NJ Jersey Shore Garden Blog | Playing in the dirt in planting zone 7

I can move mulch mountains!

05.23.2011, No Comments, Mulch, by admin.

There’s still a bit left, but I’ll use it all in the next day or so. When the guys dumped it, the mulched had covered some of the herb bed, but I was able to move the mound off the herbs by the end of the 2nd day so they seem to be recovering nicely.

I was fascinated by the heat the pile was generating. I even took some video of steam rising up off the pile. The chipped trees must have a been a perfect mixture of the brown wood chips and green leaves to create the same decomposition and heat I aim for in my backyard compost piles. A-girl was outside with me while I was shoveling it into the wheel barrow and she ran in the house to tell her brother “I saw SMOKE in the MULCH!!”

Here’s where it went. It looks like kind of a mess in my pictures, but I like it in real life. And after all, I garden to please myself, my soil and my plants. I’m thinking when the mulch ages, the color will be a little less obvious and it will weather into the landscape a little more. The main goal was to use it to create pathways between the backyard veggie beds and to connect the 4 separate beds in the front corner of the front yard. Mission accomplished.

Amazon.com Widgets

I Got Free Mulch! Don’t Worry Husband, I’ll Take Care Of It!

05.18.2011, No Comments, Composting, by admin.

A-girl and I took the doggie for a walk after we put G on the bus today and heard the tell tale sound of trees being chipped somewhere close by. I brought Kylie home and put A in the car to find them only 2 blocks from the house, with a truck just about full of chipped trees! ALRIGHT! I asked one of the guys, “Any way I can get some of those wood chips? Maybe half the truck? I live 2 blocks away.” He says, “Well…” shaking his head… “I wanna dump the whole truck.”

Help me Rhonda.

I said, “Ok. I live at 924 – put it right in the driveway.”

5 minutes later one of the guys is tromping through my herb bed to direct the truck up and oversee the dumping – but hey! I got LOTS of free mulch! I love that all the leaves are mixed in there too…. Oh yeah – Look out. I’m gonna have some kickin’ pathways and a nice thick border all around my fence perimeter. Hooray!!

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."
- Thomas A. Edison

Tags: free | mulch | tree service | wood chips

Planted Squash, Cucumber, Melons and Some Flowers This Week.

05.12.2011, 3 Comments, Flowers, Keyhole Garden, Vegetables, What I Planted, by admin.

Yesterday I planted some more bush beans in the front and back yard and put some nasturtium seeds in the garden too. I hope they come up sooner this year than last year.

Today I put some purple tansy seeds directly in the garden around my started squash and zucchini plants. I hope these will help repel the borers that have taken down my zucchini plants for the past 2 years.

What an awful picture this is (above) – I need to make the driveway garden wider and lose even more of this poor excuse for a lawn. This is the area that gets the MOST SUN during the day. How frustrated am I that my keyhole garden is shaded until 11am?! I planted a couple of watermelon seedlings in there 2 days ago. We’ll see how well they produce with so much shade. The squash in the low garden to the right of it get much more sun. They should do fine if I can keep the borers away.

I planted the rest of the Siberian iris that I divided from Aunt Kathy’s garden in the back yard next to the lily of the valley. I also added some borage seeds down in front in what looks like empty dirt at the bottom of the picture. This was an accidental garden bed on my part. Almost 1/3 of the back yard used to be a tangled mess of ivy when we moved in. I yanked most of the ivy out, but left a section of the tangled mess because I got tired of doing it. I guess I killed enough of the strangling ivy that the lily of the valley that were struggling underneath were able to spring up in their stead. I’ve taken very little time to weed around it. I’ve moved some of it out and tried to rescue some of the pachysandra that can’t keep up with the lily of the valley and are starting to become overwhelmed. Other than that, I simply mow around it and it seems to be thriving! Easiest garden ever. hahaha.

I’m planting tomatoes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

05.06.2011, No Comments, Vegetables, What I Planted, When I Planted, by admin.

I can’t wait any longer! Pleeeaaase don’t get too cold from now on. I want lots and lots of heirloom tomatoes this season. Please and Thank you!

Bed frame trellis and lilac’s first bloom!

04.29.2011, No Comments, How's It Growing?, by admin.

On the nice days I’m making trips back and forth to my recycling center to get 3 garbage cans at a time filled with compost in the back of my minivan. Hey, I may look like a train wreck while I’m doing it, but I’ve got to work with what I’ve got. Someday I’ll get a truck! I bring it back to the house, spread it on some beds, and the next nice day I do it again. My soil is so heavy with clay that I can really use as much compost as I can haul!

My wheel barrow completely fell apart a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been dragging the garbage cans around the yard in my kids red wagon. I need to get a garden cart.

I just ordered by downspout diverter for my new rain barrel. I’m pretty disgusted that it didn’t come with one and I ended up paying $30 more to get one, but I’d rather pay the $30 than have the barrel overflowing all over my patio.

I feel like my greens (chard, lettuce and broccoli raab) are never going to take off. I should have started them in flats instead of direct seeding them in the garden. The weather has been so weird, they are just teeny tiny little seedlings. Bah. I can’t wait.

I did plant out some Baikal skullcap, valerian and some feverfew yesterday. They were getting bushy in their little 4” pots in the greenhouse so I figured it would be safe to put them in the ground.

My lilac is blooming for the first time! I got it as part of a garden package from SpringHill nursery back in 2007. I moved it across the yard last year and shocked it pretty badly – I didn’t know if it was going to make it. It looks like it’s coming back strong this year.

Oh, and today I dug an iron bed frame we aren’t using out of the garage. I put it up against the house, in case I want to use it as a trellis. Is it lame? Does it just look like I propped up an old bedframe or is it pretty? Should I let a cucumber grow up there this season? Abbie doesn’t have a bed frame around her mattress right now, and this one would fit, but I’m kind of nervous about the spikey corners – I’m afraid she will get hurt. My kids are bed jumpers. I think she needs a nice ROUNDY bed.

What do you think?

Here are some more pics of what’s happening out in the garden:

carpet flox and magic carpet spirea.

chives about to flower

Blueberry – plenty of flowers, not too many leaves though.

Lingonberry! First year! Look at the pretty pink flowers!

Palace purple heuchera. I hope it fills in all this space.

Pretty white flowers on that tree. Glad I pruned it like crazy last year.

I extended the driveway garden down to the street this year.

Look at this disaster of a shade garden. I need to get rid of a LOT of weeds and rocks and bring in a LOT more mulch. One day it will be lush and ferney and beautiful!!

Next Year Start Peas Indoors!

04.25.2011, No Comments, Vegetables, by admin.

*sigh*

I just saw a clip in a gardening TV show about planting peas that would have been helpful if I saw it 3 months ago!! The peas I planted on March 12th directly in the garden *should* have been planted in peat strips, or probably a cardboard egg carton, indoors a couple of weeks before. Turns out, they like warmer temps to germinate, but like to GROW in cold weather. What a funny crop.

The lincoln peas I put right in the garden ALL germinated, but have been very slow to do much else since then. The Sugar Daddy heirloom peas barely came up at all – only about 4 or 5 out of the whole packet have germinated and I actually threw some of them out because I was so disgusted by the failure. I wonder if they would have done better if I started them indoors.

The man on the show didn’t even separate the peat strips, he dug a trench and planted the whole pack as is! He even put two peas in each cell and didn’t thin them. He said they like to grow crowded. Sounds good to me.

This year’s pea harvest may stink, but I’m cutting myself some slack because it’s the first time I’ve ever tried to grow peas myself. In the words of Joanie Mitchel, “There’s something lost, but something gained in living every day.” There’s always next year.

Tags: do this instead | peas

Potted up the Tomatoes… again.

04.21.2011, No Comments, Vegetables, When I Planted, by admin.

Last night I was struck with what I thought was a brilliant idea. I would take the bendy parts of one of the kid tents (that my kids NEVER use) and make a wigwam style hoop house over my tomato bed so I could get my tomatoes in the ground before mid May this year. I started them in my aerogarden on Feb 21 which I now discover is TOO EARLY if I don’t want to have to pot them up twice before I plant them.

Not that the tomatoes mind, in fact they seem to enjoy being put into larger pots. They grow stronger, sturdier and produce more roots along the bottom of the stem. All good things for the tomatoes, but more work for me. Not that I mind – I’m happiest when I’m playing in the dirt.

So back to my brilliant idea. I knew I had a plastic painters dropcloth somewhere in the garage and by some miracle I was able to put my hands on it this morning. I marauded the tent and took what I needed and began to set up my hoop house. It went a lot different in my head. THIS, my friends, is a gardening FAIL. haha.

Ok, maybe it doesn’t look so bad in the picture. But this is a little video clip I took of this disaster. I sliced the corners so I could fit the plastic around the posts of my trellis. I have a feeling the wind is going to tear it to shreds. Take a look…

So I don’t think it will last long. I haven’t taken it down yet, but I have a feeling pieces of it will be flying around the neighborhood before next week.

With this in mind, I potted up my tomatoes for the 2nd time, knowing full well that a sane person wouldn’t plant them in the ground until May 15th. Somebody punch me if I convince myself I can get away with doing it sooner. Thank goodness I saved all those milk jugs!!

Almost Missed Tomato Tuesday!

04.19.2011, 4 Comments, Fruits, by admin.

It’s 11:30pm and I just found the Tomato Tuesday blog! I’m happy to participate by talking a little tomato and listing the varieties I’m growing this year. Thanks to the Wintersown.org self-addressed-stamped-envelope heirloom tomato seeds I received this winter, I’ve got a nice variety of plants going already. Plants. Not seedlings. I started my tomatoes early this year and I am already finding myself pinching off little suckers in the greenhouse. I’ve potted them up once so far, but they need to be potted up again because I can NOT put them in the ground for at least another 3 weeks. Last year I was covering all my tomatoes and peppers up with row covers and plastic milk jugs every few nights because I jumped the gun and planted them too early. *sigh* I just get way to excited about home grown tomatoes.

The varieties I planted this year are: Ramapo, Giant Belgium, Black Krim, Sausage, Mexican Italian Tree Duo, Sunray, Black Cherry, Rutgers, Beefsteak, Hillbilly and The Miracle BPF. I’ll have at least one or two of each plant.

This tomato trellis I built will be a support system similar to what he put together in the video below. I built it as 3 panels, 2 short sides and the long top. They fit together pretty snugly, but for extra support, I tied the outside top corners together with twine. The 4 legs are sunk about 14” down into the bed. I’ll tie strings down to each plant along the top 3 rungs of the trellis. I like the idea of using the strings instead of staking each individual plant because no matter how diligently I keep after them, the tomato bed is usually such a mess mid season. ~~Tomorrow I’ll take and upload a picture of the bed and add it to this post.~~