Sunlight

Now comes the first of the strangely dark periods for the garden.the next comes in late August.

Late winter/early spring are great; plenty of hours of sunshine. then the trees leaf out ( very early this year due to a heat wave;but welcome when there is such heat as this house gets hot without the shade!) for about a month, until the sun is higher in the sky, there is more limited sunshine.

so we are already down to, in Eliot Coleman's words, the one percenters. the small things that can be done.

The white strips on the front of the beds really do help. they scatter sunlight for us nicely.

Mineralization-by adding rock dust ( granite in our case) rock phosphate, greensand and trace minerals-and lime- we have allowed the natural balance plants need, and they only take it up at the rate they can use. no run off, no loss of fertilization.

Hardscape-any of the new walls and corners do add some heat to the area. plants up and happy and growing well, will take off again in May/June, even if growing slower now.Straw is my mulch of choice and it also is light enough to scatter some light.

this is also why i started virtually everything as transplants and put them out 2 weeks early ( some of it was 4 weeks early this year) a late frost is manageable with row covers. i get the maximum sunshine to new plants.

container gardening-potatoes and tomatoes are in large pots ( I have saved every shrub container for years! so recycled too) and sitting in sunny parts of the yard, freeing up the beds for other things .they are attractive; placed to look like they belong, not just hanging out in weird spots.

future plans-an upgraded greenhouse to grow through more months of the year.

will let you know what I think, next month!

Hardscaping

We seem to be in hardscaping mode-that is permanent structures, usually of rock or wood.

We actually started out years ago dragging some old timbers out of the woods and making a corner garden by the driveway. I put in plastic edging around garden beds to hold edges while we figured out what to do next. Every time I found another stash of brick ( it's in several places) I used it to shore up garden beds too.
After you have survived laying a slate patio ( and in pieces, not squares) it all seems pretty easy. the walls around the patio went up fast-big heavy flat stones you can seat 2 or 3 rows deep without mortar, and capstones. Cool! that led to replacing a corner of a lower garden bed with this stone and my upper flower bed. it looks- nice!

Bruce is up putting in scalloped edging around the nettles and comfrey I use for the compost pile. a lousy soil tucked in to small trees; a corner that needed help-I figured these lovely dynamic accumulators would be happy, and whenever I have extra compost or manure, on it goes..

so now with the old greenhouse out of here, we can see an opportunity to add some flowering trees and benches, and an archway with roses. that's how it works, you do one thing, see another.We are also going to use paving stones in the strip between the deck house and patio., leaving a space for something formal, an espaliered fruit tree is tops on my list.all high and dry and level; which would have seemed impossible when we moved to this uh, hill.Hardscaping isn;t that hard. consider it; bed edgings or terraces....all sorts of new opportunities arise when you give plants different environments!

When Bruce pulled out the brick to put the bigger stone in on the corner of what is now an onion bed, i got another nice surprise, 2 years of mulching, putting in compost, broadforking, etc, and the ground is fabulous at least 6 inches down. brown, not red clay. I am so pleased!Tilling would never have done the same thing!this is better soil than the original raised beds; I hadn;t really looked deeply at the time ( no till, with newspaper) but it;s all the crud the builder moved aside after driveway.septic system. terrible in fact. but even that is giving way to good organic practices.the garlic sure is lovely!

tomato towers

I just had to show off these beauties-from Gardener's Supply. they really do everything they are supposed to-hold the vines, use year after year, and they are even-attractive!I think the hostas might enjoy the bit of shade the towers will provide ( especially as the vines grow)

Sweet potatoes,many colors many uses

I fell in love with sweet potatoes. no not just for eating-I've never liked them! for foliage.

i bought white sweet potatoes last year. yes, they are mealier, not the slick smoothness i hate in the orange types.I planted a few in the garden and threw the rest into the edge of a flower bed( full of old gravel!) where they went into viny loveliness. i am enchanted. Actually, the flower bed produced more tubers than the garden! ( this year, I have prepped the bed with sand for the sweet potatoes. we'll see!)

so I don;t buy the fancy sweet potatoes for foliage; I just plant my regular ones. Cool!And i even found a way i like to eat them-sliced up, fried or baked into chips, dusted with cinnamon and served with mustard sauce (mustard and mayo mixed)

Latest experiment-starting slips. I put one half tuber in wet sand, one half in a glass of water balanced on toohpicks, and just planted one in a pot. that one has become a foliage plant for my deck, though I could cut slips. the sand, surprisingly has produced slips much faster than the water treatment. At just a few inches you pull them, put the lower ends in water, and plant as soon as roots are growing-no longer than 2 inches,hopefully planting after the soil and air are good and warm. they'll grow until frost!

shoot the darn things want to grow! and they come in several colors! too good to be true!

Groundcovers

I am trying hard to diversify the ground covers. even if it isn;t a "food forest" it can;t hurt to increase the species in an area.

it took a helper, even after soaking, to get spaces dug in our clay. Thank you, Lindsey.then 1/2 cart of compost ( for 4 plants!) was nestled under and around each plant, and the looser clay mixed in the top with more compost.these "pockets" can be done under trees, in clay banks, etc.

the liriope was here when we moved in; we added the patio and retaining walls, hostas and grasses.
grape hyacinths along the stairs, and we've attempted to grass seed several times. This time, using the compost "pockets" I added hardy geranium, ajuga, and a gaura. Wish us luck!

the garden grows

the work to plant mint and vlolets as groundcover is paying off. placing pretty flowers in among the groundcover, ditto. As the cherry tree is getting big enough to cast shade, I will put foamflower in where we removed the birdbath.I started with 1 plant. it now covers most of the front of the house. I love this stuff.

this means; no mulching, less fertilizing......this garden is beginning to take off!

Another little experiment is paying off big. I planted pansies for the fall; covered them with a row cover before the last big snow. they were blooming within days and are now fabulous.

We also put in 2 dwarf Russian sages and a big moonshine yarrow, where the lilies disappeared.

for permaculture, think small. Take one corner of your yard. put in  a small tree and some shrubs, then put your flowers and groundcovers in. see how you like it, as the seasons go by.Take one garden bed and put ALL your compost, mulches, rock powders on it, for one season. start cropping this fall or next spring. or try cover cropping, and see what the results, after mowing or cutting, are, for you.

strange garden loss

the lilies that are up look fantastic, thick stemmed, growing well.I even found a grouping under the cherry tree I thought I had dug up and moved! growing among the hostas, phlox and violets, they look so nice!

but only about half of them came up in the main bed..I have all sorts-for smell, for color......this is really quite a blow.

I have to figure voles ate them ( voles eat plants moles eat insects) I am a little non plussed trying to figure out what to do about it. I hate the idea of sprays; chicken wire couldn't keep such wee things out., and it WAS a hard winter;guess they were hungry ( we've never had anything like this before)

I am enjoying watching the new permaculture area around the apples take off. the currants and siberian pea bushes look good. no flowers/herbs are up yet. but they will  arrive in their own time! Apples seem happy (second year) many leaves. I don;t care if they bloom as we need them to grow another year before we can harvest.

so it goes, the good, the bad.

Spring is here

a trip to Ohio revealed what I should have already known...I am highly allergic to tree pollen. Cleveland is a couple of weeks behind us, in the gardening calendar, so i got to deal with high pollen-twice! but a chance to see more pears and cherries and redbuds and tulip magnolias in bloom?" ahhhhhh.

the garlic has spring up to nearly a foot in height. the apple trees have budded out, the onion transplants look fabulous, we are eating green salads. a month ahead of schedule, but I am not complaining. tempted to start the squash and cukes and sweet potatoes( the slips look good) but i will wait.
tomatoes are happily growing under lights;peppers too.

the only groan so far is that the peas did not sprout well. at 95 degrees for 4 days-this is the hottest April on record, I guess they just didn't like it much.what does grow will still help the ground!