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.