Jul 9th, 2008 by Julie Kirkwood
So much is going on. First, isn’t it great we’ve had so much rain this summer? My lawn is still (somewhat) green and I haven’t even thought about dragging out the sprinkler. Usually by this time of year everything is crispy and dry.
A few weeks ago I wrote about the weeds that are taking over my flower gardens and how I’m not even going to try to keep up. Here’s a visual:
Here’s last week’s column about my pea plants.
Fresh off the vine, then the moment’s passed
I got this picture of a pea pod when I wrote the column, back when the wrinkles were just starting to show up.
Sadly, the peas are completely done now. They got all shriveled and yellow. This weekend when I was weeding the vegetable garden I pulled up the vines and took down the string trellis.
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Jun 26th, 2008 by Julie Kirkwood
My column this week is about this mildly creepy pest control measure that we tried in the garden: sprinkling human hair.
“A little gross, but it just might have worked”
In the past few days my damaged plants have rebounded even further.
Here’s a Swiss chard plant, looking perky:
And here are some green beans coming back:
We’re filling a second little cup with hair as we speak!
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Jun 16th, 2008 by Julie Kirkwood
The heat wave last week seemed to cut the blossom time short on my rhododendrons (or maybe I just misremember how long they usually stay in bloom).
Fortunately, when one thing fades another bursts to life. It’s rose time, the brief few weeks of pretty blossoms that make up for all the times those obnoxious thorns grab my clothes and skin when I mow around the bushes.
Here’s what we’ve got this year:
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Jun 13th, 2008 by Julie Kirkwood
I finally got some photos of my backyard “meadow” (the little area behind the garden that I’ve stopped mowing).
First, the full story can be found here:
“Where the wild things are: a yard corner goes unmowed”
And here it is:
If anybody knows what those tall, skinny plants are in the first photo, I’d love to know!
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Jun 12th, 2008 by Julie Kirkwood
Here’s a comment I’m pulling up so we don’t miss it:
Sheila K said:
I read that fellow’s article as well and am trying to understand what Lucerne Hay is and where I might get some. I found a timothy mix from Agway in Hampton Falls, but don’t know enough about the product to decide if what I was thinking of buying was the right item. It was from Lucern Farms. This will be my first year for a raised bed and I won’t be digging that hay up if it is the wrong thing, so….if you can, please advise…should I be purchasing alfalfa?
The best I can figure, and I’m no expert, is that these British Web sites are telling us to use a bale of regular old alfalfa hay, preferably a little rotted. I think they assume we can find this just hanging around somewhere or get it cheap from a local farm. I don’t think they intend for us to spend any significant amount of money on the stuff.
As far as timothy hay, that’s what I feed to my rabbits, which is why I know that it’s got different levels of nutrients from alfalfa hay. Plus, the stuff the rabbits eat is really expensive.
Long story short, if you can find a bale of alfalfa hay really cheap, definitely use it. If not, use something else — maybe dried grass clippings –or just skip that layer. I just skipped it and used topsoil to fill the raised beds. The plants haven’t complained. Good luck!
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Jun 9th, 2008 by Julie Kirkwood
My husband and his coworker were having a discussion recently about how high a fence needs to be to keep rabbits out of a vegetable garden.
His coworker thought it wouldn’t need to be very high.
My husband’s response was to send him a link to one of the many YouTube videos of a sport called competitive rabbit jumping, which I discovered a few months ago. Here’s just one example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RejsRq0MtBI
Lets just say I’m glad the fence around my garden is 3 feet high.
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Jun 6th, 2008 by Julie Kirkwood
I planted my new raised beds in a hurry last week before we went out of town for the weekend. Fortunately, everything seems to be settling in nicely and enjoying the rain, and the chicken wire seems to be keeping the pests out.
I planted 10 tomato plants (Big Beef, started indoors from seed):
A six-pack of zucchini seedlings:
More hot peppers than we’ll ever be able to eat (poblanos started indoors from seed, plus jalepeno and cherry peppers bought as seedlings):
And in the old part of the garden I have (overcrowded) green leaf lettuce, shell peas (pods are forming!!), and a bunch of herbs:
The planting is done but there’s still so much work to be done. I need to make nicer paths between the garden beds and I need to trim the grass that’s creeping up along the fence. One step at a time, though. I’m just glad we made it this far.
Oh, and for anybody who missed it this week, check out my Yard Dirt column: “A laborious task beyond compare.”
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May 29th, 2008 by Julie Kirkwood
Remember the wasp nest that was growing on our house last year?
Well, as predicted the wasps abandoned the nest when it got cold. We left it up all winter, just to be safe. We finally took it down this weekend (and by “we” I mean my husband … I poked at it a few times with a shovel and it freaked me out).
Here’s the space where the nest used to be:
And here’s the nest on the ground:
Pretty cool. Maybe after it sits there for a few weeks I’ll have the courage to get closer and and get a good look at it.
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May 27th, 2008 by Julie Kirkwood
This week’s Yard Dirt column is about the garden project that almost didn’t happen:
“Going soft in the garden, but still working hard”
Luckily, it did happen. We made two new garden beds, nearly doubling the size of our vegetable garden. Here’s how we did it.
The frame is made from three 2″x8″x8′ boards, one board cut in half and used as the end pieces. I put a stack of old newspaper in a garden cart and filled it with water. Then I layered the wet newspapers over the grass inside the frame.
I sprinkled the newspaper with some organic fertilizer (Hollytone, because that’s what I happened to have in the garage), then spread one garden cart full of compost from last year’s compost pile.
Then I added the soil. Half a cubic yard was the perfect amount to fill the bed to the top.
The whole project took about two baby naps, or about 2-3 hours.
The baby didn’t nap much yesterday, so my husband made the second bed.
Now I just have to surround them with chicken wire for rabbit protection and I’m ready to plant … a little late, but not bad!
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May 25th, 2008 by Julie Kirkwood
Memorial Day is quickly becoming one of my favorite holidays. I’ve been waiting so long to plant my flowers and veggies. The time is finally here.Here’s what I’ve been up to this week, getting ready for the big planting.
Hardening off seedlings:
Checking on the early spring crops, shell peas and lettuce … and some surprises. This picture shows how little cilantro plants are sprouting on their own among the peas!
Watching the lawn weeds grow:
And enjoying the spring blossoms. This is a “Moonlight broom” shrub that I planted two years ago. Up until this year it was looking sickly, but now it’s blooming!
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