Saturday Morning (Home And) Garden Blogging Vol. 4.5
Sat Mar 22, 2008 at 06:00:05 AM PDT
Good morning, and happy SPRING! Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging.
Are there any words lovelier than Spring Equinox? It warms my little gardener's heart.
Denver's weather has been gradually creeping to the warmer side, but it still swinging back and forth. On St. Patrick's Day, we were threatened with up to 10" of snow — but temperatures hovered in the mid-30s, and most of the moisture came as rain, with a scant slushy cover of snow.
By Wednesday we'd pushed up into the 60s but alas, I had no opportunity to putter in the garden, as I was busy doing Mom Stuff, running around preparatory for Easter (it really, really throws me off when Easter is this early).
Yesterday it started getting cooler, and windier. And today: clouds with the possibility of more slush falling from the skies tonight. Of course. Now on Monday, when I'm back in the office, it will be nice!
This year I'm seeing some really weird patterns in the plant life. Usually by mid-March, I have johnny jump ups blooming everywhere in the front yard — they generally start blooming in mid-February. This year there are lots of small seedlings, but no blooms yet — at least none in the front yard. The first johnny jump up to bloom is in the back yard.
The first daffodil has bloomed — but it is a King Alfred, not one of the dwarf narcissus, which usually bloom with the rock garden iris. I see the shoots of the dwarves, but no buds. Maybe I'm right and the narcissus flies have infested them. Gonna have to mark all the narcissus that don't bloom so I can dig them up and destroy them. While I've had some luck with decreasing my narcissus fly losses with the application of nematodes, and the judicious application of chemical insecticides (yes, I've even resorted to that), the timing of the application is very touchy (has to be when the larva have first hatched and are digging their way down into the bulb — otherwise you miss them), I still have to dig the infested bulbs and smash the nasty little grubs inside to fucking paste.
And the first of the hyacinth have bloomed. This is a new one I planted last year, Gypsy Queen. Not sure how well I like it — the color is kinda weird, and the florets rather crinkled and icky looking to my eye. Not at all what the pictures in the catalog led me to expect. Ah well — they smell good! A majority of the hyacinth are petering out, so they definitely need to be divided/replaced next fall — good thing we're planning on digging up the front yard anyway to replace the water line and rebuild the retaining walls.
Oh, and speaking of fall-planted bulbs, I stumbled across a new resource last week: Old House Gardens Bulbs, featuring various types of heirloom bulbs. The site should be of interest to southern gardeners, as they list many types of narcissus that don't require long chilling to bloom.
I do have some crocuses blooming in the back lawn patch, but it's pretty dicey for them back there. So far they're all pinky-purple ones, and the emergence is very spotty. Part of that is the sun pattern: the more northern section of the lawn patch is out of the shadow of the house so warms up faster. And I suspect that the squirrels got some of the bulbs.
The final problem is... of course... male feet. Now, I knew that there would be some of the flowers that would get smashed, as we make our way to and from the veggie patch, or taking out the trash. But generally Da Boys and the Mister don't spend a lot of time in the back yard, so I thought for the most part, the crocus would be safe.
That was before the Potato Gun. Yes, Elder Son and his friend decided they absolutely had to make a potato gun. And the Mister has graduated into great Coolness Factor because he knows how this stuff works, and how to put it together (which is a good thing, as we were having a lot of adolescent son/middle aged father angst and head butting around here).
So far, they've gone through about 15 pounds of potatoes, and have achieved many smashed crocus and two holes in the back fence. Elder Son claims he's helping build the soil in the veggie patch, by introducing pre-smashed potatoes into it that will turn into compost.
That's what's happening here. What's going on in your gardens?
