A Day at the Farm 12/26/2011

Cold and wet.

• Planted 30 Oxblood Lilies that my sister gave me for Christmas. Their common name is School House Lily. They are often found growing beside the remains of old school houses and other long-gone public buildings due their ability to suffer from neglect and continue to grow and multiply. She gave me pink ones and red ones. The pink ones are a sport of the red ones, not sure how well they do as compared to the red ones. We will see. I planted some of them in the Rose Garden bed near the entrance, both at the front of the entrance and just inside the entrance to the garden.
• Planted 3 Crinum Powelii 'Roseum' in the Long Border, also bulbs that my sister gave me for Christmas.
• Planted a Viburnum macrocephalum Sterile in the Star Garden that I purchased on line from Martha's Secret.
• Planted 2 Double Pink Altheas that my neighbor gave me, rooted from one of her plants.
• Quick trip, looked around and left the same day. Crocuses are popping up from the ground. Seven Sisters Daffodils popping up. Spring will be grand!

A Trip to the Farm Dec 7-10 2011

Took 3 days off and went to the farm. Cold.

• Planted 200 Spanish Bluebells (hyacynthoides hispanica 'excelsior') Most of them were planted down the hill alongside the boardwalk where I already have 400 planted. It will be a beautiful spring.


• Mulched plants in the Wave Garden and the Long Border.


• Fertilized the Vegetable Garden with liquid fertilizer.


• Fertilized the Dianthus in the Star Garden.


• Finished a bed that I started last weekend.


• Transferred about 6 clumps of bearded irises to the new bed. I moved them from the Bulb Bed. I moved them to make room for my Big Daddy Hydrangeas.


• Moved 3 Big Daddy Hydrangeas from a bed that sits in full sun (by the dining room) to the Bulb Bed (that sits in dappled sun all day). They have been growing in the wrong spot for 3 years, so they were very heavy! I found a baby copper head in the wheel barrow after I lifted up one of the hydrangeas.


• Built a new bed in front of the gate by the shed. Planted 30 of the remaining Spanish Bluebells.


• Planted 6 Bluebells in front of the house next to the Franziska Kreuger rose.


• Pulled up all the chicken wire that I had staked to the ground in the Orchard. It was protecting the beds in the Orchard from the armadillos. Unfortunately, it is very hard to weed the beds so I pulled it all up.


• Planted two "Pink Cloud' Beauty Bush (Kolkwitzia amabilis) in the bed where the Big Daddy Hydrangeas had been. My mother gave them to me for my birthday. I'm very excited about them. They are dense, arching shrubs that grow to 10 feet with pink flowers with yellow throats. I don't know anyone that has these shrubs growing.


• Tried to move my Harlequin Glorybower tree to one of the new beds I built. I had it growing in a pot. My husband and I picked it up and put it in the wheelbarrow. But as soon as I started to push it forward it fell out of the wheel barrow and the little tree snapped right in half at the base of the tree. I was very upset! I planted the stub anyway. Hopefully it's a fighter!


• Weeded - always!


• The wildflower seeds are doing fine. Can't wait for the spring! Also the sweet peas I planted look very healthy. It was a good idea putting chiken wire around them. They are climbing up the wire and - no rabbits nibbling away at them!


• Still haven't shredded any leaves yet. But all the leaves have not fallen yet. I will shred some next weekend. I have to replenish my compost pile.


• Watered the lemon and tangerine in the Greenhouse.

New Arbor

It still needs to be painted, but it was built in a day. I'll be able to train a vine on it once spring arrives.

Weekend at the Farm 12/03-04/2011

Arrived Friday evening. Gray and rainy. Rainy is good! We need the rain.

• Built a new bed. Actually, it is an expansion of the bed where the 5 La Marne roses are growing alongside the driveway.


• Planted about 35 Narcissus Avalanche (the commone name is Seven Sisters) in the new bed, and I planted 15 more in the Rose Garden.


• Planted 100 Crocus Tommasinianus in the new bed also.


• Planted 25 Narcissus odorus Linnaeus (the common name is Bacon and Eggs) in the Star Garden.


• Began building a new bed, but my husband's saw gave out and he couldn't finish cutting down cedars for my flower bed edging.


• My husband built an arbor in the front of the house and the final gate to close off the yard to the critters. It's not totally cut off, of course. An animal can squeeze between posts in several places, and also under all the gates. But the yard is vastly more closed off than it was before.


• Weeded, weeded, weeded.


• Turned off all the sprinklers. It's supposed to rain again this week.


• Mulched in the Infinity Garden.


• Made smoked turkey leg and collard green gumbo with turkey we smoked and collards from my garden.


• Moved the lemon tree and the tangerine tree into the Greenhouse. It's supposed to freeze this week.


• The farmer that owns the land next to ours caught 5 hogs in a trap last weekend and there was one in the trap this weekend.
  

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A Weekend at the Farm 11/24-27/2011

• Thanksgiving day was really lovely. We ate outside under the arbor. Small group, Josh in California and Josh and Blake at Josh's folks' house.
• Had more dirt delivered to the house. Jim delivers my dirt. A sweet older gentlemen that was born, raised, and still lives in Burton. Always wants to talk for a while which is okay with me.
• Planted 50 Gladiolus Byantus Communus in one of the new beds I built last week. These are small bulbs that bloom hot pink flowers. The flowers look similar to the gladiolas that are sold in the store, but they are smaller. These are the species glads that grow wild on the hillsides of Turkey.
• Built a new bed and planted the other 50 glads in that bed. Blake gave me these bulbs for my birthday.
• Finished filling a bed that I started last week.
• Moved 10 Philippine Lily seedlings into the new bed from a bed that has lots of things growing in it that are not compatible with the lilies.
• Dug up some bluebonnet seedlings that were growing in various paths and moved them into the Rose Garden and the Star Garden.
• Fertilized the Erlicheer Daffodil bed.
• Mulched part of a bed in the Orchard that was prone to weediness.
• Weeded the Orchard.
• Adjusted the sprinklers, reduced the number of days and times to water.
• Rained hard on Saturday. Sat on the porch and watched the rain.
• Was alone on Friday. For dinner I ate some Swiss Chard from the garden.
• Got really cold on Sunday. I'm ready for winter, the sooner it gets here the sooner it's gone.
• Leaves are beginning to fall. I will start shredding next weekend and putting them in the compost pile. The leaves won't be too bad this year. The oaks didn't leaf out too much due to the drought. And there are hardly any acorns. The deer will suffer this winter.
• Left early on Sunday.

A Weekend at the Farm 11/19-20/2011

Sowed the last of my wildflower seeds: BabyBlue Eyes, Ox Eye Daisy, California Poppy, Golden Yarrow, Tickseed. It will be a beautiful spring.

Planted 200 Naples Garlic bulbs that Josh got me for my birthday. Planted in various beds.

Weeded and weeded.

Watered the Greenhouse Gardens.

Raked some fallen leaves.

Cleaned the house.

Mulched the shrubs along the Boardwalk.

Bulbs are beginning to pop up out of the ground - Grand Primo, Erlicheer, Montbretias, Hoop Petticoats, Rolf Fiedler Star Flowers, irises - spring! spring! spring!

A Weekend at the Farm 11/5-6/2011

Hard to believe, but we had a hard freeze in Burton! It happened a full month earlier than the average first freeze date. All my vines, annual flowers, and tender perennial vegetation died. This year has been the worst! I thought we would finally get some gorgeous weather that would create a beautiful fall garden - and what did we get? A freak cold snap that killed everything. The worst drought in memory and now an early freeze.

• Pulled up my green bean plants because they froze. Nematodes, but not too bad.


• Buried orange peel in the vegetable boxes. The oranges came from my tree in the back yard in Houston. Many dozens of oranges on my tree.


• Mulched some of my roses in the Rose Garden.


• Mulched all the fruit trees except for the peach trees.


• Weeded, weeded, weeded.


• Saturday built a long bed about 35 feet long and 4 feet wide and a smaller bed about 5 x 5 in the Star Garden. Lots of work! The long one has a sprinkler right in the middle of it which will have to be put on an extension. All the soil I bought is gone.


• Turned the soil in the rose boxes where the Ballerina roses are growing and sowed two packets of mixed wildflower seeds.


• Sowed California Poppy, Rocket Larkspur, and Ox Eye Daisy in the Rose Garden and the new beds.


• Mulched the Anacachoe Orchid Tree.


• Cleaned the bird baths and filled them with water.


• Filled the bird feeders.


• Watered shrubs in the Greenhouse Garden.


• Planted 1015 onion sets in the Vegetable Garden and planted the leftover onions in one of the beds I built last week.


• I was so tired Sunday! I wore myself out on Saturday. Left about 3:00 on Sunday. Took a nap at home.

Pennyroyal

Pennyroyal is in the mint family. It is a very pretty spring green color, very cheery. As you can see from the pictures, it makes a thick blanket of green. Mine is growing in partial shade. In Texas, an herb that normally should grow in full sun can grow very happily in partial shade because the sun is so brutal here. Exceptions to that rule are flowering herbs. Flowering herbs won't bloom profusely in partial shade.

Pennyroyal is a medicinal herb. Tea made from pennyroyal is an abortifascient. (It will cause a fetus to abort.) Very powerful stuff.

If you let pennyroyal creep out into your garden paths, it will emit a wonderfully minty smell when you walk over it and crunch it under your feet.

Aztec Sweet Herb

Aztec Sweet Herb is a perennial ground creeper. Mine is growing in a shady place, and it seems to be very happy. This plant is 1000 times sweeter than sugar, but the camphor content is so high that it cannot be used as an artifical sweetener. Use of this plant can be traced back to the times of the Aztecs as a treatment for coughs, colds, asthma, and bronchitis.

The leaves are tasty to chew, although the camphor flavor is certainly noticeable.

Artemesia in the Herb Garden

This is "Powis Castle' Artemesia. Artemesia is one of the most useful non-flowering plants to have in the garden due to its silver color. So pretty. Great in a pastel border or a night garden or a white garden. It is also pretty planted in dappled shade such as the location above. I have some growing in the Long Border and in the Infinity Garden.

Its use as a medicinal herb (Wormwood) has fallen out of favor. It was the key ingredient in the liquor absinthe. Wormwood is now known to have serious side effects.

Views of the New Fence

Views of the Garden

Pink zinnias, pink Autumn Sage, and Pink Muhly Grass.

The Infinity Garden is finally starting to perk up after a brutal summer. I lost a lot of my medicinal herbs, but next summer I'll give it another go.

Blue Fortune Agastache, red salvia, hollyhock seedlings, and Cassian Fountain Grass.

Cosmos, Pink Autumn Sage, grasses, and Pink Muhly.

What's Blooming Now - White Mist Flower 10/29/2011

The White Mist Flower is starting to open - it is a fall bloomer. It is a huge favorite of bees. This plant dies to the ground in the winter, and comes back from the roots. In the spring it can be cut back to the ground. It gets about 3 feet tall and wide.

A Weekend at the Farm 10/28-30/2011

Monarchs on Blue Mist Flower.

What a beautiful weekend! Perfect weather (but no rain). I came up on Friday morning by myself, and my husband joined me on Saturday. Friday I didn't do much. Watched reruns on TV and laid around. Had 5 yards of soil and 5 yards of mulch delivered.

• Decided the spinach seeds I had were no good because none of it sprouted. So I bought another package and planted it on Sunday.




• Weeded the Vegetable Garden. It looks good! Everything is healthy looking.




• Picked some green beans. Next week all of it will be ready to pick. Fall is a good time to plant green beans because they ripen more slowly. In the spring, one weekend they will be too thin to pick, but the next week they will be too big to eat. Not so with fall plantings.




• The garlic has all sprouted.




• The parsley seeds I sowed two weekends ago has sprouted.




• Spent Saturday building a big bed in the Star Garden. The star formation is officially gone. I added more flower bed onto the plan and it is no longer a star shape. Now that the yard is fenced I am expanding. My intention is that the entire area become garden with gravelled paths wandering throughout.




• Spend Sunday building a bigger bed adjacent to the roses that line the driveway.




• Planted 3 Dwarf Flowering Almond shrubs in the bed I built on Saturday. Prunus glandulosa "Rosea" I'm excited about these shrubs! They are unusual, no one has them that I have ever encountered. In between the shrubs I planted 16 Grand Primo daffodil bulbs.




• In the other bed I seeded yellow yarrow, purple coneflower, and lance leaf coreopsis. The purple and yellow will be pretty together.




• Adding those beds was a lot of work! One is about 35 feet and one is about 25 feet, both are about 4 feet wide. Work! Used the rest of my compost.




• Deadheaded the roses.




• Deadheaded the white butterfly bush.




• Sowed Baby Blue Eyes seeds on the ground under the cedars and in one of the beds that leads to the Rose Garden.


• Sowed McKana's Giant Columbine seeds in the same bed where I sowed the Baby Blue Eyes.


• Adjusted the sprinklers.


• Read the book my sister gave me for my birthday - The Founding Gardeners. It is a book about the gardening passions of the Founding Fathers. Fascinating.


• Sowed California Poppy seeds in the Orchard in the Blueberry bed and one of the Blackberry beds.


• Mulched the Debutante Camellia, the Desert Willow, the Eve's Necklace, some of the herbs in the Infinity Garden, and various plants in the Star Garden.


• Watered here and there.


• Enjoyed the weather. Glorious.

Hemlock in the Garden

I grew this Hemlock from seeds I bought from Richters. Pretty leaves for such a deadly plant.

In ancient Greece hemlock was used to poison condemned prisoners, the most famous of which was Socrates (who was condemned to death in 399 BC for impiety). Plato described Socrates' death in the Phaedo:

The man...laid his hands on him and after a while examined his feet and legs, then pinched his foot hard and asked if he felt it. He said "No"; then after that, his thighs; and passing upwards in this way he showed us that he was growing cold and rigid. And then again he touched him and said that when it reached his heart, he would be gone. The chill had now reached the region about his groin, and uncovering his face, which had been covered, he said - and these were his last words - "Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius. Pay it and do not neglect it." "That," said Crito, "shall be done; but see if you have anything else to say." To this question he made no reply, but after a little while he moved; the attendant uncovered him; his eyes were fixed. And Crito when he saw it, closed his mouth and eyes.

A Weekend at the Farm 10/22-23/2011

Beautiful weather, but no rain unfortunately. It clouded up on Sunday morning, but nothing happened. Drove to the farm directly from work and forgot my camera at home, so I used my phone to take these pictures.

• My husband began building a fence around the side yard. This is very exciting to me because it will keep the armadillos and rabbits out. It is not tall, but it doesn't need to be tall. Two boards and some rabbit wire is all I need. He got the fence completely built, only the rabbit wire on half of it is left undone. A lot of work! It will need to be painted. I will do that in a few weeks. Pictures below.


• Planted (almost) the last of the fall vegetable garden. Still need some 1015 onions. Planted 3 Savoy Ace cabbage and 3 Early Round Dutch cabbage - that's a lot of cabbage for a non-cabbage eater! Planted a Cardoon Gigante. Cardoon is a very pretty plant, similar to artichoke. Deeply notched leaves and silver colored. It's a perennial. The flowers are edible. Planted some mustard greens. What can I say? I'm from the south. Collards and mustard greens, is there anything better?


• The garlic is already popping up - so cute!


• Planted 4 perennial Creeping Marjoram in the Infinity Garden and 4 cilantro in the Herb Garden.


• Worked in the Infinity and the Herb Gardens cutting away dead debris, mixing in some compost. Raked the Infinity Garden. Looks much better. Debris is always falling from the trees.


• Raked the Rose Garden.


• Weeded, weeded, weeded. Getting rid of the last of the summer weeds and watching the cool weather weeds start to show up...


• Planted some Allysum seeds.


• Planted some Sweet Delight and Sweet Dream Sweet Peas in the Orchard and the Wave Garden. Surrounded them with chicken wire staked to the ground.


• Planted some Fordhook Giant Hollyhocks in the Orchard and surrounded them with chicken wire. Rabbits love sweet peas and hollyhocks.


• Watered various plants. Next summer I will have to rig up something more effective for the Greenhouse gardens. Water coverage is poor.


• Tired of the moles! We bought some poison pellets. I came upon a mole as he was pushing dirt out of a hole, the little bastard. I poured some poison pellets down the hole and covered it up with a rock (per the instructions). I feel kind of sad about poisoning the little creatures, but they wreak havoc on the root systems of my plants. I never dreamed, when we built this house, how much of a battle I would be waging against nature! Armadillos, Leafcutter Ants, Moles, Rabbits, and Deer.


• Worked a long time in the Star Garden. I cut back lots of Fireworks Gomphrena that had absolutely gone insane! You couldn't walk on the paths because it completely covered them. I cut off many of the seed heads and I am drying them on a cookie sheet. I cleared away Prairie Aster that was crowding the bearded iris. I cleared out verbena that was dead. Looks much better.


• Had the neighbors over for dinner Saturday evening. After dinner we sat in the screened-in porch in rocking chairs and enjoyed the beautiful evening.


• Debra (our neighbor) brought me over a cutting of double pink Althea she had rooted. A treasure! I'm excited about it.
  

I will paint the fence forest green in a couple weeks.

Armadillos can dig under the fence, but they have to really want what's inside to go to the trouble.

I have a lot of painting to do!

What's Blooming Now - Red Salvia greggii 10/21/2011

This Salvia greggii is hanging on in a determined fashion. The armadillos are always rooting around in it, so it is not growing as robustly as it normally would. The flowers are a vivid red. Salvias are rabbit and deer resistant. The leaves have a very, very strong smell which I find to be very pleasant, sort of similar to sage - they are in the same family.

What's Blooming Now - Barbados Cherry 10/16/2011

Barbados Cherry is a Texas native. It blooms in the fall, and the flowers are followed by large red berries that are edible (and much loved by the birds). There is a miniature version of Barbados Cherry on the market. I also grow that one, but I am not very impressed. As the name implies, it stays very small. I'm not sure what use it has in the landscape, it seems pretty insignificant to me because it stays so small. The miniature has a nice rounded form which requires no trimming. I have not figured out how one would use it effectively in a garden. The leaves are tiny and light green in color, the flowers are small, and the berries are small. All in all, it is not a showy plant in miniature. The large Barbados Cherry has larger leaves and they are a nice dark green. Both versions are very slow to come back after winter. In my zone 8b garden the plants come back from the roots, not the branches, so I cut mine back to the ground after winter is over.