30 Saturday Jan 2010
Posted in garden, gardening, roses, Uncategorized
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I lied. Here is another way I fill those empty holes -- potted plants!
I have been meaning to write this for a while. This is my garden manifesto and the one overarching philosophy I seem to have for gardening—-no holes.
What does this mean? Well, sit back, and I will tell you.
Wherever you see dirt, plant something.
That is it. That is my big philosophy and design mantra. Plant things where you have holes.
The most fabulous way to fill a hole is with a rose.
Ta da.
30 Saturday Jan 2010
Posted in garden, gardening, roses, tomatoes, Uncategorized
Niece and nephew helping ( I think.)
Niece comes to visit for an afternoon, but I have to plant the roses. She doesn't garden. But she says she will help even though she is wearing white pants!
Nephew soaks the roses in a bucket. You are supposed to soak the roots a few hours prior to planting.
My new Austin Roses arrived in a box today. They are three of them, bare root, scraggly ones, but large like they usually are. They are in a box in the garage until I can plant them tomorrow. I wonder how they will grow. Where will I plant them? I will probably dig up that Terrible Tomato–yes, it is still alive. My brother explained its unbelievable lifespan as “determinate” vs. “indetermiate” plants. This must be an indeterminate tomato because it has never died despite the winter. It even had three tomatoes on it, but they just now rotted and erupted. Weird. Anyway, I will rip it up and plant the Queen of Sweden there. Oh no, I didn’t buy that one. I bought, Jude the Obscure, Harlow Carr and James Galway — I love those very British names. I love Thomas Hardy so Jude the Obscure was a perfect rose. (Queen of Sweden wasn’t recommended for my climate. Oh my!) Anyway, too bad they didn’t have Tess of the D’Urbevilles or Charlotte or The Lady of the Lake — I’m sure I would have bought those too.
P.S. As you can see from the above photos, I had some help planting the roses. That was very nice since i did not want to leave them in the garage in a box any longer than I had to. I think my niece and nephew survived. I hope my rose did, too!
20 Wednesday Jan 2010
Posted in garden, gardening, roses, Southern California Rain
Today my garden soaks up the rain. The palm trees whip the sky and the cold drizzle shines the leaves of roses and society garlic, pincushion flowers and pink pom pom flowers on groundcover that I can’t remember the name of — sea foam, maybe?
It is a good day for the garden.
The old dog dug a gigantic hole in an unused bed. (Smiley face.) Still a good day for the garden.
Millions of little seedlings mass in the outside-the-wall flowerbed. These will grow to fringed purple poppies, orange mariposa poppies and Toadflax–all spring favorites. Right at the lamp post six or seven daffodil shoots are now pushing through the once dry dirt, enjoying the rain, I am sure. The Hollyhock I planted where my Blue Hibiscus tree died is revived, tiny knots of buds forming along its stem. I hope it grows tall as the tree it replaced, one giant HollyHock as tall as the sky.
I want to buy fertilizer and sprinkle it everywhere. I am waiting for a break in the rain. When this happens, I may try to clean up my vegetable patch, now overgrown with Swiss Chard I’ve never eaten, spinach the snails have indulged in, six or seven snap peas straining to grow upwards. I have only supplied a few bamboo sticks that haven’t been supportive enough to keep them safe from this wind.
El Nino? La Nina? The weatherman says this rain won’t be enough to make up for three years of drought. But let’s not dwell. Let’s watch the garden and say,
Hurray for the rain!
05 Tuesday Jan 2010
Posted in Uncategorized
Another serious helper.
It has been a while since I’ve written. My garden has been a small priority in the busy month of December. Needless to say, I did plant two or three boxes (yes boxes) of pansies that I dug out of the ground at Weidners Gardens in Encinitas. I took the kids and we had a great time running through their incredible fields of pansies and violas with spades and cardboard boxes to fill. The dirt there is so enviable. I try to dig up as much of it with each plant as I can and transport it home. (Don’t tell them!)
Home with the six-year-old helping me plant all the pansies we dug up is another situation. Did I mention that each plant is about as big as a dinner plate? I think they are $1 each. You get giant, gorgeous, healthy plants that grow and grow. No root rot. Ever have that fatal disease with your pansies? They get yellow and sort of wiggle off their stalks? Dead before you know it. No way, with these babies. They are hearty and so easy….anyway, my six-year-old wanted to help plant all of them. And they still lived. While trying to dig all the holes before she “helped” too much, I heard her say, “Mommy these are so soft.” I thought she’d have a petal pressed between her fingers, but no, she was holding the roots of a giant pansy plant, smashing them and feeling their silky threads. Then she planted them. They lived anyway.
This brings me to the topic of this blog — things that kill your garden. Okay, that sounds kind of harsh. I mean to say that there are some common garden nuisances that I encounter, and I thought I’d share some of my techniques for helping fix these problems. This is getting long so I included a few photos at the start. I’ll write the rest later. I am out trying to take a picture of that gopher (or maybe it’s a mole.) I’m not sure what it is that leaves little mounds of dirt as well as a system of tunnels. My husband and I caught a mole under a flowerpot one day, but that is another story and another nuisance. Another day, another garden nuisance.
