Morning on the Homestead

Good day fellow gardeners! Today I awoke to a brisk fall day (25F), just the kind we all know and cherish for its refreshing coolness. Yeah, Right! It was downright cold!

The plants do look beautiful though, in their frosty garb. The Dianthus especially looks like it was made for winter. Sedum turns yellowish-brown as if trying to compete with tree and shrub leaves.

Fall colors aside, the frost adds so much more to the overall beauty of a garden.

I grew up in Indiana ans always looked forward to the fall colors. We lived near a large corn field, who doesn’t in Indiana, and it was always bittersweet to see the skeletons of corn stalks standing as reminders of the wonderful ears of corn they always gave us. And fall always brought out the most gorgeous reds and yellows, especially southern Indiana around Morgan-Monroe State Park. Here in Utah, we don’t get much of that spectrum of color. We have the golden shimmering leaves of Aspen as our color guard. But their large swaths looked like gold veins running through mountain sides.

Every morning the Mourning Doves look so peaceful sitting in their high perches atop the trees gathering up the suns warming rays. I always feel so bad when I walk out to the backyard and they all leave their warm, sunny perches as I approach to fill the two birdbaths with fresh water. I have to do this to break up the ice from the previous evening thus allowing them to drink. They soon come back as though to forgive me for disturbing them.

Every morning, at 8:45, the elementary school, which sits the other side of a row of houses from me, plays a song to get the children’s day started. They play a wide variety of songs, from ‘Good Vibrations’ by the Beach Boys to ‘Good Morning Starshine’ by Oliver. And then one of the students recites the pledge of allegiance. It’s a very pleasant way to start a school day.

The birds are constantly singing and vying for a perch to sit and eat. They can never sit for very long as there is always another bird waiting its turn, and they are not afraid to push each other off so they can eat. All in all I guess it is a system that keeps them all fed.

I noticed the Dark-eyed Junco has returned. They don’t sit on perches as the other birds do so they eat off of the ground with the Doves.

I have been suffering a head cold and sore throat for the last couple of days so I don’t feel real cheery but the these morning sounds and rituals are comforting.

I have been reading ‘Animal, Vegetable, Miracle’ by Barbara Kingsolver about one families attempt to escape our dependence on industrial-food to the rural life where they vow to buy only locally grown produce, grow it themselves or learn to do without. The book serves to enlighten us to how corporations are replacing America’s once thriving, diversified family farms with mono-cultured acres of corn and soybeans to feed ‘food animals’ who spend their entire lives stuffed in pens and loaded with antibiotics and growth hormones to fatten them up for market.

The book has really awakened, in me, the need to get back to celebrating local farmers by buying our produce at farmers markets instead of supermarkets and shunning the out-of-season produce, with its bland taste and questionable nutritional value. Growing our own is much more healthy and would help cut back on the vast amounts of petroleum required to transport produce from thousands of miles away.

With the cost of fuel rising so rapidly we may for forced to return to the local farmer for our produce out of financial necessity. Wouldn’t that be ironic? To have to buy locally because fuel prices are too high.

We have become spoiled by having out-of-season fruit and vegetables at our fingertips. The price of that luxury is far higher than we know. Read this book and you’ll be surprised at how much it really costs us.

Well, I have chores to get to and miles to go before I sleep. Good day!

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Turning clay to workable soil, a progress report

I thought I would take this time to report on how well my clay soil is turning into workable garden soil. It is coming along quite nicely. When I first began planning these beds three years ago they were covered with grass and the occasional weed. Mainly bindweed and what I used to (until today) call buttonweed.

Just now I looked up buttonweed on the internet to provide a picture or a description link of it here and learned that what I thought was buttonweed is actually something else. I found Virginia Buttonweed and this clearly is not what I have. My education continues and now I have to figure out just what weed I do have. I swear it looks like a bunch of buttons on the end of each stem. So, what is it?

To date, I have converted 1,135 sq ft into eight perennial and four vegetable beds.

All four vegetable beds and two perennial beds are raised using untreated redwood and cedar lumber, to resist rot.

The remaining perennial beds are not raised but currently bordered with cherry wood logs partially buried. I plan on replacing them with stone or brick within the next few years.

Looking back on it, I can’t believe I have dug up this much soil. That is a lot of ground to cover with mulch and amend with compost every year.

I chose to experiment in preparing the beds by using three different methods, one, weed killer and then waiting until the soil was safe to use; two, digging the soil up with a shovel and pulling up grass for the next two years; and three, covering the area with newspaper over winter and then digging in the spring.

The weed killer is by far the easiest and quickest method but the prospect of poisoning the water table scared me. I read extensively about the product and decided it was safe. The product I chose to use was glyphosate. It is the main ingredient in RoundUp (produced by Monsanto), and since the patent ran out in 2000, there are now other products on the market that use it. I chose to use Hi-Yield Kill-Zall.

Glyphosate is non-toxic to humans and animals. Glyphosate moves through the weed to the root, and stops the function of an essential enzyme found in plants (but not in humans or other animals). Any Glyphosate not absorbed by plants breaks down into natural materials without moving in or on the soil to untreated plants. It is only effective on actively growing plants and breaks down over the course of ten days or so.

Weeds and grass will generally re-emerge with one to two months, so it doesn’t get rid of them completely but you now have a really good head start towards getting your garden in. If I want to start a bed quickly I will use this method again. But, I plan on having enough patience to let newspaper and mulch do the job.

Spreading newspaper over the ground and then laying mulch on top of that was pretty simple and effective but I had to wait over winter. Since I wasn’t going to plant anything for awhile this method worked pretty well.

Using a shovel was obviously the most labor intensive and after it was done the grass kept coming back for a couple of years until I had pulled up enough of it that I finally got all of the roots out.

The soil under the grass was fairly easy to work in and I added composted steer manure and shredded bark mulch over two years before finally planting anything. I used a rototiller in one bed but was told that it can create a hardpan beyond the reach of the tines so I won’t be doing that again.

Paul James, of Garden by the Yard, says it is okay to use a pitch fork to loosen the soil each year and I guess it will have to be an ongoing thing.

After all of this work on these beds I feel pretty confident that they are all life sustaining. I find fat worms and baby worms so that is a good indication that the soil is thriving.

Although I will never be free of weeds, don’t I wish and pray for that miracle, at least with enough good stuff growing in the beds most weeds will be crowded out and weeding should get better over time.

After all the work I have put into it, the soil is fairly easy to work in but I will need to add compost to it every fall.

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Final fall cleanup?

I decided to try something different this year with my leaves. I have three fruit trees along the west side of the backyard and they drop a prodigious amount of leaves. The pile looks so nice and yellow and thick.

The rest of the yard doesn’t get any leaves on it unless there is a good wind. The last few years I have been raking the leaves onto the perennials beds, beds that I had not yet planted anything in waiting for the compost and mulch to breakdown in preparation for planting.

This year, I decided that since those beds have been planted and will get lots of mulch dumped on them after the ground freezes, I will share the wealth of those fruit tree leaves with the entire yard.

I raked all of the leaves over the entire yard and let them sit for a few days. No special reason for leaving them sit, I just didn’t feel like dragging the mower out until today. The weather gave Utah another beautiful, clear, 55F day and I, in my usual capricious manner, decided that today was the day for mowing. I find that as I get older I do things whenever I feel like it more so than when they have to be done. I am more or less within acceptable bounds as far as the proper timetable, but don’t count on me to do anything by a strict schedule, is all I am saying.

Now that the leaves had rested there a few days and it looked like they weren’t going to be blown away by the wind, I thought today would be a perfect day to follow through with my brilliant plan and put those leaves to work. The grass wasn’t really in need of mowing but that wasn’t why my intention. Besides this way I could run the gas out of the mower to get it ready for winter storage. I love it when I can do two or more things at once, thereby saving time. Ah, if only it would work out that way. If I timed it right the gas would run out at the exact moment when the last leaf was mulched. And if the mower just happened to be at the storage shed door when it happened, all the better. That kind of luck doesn’t usually come about easily so I wasn’t really counting on it.

The lawn looks nice now, all cleaned of leaf clutter. Of course, the next frost or gust of wind that comes along will sever the remaining leaves tenuous hold and another pile will be created. That pile I think will go to my pseudo-compost pile. There is still the apple tree, which hasn’t dropped any leaves yet. I guess it’s because it still has quite a few apples on it. But, I am sure that after all of the leaves have fallen and they are all sitting in their final resting place, only then will all of my fall chores finally be done.

Let’s see, I better double check my to do list...

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Coopers Hawk is back

A couple of days ago I wrote about the puzzle of why there weren’t as many birds at the feeders as usual. Today I discovered why. the Coopers Hawk is back.

I saw him sitting high up in the cherry tree and all of the Finches and Doves immediately took off.

The hawk eventually left as well.

He wouldn’t turn around so this is the best shot I could get of him.

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Gurney’s Seed & Nursery order

Received my order from Gurney’s Seed & Nursery Co.

Some plants were in plastic ‘coffins’ and all of the others were in plastic bags as bare-roots. Packing peanuts were placed on top and sides but this delivery didn’t use as many.

UPS delivered the package and as you can see it is once again damaged. The order I received last week from Michigan Bulb Co was also delivered by UPS and it too was damaged. Although no plants were hurt in either incident.

The plants all look healthy and unblemished. The instructions that came with them said they are to go into the ground immediately.

The bed I just built for them next to the deck is where they will all go.

Delphinium Blue Butterfly
Listed as dwarf Chinese delphinium, Chinese larkspur and Siberian Larkspur. It is a member of the buttercup family. It can grow to 12”-18” tall and wide as opposed to the standard Delphinium which grows up to 36” tall. It can take full sun to part shade and blooms early summer to early fall. It attracts bees, butterflies, birds. All of my favorite wildlife.

Two things I wasn’t aware of when I ordered it was that contact with foliage may irritate skin and it is short lived so reseeding is encouraged but cultivars don’t prove true to the parent. If I had known this before hand I probably would have not ordered it. So, I am going to look at this plant as one of those serendipitous things that nature throws at you, and sometimes works out knowing full well that I may have to replace the plant with something more desirable.

The flowers are good for cutting and in cutting I may be able to get another bloom. I definitely want to keep some seed heads on it so it will reseed itself just to see what comes up next.

Geranium Birch’s Double
This is one of the perennial Geraniums, a true Geranium, the Cranesbill. The ‘other’ Geranium is not really a Geranium at all but a Pelargonium, although it is a relative. As the name suggests this one has double flowers.

My wife loves Geraniums but my experience with them is that they can get leggy and straggly and therefore not very attractive. Now at this point I must confess that I probably have, in my pre-gardener awakening, confused Pelargonium with true Geraniums. Now that I have discovered the difference, I am willing to give these ground-hugging true Geraniums a chance.

There are three commonly grown Geranium species: clarkei (most common), endressii (Wargrave Pink, which is a quick spreader), and sanguineum (Bloody Cranesbill, bright crimson foliage). The newest Geraniums are hybrids, and there are many, that have been bred to bring out desirable traits such as a true blue flowers (Johnson’s Blue), a neater growth habit (Rozanne), height (2’ tall Patricia), and early blooming (Ann Folkard).

Double Geraniums are the newest hybrids, such as Birch’s Double, Double Jewel (upright habit great for pots), and Southcombe Double (also good for containers).

Birch’s Double foliage turns red in the fall but is not listed as a sanguineum (Bloody Cranesbill). It is actually a himalayense which will grow to 14”-16” tall and blooms from early summer to autumn.

The plant will spread out among other taller plants and I have planted them between Monarda Jacob Cline and Stella de Oro Daylily. It sounds like it could be a good groundcover. The daylily might be a little too small for it but I’ll have to wait and see. After all, part of gardening is the fun of experimentation.

The planting instructions says to plant 1” below the soil so along with a good layer of mulch they should come through Utah’s winter just fine.

Monarda Jacob Cline
Aka Bee Balm, Bergamot, Oswego Tea, Horsemint. The many different names attests to how popular the plant has been throughout American history. It is native to eastern North America and its leaves were used by Oswego Indians of western New York to make tea. They shared its use with early American settlers who gave it the name Oswego Tea. It was used as a substitute for imported tea after the Boston Tea Party. The Shakers thought the tea effective in treating colds and sore throats and many have steamed the aromatic plant and inhaled the fumes to clear sinuses.

The genus was later named for the 16th century Spanish botanist Nicolas Monardes.

The name Bergamot was given because the scent closely resembles that of the bergamot orange.

Horsemint is similar to this Monarda, didyma, but is actually another Monarda, punctata, which is very similar in growth but its flowers are a lighter purplish color.

Herbalist have used this plant to treat nausea, vomiting, upset stomach, antiseptic, flatulence and insomnia. Its flowers can be used in salads, its leaves can be used in tomato dishes and as a substitute for sage in stuffing. No mater what the name, its herbal qualities and ability to attract bees, butterflies and hummingbirds, along with its beautiful deep red flowers make it a very useful addition to any garden.

Monarda can grow to 5’ tall and, since it is a member of the mint family, it can spread rapidly, especially in shady damp areas.

Jacob Cline is the most mildew resistant and rust resistant cultivar on the market.

Daylily Stella de Oro
This daylily has once been named Perennial of the Year. It has outstanding color and is a definite rebloomer, more than any other in its family. As is typical of daylilies, the blooms last one day but there are many on strong stems. They can be used for cut flowers, edging, borders or in mixed containers.

Stella de Oro is a compact daylily reaching only 12” tall in May-July. The flowers are fragrant and the plant forms a dense clump that can functions as a groundcover. It is also drought-tolerant, a real bonus. I am really looking forward to seeing this plant bloom. This is my first daylily.

Lavender Hardy
What more can be said about Lavender. It is a very popular herb mainly for its fragrance. Running your hand over the tops of the plants fills the air with a sweet aroma that makes you think of English gardens and a sweet, unpolluted countryside. It has been used for over 2,500 years as a stewing herb, a mood tonic, an insect repellant, and a food flavoring. Ancient Egyptians used it in the mummification process. Medieval and Renaissance laundresses were called "lavenders" because they used lavender in the storage of clean laundry. The Pilgrims brought the plant to North America in the early 1600s; at that time, lavender flowers sewn in a cap were thought to "comfort the brain very well."

Some lavenders are ‘hardy’ and some are ‘tender’. The tender lavenders are best grown in pots while the hardy lavenders can be grown outdoors as perennials. The best way to determine which is which is by checking the botanical name. The most widely grown hardy lavender is English lavender which comes in two varieties, ‘Munstead’ (18” tall with lilac-colored flowers) and ‘Hidcote’ (16” tall with deep purple-blue flowers). This plant, from Gurney’s, was not labeled as Munstead or Hidcote. The height listed for this plant is 15”-20” with purple flowers. My guess is that maybe they plant one or both varieties together and since they are so similar it doesn’t really matter which one is sold. My rookie eyes cannot tell the difference and I’ll wager the fragrance is just as sweet with either one.

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