Good morning, and let's get ready for another year of playing in the dirt. Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging, Third Anniversary Edition!
To recognize the "event", I'll be posting a few of my favorite pictures from over the last year.
Denver's weather has been bouncing around like mad, and we haven't gotten a stretch of nice days yet. Three years ago, when I posted the first garden blogging I wrote:
The first daffodils are in bloom. Sprinkles of johnny jump-ups all over. It's a beautiful morning, still a little too cool to work outside, but I'm syched — go out and clean up, plug some more bulbs in the ground, scatter poppy seeds, iPod blaring Grateful Dead in my ear.
This year — the johnny jump ups are just emerging, as are the spring bulbs. The back yard is covered with snow (although I see some grass peaking out around the edges!) Not even a crocus is close to flowering... it's gonna be a while. Tomorrow it's supposed to get into the 60s — but will be windy, the higher temperatures riding in on a Chinook wind.
Last year, on the Second Anniversary of Garden Blogging, I ruminated about why garden blogging belonged on a political website. We occasionally had commenters poo-pooing our little Saturday coffee-klatch as inappropriate for a serious, political website. The goings on at dKos over the last six months or so during the primary wars; the frequent GBCW (or TTFN — ta ta for now) diaries; the virulence of the flame wars and troll-rate battles; all have reiterated the importance of community-building series diaries such as this.
Humans don't live by politics alone. Politics are about community, and where there is no room for people of good will to meet and chat about matters of similar interest outside of politics, the community breaks down and, consequently, the cohesion required for political effectiveness breaks down.
Way back in the first year of garden blogging, I posted "Urban Garden Rules", a tongue-in-cheek recitation of things I had learned over the years digging in the sandy loam of our tiny Denver yard. Remembering, of course, that all Urban Garden Rules are Rule #1, some of my favorite Urban Garden Rules are:
If a company sends you "bonus items" with your order, it probably means the damned things multiply uncontrollably and they have excess stock to get rid of — and if you plant the bonus items, you'll never be rid of them. I'm still trying to eradicate the "drumstick allium", sent as a "bonus" with our first order of bulbs in Fall, 1993. The damned things not only form onion sets on the blooming tops (and that's what allium are — ornamental onion flowers), they also form new little onion bulbs all along the stems. Even when you manage to pull one out of the ground, you've probably left behind three or four little bulbs that were knocked off the stem under ground.
Yes, I'm still digging allium. I've discovered that right now is the perfect time to get them dug out while I can — the ground is soft from the winter's thawing and freezing cycles; the shoots from spring bulbs let me know where they are but the plants are still small enough to work around; and the roots to the allium are still small. So for the past couple of weeks I've been stalking the front yard, looking for those skinny green shoots of allium, and digging them up. It's fucking amazing — I'll see two or three little shoots, dig down 3 inches, and come up with a handful of tiny little onion bulbs. Yeesh. I'm never gonna get rid of those fuckers.
Two companion rules:
"Easily established" is not necessarily a good thing. When you see the words "easily established", leave the plant at the nursery, go home, google it up, and find out if it is invasive. I learned this rule with oenotheria — "showy evening primrose". Oenotheria spreads through the roots, and one little pot spread 3 feet within a month. It took totally digging out my front beds to get rid of the stuff. The oenotheria experience leads me to the next garden rule.
Never trust mint. If planted directly in the ground, it will take over. Even if not planted directly in the ground it will take over. My beloved mother-in-law had read that you could control mint by planting it inside a clay put buried in the ground. It was OK for the first year... then the roots went through the drain hole, and over the top of the pot, and escaped.
Need I explain further?
No plant is the right size. Even if it is. It may be just right in the first year or three — then it gets too big. Or the plant next to it gets too big. Or you decide it would look better somewhere else. Which leads to...
Plants are like furniture — most can be moved.
I have found one exception to this rule: calamentha nepata nepata. We've had one in our front yard for 14 years, and it has never outstripped it's space, never needed dividing, and hasn't self-seeded.
Plant spacing guides are for wusses. When you have a small plot, and a lot you want to grow, leaving all that space between rows in the veggie patch is such a waste. Go ahead, cut the spacing by an inch or two or three — except when it doesn't work.
Pay attention to plant spacing. Spinach planted too closely bolts quickly; two zucchetta plants will produce more squash than five planted too close together.
These two rules demonstrate a truism in gardening as in politics: nothing is true all the time. Including, I suppose, this statement.
The best litter box in the world is exactly where you don't want the cat to dig. This year Arwen the Terrible (felinius pesticus horrificus) decided the area between the pea fences, where I had planted radishes and kohlrabi, was the perfect litter box for a little kitty. Never mind that there was about 70 square feet of soft, beautiful, unplanted veggie patch she could have used. And that reminds me, I have to go out and plug the iris back in the ground. Yeah, of course, the cats dug up the newly replanted iris.
Pooties can be marvelous gardening companions, sticking their little noses into everything, rolling in the dirt and keeping one company (also marvelous garden blogging companions — Zasu has her nose stuck in my armpit right now, which makes typing difficult). Pooties can also be very helpful in the garden, keeping squirrels from digging up newly-planted seeds, birds from eating seedings, and hunting down and eradicating moths and grasshoppers. But, as with anything in the garden, there are drawbacks.
And this is my favorite Urban Garden Rule:
Weeds are Republican — especially bindweed. On the surface, very attractive, but underneath... shallow but widely rooted, strangling, difficult to eradicate once etablished, and the only way to eliminate is through ruthlessly attacking wherever it pops up.
I was going to compile some garden blogging rules, but once I thought about it, I knew — we don't need no stinking rules. We seem to get along OK without them.
That's what's happening here. What's going on in your gardens?