A Weekend at the Farm Dec 31 - Jan 02 2011

This is a picture of pink Melody Dianthus. The dianthus in the Meolody series are my favorites because the flowers stand up on tall stems above the plant. The Dianthus is all that is blooming
in my garden right now.

Cool and sunny most of the weekend.

• Washed off the furniture on the porch and the doors along the front of the house, the side of the house and the door off the master bedroom. The get dusty and cob-webby.



• Sprayed herbicide in the Orchard, the Rose Garden, the Star Garden, and the driveway. I took advantage of the warmer weather and sunshine and sprayed because the weeds were really beginning to take over - as well as wildflower seedlings that were popping up in all the wrong places. Herbicides don't work in temperatures under 60 degrees.



• Raked the Orchard and pulled up the last of the chicken wire that I had staked to the ground to keep the armadillos away. Weeded. Looks much better.



• Raked the Rose Garden and weeded.



• Dug up some 'Blue Bottles', little muscari bulbs, also called grape hyacinths, and I transplanted them everywhere. These little bulbs are true survivors. Three years ago when I transplanted my Chrysler Imperial rose from the backyard in Houston into the Rose Garden in Brenham, there must have been a few bulbs in the soil. When I dug them up today, clustered around that same Chrysler Imperial, there must have been 300 - maybe more. Pretty overwhelming if you're faced with finding homes for them. I planted as many as I could and left the rest under the rose. If you don't thin them out they stop blooming. I planted some in all the rose boxes and finally stuck some in the grass. Blue Bottles do well naturalized in grass.



• Transplanted a few Philippine Lily seedlings from one bed to another.



• Raked the Shade Garden.



• Most of my time throughout the weekend was spent shredding leaves - raking and shredding. All the leaves have fallen off the trees now, so it's time to start raking. I made three huge piles of shredded leaves in the compost bin and next to it. Oak leaves make good compost! There are still a lot of leaves to shred. Next weekend I will do some more. It's hard work raking and shredding, but shredded leaves make such good compost and it makes pretty good mulch too. Not great mulch (too light weight) but good mulch if the alternative is no mulch. I have so much acreage to mulch that if I tried to purchase real mulch to cover everything I'd go broke.



• Ate from the garden quite a bit this weekend - lettuce in the sandwiches, radicchio salads, wilted mustard greens for dinner.



• Watered the citrus trees in the Greenhouse.


• Moved some blackberry plants that had tip rooted from their mother plants. I moved them to two beds in the Orchard that had only wildflowers growing in them last year. If a blackberry vine lays on the ground, it will root all along the branch. You have to be diligent about pruning blackberries or you will have a stickery, unruly bramble.