Garden & Flowerbed Clean-up

With the looming threat of heavy rains arriving on Tuesday, I spent 3 hours outside today working on garden cleanup chores. I started in the Kitchen Garden. I first picked up all of the old Winter Squash vines and took them down to the compost pile. Then I cleaned off the bean tower and took it into the garden room for Winter storage. Then I disassembled my whirligig and set it in the shop. I need to clean it before storing it away. 

I finished up by raking the soil and starting to build up the raised bed for my garlic. I hope to plant my garlic next weekend.

You might have noticed the Blue morning glory in the last picture. My two plants of "Heavenly Blue" morning glory are outrageous this year. I haven't ever had two plants of this variety grow and bloom like they have this year. They have smothered and covered the four tomato plants.

It is literally a wall of gorgeous blue blooms and as a bonus, the blooms have lasted all day for some strange reason.

The blooms are still large and amazingly blue, even in October.

I next moved my attention to the West facing flowerbed. It was a mess, filled with large weeds, spent flowers and stalks, and  newly sprouting weeds. I weeded the whole flowerbed and it looks so much better. The next step, for another weekend day, will be to fill up the back of the bed with more Nature's Best compost. The bed slants horribly toward the back right now and all the water runs in that direction.

As I was cleaning up my my Sweet Pea tower, I did find one last "Royal Family Lavender" bloom.

After I finished all of the weeding, I took a shovel and dug up all of my "Kokopelli" narcissus. The dry Summer had caused many individual bulbs to heave out of the ground.

It was amazing to see the mass of bulbs. I originally planted 6 small bulbs on January 8th, 2012. They have done an incredible job multiplying. I decided against separating each clump at this time. I think I might do that next Summer but I had too much on my "to-do" list today. So I dug the planting hole as deep as I could and set in all of the bulb clumps as well as a bunch of individual bulbs.

The bulb clumps had already sent up tender new shoots and had large, healthy masses of roots. With the rains returning next week it was a good time to replant them.

As I weeded today, I was surprised to see that the Oriental Poppies have already begun growing again for the next growing season. These young plants will amazingly survive all Winter's harsh weather and start blooming once again in May. And I was equally surprised to see that our Peony plant had also started to sprout. I found three blood red shoots forming at the base of the plant. To give the plant some added protection, I dumped a bucket full of compost on its crown to cover up the shoots and give it some insulation against the cold temperatures that lay ahead.