garden notes for my own reference

[lolaraincoat]

One of the ways that I know we had a warm winter by local standards is that so much survived in the garden that I expected would not. It was our first full winter in this house, so I'm just getting used to how our grounds work. Maybe our excellent soil, good light, and -- at least in the back garden -- relatively protected site had something to do with it too?

Anyway here's a partial list of what got through the winter in the front, which used to be almost all lawn but I've been digging in flower beds gradually:

* All the clematis I'm hoping to train over the fences between us and the alley on our north and between our front lawn and the sidewalk to the west, even though it seemed so sickly last year.

* Almost all the lavendar in the new bed just behind the fence between our front lawn and the sidewalk (Spanish lavendar was a bust, though.)

* All the geraniums (cranesbill and some other kind, I forget what)

* The dwarf rosebushes in the new front garden, even though I didn't mulch carefully or do much of anything else to them (the hybrid tea rose that I bought on sale at the end of the summer -- the exact wrong time to plant it -- was just a pile of dry thorny sticks by April, though.)

* Chamomille, corypsis, forget-me-nots, gladiola (inherited from previous owners) and wandering jew (ditto and yes I know it's a weed but it's a pretty flowering weed) and several varieties of irises (they didn't flower last year, but maybe this year?)

And here's what survived in the back, where I am trying gradually to move from purely annual vegetable beds to some combination of fruits, flowers and herbs that would be mostly perennials (and therefore require less springtime planting):

*the small lingonberry bushes that Fishwhistle planted last year, despite their total lack of growth over the first eight months they were in the ground here.

* almost all the stuff that was here when we got here: the peach and apricot trees (which flowered this year! we're going to have fruit, I hope, if we can get to it before the birds do), the grape vine, the garlic, the apparently infinitely self-seeding Boston lettuce, the peonies, the mint, the small but spunky hydrangeas in the back.

* Almost all the flowering vines I'm hoping to train over the fences between us and the alley on our north and between us and our neighbors to the south - azalea and trumpet vines mostly. Two clematis in pots in the sunny rain shadow of the garage wall at the east end of the garden died sad little deaths, though.

* Most of the perennial flowers that I stuck in the southwest corner, half in the shadow of the grape arbor, last year: Jacob's ladder (all but one), spiderwort, creeping speedwell, coneflower, echinachea, poppies, campanella, some of the viola, and some other flowing plants I forget the names of

* Perennial herbs: rue, thyme (thriving! for a change), lemon balm, mint all the hell over the place, chives, those things that might be garlic chives or might just be garlic at the foot of the north trunk of the grape arbor, and the sweet William at the base of the south trunk. Also, some herbs and other vegetables that aren't supposed to be perennial up here but came back anyway: parsley, dill and fennel (self-seeding no doubt), and also onions, oregano, tarragon, and kale.

My goal for the garden, eventually, is to have mainly perennials, front and back, and to replace as much of our front lawn as possible with flower beds. With that in mind, this is what went into the flower beds in front: more lavendar, so that now there's an unbroken line from the northwest corner of the front to the lamppost at the southwest corner; honeysuckle to train over those fences; forsythia, blackeyed susans, coneflower and Japanese anemone from my friend B.'s garden; some gladiolus bulbs which so far show no signs of life, and some foxglove which seems to be thriving, Michealmas daisies, and bergamot.

And this went into the flower beds in the back: Siberian bugloss, more poppies, more echineacha, more Jacob's ladder, more of B.'s coneflowers and black-eyed Susans, and some lamium way in the back under the apricot tree.

But that still left us with a lot of room in the back. We filled up a little space with rhubarb plants and a rasberry bush, which are perennial and will take up more room in years to come -- a lot more room in the case of the rasberry if we're not careful. Most of the remaining space, though, is filled with vegetables and herbs: watercress, tomatoes, tomatillas, beets, spinach, radicchio, arugala, onions, red chard, swisss chard, fennel, brussel sprouts, kale, two types of hot peppers, eggplant, cucumber, zucchini, and some kind of squash that started growing in the compost pile so we won't know what it is for a while yet. Oh, and herbs: besides those that overwintered, we'll have sage (two kinds), basil (two kinds), parsley (two kinds), marjoram, cilantro, marigold, cress, summer savoury, rosemary, and dill.

And we'll also have grapes again, damnit, and probably apricots and maybe even peaches -- the trees flowered, and I saw bees buzzing around them, so here's hoping..

We planted all of that over the last two weeks, which probably explains my sore back. Well, that and the weeding -- the thistles also survived the winter, curse them. There's still a little patch of the vegetable plot open, waiting for the heirloom tomatoes, and quite a lot of the shaded flower bed which will need ... something, but I don't know what yet. And some pots in the sunshine which I'm thinking of filling with morning glory and nastursium.

It turns out that watercress is a member of the nastursium family, that's what I learned yesterday. How about that?

Comments

[winterthunder.livejournal.com]

Can I move in with you? I'm suffering from an extreme lack of plantable dirt in my life. :D

You might consider cyclamen in the shady spots. They're a bit pricy, but they're perennial and they have lovely flowers in the spring and pretty foliage for the summer and fall.

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

How well does cyclamen handle cold weather? Like, seriously cold weather? I think of it as more southern, but I'm a gardening beginner ...

[winterthunder.livejournal.com]

Hmm, according to Wikipedia the hardier species can go down to -15ish.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclamen

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, that's not going to work for us then. Dang! it's so pretty.

But I have to figure if something that pretty and shade-loving is not a feature of local gardens already, there's probably a reason ...

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

And, er, whoops, that was me.

[djinnj.livejournal.com]

If your garlic/garlic chives have flat leaves, they are garlic chives. If they have flat folded leaves (sharp crease running up the middle, folds open like a book), then it's garlic. And garlic tends to get bigger than garlic chives, too, although the ones my parents got at the farm today are HUGE.

Things I like for shade 'cause that's about all we've got: primroses, hellebore (although I admit to not having any in the garden because they are expensive), and wild wood violets (those are all volunteers). Oh, bleeding hearts works for shade, too. There's a bunch of orchid type stuff which works for the shade garden as well. And I also like certain kinds of begonias but they're pretty much annual. In our previous house we also had lily of the valley and star of bethlehem. Oh, and we have wild rue anemone here which is very pretty and lasts longer than a lot of spring flowers, but I don't know if you can actually find it in a nursery. I get the feeling it doesn't travel well, although my mother managed to transplant some this spring.

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Hah! thank you. We have garlic, then. It's growing in the near-dark, too, and totally a volunteer. Weird, but I'm not complaining.

I just stuck some vinca in that patch where they are - hope they get along together.

Primroses are a great idea if I can find some that will handle the climate. Everyone around here uses bleeding hearts so I'm trying to avoid them, out of perversity. Violets are a little tender for our weather but I'll look out for them, because I love them so much. Orchid-ish would be lovely but again I don't know about the climate. And I just put in some lily of the valley, at least the tubers -- my fingers are crossed that it will do all right here and spread. Or course a raccoon may have gotten it already, that happens a lot ...

I don't think I've ever seen wild rue anemone. It sounds cool! Rue, the herb, is one of my favorite plants ever -- so pretty and distinctive, and so hardy, for an herb.

[blacksquirrel.livejournal.com]

Sounds lovely! I've never been able to keep lavender alive either in a garden or in an inside pot - any tips?

How do you prepare chard? We don't usually grow it, but we bought into a CSA this year and it will include chard.

I don't know if they work for peaches, but for apples there are little sleeves that you can tie onto each bud to protect the growing apple from bugs and birds - we don't like to use pesticides so we've never had edible apples by the end of the season. We may try the sleeve thing this year.

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Great icon! and hmm, lavender tips ... well, at least in this climate nothing but full sun will do. Really it has to be in the sun for every minute of daylight. Also, regular water while it's getting established but after that it likes its feet dry, so not too much water and sandy soil. Also, a good deep trim at the very beginning of the spring. Oh, and English lavender isn't as pretty as French but seems to be hardier.

Chard: I just use it like cabbage or celery, chopping it up for stirfrying or stews or soups. Mine always develops little holes from slugs or some other form of blight (because I too am pesticide-averse), which is fine if I wash it and cook it but look horrible in salad. You could use it in salad, though.

And the little sleeves sound like so much work! Let me know how it goes. Our last house had a plum tree, a pear tree, and an apple tree, and we lost about half of each crop to raccoons, birds, and bugs -- but half the crop was always enough for us anyway. I never bothered with anything more dire than sometimes throwing soapy water over them to discourage the worst of the insects and worms.

[blacksquirrel.livejournal.com]

Thanks - I took the icon pic the last time I was traveling in Provence. The lavender fields there are one of my fav things in the world.

So, wow - I think I actually managed to do every possible wrong thing when growing lavender - maybe I'll give it another try, now that I know.

Thanks for the chard suggestions!

I'll post if we do decide to go the sleeve route and let you know how it goes.

[cordelia_v]

Wow. You're a really serious gardener, sounds like. I mean, yes, I imagine that you don't think you are. But that is a much more ambitious list than I would ever come up with, left to myself. You must also have a good-sized plot, I'm thinking.

I can't wait to see it all, in August!

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Oh, I would call myself serious. I'm just not very skilled or talented.

We do have a decent-sized plot, mostly because previous owners used the entire back yard for food production so we had all this lovely dirt and the grape arbor ready to hand.

This is quite typical of Toronto immigrant households btw. Front yards are small and intended to impress the neighbors with displays of orderliness, diligence and piety mostly; women take care of them unless there is grass (mowing is men's business.) Back yards are, though, an entirely male domain, and there Torontonians engage in intensive farming -- it's that peasant mode of production you may have heard about in grad school.

This is, at least, true for my neighborhood and for new Canadians. Anglophone Canadians (and migrants from England, Scotland, and New Zealand) do not do this food-production thing, not at all. Some of my colleagues who have seen my back yard are quietly horrified -- for example my friend B., originally from New Zealand, who keeps giving me flowering things from her own garden and trying to teach me to behave more like a Canadian and less like my Portuguese neighbors.

There's a whole local geography of who shops at which garden centres and what kinds of plants they buy, too, which has kept me entertained as I've started to make gardens of my own over the last few years ...

Sorry, that was way more than you wanted to know. Anyway, the short answer is that I am very much looking forward to showing it to you!

[mincot.livejournal.com]

That's what happens here with the Vietnamese community--my back yard is a weed-filled collection of potholes from vegetable patches. I;m reclaiming it, both for vegetables and, eventually, a cottage garden with very little grass.

[aubrem.livejournal.com]

Wow, a lot going on there. Is there any chance you'll post pictures? I'm still battling spring weeds here in my garden. I've been sneaking in some planting though - perennial and annual flowers both, along with veg.

I'm very excited because we finally found a large, reasonably priced arbor for our red climbing rose. I need to take pics and start posting.

[mincot.livejournal.com]

Would you like to come and start work on my back weed patch (errr, embryonic garden)?

And if you have any raspberry shoots, wrape 'em up so they stay moint and send them my way!

[twotoedsloth.livejournal.com]

It turns out that watercress is a member of the nastursium family, that's what I learned yesterday. How about that?


That would explain why it tastes like watercress, wouldn't it...