Gardening is a learning experience

I am grateful for finally having the space to garden as I always knew I could. And I am grateful for being healthy enough to get out there and do it.

I am grateful that gardening is such a popular activity. Its popularity has made possible the wide variety of plants and the nurseries that make them available.

I am grateful for the variety of media available to give me ideas, to spark my imagination and to answer my many questions either through websites, bulleting boards, blogs, podcasts, books, magazines, and to a lesser extent radio and television.

I want to take this opportunity to send my heartiest thank-you to each and every one of my wonderfully talented, generous, caring fellow gardeners who take the time to blog their experiences so beginners like me can learn.

And I have learned a lot this past Spring and Summer. About how plant colors interact with one another. How to put color combinations together to design a ‘cool’ setting or a ‘hot’ setting. About how some colors give the feeling of depth, and how texture can give the illusion of movement. I have also discovered that there are no hard and fast rules. That it is okay to experiment to find your own unique style.

I have begun to learn ‘nursery speak’, the hidden meanings behind words like creeping (invasive) or airy (long and thin).

About what plants won't grow in 'full sun' areas like I was told they would. Without casting too much discredit onto nurseries trying to sell their wares, I realize they look at ‘full sun’ from the view point of warning potential buyers to give the plant at least six hours of direct sun. My experience has now shown me that more than six hours of full sun can be detrimental to the plants health. I probably should have watered more for those particular plants, but I don’t know which plants need more water in the ‘full sun plus’ areas just by reading the warning that they need full sun. Communication is a wonderful thing, but only if all pertinent information is properly conveyed.

I have learned how valuable it is to have someone you can count on to actually water everything when you are on vacation.

I learned I need to start seeds indoors earlier than I did this year. As well as the fact that I can actually make it work.

Another thing I learned is that this can be a pretty expensive hobby if you let it get out of hand. The rewards are far greater though. Being outside in the sun, exercising your knees and back, and shoulders and legs, and neck, and oh, what a workout!

I have learned the true value of a great pair of pruning shears over the economy of a good pair. Likewise with every other garden tool available.

Other rewards come later after you see all of your planning and hard work come to fruition and even if only one person tells you it looks great, then it was worth it. That’s the moment when you take a break, stand back and don’t look at your work with a critical gardeners eye but look at it for the beauty it is and say “You know, it does look good”.

When dozens of birds, butterflies and bees come around to visit, that is when it will really hit me. That I have actually created an environment that is natural enough for wildlife to nourish themselves, find protection and feel comfortable enough to nest here. That is when I know I have achieved something really important and worthwhile.

I already have more than my fair share of birds coming around to all of the feeders I have filled every day for the past three years. I’m used to, daily, seeing a variety of Finches and Doves. I am regularly visited by Hummingbirds, Starlings, Flickers, Mallards, Chick-a-dees and the occasional Red-tailed Hawk. Now I am to the point that I am anxiously looking for the never before seen birds that migrate through here.

This year there were more bees than last year. Next year I hope there will be even more. This year there were only the white cabbage butterfly and once I saw a red butterfly, but next year, there will be more, I’m just sure of it.

I learned that maintaining a garden bed is a lot of work. I was already in tune with the rhythm of digging, amending, planting, feeding, and weeding with vegetables. But this year it was different. This time it is with perennials. I have already gone through three winters of caring for roses and fruit trees and one winter of caring for a few other perennials.

This winter I will be caring for so many more plants than I ever have before and attempting to learn the timing of when to mulch and which plants should be covered and which ones should not that I am really looking forward to how they come through.

Gardening has taught me to accept nature on its terms, and if you can do that and provide its very basic needs then you will be rewarded by the simple yet complex beauty that only nature can provide.

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End of one year, beginning of next

I can't believe it is time to start thinking of cleaning up the yard and garden for Winter in preparation for next Spring. Time flies when you are having fun? As I get older, time flies even if you aren't having fun.

I have to admit that overall, I did enjoy this year. I started four new perennial beds, which means 490 sq ft less yard to mow, yeah!. Two of them were started from scratch, i.e., grass into planted bed, and two from amended bare earth to planted bed. I added 20 new plants to four existing beds that were started last year. This brings the total new plants started this year to 124 and 67 bulbs. Wow! I did not realize I had started that many. I’m shocked and amazed.

Next Spring better look really good!

To satisfy my anal trait, I keep maps of each bed so I know where everything is planted. I also enter all pertinent information into a spreadsheet calendar linking each plant to a word document telling me everything I ever want to know about any given plant I have in my garden. I know, everything is online somewhere, but if I am ever without a connection to the internet, for whatever reason, at least I have what I need on my hard drive. Now I need to print it all out in case the computer breaks down.

The lawn mower needs to be maintained, i.e., gas treatment, wheels oiled, oil changed, air filter cleaned, blade sharpened. Tools need to be cleaned, sharpened and wood handles treated with linseed oil. Containers need to be emptied and cleaned with bleach solution. Weeds to be pulled, always! Perennials need to be divided, since this my first year I can put this chore off. Mulch needs to be added after ground freezes to prevent freeze/thaw cycle. Amendments need to be added and worked into soil. Annuals need to be pulled.

Still a lot left to do.

Well, the leaves are falling and just begging me to rake them onto the compost pile, so, as they say “Nature calls” and “Time waits for no man”.

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Bumpy, rough lawns

I have one of these. It was bumpy when I moved here. It was bumpy, lumpy and treacherous to walk on. And mowing was no picnic either. Almost every neighbor I talked to about it told me the same thing. They told me that the lumpiness is caused by an over-abundance of earthworms. I believe earthworms in the lawn is a good thing. Earthworms anywhere is a good thing. From hearing them talk this soil should be rich enough to grow anything I wanted without having to add anything to the soil. I was thrilled to hear that this might be the case, but I found it difficult to believe that the noble earthworm was the cause of my bumpy, rough lawn.

Since I had never lived anywhere where I had to take care of a lawn, I was a lawn-maintenance virgin. And as such, I could not dispute what I was being told so I began reading and searching for other causes of bumpy, rough lawns.

There are several possible reasons for bumpy, rough, uneven lawns. Older lawns become uneven and bumpy as the Turfgrass gradually thins. These lawns have less foliar growth and cushioning effect than thick, dense Turfgrass.

When I first moved in the grass was browning and thin in some areas and so I thought this must be why this lawn is lumpy. The solution seemed clear, if I simply feed it and water it on a regular schedule I could ‘save’ this lawn by myself. This great delusion began in the Summer of 2004. By the end of 2005, after following the commonly prescribed practice of weed & feed at regular intervals, it was very clear to me that what I was doing was not working. After two Summers, two Autumns, and one Spring, I still had no idea how to save this lawn and I still had brown areas, thinning grass and a bumpy, rough surface along with ever increasing water bills.

During this time of indoctrination by fire, I had dug up the lawn in several places looking for these nefarious earthworms but never did find more than a handful. I didn’t find the rich mountains of castings that I was told was creating the ankle-twisting mis-adventures that I had come to expect from simply walking across the lawn.

Other reasons for lumpiness could be poor maintenance, shade, insects, diseases and other factors. I suspect it was poor maintenance. There was no way it was shade because the lawn is in full sun all day long except for under the fruit trees and the grass was lush and thick there. As far as insects and diseases, I didn’t see anything that convinced me that these were the causes. And there are the ‘other factors’. I don’t have a clue what these could be. Maybe moles, voles and other rodents but that is not the case. Never saw any of these here.

Everyone said I should aerate. That should level it out in no time. They reasoned that aeration helps open up the soil to allow air and water down to the grass roots and thereby create a more lush turf. I can’t help but think that if I have such an abundance of earthworms then my lawn is already very well aerated by them. But, I had someone come out to aerate anyway, because it is good practice to do so. The ground was so hard that it was basically a waste of time.

So, if the ground is too hard to aerate, then earthworms is not the cause of my lumpiness.

Spring of 2006 came around and I was not looking forward to fighting a loosing battle so I spoke with a lawn service guy and decided to let them take care of it all for a couple of years. I figured I would pay close attention to when they came around and make note of what they used and then I would be able to take it from there. It is now two years later and my lawn has never looked better. But, I still have lumps.

Their advice was pretty much the same as everyone else who has lived around here for years. Aerate. Is this just a commonly accepted ‘cure-all’ for lawn problems? Even though it obviously does not work.

Just today I read an article that mentioned the freeze/thaw cycle here in Utah. I suppose it is the same in every northern state but it never occurred to me that this might, if not cause the problem then at least it could be contributing to the problem. If this is the case then the only course of action now is to sprinkle top soil and reseed every year. This may have to be the way to go because I don’t think it will ever ‘cure’ the lumpiness.

I guess I am just going to have to live with it. Or, I could replace all of it with wildflowers and sell my lawn mower. Now that sounds like a great alternative.

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Springhill Nursery order, part two

Received the Dianthus Desmond that was back ordered.



This completes the order from Springhill for this year.

The plants look to be in very good shape. Can't wait to see these in full bloom.


at maturity

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Built new bed

Finally got this bed built. I have been planning this bed since we had the deck built two months after moving into this house in 2004.



Anyway, just finished it today and now I will need to have some soil delivered. It’s 14 ½’ long by 4’ front to back do that’s 58 sq ft. times 9” deep, so that’s, where’s my calculator, 522 cu ft. What? I must have done something wrong. D’oh! I mixed feet with inches. Try this again. 14.5’ x 4’ x .75’ = 43.5 cu ft. That sounds more like it. Wow, I used to be pretty good at math. Good thing there’s the internet to show me how. I found help at Do It Yourself.com.

Other raised beds I have built in the past I used wooden stakes at the corners. They have held up pretty well but this time I opted for metal strips at the corners









and to hold boards together.

Hopefully the weight of the soil won't push it apart at the seams.





I already have plants ordered for it,
Monarda (Bee Balm) Scarlet, an herb,


Hardy Lavender, also an herb,


Geranium Birches Double,




Daylily Stella de Oro,










Delphinium Blue Butterfly, a dwarf at 14" tall,










Phlox Blue Paradise,












and Dianthus Maiden Pinks.











This leaves room for a shrub at one corner and I haven’t decided between a Caryopteris or a Spirea. That corner will be in all day full sun so either one will do.

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