Saturday, February 22, 2014

What I did in my garden this week

Feb. 17 -22nd

I decided to start a weekly entry for now hopefully I can keep caught up this way. I believe that the more I write about what I am doing the more motivation I will have to improve and keep going. I wanted my garden to be awesome last year and it was definitely  better than the year before.  This year I want it to be enjoyable to look at as well as producing lots.

I cut down my dried up flowers in my front flower bed (between the sidewalk and the road) and cut the iris greenery down so I won't have a lot of dead matter this spring to deal with. I had covered my mums with dry cut grass in hopes that I will have them again. I know it was a long shot but it was worth a try.  Every time I clean up this flower bed the youth that walk by our house decide it is okay to walk there now, I have tried solving it various ways.  There is always a space of time when there is little there to suggest that there are still plants growing. I want to propagate a ground cover in hopes there won't be as much bare soil,  the one I planted there died back and I don't know if it is coming back this year so it is not ideal for that spot even if it survived.  I do have bulbs growing on one end but always end up with bare soil. Maybe a miniature rosebush or something of the sorts would get the message across.

I also collected dried weeds from among my bushes in front of a bedroom window and cut down all the suckers around our two trees in the front in hopes that I won't have as many problems with that this coming season.  Our flowering plum send up suckers every year. I have been trimming them before they get more than 2 ft. high or so and it has seemed to decrease how many come back. I notice them at least 2 to 3 times in a year. I  spread my columbine seeds all over the front flowerbed by our front door.I did start to trim my rose bush in the front and only got so far with that project. I have one more flowerbed in the front to clean out and make weedless.   The rosebush is in the last flowerbed in the front that I need to work on.

I know last year I got some early gardening in and I believe it did help decrease my weeds. The weeds are still not under control and it makes it so I don't enjoy my gardens as much. I tried Preen but realized that I like to grow flowers from seeds so that has not been real helpful since it is designed to make sure seeds don't grow which is great if they are weed seeds not so much if they are flower seeds. I did spread some in my garden last year when I tilled so I sprouted the seeds then planted them I believe that it helped speed up the growing process a bit. It was almost like planting a young seedling but I didn't have the plant shock and didn't have to harden the plants off it was great. I might do this instead of growing seedlings this year. I just put them in a bag with a damp paper towel. I want to make seed stripes this year because the sprouted seeds were all in a clump and hard to separate last year. I think you can do this with any seed so even plants that don't transplant well can be sprouted then buried to grow.

I will need to get my eggplant growing that is one I have to do a seedling for since the growing season is so long. I will see about my watermelons to one I believe has a shorter growing season. In two to three weeks I need to clean up my hanging baskets and plant them I hope to have them spectacular by May. They were a disappointment last year. It was my first year trying to grow seedlings myself to put in the baskets. I had better luck growing then in the basket to begin with.

One other observation about my garden and I want to make sure I continue doing this is when I dig up grass around the edges of my garden if I just flip them over so the roots dry out it doesn't grow back for a very long time. I did it in about Aug if I remember right and it still hasn't grown back in it was bare since I have done it. I hope this helps keep the grass out of my garden and raspberries better. I will do this when ever there is no danger of digging up the plants I want to grow.

Monday, February 10, 2014

Waiting

I am waiting to get my seedlings started. I wanted to start them this month but decided to wait since there is a possibility in a week or two they wouldn't get watered and that is about the time they would sprout so I didn't want to take that chance.

I am excited to get started. I did plant some peas in my garden when the ground thawed  Jan 27th, 2014.  I planted them in front of my raspberry plants. I am hoping the raspberry vines can become their support and also shade them when it warms up this spring. We will see if this works well or not. I plan on planting more since I only got about a two feet planted. I also found out that the middle of my raspberry plants didn't get weeded before the cold set in. I will have to watch this closely so the grass doesn't take over again.