Gardening by Mistake

I’ve been spending a lot of time weeding the tall grass prairie that took over my garden. (That is, if a tall grass prairie was made of invasive, non-native grasses). I did a great job of staying on top of the weeds until about mid-July. Then we had unbelievable heat and humidity and I hid inside. The weeds kept growing with abandon.

I’ve been noticing what is still growing and what is no longer in evidence from what I planted. So far, aquilegia is the only thing I’ve noticed that has vanished. Oh, and one of my asclepias tuberosa plants. Everything else is still hanging on somehow. It’s been a hot and dry summer since mid-July. My viola pedatifida, WS and planted this year, were looking beautiful on Friday morning as I weeded. On Saturday evening they’d vanished, no trace that they’d ever been there. I assume the blasted rabbits got them.

As I’ve been weeding I’ve had a lot of time to think about this year’s gardening and I’ve gotten pretty bummed out about what seems like my many failures this year, the first and most noticeable of which is the current weed situation.  Another item high on the list is my failure to get as many plants added as I’d set out to. My goal was 350 plants. Last year I added 170 or so. So far this year, I’m at a measly 123. I still have winter sown plants sitting around waiting to be planted, so it’s possible (I don’t know that it’s likely, though) that I could make it to 170 this fall. I’ve just got to get more planted next year. And that might sound like a lot of plants, but I have (stupidly) 1,000 square feet of garden to fill in. 170 is a drop in a very large bucket. Added to my list of disappointments are the failure to get my prairie rain garden in and my front border done. Both of those go on my list for next year.

Maybe by the end of the growing season I’ll have gotten more planted and everything will be nicely weeded and maybe even mulched and I’ll feel better about things. For now, though, I’d have to say that this growing season was a real disappointment and failure.

I’m planning to do a couple of things this growing season which should greatly improve the situation of my compacted garden beds.  Before I started on my efforts, I figured I’d better do something that I could compare in the coming months, to see if my efforts are successful. Now, some of my beds are packed hard. When I tried to push my garden fork in about 2 inches last summer, the fork bounced off the soil! So much for aerating that way. Not all my beds are as bad as that spot, but I decided I’d better have my husband do the fork pushing so we could at least get it into the ground.

So out we went tonight, fork and notebook in hand. I had him stick the fork into each bed in 3 places, recording where those places where and how deeply the fork went into the soil. He used both arms and leaned into (but didn’t stand on) the fork as he did this. The least amount the fork went in was 0.5 inches (ouch! Those poor, poor plants trying to grow there!) and the most was 6 inches.

I made a spiffy spreadsheet recording all of this and calculated the average depth of the fork in each bed. I was very surprised at the finding of the best bed. It was what I often call my “Mediterranean” bed. It’s hot and dry and at the top of the slope of our yard, so moisture doesn’t stick around there. This bed is in full, baking sun and it last got mulched with wood chips more years ago than I want to admit. (I keep meaning to get around to it…)  This is also the one bed that didn’t get all the amendments when it was established that the others got. Hmm. The most benignly neglected bed is the least compacted bed? Doesn’t make sense. The only thing I can figure is that I’m not in that bed as much, perhaps, but I don’t think that’s the case.

At any rate, at the end of the growing season I’ll drag my husband back to the garden and repeat this. I don’t know that I expect much of a change at that point. But I’m planning on checking again next year, and I bet I see some difference then.

I’m not even going to number these. I managed to commit a whole bunch in a short space.

Yesterday we got rain. It had been 2 weeks since we’d had any and 5 days since I’d watered my WS seedlings. I figured they’d probably like another drink. The forecast was .1 – .25 inches– a great amount for my pots in tubs.

Ha! THREE inches later, my pots are literally floating in their tubs, and that’s after I dumped the tubs out about 1/2 way through. Those poor, poor babies.

Fortunately, tubs of floating pots accounts for “only” 140 of my seedlings. The other tubs were also emptied 1/2 way through the rain but I covered them with a tarp. I haven’t yet checked to see if they got flooded somehow anyway— I’m kind of afraid to. I do wonder, though, why I felt like I didn’t need to cover the 3 tubs on my deck when I covered all the tubs down on my patio. The brain works in mysterious ways. My brain, anyway.

So, one mistake might have been to believe the forecast. Or maybe it was not double checking it once the rain started. A definite mistake was not covering those 3 tubs of pots after I drained them the first time.

I’ve emptied the tubs at this point. Later, I’ll be heading back out to squeeze some of the water out of the pots. They are that saturated.

There’s a good chance of more storms tonight. Ack.

Since I was already out with the camera to take a picture of the salvia ‘Purple Volcano’ (see previous post), I decided to make the rounds see what else might be a candidate for pictures out in the garden.

First off, I thought I’d take a shot of the achillea foliage. So often when I’m looking for information online, I see pictures of flowers but not the foliage. The foliage is an important element and I am often frustrated that I cannot find good images of it. Therefore, here’s a picture of achillea, blooms and a foliage close-up:

Popular with the insects, the achillea had swarms of tiny bees and flies hovering and flitting around it.

A pumpkin vine. Blossoms but (so far) no visible fruit. I grow them for the kids and the worms. The kids get to carve them at Halloween, and then worms get to eat them afterwards. (Worms LOVE all curcurbit fruits).

A rose (Snowfire, I believe) among the coreopsis ‘Moonbeam’:

One of the few echinacea blooms in my rose garden this year, thanks to the mole.

Along the south side of the house, I have what I believe is a species echinacea (as opposed to the cultivars in the gardens). About 6 years ago I sprinkled a partial can of seed mix along the side of the house. This single echinacea plant grew from that, along with some other perennials. No mole has bothered it, and I’m tickled with how tall it is– my chest height. I’m debating trying some root cuttings from it this fall. You can see that the blooms on this variety are different from the cultivar above.

This agastache was another perennial which grew from that seed mix of years ago. It has been very happy and has spread widely. However, I don’t believe it would be something I would call invasive. I think in my garden it wouldn’t have spread as much as here, where the plants have been left to grow as they will. The blooms open from bottom to top.

Some sort of bee taking a little rest on a cinder block. In the full-size image you can easily see that his wings are see-through. It’s an amazing thing.

A chickory blossom. The chickory is not in my garden, but next to it. It grows as a wildflower here. It has naturalized quite well— unfortunately. While I love the blue flowers, the plant itself does not blend into a garden. The foliage is too coarse and the flowers too few.

This guara (left) and ornamental oregano (right) were new additions to the garden this spring. Both came from Bluestone Perennials. That was a large order I placed. I was not impressed with a large part of the order, but these two plants are exceptions to that. Both have done very well in the garden and have grown considerably. Behind the oregano are some leaves of a borage plant. Unintentionally, that has become the “herb” corner with sage, borage, oregano, thyme and chives planted around the roses. It’s no surprise, knowing what is planted there, to hear that this is the driest area of all my beds.

This is the second year I’ve grown borage. I just love those clear blue flowers and the fact that the plant does well with benign neglect and little water. The plants this year dwarf last year’s plants. This borage plant here is hip-high on me. I didn’t think it would get as large as it did, and I ended up planting it too close to that rose bush. It has largely devoured that poor rose. Fortunately, the borage is an annual (one of the few I bother to grow and plant) and the rose will have relief next year. One reason I’ve grown the borage is that it’s a known self-seeder. My hope it to end up with volunteer borage in future years. I did have one volunteer this year from last year’s couple of plants, but I accidentally pulled it while weeding. I didn’t figure out what it was until I’d already yanked it out. Oops! I think next year I’ll do better!

And, penultimately, some day lilies. The first is ‘Prairie Blue Eyes.’ I have no idea what the other is.

When I downloaded the memory card from the camera, I found an image I’d taken back in June and had never downloaded. This is a sunset viewed from our front porch.