Front paged at My Left Wing
Good morning, and let the rains come! Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging.
Since early in the week, the forecasters have said "soon it's gonna rain". Every afternoon, after a fine day with highs in the mid to upper 60s, the sky would cloud over, the temperature would drop radically and, perhaps, a few rain drops would fall.
They said it would start raining Tuesday evening, going into Wednesday. But no, there was no rain. Same thing happened on Thursday — clouds, a few drops, cooling temperatures, and dry sidewalks.
It seemed as though the same thing would happen yesterday — but by last night, there was a skim of moisture on the sidewalks, and when I awoke this morning there were puddles.
Which is OK — the delay in the arrival of rain meant that I had opportunity to get the veggie patch ready for planting. And it is.
It has been a pretty busy week. I finished cleaning up the veggie patch and, last Sunday, I was able to fire up the tiller (all by myself, even though it had been sitting idle since last summer), and till the ground nice and deep. Sunday also saw the pruning of the hardy rosemary in the front yard, which had been smashed by snow — and a nice discovery. One of the branches which had been touching the ground — perhaps since last summer or fall — put out a set of roots, so now I have a second plant. So — if you want to propagate a hardy rosemary, bend a stem over, secure it to the ground and after a time — new plant!
I work a four day week, with Wednesdays off, so had another full day of dirty-nailed puttering. In the morning, while waiting for it to warm up, I potted cauliflower and broccoli seed. I thought the forecast would put a kink in my Wednesday plans to get the soaker hose buried but, as the rain held off, that job was finished in good time, too.
I also took time on Wednesday to whack back the lavender. Oh, I do hope it recovers; it looks pretty ratty right now. It had so many flattened, broken branches there was nothing for it but a good whack back. I took care to see which branches were showing signs of new growth low down on the branches, so I could cut above it, and encourage it to fill in. That's the tricky part about pruning lavender: if you don't prune it, you end up with a horse-tail effect with tufts of new leaves on the end of a bare branch; if you do prune it, you have no guarantee that that branch will put out any new growth where you want it. I hope the improved air circulation and access to sunlight will allow those low-down, inner branches to thrive.
And on Thursday, I discovered a disturbing phenomenon. One of the flats of snap pea seedlings on the front porch had several of the pots knocked out of the flats — and, of course, the soil and/or seeds or seedlings knocked out of the pots. I figured the Dadster had kicked or hit it with his cane while coming or going to the front porch rocker. But then I found the same thing yesterday morning, with claw marks on one of the pots (actually paper cups). Yes, one of the cats — my guess would be Arwen the Terrible, she who seemingly has a vendetta against all small, green, growing things — has been attacking the pea seedlings. So as soon as possible I'll need to get them in the ground, even if not all the seeds have sprouted, nor are all the seedlings big enough for transplanting. I'll just have to direct seed some peas along with the seedlings.
I luckily had an extra half-day off yesterday, as the BossMan has asked me to work some weekend hours. That allowed me to buy some landscape cloth and get it laid between the planting rows in the veggie patch.
I'm trying a new technique with the landscape fabric this year — I'm always looking for a better, easier way to do things. In years past, I've generally covered the whole patch with fabric, then cut holes or lines where I wanted to plant things. This year I bought 4 ft. wide rolls and cut them in half, laying them between the rows, which are set at 26 inches apart, leaving a gap into which to transplant or direct seed. I'm going to be hunting down a bale or two of straw to use in the potato bin (another try at a failed experiment from last year!), so will use straw to mulch the gaps after planting.
This week also saw the arrival of some of the plants I ordered — the fragrant violets and passionflower from Logee's. The violets will go into the ground. With the passionflowers, I have two plants, so I'm thinking I'll plant one in the ground, and one in a pot. That way if the first one dies, I'll have a shot at fall-planting the second one in the same place, or experimenting with over-wintering a passionflower indoors. See, if I can get a passionflower to live indoors over-winter, I'll no longer be limited by hardiness on growing passionflowers, and I am so passionate in my fascination with the weird-looking things.
So that's what's happening here. What's going in your gardens?