Record-keeping

I'm not writing much here, because summer gardening is just depressing what with the weeds and the heat (yesterday morning when I got up it was 79 F. and 78% humidity), but I wanted to note two things from this week just for the record.

First (well, actually, second, but I'm recording it first) I started seeds for a number of fall crops: lettuce, kale, pak choi, kohlrabi, daikon (which will need to be transplanted early, so its roots can develop), endive, mustard, and collards.  All for the demo garden, most likely.  I may start some stuff directly in my garden, but I don't trust it now, because someone got in this week and ate a whole lot of sweet potato leaves.  Groundhog, possibly deer, probably not rabbit because of the volume that's gone.  I was not having great hopes for the sweet potatoes anyway.

The other inside task was to transplant the rest of my little herb plants into bigger pots.  I started them in May or June, I can't remember, maybe I noted it here:  a whole lot of lavender, rosemary, and Russian tarragon.  The intent at the time was to eventually set out the plants on the sunny side of the vegetable garden, outside the fence, with the intent of keeping invaders away with the strong smell.  I'm just not sure that's going to happen, given how awful a job I've done of keeping the weeds down and my plan to apply for a community garden plot next year.  (Of course, I may not get one; there's always a waiting list.)  I can certainly stick in herb plants in other places (though this is a lot of herb plants) including on the driveway side of the bed I'm hoping to put in between the mock orange and the pagoda tree.  The question is really whether they will be big enough to plant in September.  Keep watering them, I guess.

Also, one of the more successful starts has been Lavendula viridis, the yellow French lavender, which I was hoping would bloom this year, but that's not going to happen, and it's not really hardy here.  I happened to have seeds, not that I managed to germinate them last time I tried, when I actually did it in the early spring.  I suppose I can have lavender under lights all winter...

July sizzle

Happy Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day!  It's been hot and mostly dry in Maryland zone 7a (though we've had a little rain) and this is the time of year I think I have no flowers.  But some of them hang on, loving the heat or fighting through it.

Here's my most dramatic bloom, a hardy hibiscus (Disco Belle, I think) that I grew from seed ages ago.  Unfortunately it is being dramatic in the direction of the neighbors' yard, but at least they can enjoy it.  It really is huge (balloon flower for comparison).

Also a drama queen, this green gladiolus.

Purple coneflowers are reliable in the heat.  They do insist on seeding themselves in inconvenient places, but I don't mind, and I love watching the finches feeding on them in the fall.

Daylilies are still in bloom - here are the red ones I forgot to include last time.  They may be 'Black Knight' but I had several dark reds and they've been moved around, so I don't know.

Calendula, with bee.

This is in the MG demo garden, not my yard, but I'm including it anyway.  It's tithonia 'Aztec Sun.'  Mexican sunflowers are usually orange, but I like this milder yellow as an alternative.  Next year maybe I'll combine the two.

This is a flower cluster from Sophora japonica, Japanese padoga tree.  It's nice to have a tree that flowers this time of year, and it's a pretty tree, but I wouldn't recommend it, because it self-seeds with a vengeance.  We also made the error of planting it next to the driveway, with this result:

Constantly - it's like a snowstorm whenever I drive away.  And they leave a sticky residue.

Hope your gardens are flowering and flourishing!

Worms Survive Despite Unforgivable Neglect: News at 11

I finally got around to putting a new level on the worm bin today.  In recent weeks months all I've been doing is chucking an occasional food scrap in there (worms eat much less than one thinks in the beginning) and not even renewing the bedding.  But they are still alive, and in fact there are baby worms, so things must be going fine.  The Worm Rebel Alliance continues to operate at the top of the bin, but perhaps this impulse to climb will get them through the holes and into the new bin, which has been provided with lots of bedding and some pieces of cantaloupe rind.

Worms, I promise to gaze on you more often.  Now keep making compost.  And please don't climb up the sides between the two bins, or you will be squished.

Scorch

I suppose I should write something about the horrible summer.  Every year I get rather depressed about gardening at this time, and this July is worse than usual.  I believe this is the 11th day in a row with temperatures at least in the 90s and mostly in the upper range of that (we are spared the city heat, but it hit 105 in DC yesterday), and nasty humidity until it gets really hot, and very little rain.  What rain we had came in the form of a derecho, which is a storm that comes straight at you (opposite of a tornado, you see), last Friday night: furious winds, intense lightning, like a thunderhurricane on speed and hair straighteners.  Trees were down all over, people died, the region declared a state of emergency.  We lost only branches and our power was only out for two days, which was lucky (some people are still without power 8 days later).  And my rain gauge recorded only 1/2 inch, although a lot of the rain came sideways, so who knows.  The whole thing lasted less than half an hour.  We've only had a gentle shower on 4th of July morning since then.  (It was the lowest-key 4th I've experienced in a while - most fireworks displays were canceled because of the heat and power loss and the need for emergency personnel to occupy themselves elsewhere - though there was a gorgeous moon.)

We have no water when the power goes out, but since Sunday I've been trying to keep things watered: the seedlings still on my deck, the pots, what little is in the vegetable garden, the young trees.  Luckily I forced myself out last Friday morning (before the storm) and rescued the trees from encroaching weeds, mulched, and placed unfortunately bright blue buckets (the new Lowe's color; I was counting on their old gray ones) with small holes in the bottom on the soil.  They can be filled to let the trees soak up water slowly.  (Though not slowly enough, since I put too many holes in.  I may transfer these to the tomato bed and get new ones for the trees, with just two tiny holes each.)

I waited too long to rescue the winterberries I planted last fall; their area had never been cleared out properly and is full of pokeweed and wild grape vines.  I think the two females may survive, but the male looks like he's had it, so I'll have to get another.  This is the problems with planting things in our Way Back; the weeds have a huge head start.  The whole back slope project I wrote about last fall is not looking good; pokeweed is winning there too, though a lot of the daylilies are up and blooming.  In other depressing news, the pomegranate may be alive but I can't see it producing anything this year or surviving another winter.  (The fig looks great, though.)  The viburnums are still in pots and will stay that way until fall.  I'm hoping to manage some weed control and some transplanting into larger pots when the weather clears, which should be tonight.  Temperatures in the 80s will feel positively chilly.

More soon, I hope - need to get back in the habit of posting frequently.

The future of my vegetable garden

I thought this one belonged on Grow It Eat It, so you can go read it there.

Bloom Day June

Time for another Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, hosted by May Dreams Gardens!  Here's some of what's blooming in my garden this month.

Lots of very orange butterfly weed, with a bee.  I get seedlings every year now, so will be spreading this around.

Anise hyssop, with a bee.

And to complete the series, purple buddleia, with a bee.  I grew this from seed, believe it or not (the buddleia, not the bee).  I also grew the above two from seed, but that actually makes sense.

Stokes' aster, liking its new location better than being under a shrub.  Grew this from seed too.

The first Unwin's Dwarf dahlia flower from a tuber I missed in digging them up, which of course survived just fine.  Someone else grew these from seed.

This is some sort of campanula, I assume.  I got it at a plant swap where it was labeled "Blue-flowered ground cover." Not.

Elderberry, the bane of my existence, but it can't escape from where I have it now, ha.

Platycodon or balloon flower.  I am very fond of these, even though they all face my neighbor's yard along with everything else in that bed.  Grew these from seed originally too, but they have spread.

Common orange daylily, with blueberries.  Massive amounts of blueberries this year.  And of course massive amounts of daylilies.

One of many other daylilies.  I don't know what most of them are because (together now) I grew them from seed.

I didn't grow the lilies from seed, but I still can't identify them because they were part of a mix.

The magnolia is having one of its periodic reblooms.  St. John's Wort in the background.

My still-very-small lime tree is blooming!  Ants seem to like the flowers.

And finally, the wild and wacky petunias I planted in the window box on the deck railing.  What can I say, I saw them and yes I said yes I will Yes.

:)

Happy Bloom Day.

The garden of Dorian Gray

My life has been full of stuff I'm not quite getting done.  This is not exclusive to the garden, but that's what you're here for, so that's what I'm managing to post about this evening.

Often when I'm working in the Master Gardener Demo Garden, or showing people around it, someone will ask about my garden at home, and I produce a hollow laugh and some "oh dear" noises, and change the subject.  The demo garden is as near pristine as something that only gets worked on by a bunch of people once a week can be.  My garden... is not.  Gardeners in my situation usually say something about the cobbler's children having no shoes (Kathy Jentz wrote an editor's column about the phenomenon in the latest Washington Gardener magazine, which also contains a photograph of my torso and a pumpkin that my son won a prize for, not to swerve off topic at all) but I am of a more Gothic frame of mind, at least when thoroughly depressed by weeds, and so I prefer to consider my home landscape the Garden of Dorian Gray: the true ugly manifestation of my neglect.  (Although it is not hidden away in a cupboard, but unfortunately out in the light of day.)

The above photo shows one of the tidier bits, almost perfect if you discount the large pokeweed and the knee-high grass.  I am not showing you the vegetable garden.  However, the weather has taken a turn for the better (blessed coolth) and I may get ahead of the weeds in a few places before it gets bloody hot again.

In other news, we caught and relocated Groundhog #8 today (I think we had reached #4 in the last post).  (At least I hope it's #8.  Someone scared my neighbor with tales of a tagged groundhog finding its way home after being dropped three miles away.  But ours are going farther than that and on the other side of a 6-lane road.)  It defecated in the car; I hope it's happy.

We have been eating lots and lots of blueberries and black raspberries, and freezing more (pies in the winter!).  I can't say the garden/landscape has been very productive otherwise (aside from peas) but I will have lots of flowers to show off for GBBD (must take pictures tomorrow).

Also tomorrow must look at the worms and perhaps add another floor to their habitat.

I promise to write more often.