Flowerbed Clean-up

I spent a good deal of this weekend working in the Mudroom Flowerbed. It was time to give it the annual spring cleaning. I unloaded tote after tote of dead branches and old foliage. Slowly but surely I worked through the whole bed, leaving the enormous "La Trinidad Pink" salvia until last.

Our two patches of "Tete-a-tete"  narcissus are off to a good start. I was happy to observe that this past December's cold weather hasn't excessively browned the leaf tips. Before we know it, this clump will be a sea of blinding yellow trumpets.

As usual, I was pleasantly surprised by how many perennials are already showing signs of new growth. Here is Black-eyed Susan "Henry Eilers". I guess if you are going to reach 5 feet in height, you had better start growing early in the new year.

A healthy clump of agastache "Acapulco Orange", already sending up lots of new growth.

I also spend a few hours today completely cleaning up the Sunset Flowerbed. While this bed is much larger than the Mudroom Bed, it is less densely planted. While it still involved a lot of careful work, it was a much easier weeding job than the Mudroom Bed was.

Here is the lobelia "Fan Scarlet", just beginning this year's new growth. This poor plant got absolutely smothered under a Penstemon last year and never stood a chance at reaching full size, let alone blooming. We are going to move it once Spring weather arrives, so it has its own space and the right conditions to perform.

Here is my sweet little clump of "Sabrosa" narcissus. I dumped some extra soil over the clump before our freezing weather hit. I think that really helped to protect the young green shoots.

I am also excited to see some of the "Toto" narcissus that we planted last year coming back. They were among the group of bulbs that didn't get planted until mid-Winter 2016. They seem to be coming up in good numbers this year and I am anxious to finally see them in bloom.

And Some More Bulb Planting

We were blessed with yet another dry Saturday, so it was time for some more bulb planting. I really want to get this done and get it off my mental "to-do" list. We started up on the bank by the Sweet Gum trees. There we planted 10 "Angel Eyes" daffodils.

As we were working in that area I noticed that the Hound's Tongue have already come up and are beginning to bloom. They have such pretty blue flowers. 

We then moved down to the island and planted 25 "Barrett Browning" daffodils. Then we stopped near the bottom of the road and planted 20 "King Alfred". While we still have one more variety left to plant,my back was telling me that was enough bulb planting for today. So then I moved back up to the house and finish weeding the "overflow" kitchen garden area. It was growing a dandy batch of grass and weeds and was at the point that it needed to be weeded or it was going to get out of control. It feels really nice to have this project completed. Now all I need to do is add some fresh Natures Best to the soil and this area is all ready to plant. At this point I am planning to plant Zinnias and Melons here after our last frost date.

Mudroom Clean-up

The sun came out today in wonderful, long spells and we hit a high of 50 degrees. Since I was drawn to the outdoors, I decided to work in the mudroom flowerbed, where I could enjoy the warmth of the sun each time it poked out from behind the few white clouds. I spent just over an hour cutting back most of the dead foliage and stems.

Even though it is only December 26th, there is so much new growth. Both clumps of "tete-a-tete" narcissus are over an inch tall now.

As I cut back last year's growth on almost all of the perennials, I discovered each time that next year's plant has already begun to form. While this is exciting it is also worrisome. We have a 5 days spell of nights in the low 20's ahead. Hopefully all of these young leaves are hardy enough to withstand some very cold nights.

Garden Cleanup and a Cold Sunny Day

Today I went down to the big garden for the final clean-up of the year. I still had in the ground nine varieties of dahlias that I chose not to dig and save this year. All of these varieties displayed some unusual markings on their leaves, most likely the tell-tale signs of dahlia virus. In reality, I should have pulled these plants as soon as I noticed the first sign of virus. But instead, I waited until I had safely dug all of the other dahlias, just to be certain that I wouldn't transmit any virus from contaminated plants to healthy plants as I dug. Then I tossed them all over the fence. Again, I didn't want to toss them in the compost pile and risk further contamination. Then I covered the compost pile for the year and the garden was officially put to bed. A blank slate - except for the weeds - once more.

Although the high temperature was only 41 today, it was sunny and a very pleasant day to be working outside. As you can see, all of the cats were enjoying the late Fall sunshine.

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.

Cleaning up the Mudroom Bed

This afternoon, with the assistance of Mom, I was able to finish cleaning up the mudroom bed for the winter. We cut off all of the dead stalks and trimmed back the perennials. Certain plants, like our many salvia varieties, I will give another further haircut in the Spring. 

It was great to see how many plants have already started to form next year's new growth. We were all a little concerned that some of the plants would have suffered some damage during our extreme cold weather in early December. As you can see, poking out from their base, most of the perennials have new green leaves and shoots. The one great mystery is our "Black & Blue" salvia. It has managed to overwinter for the last two years. Will we get lucky again this year or did our -10 degree night finish it off? We will get our answer in March when it should begin sending up new growth.

Planting the Garlic - Finally!

Today I finally got around to planting my garlic. I had been meaning to do this task for at least the last two weekends but something always got in the way. I had no excuse today! The weather couldn't have been any nicer. The high reached 54 degrees but it felt much warmer. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and there also wasn't any wind. First I had to finish cleaning up the kitchen garden. I tore out all of the dead tomato plants and then pulled up and cleaned up all of the morning glory vines. As always, that took much longer than expected.

Then it was time to build a raise bed for the garlic. I hauled in two garden cart loads of Nature's Best and built my garlic bed. Then I went to the extra refrigerator in the garage and pulled out my garlic cloves. I had saved, especially for planting this Fall, the biggest two bulbs each of both garlic varieties that I grew last year. I carefully divided the bulbs into individual cloves, being as careful as I could to keep the paper wrapping around each clove. I was more successful with some than with others!

After I had my planting stock ready I took everything out to the raised bed and laid out the cloves. I dug 1-2" holes for each clove and added a tablespoon of bone meal to the bottom of each hole.

I ended up planting 15 cloves of "Chesnook Red" and 12 cloves of "Russian Red". It is suppose to rain Tuesday, so that will be a great way to get all of the cloves nicely watering in and settled. Now I just need to buy a new piece of remay cloth and cover the row in a protective hoop. Hopefully, around Christmas time, I will take a sneak peek under the remay tunnel and find that my new garlic crop has sprouted!

The Big Garden Put to Bed

The above picture doesn't look like much but to this gardener it is a beautiful site! Today I finished digging up the last of my 238 dahlia clumps and it wasn't a day too soon. We have had multiple storms come through this month. Many of them have originated from the southern tropics and have dumped 2" plus of rain as they passed through the area. As each storm rolled by I could literally watch the water table rise in the garden. As you can see in the bottom of the picture, the soil is saturated and the water is starting to puddle and stand. I am really fortunate that I only lost two tuber clumps to rotting this year. I think that might be a record. Now it's almost December. Time to let the garden and the gardener rest for the Winter.

Kitchen Garden Clean-up

Today I tackled one of my least favorite tasks of the Fall season; cleaning up the kitchen garden. This task was made a bit easier by today's weather - overcast and a very mild 68 degrees. I had already harvested all of the Winter Squash, Onions,  Morning Glory seed, and Tomatoes. It was now a "simple" matter of picking up all of the spent plant material as well as the assorted cages, towers, and plant markers.

As always, it took me much longer than I had expected! Here's the view once my work was completed.

I assumed that the only vegetable that would remain in the garden would be the two "Tuscano" kale. However, the "Galina" yellow cherry still looks good. The 10-day forecast seems mild, so I thought that I would leave it in and see if I could get one more harvest out of it before the first frost.

I am waiting to harvest any kale until the first frost or two. All my gardening books indicate that the kale will become much sweeter after it is exposed to a period of freezing temperatures.

Like so many plants, Kale is architecturally interesting.

There are still many tresses left on the "Galina" cherry that have yet to mature.

Here's the "compost" pile of assorted plant material. I know that the deer will quickly discover this  vegetation and make quick work of cleaning it up. They love tomato plants.

While I worked alone for much of the afternoon, I did have this sweet little bird supervise me for a while. I was able to get quite close to it and it just calmly remained perched on the garden fencing. On the other end of the "assistance" spectrum were these three slugs. Absolutely no help what so ever!