In the Garden, Week Five

Lilies, lilies, lilies! I have them blooming now, throughout the garden, and I love them. I planted a couple of Stella del ‘Oro day lilies more than a decade ago and now we are in the happy position of being able to divide them and spread the love. We transplanted these at the base of the angel’s feet and now look at them! I still love the creamsicle-orange color that drew me to them in the first place.

The angel is another story. Long ago before the kids were born, we drove to New Orleans in our Volkswagen Golf TDI. On the return trip we stopped in St Francisville, Louisiana and found the angel at a statuary shop. We managed to maneuver her into the back seat of the car, where she rode for the remainder of the trip (she didn’t help our gas mileage much, but so what?). She’ll always remind me of the cemetery at St Francisville, which is always worth a visit.

The asiatic lilies are in full swing as well. These beauties never seem to last long enough, but I love them anyway. My mom-in-law gave me this variation, called the Lollipop Lilly, when my youngest son was born in 2006. It’s still going strong, although this year it had to fight its way through the purple phlox that’s managed to take over every square inch of unplanted space in the garden. Needless to say, it’s time to do some “weeding.” I can’t believe there was a point when I would actually save the phlox and replant elsewhere in the yard.

I still have several standard day lilies and a few colorful specialty day lilies on deck, along with some tiger lilies. We are nearly to the height of the summer bloom in Minnesota gardens and the birds and bees are loving it! So am I. Until next week…

Learn how to plant a Birds and Bees Garden in The Nitty Gritty Gardening Book: Fun Projects for All Seasons, which is available through Amazon, Lerner Publishing Group, and at local gift shops and garden centers.

 

 

 

 

In the Garden, Week 4

On Thursday, before the rain set in, I took this misty photo of my wisteria. I’ve wanted wisteria in my garden ever since our 1998 trip to the Loire Valley in France. There, wisteria grows like crazy, climbing up the sides of buildings and covering garden trellises everywhere. But the variety that grows in Europe does not like our cold winters, so we tracked down a variety that does at Bloomington Garden Center. It’s called Aunt Dee, and it’s taken firm root next to our pergola. For the past five years it’s bloomed like this in June and sometimes again in September. I love it!

  

This week we also continued to harvest strawberries from our community garden plot, picking more than a quart each on Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. I had more than enough for a batch of jam…yay! It was too warm yesterday to even think about processing the jars, so I’ll stick one in the freezer and keep the other in the refrigerator.  In the summer we eat plenty of PB&J sandwiches to plow through the jars quickly enough.

Otherwise, I’ve been in weeding mode. I like to take Suzy Bales’ approach to pulling weeds: I never go out to the yard with the intention of weeding, but as I do the daily walk through my garden to see what’s growing and I have the urge to weed, I will. Yesterday I ended up plopping myself down on the garden path and methodically pulling and piling weeds for the better part of the afternoon. In fact I had trouble stopping. After weeding the back garden and most of the side yard, I decided to walk to my community plot where I scratched around the tomato and pepper plants, weeding as I went. With recent rains to soften the soil, it was a very satisfying day to pull weeds.

I’ll leave you with this photo of our blooming rose bush. This rose has a history. It grew from a clipping taken from my mom-in-law, who planted it from a rose bush that thrived on her parents’ farm. In fact, my husband’s grandmother carried a bouquet of these very roses on the day she got married. Before next week I hope to figure out what’s been nibbling the leaves. If you have any ideas, let me know!

Until then, check out The Nitty Gritty Gardening Book, available through Amazon, Millbrook Press, or at your local gardening shop.

In the Garden, Week 3

My youngest got to help with his favorite part this week…harvesting. We have many more strawberries to come!

It’s June, school’s out, and the strawberries are beginning to ripen…all sure signs that summer has arrived. Our trips to the garden plot this week involved watering our seeds, searching for signs of growth, and pulling a few more weeds.

The zucchini seeds we planted last weekend have sent shoots through the surface of the soil, producing healthy seedlings.

Oops! Looks like we spilled a few spinach seeds last weekend. But the spinach will still have plenty of room to grow.

But the exciting part was picking our own homegrown strawberries, both from our community garden plot and at home. We picked about two pints, but there are many more still ripening on the plants. Picking the strawberries at home involves a little more detective work. We have a few everbearing strawberry plants tucked under the rose bush, hiding in amongst the sedum and wild geranium, and they aren’t always easy to spot. I’m happy that we seem to be getting to them before the birds and critters begin to nibble away. I used most of the berries to make a strawberry rhubarb crisp…yum! I’m hoping to make a batch of strawberry jam before the season is over.

Strawberries from our yard.

Strawberry rhubarb crisp, served in the cutest little scalloped bowls my mom-in-law gave me a few weeks ago. I love them!

I also managed to plant the rest of my herbs. Last year I filled my back window boxes with herbs, but back in April I decided to scatter mixed lettuce greens in the boxes instead. This is the first year in a long time that we’ve had a dog, so planting edibles in the flower boxes keeps food out of her zone, if you know what I mean. It’s just about salad time…aren’t they cute? With the back boxes already accounted for, I’m having to get creative with my herb placement. I found this cute basket-bucket in my garage and created a mini moveable herb garden with basil, sage, and thyme. I planted the rest of the herbs in a couple of flower boxes that I can keep out of the dog’s reach. Stay tuned for more planting updates next week!

Mixed greens in my back flower box.

A basket of herbs.

Learn how to plant your own herb window box, strawberry basket, box of mini salad, and more in The Nitty Gritty Gardening Book, available through gardening shops and Amazon.com.

In the Garden, Week 2

The front flower boxes, finally planted!

I love this time of the year in the garden! It’s hectic, and there’s always a ton of work to do, but the results are entirely satisfying. This week, I enjoyed two of my favorite late-spring rituals: placing a lily of the valley bouquet on the dining room table in my grandma’s green vase and making the first rhubarb pie of the season. My ten-year-old harvested the rhubarb from our garden plot, and I made the pie…yum! I always add cardamom and orange zest, and this time I threw in some strawberries too.

Harvested rhubarb…

made into delicious pie!

I also planted the front flower boxes…I’m pretty happy with how these turned out this year. Of course I did have to make two trips to Mother Earth Gardens–oh, darn, right? As I was planting the second box I realized I was short one begonia. I love these flower boxes, by the way! We ordered them last season from flowerwindowboxes.com. They are self-watering and you can paint them any color you wish. They are fantastic!

But one big gardening to-do project has been looming over my head all week: I needed to have my plot at the community garden planted by June 1st (gulp). So yesterday I enlisted the help of the boys and our good friend from next door. We turned the soil, added composted horse manure and compost, hauled wood chips to cover the walking paths, and tucked straw under the strawberries to keep weeds at bay.

Scratching up and turning the soil. Youngest is wondering when he gets to cash in on the promised iPad time.

Planting! If you look closely you may be able to see the dotted line of perfectly placed beet seeds.

After all that prep work, we were finally ready for the fun part! We planted cosmos, sunflowers, two rows of beets, two rows of carrots, two rows of spinach, cucumbers, and zucchini from seed. Then we planted the seedlings: 4 tomato plants, 4 pepper plants (2 jalapeno, per youngest’s request!), one eggplant, 4 swiss chard, 2 Brussels sprouts, and one cabbage. Whew. I kid you not, 6 hours later I was finally leaving the garden. But what a sense of accomplishment! And I was so impressed with the stamina of my helpers! My ten-year-old lasted 4 hours and the younger two lasted 2 hours each. I highly recommend having the kids help with seed planting. They were so careful about reading the instructions and placing the exact amount of seeds at the specified distance apart. I honestly think they did a better job with it than I did! That’s it for now…stay tuned for more updates.

Our friend from next door came along to help us plant…here she’s sewing the cosmos, marking each seed planting with a tiny pebble to make sure she has the spacing just right.

Ta-dah! The end result. I covered the Brussels sprouts and cabbage to prevent flea beetle munching and the eggplant to keep it cozy during cool nights.

For more gardening ideas for kids, check out The Nitty Gritty Gardening Book, available through Amazon, local gardening shops, and book stores.