Time at the Farm. March 13 - 16, 2022

 

I can't get enough of this Colonial White Verbena.  Absolutely love it!

I arrived on Sunday evening.  Bert was already here.  Monday vacation. 

• I covered up all my tomatoes and a couple of other frost tender plants that I already put in the ground.  It was to drop below freezing during the night.  I have taken to planting some annuals, last year for the first time and again this year.  They are colorful and, being annuals, their bloom season is very long.  I try to plant reseeding ones, but I am not consistent with that.  This year I have almost no spring wildflowers.  I just didn't want the snarl of them in the gardens.  The decision to sow seeds for spring wildflower blooms was last fall and early winter, and I didn't sow them.  I wanted room to plant other things, and if I have wildflowers everywhere I can't plant anything until they are finished blooming so I can yank them up.  But annuals and perennials need to get in the ground in the early spring so they can get established before the heat of summer.  So.  Here I am in early March with virtually no early color in the garden which is kind of different for me.  
•  Sunday.  I pulled all the covers off my plants.  I expect no more freezes this year.  It could happen, but I'm betting against it.
• I worked in the Rose Garden all day.  I cleared most of the beds.  I pulled out leaves stuck amongst the branches of plants, pulled weeds, smoothed soil and mulched.  In the beds with the oregano, I started digging it all up, but eventually I decided to shear it down to soil level.  So I kept most of it, but it looks very neat now.  All the sticks and uneven mess is gone.  I mulched everywhere I worked.  I planted some red pentas, pink pentas and some pink cleome.  This cleome variety does not set seed.  It gets bushy and stays fairly short.  I pulled up a lot of my chicken wire enclosures and stuck them in the ground on the outside of the fence until Bert is ready to armadillo-proof the Rose Garden. I pulled up the chicken wire enclosures so that I could clean out the beds and spread the mulch.  It looks really good in there even though I am not quite finished.  That is all the work that will happen in that garden on this trip. 
• I dumped all the debris in an erosion spot.     
• A tiger swallowtail was floating around and sipping at the verbena while I was out there.  The tiger swallowtails are always the first swallowtails to appear each spring.  They are so beautiful.   
• I planted a lemon verbena, a pineapple sage and some chives in the Kitchen Herb Garden.  
• I planted 2 bee balm in the Star Garden.
• I planted an Aztec Sweet Herb in the Medicine Garden.
• I spotted a hole under the fence that surrounds the air conditioning units (and closes off that section of the Star Garden).  I had seen a very little bit of armadillo activity in the Star Garden since our barricades had been erected, and I found the entrance!  I put a trap in front of it.  Maybe we will catch the little devil.  
• I worked steady from 8:00 until 5:30 without a rest.  Worn out!  
• Monday.  Up early, coffee on the front porch.  No armadillo in the trap.
• In the morning I worked on the Long Border.  I have cleaned out and mulched about a third of the Long Border in weekends past, but it is large and it is a multi-day effort.  I raked out leaves, cut back salvia stalks, weeded.  I spread mulch everywhere I cleared.  I got another third completed.
• I cleaned out the bed at the Rose Garden entrance.  I didn't do any mulching in there. 
• Spent about 20 minutes in the Shade Garden clearing out white snakeroots stems and picking up fallen limbs.
• Next I worked on the back beds.  I finished weeding and mulching the Black and Blue sage bed.  I cut back the three Thryallis.  I cut back the grasses along the back walkway. 
• I planted 4 tomato plants in the Vegetable Garden.  Two Beefmaster, one Purple Cherokee and one German Johnson.  I planted 3 of them in buckets and one in the ground.  Mulched around all of them.  
• Turned the compost pile.   
• The last thing I did was spray herbicide in the Water Garden, the Vegetable Garden, the Shade Garden, around the pool area, and the Star Garden.  I didn't want to do it because I was tired, but it really needed to be done.
• Headed home about 5:00.