first started the straw bales. And a link from the video comments turned up this discussion thread started by a guy who calls himself "Strawbaleman." He shares lots of great photos of his gardens:







Maybe this could work in the side bed, along the south-facing wall.

potato starts

My Red Ruby potato starts arrived today from Kitchen Gardens. They'll have to wait in the fridge until next weekend — we're off to Denver tomorrow.

Looks like I'll also have to run to Big Orange + get some landscape fabric to sew up into a potato bag.

seed starting

Gotta get off my duff and start some seeds! Since last year's setup turned out to be... er... not as easy as advertised, I probably ought to start my seeds in something like this:



via Kate at High Altitude Gardening

notes: geotextile bags for planting

Urban London garden grown in big bags. Want this for potatoes?