ragdall
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Post by ragdall on May 27, 2021 23:23:27 GMT
Last October I bought and planted more tulip and crocus bulbs than I usually would because I sensed that I might need more cheering up this Spring. The crocuses were lovely but are long gone. The tulips are bringing much pleasure to me now, and hopefully also to others passing on the street.
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Post by meganl on May 29, 2021 9:21:24 GMT
They look beautiful lass there is a house near me was abandoned for years it looked like something from a ghost story but every year the garden was filled with wild bluebells. Last year someone bought it and started doing it up they did a really nice job haven't been inside but the put pots of flowers all over, but I was a little sad that it would look just like any other managed garden in the town. The other day as i turned to drive up the hill I glanced across and had to stop the car to wipe away a tear for there were the pots of brightly coloured flowers but they were sitting on a beautiful carpet of wild bluebells. Whoever the new owner is has brought in the new but treated the old with respect. Your little bit sunshine will brighten many a persons day.
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ragdall
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Post by ragdall on Jun 10, 2021 7:55:24 GMT
Wonderful, Megan, that the new owners appreciate the wonderful wild bluebells too.
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ragdall
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Post by ragdall on Jun 10, 2021 8:21:06 GMT
The double tulips opened up.
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maeve
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Post by maeve on Jul 24, 2021 14:35:05 GMT
Sorry for this late reply, rags!
Your double tulips and other bulbs are gorgeous, and I'm sure they would be a comfort. We planted T. Mount Tacoma here and a single bulb has carried through for about 12 years. I hope to plant some doubles this fall. Seeing yours has reminded me to plan for it.
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ragdall
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Post by ragdall on Jul 25, 2021 11:19:47 GMT
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maeve
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Post by maeve on Jul 25, 2021 13:45:20 GMT
You're a good enough gardener for your yard to look lovely, feel peaceful, and attract various birds! What more does one need?
I try to remember to sprinkle bulb food in the Autumn (roots are forming), Spring (first sign of foliage), and end of bloom (forming buds for the next couple of years for many bulbs). You don't need much for each area. Sometimes I remember, other times I can't afford a big bag so rely on a scoop of good compost. Sometimes I do nothing and the bulbs survive rather than thrive, so a little bit of food does make a difference in flowering and longevity.
The double tulips (hybrid tulips in general) often don't last much past a year or two, but if they are of the group of sports from the Darwin tulips chances are reasonably good. It helps to plant them deeper than usual, and especially to provide good drainage, even to the point of adding grit or smallish crushed stone/gravel under and around the bulbs (helps discourage voles as well!) Garden experts used to advise sprinkling bone meal on the soil surface, a practice that invites animals like rodents and skunks to dig. (I once had a big raccoon decide to drag a 20 pound plastic bag of bone meal nearly twenty feet from where I had left it!) Nowadays, I think most experts nowadays understand the bonemeal needs to be down in the root zone soil to be accessible, so the granulated bulb food becomes more important on top since few of us remember to dig in bonemeal before we plant.
Since some stubborn weeds have taken over my native wildflower nursery bed, I've dug out nearly all of the many, precious little plants, and chucked each area into a big pot as they came out of the ground, until I had time to carefully remove weed roots and find the tiny dormant species like bloodroot and Dutchman's breeches. I had time yesterday afternoon and spent several enjoyable hours in our shaded tarp-covered greenhouse with chuckling chickens for company. I potted up bloodroot (little tapered red buds and roots), Dutchman's Breeches (small pea-size pearly bulb with the tiniest little new buds in clusters all around the base), primula veris (Cowslips), thirty or more pots of Phlox stolonifera, European and Canadian ginger. Since I was in there and already had the potting mix ready, I went ahead and also divided 4 varieties of Phlox subulata (Creeping or Cemetery phlox) I had bought in the spring and was growing on to propagate for the front yard bulb slope I have in mind. These ended up with the four mother plants and four each new starts. They should be well rooted before I need them- hoping to start that job this fall. I still have double bloodroot, three kinds of trillium, and Canada violets in the nursery bed. Once I've dig them out I can dig over the bed, painstakingly remove every weed root, and start again with fresh compost-rich soil in wood-framed raised beds (with hardware cloth screening bottoms to keep out the voles), and gravel paths. If that is ever achieved, I'll plant stock plants in the raised beds while all the others will go out to their planned beds in the woods and clearings.
Enough from me. Warm regards to rags and Megan.
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Post by meganl on Jul 27, 2021 6:11:59 GMT
Hope you are both safe from fires not much chance of them here it has been a summer of fog sometimes we get lucky and get a nice evening but the almost constant grey wet blanket can be very down casting but at least we are safe, no fires and no floods like the poor people in Germany had to suffer
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maeve
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Post by maeve on Jul 27, 2021 11:54:59 GMT
Hello Megan! I think both rags' area and mine are safe enough for now. We worried about such fires a month ago but current conditions are mostly wet- and as you mention those foggy, grey skies can be quite depressing. Let's hope for enough sun to allow plants to grow and folks to feel cheery.
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maeve
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Post by maeve on Jul 29, 2021 0:38:38 GMT
Working my way through the wildflower nursery.
Potted up Yellow Trillium, Toad Trillium, Double Bloodroot(28 gallon pots), European ginger, Canada Violet, Dutchman's Breeches, two more of a Japanese? primrose, and a dwarf Japanese form of Solomon's Seal.
Tired, me.
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ragdall
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Post by ragdall on Jul 29, 2021 9:35:01 GMT
Maeve, As always, your never ending activity is amazing.
Thank you for all the gardening tips. My bulbs survive, not thrive. The only thing I knew to do for them (from watching my father, who had hundreds of tulips when I was a child, was to work bone meal into the soil in the bottom of the hole when planting them. After that, they've had to fend for themselves. I'll have to try to find some granulated fertilizer and then try to remember to use it. I fight with an invasive weed that takes over my flower beds. The root system is massive and very sneaky. No matter how hard I try, I can never remove all of it. Sometimes I'm tempted to give up and allow it to take over. It has pretty blue flowers.
The housing area where I live is built on about 200 feet of glacial till (gravel). Drainage is not a problem, neither are voles. Beginning almost fifty years ago, we've had truckloads of various qualities of "topsoil" brought in to cover the gravel to plant lawns, vegetable gardens, and flowerbeds, whenever we could afford to buy it and had the time to spread it.
I no longer attempt to grow vegetables, can't keep up with weeding and thinning plants in the flowerbeds, and am grateful that the varieties of weeds that occupy at least 50% of my lawns are green.
Because my granddaughters are no longer interested in being paid to mow my lawns, this year I'm experimenting with not fertilizing my lawns and allowing them to grow longer times between mowings. The longer grass keep the moisture longer and needs less frequent watering. White clover is making a very successful comeback after it was almost wiped out by an overzealous Lawn Care person I'd hired a few years ago to eliminate weeds,(not clover). I'm hoping the clover will make the lawn healthier again.
Megan, many fires are still burning in my province. The worst ones are in the south. Those fires closest to where I live are far enough away to not be a threat and are not growing larger at this time. We haven't had the thick smoke we were getting before, either, which is a great blessing.
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maeve
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Post by maeve on Aug 1, 2021 12:10:54 GMT
Good morning, rags. We have the same invasive campanula family relation, with the stretchy stem roots leading to white carrot-shaped main roots, sometimes in clusters. It's one of the worst invaders in the wildflower nursery and azalea bed here, with Bishop's goutweed a very close second. I'm gradually digging it out of the garden beds, but it's a years-long project to remove flowering stalks, deplete seed from previous years, and remove all traces of roots. As soon as an area is declared clear it is given compost and 2-3 inches of shredded mulch is applied- with 4-5 layers of newsprint down first if an area was especially thick with weeds.
Your lawn recovery strategy will be better for the lawn in the long run. We cut high and never fertilize lawns here on our little farm, and seed with clover wherever bare spots begin. When an area is looking tatty we leave the grass clippings to fertilize it. When growth is lush we cut it more often but still keep it at about 3-4 inches, and collect clippings in the mower bag to use as nutritious mulch in vegetable and flower beds. Our grass rebounds beautifully from drought, while across the road they think clover is a weed and cutting down to bare soil (really- I see soil dust flying when they mow/use a weed wacker/strimmer) is a good thing, and their grass and soil suffers terribly. I hope you can find someone dependable to cut your grass according to your needs.
I can picture you and Steve bringing in soil. We're on glacial hills here, with hard blue glacial clay beneath up to at least ten feet deep of sand out back where the septic was installed, to deep clay topsoil up to two feet deep in front where the well is. Our first month in the poor old cape house the ground was frozen hard and to plant some narcissus and tulips out front (thinking, as you did, that we would need something cheery in the spring) I used a hatchet to chop several areas deep enough. We had no money for buying bagged soil (and have never been able to afford soil delivered by the truckload!) Lumps of manure from the dilapidated, poorly-made cow shed (so small the poor cow must have had to back out- no room to turn!) covered the bulbs. So frozen soil, frozen lumps of manure, and whatever fallen tree leaves I could scrape free on top. We garden people all do what we can do, wherever we are placed.
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maeve
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Post by maeve on Sept 15, 2021 18:20:39 GMT
It's a bit lonely posting here, but a small update garden-wise. I found a bag of fresh Mount Tacoma double tulips in town, and have Angelique and Menton tulips coming in the mail to go with them. Both peach trees fruited beautifully for the first time, and could be thinned even more next year- they are large and lovely.
We have strong winds and large hail possible with the storm heading our way so I picked the rest of the pears (Luscious and Seckle (2 variations), and two kinds of crabapples. Midseason Bellflower apples seemed not quite ready to pick but I'll check a few more, and I'll check Hidden Rose aka Airlieās Redflesh apples to see if they need to be picked before the winds start. It's a late season apple, so I'd rather leave it for another couple of weeks. Some of the Anne yellow rasps were ripe, with lots more to ripen or not before frosts begin. The Asian pears needed thinning so we'll take more care with that next year. They are still firmly clasping the branches. We have peaches- oh, such peaches from two trees with differing varieties. I have never seen such perfect peaches anywhere around here, so blessed!
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ragdall
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Post by ragdall on Sept 17, 2021 7:39:06 GMT
Hi Maeve, I hope the wind and hail missed your orchard. What an abundance of beautiful fruit you must have. I hope that you will be able to let it grow as long as needed, but also be able to pick everything in time to keep it safe.
In our climate, there are many berry bearing trees that feed the birds, but very few trees with fruit for human consumption. With the direction in which the climate has been changing, that may change also? The warmer seasons have been a mixed blessing. We are seeing more damage to our forests from insects that were previously controlled by lengthy spells of freezing weather.
The grocery store has big bins of "orchard run" apples and pears at decent prices. I like to buy those because they are not perfect and remind me of growing up in a warmer climate where the neighbourhood had abundant not-perfect fruit, for the picking. We children would climb the trees for older neighbours who didn't want to climb anymore. We'd pick for them for a share to take home to our families. Usually there was far more fruit than the owners could use. After they had all they wanted, the rest of the fruit on the trees was ours for the picking.
I'm in love with double flowering tulips and will try to get more bulbs this year. I'm not particular about variety as long as the bulbs are a good size and look healthy.
Winter is coming. There was frost in some parts of our town last night. On my thermometer it went down to +3 Celcius, (about 37 F). My Green Ash trees have all turned yellow. The Pine Siskins have been pecking away at the seeds on the one female Green Ash. Yesterday afternoon very strong gusts of wind scattered yellow leaves across my entire back yard. When I was out this afternoon looking for furnace filters, I noticed that the local hardware store had a fall bulb display. It seems to me the prices took a huge jump from the last time I bought bulbs? Prices on almost everything are much much higher now. I'll wait a bit and check prices in other stores. I still have lots of time to plant bulbs. The ground usually doesn't freeze until November.
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maeve
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Post by maeve on Sept 17, 2021 14:41:32 GMT
Hello, rags! Yes, we got the rain but no real wind or hail, thank goodness. I'm cutting up and freezing paste tomatoes and peaches a few quarts at a time. I'll probably do the same with at least some of the apples so they'll keep for winter pies and crisps, and perhaps sauce the rest. Still thinking hard how best to use the Seckle and Luscious pears. I like them best for fresh eating, but we do not have very good winter storage- our basement is 10-20 degrees too warm although it's heated only by a freezer's heat output. Maybe I'll freeze sliced pears for pear tarts and gingerbread cakes and can some for winter meals... or just can them all? Hmmm Lots of peeling either way. Got to get them put by before it's time to deal with 6(?) varieties of potatoes. Lovely fruit harvesting memories. Plants and bulbs are much more expensive this year, yes. I find the best quality, information and pricing for bulbs at John Scheepers and their wholesale sister company Van Engelen (USA shipments only, but excellent for exploring varieties you want to consider). If nothing else, their Horticultural Tips page has a wealth of good information, including Stinze Plantings (currently being updated so not available)- which I want to apply to our ratty, hilly front yard. Edited to add one source I've not been to but shows as available in BC: CostcoI am NOT ready for cold.
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