In the Garden: May 2008 Archives

This entry is for Adele, who asked if I would post pictures of the herbs. Sure thing! *S* And you can count on my posting pictures of the iris when they bloom, and after I've divided them. Thanks for asking!

This shot is an overview of the herb garden. You're looking northwest. The house is behind and to the left, and the attached garage is behind to the right. This garden is still a work in progress. I have a lot of work to do in the north end of the garden, and I have to get serious about pulling the volunteer plants in the walkways. I HOPE to get a new layer of chat down. (Chat is a finishing grade of limestone that looks white in the sun. It's ground, but not as fine as sand.) Please note....NO BOAT in the back yard!

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This is the southeast arm of the garden, looking south toward the house. Those beautiful mounds are oregano. (I probably have enough for the entire city. *G*) Beyond the oregano you can see chives about ready to bloom, and to the right are garlic chives. (If you grow garlic chives, do NOT let the flowers go to seed, or YOU will have enough for all the Chinese food in London for a year!)

This is the lower part of the NE arm of the garden. The small dark plant is a rose; to the right are two lavenders, a spearmint contained in a furnace flue, and a dark blue perennial salvia. Across the bottom of the picture are two of the lemon scented geraniums and a small silver thyme.

I'm addicted to thyme. I love growing it, and I love the smell of it. I have it in several of my gardens, and even in one pot. This particular bed needs a little renovation. The thyme has overtaken two thirds of the box and is creeping into the walk, and now the lemon balm is trying to escape from the furnace flue in the corner. Just past the timber on the north end of the box, you can see the clematis, which is growing by leaps and bounds!

This is the Angelica, surrounded by fever few. We destroyed a square yard of the feverfew to plant the tomatoes, and I have more to rout out in the walkway. I need to research Angelica. I have NO idea why I planted it. The tomatoes are south of the Angelica, and south of the tomatoes, I've planted spinach, which the bunnies really like! Tomatoes and spinach are not herbs, but they go so well with the culinary herbs that I couldn't pass on them.

The deer severely pruned the sage this year. I wasn't worried, because last year it came back well when I pruned it in the spring. Unfortunately, large parts of it died off this winter. Dear Husband pruned for me, and you can see the remaining gnarly arms, with two fairly healthy groups of leaves. I added a golden variegated sage, a tricolor sage, and a Berggarten sage yesterday. I haven't had a lot of luck with anything other than the traditional sage, although I've managed to grow a white sage for several seasons. That was odd, because we're one zone too cold for the plant. I think a large part of the problem is that chipmunks have taken over that bed, and may be cutting the roots of the plants as they burrow.

This last picture is of the south end of the center box. In the corner you can see Purple basil, and Purple Palace basil, with its ruffly edges. There are five plantings of sweet basil. From here you can't see the miniature purple basil. I'll take a picture of that, later. Off to the left you may be able to see the parsleys and a rosemary. To the end of that box are Purple Coneflower, and I'm going to plant dill and nasturtium.

I think the lemon verbena is going to be planted to the right of the Angelica in the northeast corner of the garden. It can be used for tea, and in baked goods, but I usually save it for potpourri.

I'm going to mulch around the tomatoes, spinach and basil. I plan to add compost to several of the boxes, and clean up the walkways, and we should be good to go when the exercise class visits. I think it will hold until the Red Hat Ladies visit i June, with the exception of the chives needing a haircut. From then on, it will be mostly weeding and watering and harvesting.

Thanks for asking about my herbs, Adele! *S*

I was on my way back from an errand for the company when I realized I was going to be within three blocks of my favorite nursery. It's May 19th and I had not yet purchased tomatoes and herbs and bedding plants. In this part of Illinois, the general rule of thumb for planting tender annuals is to wait until May 15. We're already 4 days past the frost free date! I had a pretty good idea what I wanted to purchase, so my visit was less than 30 minutes. I was able to find everything I was looking for, and a bit more, of course! *G*

Dear Husband cleared a portion of the herb garden that was being overrun by feverfew, and he dug two good-sized holes for the tomatoes, then he went off to mow.

I planted the tomatoes, a "Big Boy" and a "Sweet 100" cherry tomato. The nursery was sold out of the miniature yellow pear tomatoes that I really wanted. I worked my way around the garden adding 5 sweet basil, a purple ruffles basil, purple basil, and a miniature purple basil, 2 rosemaries, a curly parsley, 2 scented geraniums, and three sage plants. I worked on cleaning out some of the volunteers in the walkway before it was time to go in for dinner.

In the herb garden, I have dill, lemon verbena, another lemon geranium, and some mums left to plant. My mint had died off. I'm not surprised, because It's been growing, sequestered, in the same pots for easily four years, and had to be root bound. I bought a chocolate mint, a curly mint, and a pineapple mint to replace them. Tomorrow, I'll empty the pots, refill them with new potting soil, and get the mints planted. I have a Scottish spearmint that smells heavenly, planted in a flue pipe in the herb garden, Next to that I have a salvia that will need to be supported. It's beautiful this time of year, but before long it will become top heavy and spread out from the center.

Both of the roses and the clematis that are next to or in the herb garden have come back nicely. The smaller of the roses will bloom about the time the lavender blooms. Scent is a large part of my herb garden. As I planted today, the scent was heady! I had visions of pesto, sage stuffing, roasts with rosemary, and mint juleps! Everything I brushed added it's fragrance to the blend.

This was one of those days that make me happy to be a gardener. *S*

Ed's sitting in the curve of my arms as I type this. If there's an unusual number of typos, chalk it up to my communing with my cat...

Yesterday, I spent about three hours in the gardens along my driveway. I saw some weeds encroaching on my peonies that I knew had to be dealt with. Several years ago I used the lasagna method to reclaim the center section of the garden along the lower driveway. That bed is probably 60-70 feet long, and has three distinct sections. The center area is still rather bare, but I've got rudbekia, perovskia and some salvia started there. I believe that I will be transplanting more plants into it fairly soon. The north end of the bed needs weeding to kill off an infestation of Bouncing Bet, a plant that I put in the gardens years ago and can't seem to kill off, but there are day lilies, daffodils, iris, lamb's ears and more salvia settled in there.

The south end of the garden is really in disrepair. I had planted physostegia and echinnacea over two-thirds of it, but the physostegia has died out, and there are places where I have sumac, poison ivy, grapevine and some shrubby volunteers that I really don't want. I think I may transplant some of the purple coneflower to the center part of the bed, and move one beautiful meadow rue plant to a more shaded area, and then ask Dear Husband if he will help me take the rest back down to dirt.

Which brings to mind.... I called a local gardening company which is just getting established. I asked if it would be possible to hire gardening muscle for either a morning or an entire day. I need just one man, I think, to help lift lilies in mid-June. When the owner called back to talk to me he told me that the best he could do was two men for an entire day, complete with truck, trailer and tools for $800.00! HOLY COW!! I COULD put two men to work for a full day, but the price is simply outrageous. I hope DH will take this as a sign that my garden time is really valuable!

I think I will try calling a few other landscapers to see if they are willing to spare a laborer for half a day. I need someone who understands about lifting the iris with as little damage as possible, and once they have been lifted and stored where I can work on them in the shade, I want the soil amended so that I can replant. I could put someone to work for an entire day, but not for the first price I've been quoted. I hope there will be someone who wants the work.

I spent this morning raking up the weeds that I'd pulled on Friday. I sawed down a few branches on the pear tree that had died, and I used the weed-eater to clean out an area that is getting infested with weeds. I used the weed-eater around the edge of the front lawn gardens, and along the south side of the house. It made me run a bit late for the Red Hat ladies, but it was worth it to get it done. The next time out, I'll need to cut down volunteer shrubs and mulberries, perhaps on Monday.

It was good to get some of the cleanup done while the grounds were still moist and easy to work with. There's a lot left to be done, but I'm glad I made the start.

We have several plants that are harbingers of spring. They bloom when all the others are still thinking about creating flowers, and are opening their leaves to the sun.

My father had a star magnolia outside the windows of his last office, what he called "the shop." The magnolia was planted on a rather steep hillside in Stone County, Missouri. You can imagine how difficult it was to water that shrub adequately. First there was run-off because it hadn't been set into the hillside properly,and second, the ground absorbed the water and it drained off immediately. I didn't understand these things at the time, and I thought this little plant was destined to be just three feet tall.

More than twenty years later, I bought a star magnolia, a tip of the hat to my Dad's choice of shrubs. It's planted just outside the window to MY office. This "shrub" has grown to be 18-20 feet tall and the blooms were awesome this year! As you can see from the picture, the entire plant was densely covered with blooms.

The CPA's assistant came to visit a couple of weeks ago when the magnolia was at its peak. I had the windows open, and a gentle breeze was coming in past the magnolia. The scent was amazing! Our heads swiveled in unison to sniff the air! *G*

Unfortunately, the blooms on our star magnolia last barely a week, less if the temperatures are extreme. So they have given way to the daffodils and tulips and other flowering shrubs.

We have one pod of very early tulips that I believe are the "Darwin" variety. Usually tulips die a quick death in the clay of my gardens, but these have lasted for easily fifteen years. For some reason, the chipmunks who live in that garden leave them alone. They seem to have the same protective scent or taste that daffodils have, and pests leave them alone.

I love the bright color. It's a shock to the senses so early in spring!