A Walk Through the Garden

Since the backbone of the new vegetable garden was completed, the last month in the garden has mostly been filled with busy work in between heavy bouts of spring rain. The last several days have been thankfully dry, leaving me plenty of time to wander around the garden. So I thought it might be nice to give a walk-through everything that's been going on.

Starting from the backyard, here's Molly busy with her usual chore, patiently waiting for squirrels:



Of course, looking at this photo, I'm reminded of all the weeding that needs to be done on and around the path. The violets I let grow by the steps and now threatening to overtake the steps, and you might see the walnut seedling growing nearby. Maybe you can also see the yarrow, creeping thyme, raspberry, bronze fennel and mint? This bed is a bit formless, an afterthought compared to other beds, very much a work in progress.

Turning to where the old vegetable garden used to be, you'll notice big changes:



The beginnings of a woodland garden. Back in January, my mother and stepfather moved to a new house along a lake with plenty of garden, much of it filtered shade. Lots of hostas, more than she wanted. So when we were down a few weeks ago, she dug up a bunch and gave them to me. They're already serving as excellent filler, and there are plenty more to plant along the fence.

The focal point of the woodland garden is a serviceberry (sometimes called juneberry) tree purchased from Suburban Lawn & Garden:



It's an understory tree that does well beneath the filtered shade of the redbuds and larger trees that surround our yard. In spring it produces a show of white flowers and produces small edible berries that attract birds. Apparently, the berries make good preserves, but much like crab apple, the fresh taste is too sour to be enjoyable. The tree should get about 20 feet high when fully mature, and we are attempting to stretch the trunks for a more open shape.

Turning back towards the patio, there's the new rain barrel we installed next to the gate:



We might make further changes to the spot behind the gate, since we overshot the length on the downspout and the gutter is still prone to overflowing. Rather than struggle with the water, I'm considering building a little rain garden. This might also be a great spot for a native plant I really love called Joe-Pye weed.

Walking through the gate, you can see the other rain barrel we installed on the south side:



We got the rain barrels from a local non-profit called Bridging the Gap, which facilitates recycling and other environmental programs in the Kansas City area. They do workshops teaching folks how to build these things, but we decided to purchase a couple of pre-made barrels instead. At $65 a piece, they were a far better deal than anything from a catalog or online. Not so pretty, but I don't really care so much about that. With all the rain we've been having, I've already watered my plants from the barrels several times.

In this photo, you'll also notice my tomato cages and filled-out flower/herb border. The lavender and thyme plants have really taken off this year. Here's another photo taken a few steps down the path:



You can see how the yarrow, salvia, and perovskia are doing quite well. The pale coneflowers are a bit too slender and diminutive to be seen in the background, but I'm hoping that with some time they will spread. They get around 3-4 feet tall in summer.

Along the path near the gate, you can still find some pennyroyal:



Beside the gate is my new bed for the raspberries:



As mentioned previously, it's 'Caroline', ever/fall-bearing variety that produces big juicy red fruits from August to October. Soon I'll string some wire or twine along the posts and bring a bit of order to this bed. I'm waiting until fall/winter pruning before filling the box up with soil.

On to the vegetable beds! Look at the lovely little surprise I discovered a couple weeks back:



It's a volunteer potato in my hot pepper and basil bed. When we dug up the soil from the old boxes, I searched for any remaining potatoes and other bulbs and roots, but found nothing. So imagine my surprise when this little baby popped up. It's probably on of the 'Caribe' potatoes I grew last year. I'm going to let the vine grow and flower and see if it produces more of those violet-skinned beauties.

Elsewhere in the vegetable garden, a bush beans waits:



I've got two 2'x1.5' bush bean plot, but I failed to mark them after planting and am not sure which is the 'Gold Crop' and which is the 'Jade'. Guess I'll know when the pods start appearing this summer.

What else is growing in the vegetable garden? Well, we have some Swiss chard:



Typically, chard and spinach are started outdoors, but I started a few indoors, all of which died in the great cold frame debacle. The plants started outside have suffered a few insect attacks and are just now getting their 3rd and 4th leaves. I've had to cover the spinach and chard plots and do a bit of reseeding, but the chard is holding through admirably.

Despite similar insect attacks on the raab and cole crops, the plants have continued to persist:



Actually, I fashioned makeshift cloches to ward off further damage until the plants got large enough to hold their own:



I'm sure you can tell that it's just the top of a soda bottle, the cap of which can be removed to let cooler air in. I've been saving these a few years for just such a purpose, and they work pretty well.

And here's a partial view of the vegetable garden from the east:



The mulch we bought ended up not being enough to cover all the paths, but at least we've got the landscape fabric to stifle the weeds. I also wish the beds looked more abundant than they do, but I'm hoping it looks more impressive by July.

Anyway, on to the front border I never seem to talk about anymore:



The Siberian irises look quite impressive, and the baptisia makes for a wonderful backdrop when in full bloom. The current plan is to remove the tall red-orange Asiatic lilies that clash with my relatively cool color scheme and give them a new home, perhaps elsewhere in the yard or with family. The 'Stargazer' Oriental lilies, which are a more pleasing fuchsia-streaked white, will go in that spot. Or perhaps that's where I'll put the lobelia syphilitica. I like how the reddish tones and white pop beside the blue and violet. The lobelia won't bloom until late summer and fall, at which time it'll be the main show.

But those irises look lovely...



Don't they?



Elsewhere in the front garden are little surprises:



Finally, there's the rock garden I started last year in the northeast yard along the rock wall, a spot that is dry and gets a fair amount of sun during the day. The 'Ultra Violet' hybrid salvia (or desert sage) I planted last year is now in bloom:



I think the yellow flower of the sedum makes a lovely contrast. Below that is one of the purple hens & chicks that I started with last year, along with a blue-green sedum I bought about a month ago:



I'm still looking for more succulents and alpines to fill the space, but as with most of the plots in my yard, I've decided to take a slow-paced piecemeal approach to design. Wandering through my garden, I'm starting to really love how everything's taking shape and looking more like the space in my head.

Spring Has Sprung!

Officially 3 days into spring, and everything's busy preparing for the oncoming season. The temperature has sustained around 50°-60°, with very little frost at night. Today's high is predicted to be 70°. I suppose I should work on a few spring chores before it rains tomorrow.

The garden, of course, has been enjoying these conditions. The tulip leaves have been popping up, and the crocuses are in bloom in the front garden. I was surprised by a few daffodils in the south garden among the spider-lily leaves. Lately, I've been noticing daffodils everywhere in the neighborhood and recalling how much they delight me with their cheery selves. Save for the crocuses, the front flower garden is so void of color. So I think I might tuck a few daffodils in next autumn. I'm thinking also of adding some more crocuses, especially some smaller varieties, to add more interest. For now I'll just have to wait for the muscari, tulips, and allium to flower.

The vegetable garden is progressing slowly towards production. I planted peas outside last week and started some tomatoes and herbs indoors. Just yesterday I was able to plant a few of my cole crops in the ground--the bok choy, kale, and raab specifically (which you can see in the photo). If you look in the upper right corner of the photo you'll note what appears to be glass. This is one of the old windows I've been using as cover at night, just to stave off any late spring frosts. When we moved into our house in 2006, we found all sorts of odds and ends in the basement and attic. We have several windows and window screens, along with doors and what the inspector called "museum quality" knob-and-tube wiring. But my boyfriend and I are natural packrats who like old, weird things, so we look at such objects as opportunities, rather than landfill fodder.

Anyway, speaking of vegetables, may I entreat you to plant some kale?



I've eaten the stuff several times, but I've never grown it until this year. It germinates and grows very rapidly compared to nearly everything else I've planted. I have very little doubt that in less than another month I'll be rewarded with a bevy of leaves to sautee or throw into a tasty minestrone soup. This is a Russian variety, which means that the leaves are flatter and less curly than the Scottish varieties you often see in grocery stores.



Yes, it is a wonderful vegetable.

Lastly, yesterday Rob (my boyfriend) and I attended the orientation for our CSA. "CSA" stands for Community Supported Agriculture. It's like a subscription service for direct-from-the-farm produce where, for a few hundred dollars, you get a weekly supply of vegetables throughout the growing season. Our CSA, Fair Share Farms, maintains a blog to keep members up to date. I chose them because they had the most convenient drop-off point in the city and are committed to organic methods. There were a lot of people at the orientation and sign-up yesterday, which was both hectic and heartening. I'm glad that so many people like me are getting interested in supporting local agricultural economies and caring more about where their food comes from. Another interesting benefit of this CSA is that we are required to work a few hours on the farm in Kearney. We signed up for a couple weekends in August, so it will be a while before we contribute, but I'm looking forward to seeing the farm and how it operates. I'm excited!

If you're interested in joining a CSA, I recommend this website as a starting point. You can just input your zip code, and they'll throw out a few farms close by. There are over 2000 CSA's throughout the country, so chances are there's one in your vicinity.

Blooms & Vegetables

I missed yet another Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day.  This time it was due to problems importing photos from my camera to the computer.  By the time I got them all uploaded, it was very late, and I was very tired, too tired to make an entry.  Oh well, maybe next time?

In the mean time, I do have some blooms.  Most of my garden is suffering the mid-July dry spell, which I am slowly working to correct.  One of my online acquaintances told me that it takes years to really get a garden going, and I'm beginning to see what she means.  I keep reminding myself to take things slow and really consider what I want out of the space.  Each year is an improvement, and I learn from every mistake.

I always try to keep some impatiens around, since they do well in the part to full shade conditions of the front porch facing east.  This year I grabbed a few pinkish/lavenderish Elfin hybrids, which have added some much needed color.

The stars of the front flower garden right now are the 'Stargazer' Oriental lilies, which have mostly turned out more pink than I imagined.  But wow, they are beautiful and smell fantastic.

In the backyard, the vegetable garden is holding up well, though it's barely produced anything for a meal.  Last Friday I decided to dig for potatoes and found these little beauties:

I washed them and then hid them in the pantry for later.  On Monday I made a nicoise salad for two, with my steamed fresh new potatoes and green beans from the farmers' market.  The beans were a little tough, but my potatoes were tasty.  Though, to be honest, I could not discern much of a difference in texture or flavor compared to the store-bought variety.  Even so, on principle, I prefer the homegrown variety.  I never realized how easy they are to grow.

Otherwise, I have no carrots, no green onions, have harvested one jalapeno pepper, and two tomatoes that turned out to be rotted inside.  Two weeks ago, I harvested all my beet leaves and used them to replace Swiss chard in a pasta dish, which turned the pasta pink--but boy did it taste good.  I have tons of tomatoes, a few of which are just itching to turn red.  Odds are that August will be the major harvest season, and I'll have more than I know what to do with.

By the way, that acquaintance I mentioned keep track of her garden online, if you'd care to have a look.  She and her partner (C.P. McDill, proprietor of ambient music label Webbed Hand Records) utilize many principles of permaculture in creating a garden that is organic and sustainable, a place that is capable of producing a majority of the food they need--but also beauty and color.  I've found it particularly inspiring.

Since I've had my camera back for the last couple weeks, I've been meaning to finally take part in the Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day. While I did venture into the garden to take photos, the day completely passed me by, and so now I've decided to post my backlog of leaves and blooms from the last week or so.

Here's a half-grown Echinacea pallida, a native coneflower not as commonly cultivated as the 'purpurea.' I planted it last year from seed because I loved the narrow pink petals.


The hyssop, another plant I cultivated from seed that never flowered last year. It just started flowering a few days ago and is quite pretty. The leaves, when crushed, smell a bit like lavender and sage. I'm going to try brewing them for tea.


And some 'Rudy' Tritelia flowers from the front garden.


A 'Cottage Red' marigold. I love marigolds, but I'm so sick of the full French varieties. This Mexican cultivar is more diminutive, but the coloration is so lovely.


Here's the Oakleaf hydrangea I recently planted in the front garden. I absolutely love the flowers, though they are so heavy that they weigh down the branches.


But let's not forget my 'Annabelle' hydrangea in the backyard, which is now (mostly) in full bloom.


The nasturtiums are not yet blooming, but their leaves are so lovely I couldn't resist including a photo (please ignore the weeds). And those are 'Bull's Blood' beets in the background for some lovely contrast.


The yarrows, threatening to bloom. These were part of a sunny seed mix I received from Burpee, none of which bloomed last year. Only the yarrow held through. Which is good; yarrow is a traditional part of any herb garden.


Here's a better photograph of the pale coneflower mentioned above. While it looks almost white here, the color is really more of a lavender/pink.


An earlier photo of the 'Annabelle' hydrangea, which I like almost more than the full bloom. Or maybe I just like the photo itself more.


And for more of a surprise bloom, here's one of my cucumber vines.


And here are some tomato blossoms. I've already got something like 10 baby tomatoes. Here's hoping the squirrels stay far away from the fruits of my labor.


By the by, did you know that yesterday was Bloomsday?

Photographing the Garden & Thinking about Design

The last week or so I've been making an effort to go out in the garden and take some photos. I've missed a day here and there, but it's still a good habit to get into. There's always something going on this time of year, and I often find myself wandering aimlessly, looking at everything or nothing in particular.

More importantly, my Creme de Cassis hollyhock is in bloom:



With all the weevils sucking at it, I was afraid it might never bloom. The leaves are pretty chewed-up, and the stalks are bent, but the flowers are lovely. I realize now that I should have saved some bamboo poles or bought some sturdy stakes to keep the plants upright. Aesthetically, they are not as nice as they could be. Still, hollyhocks always strike me as the flower for a cottage garden, which is roughly the vibe I go for. With any luck, they'll reseed and continue to delight for years to come.

Other Matters

For some reason, I have a subscription to Domino. Many of their ideas are quite out of my realm financially and don't really fit with my lifestyle, but I do like any design/decorating mag as a resource. I have my own idea of style, which I try to maintain against whatever trends are out there, but I don't mind having a guide show me the way around.

Anyway, the most recent issue has an article about gardening design personalities, which highlights a number of names worth remembering. If you've read previous entries in this blog, you'll notice that I'm really interested in the design and "theory" aspects of gardening, so I thought I would list all the figures mentioned for personal reference and share them with you.

Beatrix Farrand
Edith Wharton's "The Mount"
Tony Duquette
Madame Ganna Walska's Lotusland
Garrett Eckbo
Thomas D. Church

I own a book called Creative Gardens, by James C. Rose, who studied architecture at Harvard with Eckbo and was similarly pivotal to Modernist landscape design. Some images of his work can be found here and here.