Fruit of the rains

What a wet mess we've had to start summer. With the exception of the last week, it's rained most days. The yard looks lush, but I've got powdery mildew on my black-eyed susans already. That doesn't usually show up till mid-late August. 

All this moisture has given us an interesting bumper crop of mushrooms, though.

Not usually the kind of thing I'm looking to grow, but they certainly have a beauty of their own!

Last year I planted a number of new herbs in my garden, some for cooking and some because I love herbal tea. I also started some sage from seed. One of my plants has really flourished, which is great because one of my favorite quick dishes uses fresh sage. 

Take a package of frozen cheese tortellini and cook it in boiling water. While that's cooking, bring a couple of Tbs. of butter just to the point of browning in a frying pan. Add 1-2 Tbs, of olive oil and a handful of sage leaves, sliced very thin. Saute for a few minutes, seasoning with salt and pepper to taste. Drain tortellini and toss with the browned sage butter and serve. In a pinch you can season with dried sage, but the fresh is so delicious, you'll grow your own sage for this recipe.  Enjoy!

Spring's Rite

June is the most glorious month in the garden. It seems the whole garden is flush with blooms. Together May and June make for a gardening mad dash while you have more tasks than you can possibly complete. Selecting plants, preparing the soil, planting, weeding and mulching.

I love the idea of preparing the beds in the fall, but I could never dig up plants that may have one last bloom, just so I can enrich the soil for the next year. So instead I work around the tiny sprouts, trying to remember what I might have planted and what's just a weed.

Course all this activity makes it hard to choose writing a blog over planting, so now I'm trying to catch up a bit.

Last year I started foxglove from seed, nursing the seedlings until I could bring them outside. They're a biennial, so the first year they just grow their leaves and strengthen for the bloom the following year. Last year I just had leafy circles in my garden. This year, they're beautiful, big pink stalks that are blooming under my Spanish Andromeda and under this prickly bush with a name I forget. (Course that means it's also physically painful to cultivate them!) They should set seeds. I wonder if I'll get little seedlings this year which will bloom next year or if the seeds will overwinter and sprout next year.

Need a Shrub

We've a nice little spot behind the garage, under a big oak. It has a nice bed of myrtle and used to include a good size bush. Unfortunately this old bush died a few years ago and we're left with....a big opportunity. What to put there? It's pretty shady. Gets afternoon sun. Might be considered part-shade. Trying to think of shape and the light back there, plus, being in Mass. and zone 5.

Not sure if hydrangea is the right shape. Don't want any more holly (see below). Any ideas?

Pruning Take 2

Here's a before and after of the boxwood with the winter kill I talked about in the last post. Hope it doesn't take too long to fill in. Especially since it's at my entryway.

Pruning Massacre

Have any bushes you've made a mess of when you've tried to prune them? I sure do. I have two hollies in my back yard that instead of growing up, are growing OUT. Not particularly attractive. I got some advice from the pruning workshop I attended at the beginning of the season. Seems I most likely trimmed the leader, the tallest stem, going straight up, which caused it stop growing upward. The advice from Volante Farms was to make a new leader by pulling up a likely branch and tying it to a stake until it naturally will grow in the right direction.



I tried it. Boy, was it tough to wrestle that branch in a somewhat vertical direction--a 2 person project. I think it may actually work for one holly. The other one... Well, I'll give it a year, but it just may not be long for that garden.



I also did a drastic trim on a boxwood that took heavy damage this past winter. This boxwood has been here much longer than we have (and that's 18 years.) and was standing chest high. 2/3 of it was brown from winter kill, so I went in and cut out the dead wood. leaving a somewhat lopsided bush. I'm hoping it will fill in enough this season so it won't look so sad. Boxwoods are slow growers, though.

Dandelions. Ugh.

Well, we've got a bumper crop this year. They've been increasing in numbers both here at home and at the cottage. We're avoiding dandelion killer at home (saving the kids from the chemicals, us too) and can't use anything, even fertilizer, up at the cottage because of the pond. So my favorite tool right now is the handy-dandy dandelion fork.

I'm amazed at how many of these plants I can get out with root intact when the soil is damp. You do need to get the whole tap root out to prevent them from growing back. But even if you don't get it all, getting the majority weakens the plant, depriving it of the opportunity of photosynthesis. Every plant you pull stops the reseeding process. We all know how efficient those puff balls are at seed spreading. 

If your yellow heads have already turned white, you can carefully pick them and get them out of your yard. When the kids were younger I'd send them out to pick the yellow dandelion heads, just so they wouldn't go to seed. One cent per head, honor system. At least it stemmed the spread.

There are other methods to get rid of them--can use hot water or vinegar--but those kill the grass, too, and dandelions are usually embedded in the grass. You can also spread corn gluten on your lawn, which prevents the seeds from taking root. 

But there's something satisfying about pulling out those weeds. I'm amazed at how quickly I can fill a bag. Then I can sit back and enjoy a nice clean patch of green grass.

Those bees...

OK, enough of the "travel blog." Anyone else dealing with ground bees? Never knew what a ground bee was until they settled in my yard last year. Last spring I found lots of holes in my gardens--little sandy cones--with a good number of bees buzzing low around them. Problem is, these holes were in, let's say, inconvenient places--up in my raised bed where I need to balance 4' above the ground to cultivate, plant and weed. They were also throughout my annual and herb bed, which I was about to dig up, mulch and plant and this year they're also in my lawn. 

Thought I was sitting on an immense hive. Scary--especially with a son who wants to stay inside at the sight of a bee. 

Did some research to figure out what had invaded my yard and found out some interesting things. Ground bees live one to a hole and are active just for about a month or so of the year. They like poor or exposed soil (hence why they like the area in front of my hemlock.) Some people just ignore them, knowing they'll eventually be gone, but I needed to dig right where they were. While I'm used to working among the bees, I had no interest in angering a bunch of them by digging up their houses.

I try to keep as organic as possible in my yard, so I was searching for a solution that would be compatible with that. Apparently a simple one is boiling water. So for all the holes that were in areas I would cultivate or right where I'd walk, my husband and I would head out at dusk when the bees would be back home. We were armed with a kettle of steaming water and a funnel and we'd put the funnel on the hole and pour in about a cup of water. 

The bees were back this year and we treated them once before we went on vacation. I see fresh activity (holes and cones), so we apparently didn't get them all. The ones in the lawn I'll leave--we just won't mow late in the day when they're headed back to their nest. We'll need to head out with the kettle again. My annual garden desperately needs to be turned so I can get ready to plant. And considering my late start on things this year, that should be now!

Interested in more?  http://www.uri.edu/ce/factsheets/sheets/miningbees.html

Petrified Forest

No, as my son learned, this forest has no standing trees of stone. It sure does have a lot of beautiful rock, though, as the minerals that have settled in these logs have created a rainbow of hues. Did find a few plant gems in this arid place.

Traveled next to Canyon de Chelly and really enjoyed the dying light on the canyon. Then the next day moved on to Monument Valley. Here, above, you can see the scrub that dots the landscape.

And for a bit of scrub in a different environment, the Grand Canyon, south rim.

In closing, a view on South Kaibab Trail, very green because it's spring.

A Break From the Local Flora

A bit of a diversion... Just came back from a great 10-day vacation in Arizona during April and thought I'd share some of the local flora. Kinda hampered my local gardening efforts, but, well, it was worth it. Of course, I did have to do a little web research to see if we would catch desert bloom. We were going to be there at the tail end. While most of what you go to see in Arizona is rocks, my camera caught a bit of the living stuff, too.

Travelling north of Phoenix, toward Flagstaff, we stopped at Montezuma's Castle. Here they had beautiful Arizona Sycamores (Plantanus wrightii) with white trunks. It seems they have an extremely thin bark which mostly peels off. Makes a dramatic presence. The Sinagua used them to construct their dwellings. 

Also saw creosote bushes (Larrea tridentata) with their yellow flowers. Some of these evergreen plant are believed to be 11,000+ years old. Hard to believe.

North of Flagstaff, we visited Sunset  Crater, a 1000’ high volcanic crater with a number of smaller cinder cones around it. We hiked to the base of this volcano which erupted around 1100 and were surprised at how little vegetation there was in the landscape. 

Hawaii  is enriched by the fertile volcanic soil, but in Arizona, the sparse rainfall slows the growth. Found these beautiful, tiny yellow flowers in the flat area near the base. 

The Ponderosa Pines were beautiful. Their bark was deeply textured, just wonderful.

And, lastly, here is a tiny orange succulent from the desolate environment of Meteor Crater.

Sprouts and Seedlings

Walking around today I noticed that the myrtle has begun to bloom in a few areas. I love blue in the garden and it's hard to find a more dependable plant than myrtle. It's great on a slope, does well in sun and part shade and brings color in a good part of the season. I had a huge bed out back in the deep shade until my dog decided he would claim it. I still have it in several areas of the yard and I want to see if I can transplant some to my slope out front to cover some bare ground.

I noticed the foliage for the dog tooth violet is now out. This is an unusual plant that has been

 growing under one of my oaks for close to 20 years, planted by the prior owner. It even

 somehow survived some substantial regrading. It has mottled brown/green foliage and yello

w flowers with downcast heads. It blooms for such a short time, but I'll try to catch it and show you what it looks like when open.

In one of my mint "beds" this spring I've got a little lupine seedling. This may be a particularly valuable gem as the main plant is nowhere to be seen yet. I'm hoping it will still show up, as it was a robust blue lupine--just beautiful--given to us by a neighbor for our 15th anniversary. I'm going to have to dig out this seedling and relocate it. I plant my mint in large nursery pots with the bottom cut out. Mint spreads rapidly and vigorously with trailers and by underground roots. Choose a deep pot and leave at least an inch or so above ground to keep it in its place. Mine does well in almost full sun and OK in a pretty shady area. Mint is so valuable in cooking and smells so great, I wouldn't be without it. Spearmint is my favorite. I went searching for it a few years ago and my friends Laura and Pat helped me along.

Pansies on the Pot

Well, I made my first garden purchase of the year on Saturday. Two six packs of pansies. Bought them after listening to a pruning workshop. (Maybe there's some hope that I can repair some past hack jobs on a couple of my shrubs.) A beautiful pale yellow and a raspberry red. Problem is, they're still in their 6-packs, sitting on top of the pot they're supposed to be in. I haven't done much in the garden yet this year, other than walking around. Did trim the dead tops off the plants in the flower garden. (I leave the dead heads on over the winter to feed the birds.) Also trimmed back the lemon thyme. Lots more jobs to come.  The lilac buds are really swelling, the scilla is out with its beautiful blue flowers and the day lilies are an inch or two high. The explosion of activity isn't far away...