Weekend at the Farm August 24 - 25, 2019

Arrived Friday evening and went home early afternoon on Saturday.  Dad's birthday party at Etoille on Saturday night.  Then I came back on Sunday and spent the night Sunday night.

• We have Airbnb guests next weekend, so I spent the weekend clearing out paths, weeding, etc. - basically doing the same thing that I always do but with the added urgency of knowing people will be there soon. 
• Saturday.  Bert came up on Thursday and bought a yard of soil mix for me.  I knew that was not going to be enough to fill up the long bed in the Vegetable Garden, but Bert is always worried that my dirt will sit on his trailer and rot the wood.  So I HAVE to unload all of it every time he hauls dirt home.Saturday morning I worked on that.  I got all of it off the trailer and into the raised bed in short order, about 45 minutes.  Sure enough, with the amount I had a couple of weekends ago and this weekend, I still need about another yard and a half.
• All my Edamame seeds have sprouted that I planted last weekend.  They sprang up fast!  The hairy vetch has not emerged yet except for one single seed.  
•  I sowed Kale, beet and turnip seeds in the bed that I filled.  I did some weeding.  More pine needles had dropped in my good spot, so I raked them up and spread them in several beds that I'm not going to plant.  I also sowed some lettuce seeds.  If it proves too hot for lettuce still, that's okay.  I have lots of lettuce seed, and I would be planting it in succession anyway.  Next time I'm there I will sow parsley and dill in my buckets.  Apparently voles really like sunflower roots because all my sunflowers had been eaten off right at the soil level.  They had finished blooming for the most part, so I'm not super-upset, but I was hoping to get some seed for the birds.
• The rest of Saturday was spent watering and weeding.
• Sunday - I was up by six and on the road a short time after that.  I was in Burton by 7:30 and started working.
• I tied plants back that were leaning into paths, mostly Philippine Lily stalks and ageratum.
• I worked on the dayflower weeds in the Rose Garden for a while.  I raked the Rose Garden.  I have a tendency to pull weeds and throw them on the ground wherever I'm working.  So the area really needed to be raked.
• I raked the Star Garden and tied back or cut plants that were leaning in.
• I spent some time on the area of the Star Garden that leads to the Rose Garden.  It looks much better now, all cleaned out.  
• I spent a lot of time weeding in areas of the Star Garden that I usually don't spend a lot of time on:  the Copper Canyon bed, the Bulb bed, the Ehrlicheer bed, the middle beds of the Star Garden, the Pink Muhly bed, the white Sweetshrub bed.  
• The armadillos have messed with everything.  It's maddening.  They infuriate me.
• This may be the best the Star Garden has ever looked in August. - despite the cursed armadillos.

Weekend at the Farm August 17 - 18, 2019

These are pretty hibiscus flowers on my Mellow Yellow Hibiscus. This plant really loves the heat.  This is a reseeding hibiscus.  I've decided it is not a perennial.  It throws off lots of seed, and I've concluded that it is reseeding itself every year.  I read on the Dave's Garden website that it does not set seed.  That is not true.  Every year it grows, but never in the same spot.

There was a little bit of rain last week based on the water levels in the rain barrels, but not much.  We need rain.

• Saturday morning I was up by 5:30.  Drank coffee for an hour or so waiting for it to get light outside. 
• I started in the Rose Garden.  I cleared out a few beds that I didn't get to last weekend.  The bed with the Fortune's Double rose is now clear and ready for the lycoris display to begin.  I planted a bunch of bulbs there last year. Perhaps they won't bloom this year - they are not fond of being disturbed, but I hope I get a few blooms at least.  I worked on the Noisette bed and the Valentine bed as well.  And, of course, I watered the whole time I was out there.
• The Ballerina roses were looking pretty ratty driving in to the entrance to the place, so I spent some time pruning them.  One of them had some pretty thick vines growing amongst it.  That vine comes up everywhere.  It grows on the trees on the neighbors' property, and it suckers like mad.  I cut away the vine and poisoned the cut stems with my oil can.  Cleaning up the Ballerinas took some time.  They could really use some tender loving care.  Next week I will mulch and fertilize.  I gave them a good watering.  
• Bert went to Papescapes to buy some more soil, but they were out. Disappointment!  I will have to wait until next week.
• Since I did not have fresh soil to finish my deep bed in the Vegetable Garden, I decided to prepare the 8x4 bed nearby.  I dug many shovel-fuls of dirt out of the bed and threw them in the deep bed.  Then I replaced those shovel-fuls with lots of the soil mix that I put in the deep bed last weekend.  Then I added 3 bags of compost that I bought at Buchanans.  Turned the soil to mix it all together.
• I weeded for quite a while in the shady part of the Star Garden.  I cut back the Indigo Spires down to the ground.  Hoping for one more great showing of flowers before the first frost.  I cleaned up the paths and raked.  Still needs some work, but looks much cleaner.
• I fed the bees some sugar water.  It's so droughty that I decided to give them a boost.
• Sunday.  Up early and out the door before 7:00.
• I started in the Rose Garden pulling a few weeds and beginning the watering regimen.  
• The pine needles have dropped along the trail, so I raked up three truckloads of them and spread most of them under one of the blackberry beds in the Orchard.  I saved several piles for later.  I did a bit of weeding while I was down there.  
• The best place to rake up pine needles has gotten overgrown with yaupon, so I got the loppers and cut a dozen or so down to the ground.  I poisoned the cut with my Remedy / diesel mix.
• I sowed 100 Tohya soybeans in the bed I prepped on Saturday.  This is a bit of an experiment.  I'm not sure if they will do well with a fall planting, I have only read about spring plantings of soybeans.  But green beans will do well with a fall planting, so we will find out in two and a half months.  They are ready to harvest in 78 days which puts us to into the first week of November.
• I weeded a section of the newest bed in the Vegetable Garden and then spread pine needles over it.  I don't want to mess with it for a couple of months, and pine needles keep everything down.  Next to that section I weeded, loosened the soil and spread hairy vetch seeds over the area.  Hairy vetch is a green manure, it is nitrogen-fixing.  I will plant two tomato plants in that spot in the spring.
• Went back down to the Orchard mid-morning and weeded the bed near the entrance which was crabgrass-choked.  I cleared out the area around the coneflower I sowed last winter.  I weeded around the trellis and spread some pine needles in that spot.
• I finally planted my Blue Mist flowers.  I have two that have been sitting in the front bed for many weeks. Their roots had grown out of the pots and into the ground.  I planted them in the Star Garden next to the Peggy Martin rose.  I surrounded them with pine needles for a little protection.  Planting things in August is not easy on plants.  While I was there I weeded on the other side of the path.  My Schoolhouse Lilies are already sprouting.  One of the bulbs had been uprooted by the armadillos, so I planted it in a sunnier spot nearby.  I've never liked where I planted those dozen or so bulbs many years ago.
• Can't believe I had the strength coupled with the desire, but I tied up all the canes of my Climbing Pinkie to the trellis.  This involved dragging out the ladder, cutting away lots of spent cannas (I probably should let them dry naturally to feed the rhizomes, but it was hot and I didn't want to climb amongst them) so I could grab all the rose canes.  Climbing Pinkie has thrown off 10 foot canes all over the place.  I wound them around and tied them off.  An armadillo has dug a burrow in that bed.  It's fresh.  How galling that one of those little bastards is living right in my garden.  I checked, and he wasn't in there.  They typically dig a dozen or so burrows within their territory, and they move around. 
• Next, I worked on the front beds.  I weeded, pruned my roses, cut away the seed heads of Giant Rudbeckia, cut back Verbena Bonariensis, gathered up dried unsightly debris, smoothed out the soil (armadillos really mess up the soil) and generally made everything look much better.  I'm really happy about the work in the front beds.
• Last gasp of effort - I planted an Alamo Vine (that I bought at Buchanan's on Friday) on the trellis in the Orchard.
• Drove in to work on Monday morning.

Bumble Bees on the Zinnias August 18, 2019

These big bumble bees are always active in my gardens.  They particularly love my salvias and my basil.  But they often land on my zinnias.

Weekend at the Farm August 10 - 11, 2019

• Saturday morning Bert drove to Papescapes and got me a yard and a half of their mulch / compost mix.  
• I spent the morning weeding in the Rose Garden, watering, fertilizing and spreading the soil mix.  I made good progress.
• For most of the morning while weeding, I made the mistake of trying to pull up the day flower by the roots which is extremely difficult to do.  Never have a I known a living thing so determined to survive.  It takes all my strength to pull up each day flower.  With a scourge as bad as I have, I think you should just yank up the tops so that it does not root at the joints or spread its seed.  But time after time I get absorbed in the task and try to be thorough.  Then hours have passed and I've only cleaned out a few beds. 
• There is a barely discernible change in the roses.  The days are getting shorter which means the average temperatures are getting gradually lower.  And the roses are responding.  The days are hot as blazes, but I can sense the change. 
• The zinnias and morning glories that I sowed last weekend have popped up.  I just love the miracle of seeds.  It gives me a little thrill that I have never stopped experiencing regardless of the many years that I've seeded my beds.
• I spent a little bit of time weeding in the Orchard.  I cleared out the only bed in the Orchard that does not have a fruit tree in it.  And I spread the seed from several dried out zinnia heads.
• I weeded the bed underneath the apple tree, a painstaking process since I have a hundred or so lily seedlings growing in that bed.
•  Jeff came over for dinner.
• Sunday.  I worked in the Rose Garden again.  Watering, weeding, fertilizing, mulching.
• I watered in the Long Border.
• I weeded in the bed where the hydrangea is gasping in the Star Garden.  The hydrangea is gasping for water, but the weeds were as happy as could be.  I cleaned out the bed and spread mulch.
• While I was in that part of the Star Garden, I pruned my blue Vitex trees pretty hard to remove all the seed heads.  
• Watered in the dry parts of the Star Garden.  Just a few more weeks dear plants, and we will be past the worst of summer!
• I weeded next to Peggy Martin rose with the intention of planting two blue mist flower plants that I bought ages ago and never planted.  But another weekend passed without getting them in the ground.  It's just as well.  The armadillos are so vicious, they would probably root them up.
• Cleaned up and drove to town to pick up my phone.  I left it in the grocery cart at HEB on Friday.  I stopped at Home Depot and bought some bamboo stakes.
• When I got home I started working in the Vegetable Garden.  With the soil mixture that I had left after mulching the Rose Garden, I filled up the long bed that Bert built for me last weekend.  I only had enough dirt left to fill it up about a quarter of the way.  But I used all the soil I had.  It is a very deep bed.
• I worked into the evening weeding and weeding and weeding.
• I sowed calendula and zinnia seeds in the Rose Garden and trained the sprinklers on them.
• Drove in to work on Monday morning.

Flowers Blooming Now August 3, 2019

Below, this is Obedient Plant.

The next two pics are butterfly weed.

Below, Rudbeckia Goldsturm.

Below, this is a flower from a Rock Rose.

Below, this is a wildflower that grows throughout my garden.  It is wild petunia.

Weekend at the Farm August 3-4, 2019

This picture is looking down on the top of an amaranth stalk.  This one, as evidenced by the pink-y tone of the leaves, is going to throw off pink seed heads.

This is the first time we have been here in three weeks.  We got back from Alaska last Sunday.  And, of course I had to work all week.  It was so good to be back in the garden.

• It didn't rain for the three weeks we were gone.  Before we left Bert accidentally left the water off in the Medicine Garden after he changed out a hose, and everything small was dead - my Columbine, etc.  The shrubs and trees were half dead.
• Dry, dry, dry everywhere.  So I started watering which is the usual activity in August anyway.
• I started early Saturday morning in the Vegetable Garden.  I pulled up the last of the tomato plants.  I usually pull them up sooner since they host nematodes.  As soon as they stop producing I pull them up, but I haven't had a chance until now.  I did lots of weeding (of course) and filled the cadet up full of weeds.  I fertilized the asparagus.  I raked, then sprayed herbicide.  I'm planning to get some compost next week or the week after to begin my fall and winter garden. 
• I sowed some more sunflowers, a packet of various varieties.
• The sunflowers are blooming.  The amaranth has gotten tall.  The morning glories that I sowed are all puddled on the ground even though I sowed them against an arbor.  Strange.  I stuck a tomato cage in the middle of them that they can climb.
• I weeded in the Star Garden next.  It was weedy, but not a disaster since I had worked so hard three weeks ago.
• I cleared a space in the long bed in the Star Garden and sowed some Heavenly Blue morning glories on a metal trellis.  I think I have enough time to have a show of them before the first frost.
• I sowed lots of zinnia seed in the Star Garden.
• I watched a Monarch butterfly lay eggs on my butterfly weed.  
• One of my La Marne roses has died.  And one is half-dead.  I dug up the dead one and trimmed back the other one.  Sowed zinnias in the spot where the rose had been. That rose was growing in a really large space, and I don't want to leave it empty for sowing flowers for springtime.  It will be too hard to keep weeded.  It's a really large area.  I'm not sure I want to grow roses, though.  La Marne was an excellent bloomer, one of the best I've ever had.
• Carol came over for dinner.  She got bit by a copperhead 3 nights ago.  On her heel.  That's my worst nightmare.  One thing I will say for her experience, it was dark and she was walking in Crocs to go turn off the hose.  She probably stepped on it or disturbed it pretty bad.  But she didn't see it. I'm terrified that I will see it strike and have not only a snake bite, but also a heart attack.  Because it will surely get me on the hand.  I'm always sticking my hand into vegetation. She said it felt like a wasp sting (which hurts really bad).  But when she got into the house and looked at it, she saw two puncture wounds.  And, her leg swelled up and got purple right away.  She drove herself to the emergency room.  She is 89 years old.  She's made of stronger stuff than my generation!
• Sunday.  I moved back and forth to the Rose Garden, the Medicine Garden and the Orchard as I continued to water.  But I spent the biggest part of the day working in the Orchard.  
• I weeded, weeded, weeded.  I spent a lot of time cleaning up the grape vines and blackberry vines.  The grape vines were draped all the way to the ground.  I cut them away so that I can see under them.  There are lots of grapes - green and half ripe, so hopefully soon I can gather enough to make jelly.  I think they need more than one week.  I wrapped and wove the blackberry vines around each other so that they were out of the paths.  And I cut lots of dead canes and pulled them out of the bramble.  It was cloudy today, so pruning my blackberries was not horrible like it usually is.  I cut my salvias down to the ground hoping to get another showing in the fall.  The bergamot was spent, so I cut it down to the ground.  Removed lots of dead vegetation.  I had the loppers with me, so I cut away a large-ish dead branch on my crabapple tree that has been bugging me for months.  I raked the paths.  Then I sprayed herbicide.  I fertilized a couple of the roses. I deadheaded my zinnias and spread the seed.  I spent most of the day working in the Orchard.  There are still lots of weeds and lots of clean-up as we head in to fall, but I made good headway.
• Bert replaced the boards in the 16 x 4 foot bed in the Vegetable Garden.  The sides are really tall now.  It will take a helluva lot of soil to fill it up, but once I've done that work I will be able to use this bed for all my veggies that grow under the ground like beets (which performed terribly this year), garlic, and onions.  
• I staked all my amaranth.  I have two varieties growing in the garden right now.
• The little agastaches that I planted before I left for Alaska have either been decimated by the voles or killed from lack of water.  The ones gasping look a little bit green at the bottom, so maybe if I keep them watered they will bounce back.
• After lunch I worked in the Star Garden.  A light rain started to fall, and because of it I was able to work until 4:30. I cut back some of my salvia, but I left some for the bumble bees.  They are crazy for it.  Weeded.  Spread seed from my Strawberry Fields Gomphrena.
• Bathed the dogs.  Bathed myself!  I was filthy, but I always am.
• Headed to work on Monday morning.

Yellow Butterfly Vine August 3, 2019

This is the first time I have grown this twining perennial vine.  I'm interested to see how well it returns next year, but it certainly seems vigorous.  I have it trained on a conveyor belt, and it has already climbed to the top.  It doesn't get its name from the yellow flowers, it gets its name from the shape of the seed pods.  A remarkable likeness!  It's blooming right now, and it's always great to have something blooming in the dead of summer.

Sunflowers in the Vegetable Garden August 3, 2019

I had several packets of sunflower seeds in my seed box that have been in there for years.  A month or so ago I sowed some in the Vegetable Garden.  They are in bloom and look very cheery.