Lesson Learned and a Little Rearranging

Last year, when my (now former) voice teacher and his wife gave us lots of pass-along plants to fill in my bare flower beds, I just plunked everything in the ground and hoped for the best. I didn't do any research, and I didn't really consider how they would fill in, what things would look like during the winter (bare) or how far they should be from the house.

During a conversation a couple months ago with my great aunt, I heard the term "foundation plant" for the first time. As she explained it, a foundation plant is one that is okay to plant near the foundation of a house because its roots are not invasive (aka: the roots won't grow into the foundation of the house, thereby ruining the foundation).  It also usually has a more compact growth habit, rather than something flowy or fountain-like. The other cool thing about this conversation: my 90-year-old great aunt walked around the house at the farm with my parents (the one that my grandfather built) and identified every bush and flower, making note of which were foundation plants and which were not.

This conversation made me wonder if the forsythia bushes I planted at the back of the flower beds (near the house) were foundation plants (if you squint, you can see the small leafy bushes in the back row).

I hopped on Google and started searching away, and, of course, forsythia are most definitely not foundation plants. Fortunately, they hadn't been there all that long, so I don't think any damage was done.

Around the same time I dug up that tidbit of information, my friend Patrick (who is a master gardener) mentioned to me that the red bud (in the pic above, it's on the far right with the heart shaped leaves) needed to be moved soon. See, when I planted it, I thought it was a shrub. WRONG. It's definitely a tree. Pat's comment was "Yeah...you know that seven foot tall tree by our driveway? That's a red bud."

So I started brainstorming places to put four-five forsythia and a small-ish tree. Fortunately, it didn't take long. I decided to put the red bud in the opposite corner from the hybuscus at the front of the yard. Here she blows, a little peeked looking, but otherwise none the worse for wear. Please ignore the downed mailbox in the background. That is a story for another day.

As for the forsythia, on the other side of our driveway, is a narrow strip of grass that is constantly forgotten. It always seems like a waste to restart the lawnmower just to mow the 3 foot wide section of grass, but it has to be done. I decided to forgo the issue and plant a forsythia hedge.

Once these fill in, I don't think we'll have to mow over here any more, but I am considering putting down weed cloth and mulch, just to be sure.

Once I got everything moved, I was left with this...and a similar situation in the other front flower bed.

Needing ideas, I took this picture, along with a few others, up to Bates Nursery (they are a local, family-owned nursery about 10 minutes away). One of the employees tossed out a couple of ideas once he'd seed the pictures and heard the description of sun, but told me that before I made any decisions, I should go home, measure the beds and the window heights above them, and come back with a rough sketch of what I'm working with. Here's what I came up with. Obviously my musical talents don't translate to the visual arts.

Armed with the sketches, I went back to Bates, where a second (and very helpful) employee helped me choose plants, figure out how many I needed, and helped me figure out a layout for both front beds. I only left with shrubs for the left bed that day...partially for budgetary reasons (three shrubs were $100) and partially to break up the work for myself.

Since there is a gardenia to the right of the front stairs, I decided to mirror that on the left. Bates didn't have exactly the same kind of gardenia, but they helped me pick out one that has similar foliage (Kleim's Hardy). The only noticeable difference is that the flowers on the new one are single, instead of double flowers.

To contrast the gardenia in the left bed, I also picked out a Georgia Petite Indian Hawthorn. It has lovely blue green leaves that look a little bit waxy, and it blooms small white flowers in the spring.

Has anyone else been rearranging their garden? Planting shrubs? Digging holes is hard work! Oh well, hopefully I'll get lovely toned arms out of it.

State of the Vegetable Garden, May 2013

Whew! I know I haven't written about gardening lately, but that doesn't mean I haven't been toiling away! So here's a post to catch you all up. Warning: it's long!

The seeds I had leftover from last year, and the ones that I ordered have all been started, and I've got some of the seedlings planted in the garden boxes. Sadly, not all of them yet though!

Just in the past couple days, the garden has seen great improvement! I spent a good bit of the day planting herbs (sage and basil) in pots to put around the retaining wall

The rhubarb was already there, but I have plans to make strawberry rhubarb pie next weekend!

And my ever-helpful buddy Patrick came over to help me build another garden box, so now I have three, and we have plans to build another one on Monday! We were going to build both yesterday, but ran out of light by the time we got the first one finished.

Oh! and may I introduce my newest garden helper? Meet Betsy Lou.

She is a sweet, young (only a year and a half) rescue. I have been fostering dogs for an East Nashville rescue called East C.A.N. and was fostering Betsy for them, but the hubs and I talked, and we decided she's home :-) Seger loves having a little sister (even if she is MUCH bigger than him...she's 70 lbs!!) and the two of them spend lots of time in the backyard running and playing.

Ok....back to gardening....I harvested my first crop of peas yesterday. Those are going gangbusters. They've actually grown taller than the trellis.

 You can see where I've planted some lettuce. It's not very big yet, and it looks like it maybe got dog smashed....*sigh*

These are the lemon tree tomatoes (not all of them....there are more planted elsewhere, and still to be planted!). 

These (to the left) are trionfo violetto beans. Even their stalks are purple! I can't wait to see what they look like as they get a little bigger.

These (to the right) are a variety of onion sent home with me by Patrick. I guess they grow onions at the top of the plant as well as growing them as a root. My mom says they might be Egyptian walking onions....anyone know for sure?

Bonus shot of the garden box layout. I think the fourth one is going to end up on the far end of the line. Eventually I'd like to have a total of eight, but we'll see what happens!

The blueberry bush has gotten a lot bigger, and is already putting on berries. Hopefully I'll have a good crop this year.

In the retaining wall bed, I planted various herbs and flowers that are coming up. There's dill....

....and sage....

...and nasturtiums....

....and I think these might be asiatic lilies. Not sure yet. I kept pulling them last year because I thought they were weeds, but I'm pretty sure someone actually put these here on purpose haha.

 The tea rose is putting on buds. The ones in front have already finished their first round of blooms and are getting ready for a second. Doesn't this one look like it's ready to burst open?

Oh, and I keep waiting and waiting for the garlic to be ready to pull. I thought it was supposed to be ready in the spring, but I also know you aren't supposed to pull it till the leaves die, so I guess I'll keep waiting....

I dug up this spot just this morning to plant the faerie watermelon, and a few sunflowers. I have a lot more digging to do to plant all those sunflower seeds though!

 My lemon balm has come back with a vengeance! I'm seeing more cocktails in my future....maybe a jelly? Anyone have any ideas??

This mint was, I think, accidentally passed along to me by my voice teacher and his wife. They gave me a bunch of flowers to put in my flower beds out front, but I'm not sure if this was supposed to be in there or not! It looks a little sad right now....probably because it's a clump of dirt sitting on dry leaves (need to fix that), but knowing how hardy mint is, I think it'll be alright until I can get my hands on some more potting soil.

Oh, and here are the first of my container tomatoes. I need to prop it up with something....hmmmm....

Kudos to you if you seriously just read all that. How is your garden looking? Did you plant anything super neato/unusual this year?

A Pre-Order Seed Inventory

With the January arrival of seed catalogs, I've been hard at work planning this year's garden! I have ordered some seeds, but I wanted to make sure to use what I already had on hand to keep costs down, but also just to not be wasteful. So...without further ado, here is my list of what I already have on hand.

1. Sunflowers - I've got a 1/4 lb of these suckers....I'm thinking of just digging a (shallow) trench along the back fence, tossing them in the ground and seeing what happens. That said, I've still got a LOT of sunflower seeds....anyone in Nashville need some???
2. Lettuce (Summer Mix) - this is a cut-and-come again loose leaf variety that I've had good luck with in the past, but have some left over from last year.
3. Tomato (Costoluto Genovese) - leftover from last year. I was a little disappointed in the yields, but I also didn't get them in the ground until July, so that MAY have had something to do with it.
4. Basil (Mrs. Burns lemon) - I was unsuccessful in getting these to sprout last year, but I may try again, just because I have the seeds. I can always buy a started basil plant if it's unsuccessful.
5. Jalapeno - again, leftover from last year. These didn't get as big as my monster jalapeno two years ago, but they still had decent yields, despite the fact that these also didn't make it into the ground until July.
6. Red leaved Perilla - leftover from last year, though I have to admit, I never actually used any of it in my cooking!
7. Dill
8. Green Bean (Blue Lake 274, bush type and Bush Blue Lake 156)
9. Broccoli (Packman Hybrid) - at last check, this was actually still producing!
10. Turnip (White Lady hybrid)
11. Onion (Parade) - this is a green onion that was just starting to sprout in the garden when it got dog-trampled....boo.
12. Columbines - I had meant to plant these last year, but then we bought a house and moved, so they are now in my refrigerator chilling since I neglected to plant them in the fall (fail)
13. Cleome - these are pass-along seeds from my voice teacher's wife.
14. Nasturtium 
15. Hibiscus, red and white - these seeds were saved from some growing along Nashville's greenway
16. Mustard Greens - never managed to get these planted in the fall....again....fail.
17. I also think I have some yellow squash seeds around somewhere....There were lots of things that just got tossed in boxes during the move....I'm still finding things!
18. Caroline Reaper - THESE are special. My mother is friends with a man named Eddie Currie, who breeds hot peppers in SC. He owns Pucker Butt Pepper Company (you can check them out here). Eddie now holds the Guinness World Record for the hottest pepper in the world, and this lucky girl has some seeds! My hubby loves spicy food, and these are supposed to have a nice fruity flavor to go with the heat. I'm really excited to get these babies growing!

More Fall Plantings

The rest of my fall planting order has arrived! Woo hoo! Here's what I've got:

Moon River Peony
California Hard Neck Garlic
Naturalizing Daffodils
Apricot Beauty Tulips

With that, and the fall season, comes some to-do's:

1. Find spots for and plant my new goodies!
2. Plant bulbs given to me by my voice teacher and his wife (I have a giant tray full of bulbs! Mostly daffodil...they think)
3. Plant more green onions, lettuce and mustard greens
4. Clean out pots. I have some iris and daylilies in containers from the apartment that I have been waiting to plant in the ground. Others are just past their prime and are looking scraggly or need to be brought inside before it gets too cold.
5. Stir compost and add leaves as they fall and are raked up

What does your fall clean-up/to-do list look like?

Re-Establishing Flower beds

It's been a little chaotic around here the past couple weeks, but in between the chaos (and the heat....and the mosquitoes that try to eat my face every time I step out the door), I have been hard at work trying to re-establish the flower beds in front of the house. So far, I've got one down (thankfully, the larger of the two), one to go.

If you will recall, the left flower bed looked something like this when we moved in (after I added some gifted plants)

Giant mass of weeds. Yikes. I have to admit, I was really dreading pulling all of them, so I started looking for other ways to get rid of them.

I read somewhere that you could use newspaper as a temporary, cheaper, biodegradable weed cloth under mulch, so I decided to give it a try.

I did pull the worst of the weeds, just so it was easier to lay the newspaper down, and laid down a couple layers of newspaper, soaking them with water as I went so they didn't fly off in any unexpected breezes. Once I got a reasonable-sized area covered, I used pine bark mulch (the cheap stuff....not Scotts brand or anything...that would have gotten expensive in a hurry!!) to cover the newspaper so my neighbors wouldn't talk bad about me haha.

Here's an in-process picture.

When I ran out of newspaper, I decided to take a break. That break turned into a two-week break. Oops. That was about the time the mosquitoes got really bad and started trying to eat us every time we stepped out the door.


This morning I resolved to get back on it. I tried to go to Kroger (which is supposed to open round the clock) to by more newspaper, but they were closed for some reason or another, so on to Home Depot I went for more mulch and to see if they had some kind of paper that might be serviceable. Man, am I glad. Here's what I found.

I'm hoping this stuff will actually work better than newspaper, since it's thicker. Plus, I can use the leftovers on other projects instead of just tossing/recycling whatever is left.

Scissors and giant roll of paper in hand, I got down to business, again, soaking the paper as I went to avoid shifting.

This paper went much faster than newspaper since I didn't have to put down multiple layers or deal with flimsiness.

Then, I mulched, and stood back to admire my handiwork.

The plants that are already here should grow together some. I also have an order in for things like tulip and daffodil bulbs...and a peony!

So now that I've gotten to show off a little, now comes the part where I hang my head in shame and promise to fix this....like tomorrow...

Again. Yikes. Oh, and see E.T. peeking out the basement window? That would be my husband's sense of humor at work.

Any major gardening projects you've been tackling? Any you are dreading/putting off?

More Pass-Along Plants

I've mentioned before how much I love pass along plants not only as a way to get plants for your garden on the cheap, but as a way to keep your beds from getting over-crowded.

A few months ago, my voice teacher and his wife dug up about half the plants in their garden while they were clearing space for workers to build them a new retaining wall. They new we were in the process of buying a house, so they said they would keep the plants they weren't going to put back in pots for us until we had a place to put them. Very sweet of them!

So a couple of weeks ago, I went and picked up all the plants that were waiting for us. There were several forsythia bushes, a red bud, some shasta daisies, rudbeckia and flox and some ornamental grass (meant for borders). I spent a couple hours the next day placing, planting and watering all those plants. Fortunately, the soil was easy to dig (unlike in the back yard), so getting everything in the ground wasn't too hard. Here's what it looks like now:

Left Bed

Right Bed

I still have some filling in to do. These beds are quite large. I also need to put some newspaper down to kill the weeds and grass, and then mulch on top of it to give the beds some definition.

I noticed today my rudbeckia is starting to bloom!

And my flox! Huzzah!

I'm Feeling Rosy

Remember those scraggly rose bushes in the back yard retaining wall bed? They looked like this when we moved in...

Pretty pathetic, right?

Well, I trimmed them back a couple weeks ago, just to see what happened. I figured if I killed them, oh well...I can always put something else there in its place. So I got out my pruning shears and started cutting...just removing the brown, dead stuff and stems that seemed strangely out of place. I also mulched with a little mushroom compost.

It seems my efforts have paid off! I started noticing new growth almost right away. Here's what they look like today...

There's definitely still room for improvement, but baby steps, right? I think I'm actually going to have to figure out something to do with the larger one (maybe a trellis?). It's starting to arch overhead rather precariously. I have no idea what kind of roses these are. If anyone happens to know, an ID would be very much appreciated!

Do you grow roses in your garden? What do you do to care for them?

Oh! and in other news (though still on the rose theme), one of my students gave us a  lovely housewarming gift. And how appropriate is it that her name is Rosie?

Introducing.....a Blank Slate (Part I)

Whew! We are all moved in, and though we are still unpacking, I thought I'd share my blank slate of a yard with you all. I'm going to split this post into two in the interest of not writing the longest blog post EVER, so without further ado, I present to you my front yard.

First (and yes, I know this isn't technically the front yard), here's what our garage looks like....well....kind of. Right now, we'll call it Mt. Box ok?

Before you get too scared, here is a wider shot....no....we did not have boxes piled five feet high through our entire garage (just part of it).

Actually, at the bottom of that picture, you can see my first little indoor project happening (shelf painting!), but we'll talk more about that later.

Here's the front of the house from the end of the driveway. Not terribly exciting (yet), but we're getting there. The gigantic hackberry tree next to the driveway is going to come down probably this winter. Hackberries spit a sap that ruins the paint on cars, so one hanging over the driveway is really not ideal, especially since the garage is not going to stay a garage.

Not really sure what these little trees/bushes are off to the left of the driveway, but I am going to have to trim them back so they don't invade the driveway as well as getting the vines off of them.

Now this, I am pretty excited about. We have a lovely hibiscus bush in the front yard. You can see the end of the pretty purple blooms (it was covered in them a few weeks earlier).

There is all kinds of ivy growing up the trees in the front and back yards. We actually tackled getting it all off of the trees last weekend. The vines look great, but they bore into the trees and can kill them.

You can actually see the little tendrils the vines send out to attach themselves to the tree. No good!!

Moving on....I now present you with the ugliest lollipop ever.....

This guy has already been removed as well (I'll get some after pictures soon!). There are/were a couple problems with this: it blocks one entire window in the living room (not cool), it was growing up into the power line to the house (really not cool), and since it is so big and rotund, it also blocks the view of the path to the front door from the driveway (REALLY not cool, and a safety hazard, especially for when the hubs deploys again).

To the side of the front door, there is this wonderfully fragrant gardenia....

....and a not-so-wonderfully scraggly rose bush.....

....and that's it for what's in front of the house. Fortunately, my wonderful voice teacher and his wife have been saving some bushes they dug out of their front yard for us, so we will hopefully have something to put here soon!

Lastly, here is my awesome red front door! The porch needs to be power washed and repainted, but we've all got to start somewhere, right?

Whew! Hopefully I didn't totally bore you with all that. I am making my to-do list as I go along. What have you guys been up to? Did everyone have a great 4th?