March 16 - 17, 2022

 

These are Pearlbush flowers.  Pearlbush is a very early spring flowering small tree / large shrub.  

• Wednesday.  Worked.
• I pruned grape vines during lunch.  I am about 2/3 completed.
• Thursday.  Vacation.
• I cleaned out the Copper Canyon bed in the Star Garden.  Cut back all the Copper Canyon and Cigar Plant.  Raked.  Spread mulch.
• I cut back all the grasses into little mounds throughout the shady part of the Star Garden.  And I cut down Philippine Violet stems.  They will come up from the roots.  Mulched where I worked. 
• Weeded.
• Planted some Pentas.
• I cleaned out the milk and wine crinum bed - cut away dead crinum vegetation and cut back the pink Turks Cap.  Scraped out all the old leaves and weeds.    
• I cleaned out the Indigo Spires bed in the Star Garden.  Began mulching but didn't finish.  
• I did some mulching in the Rose Garden.  
• Bert put wire fencing around the entire Rose Garden along the outside of the decorative wood fence and a low barrier across the entrance. This is a major improvement.  I am expecting a huge decrease in armadillo destruction.  This is a game changer!
• Turned the compost pile.
• Pinched side growth off my tomatoes.  
• I have been watching my Texas Kidneywoods looking for new growth, and I see some now.  I planted them last fall, and they are doing fine.  I planted one outside the Vegetable Garden and one in the wild bed in the Rose Garden.  
• The altheas have the smallest hint of green bursting forth.  Eve's Necklace also is greening up.  Spring is such a miracle. 
• My Nasturtium seeds finally sprouted.  I had assumed they were not going to germinate because the seed was old.  But I saw them finally pop up in the Vegetable Garden after what seemed to be many weeks. 
• I planted 3 Comfrey in the Medicine Garden.  I love comfrey.  The leaves are long and wide, and the flowers, while not super showy, are very pretty when you are looking closely at them.  And it is a medicinal.  I love useful plants.
• I planted a peach scented sage in the Star Garden.  
• I prepped 3 areas in the Vegetable Garden with fertilizer and compost.  I planted 2 Black Beauty eggplant.  They like it hot, and it is still pretty cool.  But I'm never sure they will still have eggplant for sale if I wait to buy it.  It might as well suffer in my garden if I plant it now rather than in a nursery.  Sowed a packet of yellow squash.
• I sowed some snake bean Chinese Python seeds on the arbor in the Vegetable Garden and along the fence line.  This is a vine that grows a long bean that looks like a green snake.  It is supposed to taste like green bean.  I'm growing it just for fun.
• Sowed some hot pink flowering buckwheat here and there in the Vegetable Garden that I will turn over into the soil before it sets seed (for green manure).
• I planted 8 Stella de Oro daylilies, some in the Star Garden and some in the Rose Garden.  Stella is kind of common, that's true, but that's because she is such a good performer. 
• Sprayed herbicide in the Orchard and here and there in the Star Garden.
• I cleaned out dead winter debris in the Orchard for a bit and pulled some weeds.  
• I sowed some seeds in the Rose Garden - balsam, cleome and Chinese Wool Flower.