Planted 5 Nanking cherry shrubs in the front yard today. Bought the little bareroot plants off Ebay for $12 including shipping!! They look happy, with little leaf buds on them. The seller included 3 extra, but I honestly don’t have a spot for them. Not sure what I’ll do with them, but I’ll keep them safe till I find them a home.
This photo of the blooming bush is what I HOPE these shrubs will look like one day, but mine are just babies. Here’s the real thing…
The walls of the keyhole garden are complete. All told, I spent just about $100 on the 2 top levels of brick because I already had the 2 bottom levels around the yard.
I lined the side walls with cardboard, but not the bottom. Some of the other keyhole gardens I’ve seen online line the bottom with cardboard, but I just dug up the soil all around and began adding new soil and compost on top.
My center basket is made from 4 wood 2x2s and some light bamboo stakes to make it a circle instead of a square. I wrapped these with temporary plastic fence, the kind you find at construction sites to block off an area.
The center basket is filled with leaves and I just added the first food scraps two days ago.
I’m filling up the rest of the garden with compost and soil from the recycling center and some of the compost from the yard. I have wood ashes to add and I’ll do that with the next layer. Almost done! I’ve got some time to let the garden rest until I plant, I’ll be using this bed for peppers, eggplant, melon and bush beans. I’ll direct sow sometime after May 15th.
I’ve started seeds in my aerogarden in the seeds starting tray. 66 seedlings fit! I set up some more seedlings sitting in my window sill too. Some of the wintersown seeds are starting to germinate! I think I saw the yarrow coming up in the flat outside. Good News! The fruit cocktail tree I planted last year didn’t die yet! I’m so glad I didn’t pull it up during the winter when it was looking so dry and grey. I see new growth on almost every leaf bud out there now!
Back in December I came across a video on youtube and started looking into creating a keyhole garden in my front yard. See my original keyhole garden post. The weather warmed up a bit here at the Jersey Shore for a few days so I wanted to begin putting it together to have it ready to plant this spring. I was really going for a no-cost solution and wanted to use materials I already had to put it together. We have lots of firewood in the back yard that is cut too long for our insert stove and DH hasn’t gotten around to making the logs any shorter, so I planned on making the outside wall out of those logs.
First I found what I wanted to be the center of the garden.
I put in a stake, tied some twine to it, measured about 18” out from the stake and drew a circle around the stake in the dirt.
I nailed a big metal nail into the ground every 6” or so around that circle, took took it out and replaced it with bamboo stakes. (I now think they would be too flimsy to support the center compost basket)
Next, I walked out from the center stake with the twine to create the outer edge of the garden and walked around it, tracing the larger circle into the dirt and dug a shallow trench along the circle.
I fanned the logs for the wall out on the ground around my measured circle, so I knew how many I would need and could decide which ones would go where.
Then I measured a length of old hose that would hold the tops of the logs together so they wouldn’t spread out when I filled the garden up with soil.
I began to stand up each log into the trench and wind twine around the tops of the logs and the length of hose, securing the logs together along the hose.
I decided the twine was a bad idea and would probably fail early in the season because it just wouldn’t be strong enough. I intended to go to home depot and buy some baling wire and use the same technique but hopefully with a sturdier result.
DH expressed concern about the wood rotting and especially about providing a feast for termites, so I scrapped this first version of the project and stacked the wood again.
For the second try, I made the outer circle a little smaller. I realized that if I went with my first measurement, I wouldn’t have been able to reach the center of the garden from the outside wall and I may have had to use a few long handled tools to tend some hard to reach places.
This time I made the radius of the circle the length of my garden rake and will be using a collapsible fabric/metal spring garden container as my center basket. I’m moving around some bricks from other parts of my landscape and plant to replace them with something else later in the season.
I still need to buy about 50 more bricks to do 2 more levels around the outer wall.
My neighbor came outside to ask “What the hell are you building?” I told him it will be a garden and we decided to go with the brick instead of wood. He said I would be better off, but I think the wood would have looked cool.
I went to the Beach with my daughter on what seemed like the coldest day of the year. On Feb. 9th I brought A-girl to Island Beach State Park for a couple of reasons. I’m not eating eggs anymore so I wanted to gather some sea shells to crush up and add to my garden beds. The seashells would decompose VERY slowly and add calcium to the soil. I had also read that sea weed would add lots of nutrient rich green matter to my compost pile. We loaded the car with a couple of garbage cans, shovels, pruners and garbage bags. These were fine reasons to go, but what really pushed me out the door on that freezing day was a longing to find a beach plum bush. They grow wild along island beach and I was hoping to spot one and take some cuttings that I could grow in my own yard.
We parked, made our way down to the beach and found plenty of shells, but the beach was VERY clean – no seaweed to be found.
I had read varying accounts of what a beach plum is supposed to look like, so I wasn’t sure. When I got to looking around the park, I realized that finding the right shrub would be harder than I thought. I took some cuttings of some interesting looking shrubs, but then I found some short thorny brambles with bright red berries on them. Please, keep in mind I am a novice gardener! I had no idea what a rose hip looks like!
I took clippings from these thorny beauties and picked some of the berries to take home. I even used my shovel and lifted a small shoot with some roots attached to try to replant in my yard.
I saw a youtube video of a man who propagated berry bushes using “grow bags” and wanted to give that a try, so when I got home I filled a couple of gallon zip lock bags with soil, poked in some holes and stuck my cuttings in.
When I got home, I did some more research about beach plums and it seems that what I found, and took the bulk of my clippings of, were beach roses or “Rosa rugosa”
I’m looking forward to seeing if any of them grow, but that will be my final trip to take cuttings from wild shrubs for quite some time. As it turns out – 2 days later I developed a wicked rash on my right arm. Poison something. After a $20 copay for the doc and then the cost of the OTC medicine I got to treat it, it was a $36 lesson. What have I learned? Support your favorite online nursery and BUY some Beach plum bushes!
More pictures from our expensive adventure…
These are the rose hips that came off the cuttings I took.
I really love living on the Jersey Shore. It’s gorgeous all year round.
And that’s probably all I’ll ever do because it’s not supposed to grow in this zone. That’s what I get for clicking “buy now” on ebay without researching the plant more extensively first. haha! Oh well, It’s happily stretching out in the container I planted it in soaking up the weak winter sunlight from my only sunny window.
Since January 17th I’ve been following Dr. Joel Fuhrman’s eating strategy (diet plan?) as described in his book Eat to Live: The Revolutionary Formula for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss
I’ve been spending big bucks in the grocery store to try to keep up with eating a plant based diet and I can’t WAIT for my garden to start helping me out. I am actually really excited to see if I can get MOST of my food from my gardens this year!
More winter sowing done. I’d like to set up a couple of more flats, but I will set up my aero garden inside by the end of the month. I got a garden starter tray which will allow me to start 66 plants at one time under those little grow lights!
I’ve been keeping my eye on the “free stuff” page of craigslist and my local freecycle group and found a lovely person who gets a steady supply of Styrofoam coolers shipped to her each month. She’s looking for someone to take them off her hands and I am happy to do it! They are a nice size and I think each one could easily be a happy home for a tomato plant or eggplant or pepper this season! Large planters and flower pots are expensive – so I’m pretty psyched to find this resource.
Calling all experienced gardeners!! Help! I just found an open wound on my Lapin Cherry tree I got from Miller Nurseries! The tree is only about 4′ tall now, has 5 branches and lots of buds that look like they will branch out in spring. The wound is a yucky looking hole that’s rather soft when you feel around it. It’s in the top 1/3 of the trunk. Here are photos…
In the photo just above, you can see the hole toward the bottom of the picture.
So. Do I cut the trunk down to just above that branch below the hole? Is there another way to save the tree? I can’t just leave it the way it is… can I?
Thank you for any input!!
The following poem came from the facebook page of Our Little Acre. The preface they gave was this:
Barbara Wise, who gardens in Tennessee, posted this on her blog today. She was passing it on from another blogger. There’s so much truth in this, that my husband could have written it. All except for the maid part. LOL
My Wife the Gardener
~ Peter (poem found in old magazine)
She dug the plot on Monday –
the soil was rich and fine,
She forgot to thaw out dinner –
so we went out to dine…
She planted roses Tuesday –
she says they are a must,
They really are quite lovely
but she quite forgot to dust.
On Wednesday it was daisies –
they opened up with sun,
All whites and pinks and yellows –
but the laundry wasn’t done…
The poppies came on Thursday -
a bright and cherry red,
I guess she really was engrossed –
she never made the bed…
It was violets on Friday –
in colours she adores,
It never bothered her at all –
all crumbs upon the floors
I hired a maid on Saturday –
my week is now complete,
My wife can garden all she wants –
the house will still be neat!
It’s nearly lunchtime Sunday –
and I cannot find the maid,
Oh no! I don’t believe it!
She’s out there WITH THE SPADE
Today I made WinterSown.org flats for bok choy cabbage, golden acres cabbage, bright lights swiss chard, curly leaf parsley, sweet marjoram and ruby queen beets.
I sent in my self addressed stamped envelope to get my heirloom tomato seeds from WinterSown.org yesterday. I’m looking forward to see which kinds they send me!
My sister in law also saved her chinchilla’s bedding for me when she cleaned her cage last week. The bedding is called daily news – made from recycled newspaper. I added it to my compost pile and mixed it all around – that should make it steamy hot!
Happy New Year 1-1-11 Everyone!
