A bit of garden spam
Apr. 27th, 2009 09:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyprinella posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
gardeningMy basic plant philosophy is native, edible or both. So I've been slowly removing plants I find boring and taking up space and replacing them in the house I bought a year ago. For example, the crepe myrtle I was allergic to got replaced with an American elderberry. The silver mound got replaced with blueberries. The burning bush got dug out and the space it was in next to the downspout got turned into a carnivorous plant bog. Partridge berry and grapes instead of periwinkle.
The backyard's been a bit of a challenge because one of the previous owners decided to pull up the topsoil and put down plastic and wood chips. When I pulled it all up to put in my pond, I was left with nothing but bare clay. Turns out garlic chives adn wild strawberries will grown on that. I've also been playing around with letting various "weeds" grow to see what's pretty and what will grow without me trying too hard. Smartweed is actually quite pretty in the late summer. So I just wanted to picspam some of my latest doings. I got a bunch of carnivores and other plants at a native sale this last weekend. Sadly, not everything to planted right away because of severe allergy attack. Bah, tree pollen.
Backyard last fall before the cold starting knocking off the pond plants. The carrots and broccoli in the back all made it through the winter, although they didn't do much until about two weeks ago. Now they're going crazy.
Backyard as of two weekends ago. The old bed was all rotten and misshapen, so we pulled it out and put in a new one. Hoping to plant veggies in the new bed, although I'm not sure if it'll get enough sun. Our property backs up on a wetlands preserve (one the reasons I plant natives) and there are a lot of really tall trees. High summer it gets at least six hours of sun, but as you get towards fall and the sun shifts, it doesn't. This was made out of left over pond frames and lining. I had to line it because the wood was pressure treated.
Front garden, the patch up the driveway and then to the left. I do, occasionally, have to buy nostalgia plants. My mom had globe thistles in her garden when I was a kid and I spent many hours watching the bees and other insects that visited. I finally had a good spot to put them at the end of my garden here. And giving away the lirope that was there before made me really popular on freecycle. :D
Carnivorous plant bog! Not quite done, as you can tell, but by the time I got to this on Saturday, the rubber was already too hot to touch. Plan is to cut that back and build a sort of mound edge around to keep the neighbor's grass clippings from flying in when she mows. I'm also putting a rain barrel on the downspout in the back there and hooking up the overflow to go through the bog. I have a bunch of Sarrencia sp. pitchers and hybrids in there, as well as a couple of sundews, Venus flytraps, cranberries, a bog orchid and what I think is a bog violet. The last two were stowaways on the carnivores.
The backyard's been a bit of a challenge because one of the previous owners decided to pull up the topsoil and put down plastic and wood chips. When I pulled it all up to put in my pond, I was left with nothing but bare clay. Turns out garlic chives adn wild strawberries will grown on that. I've also been playing around with letting various "weeds" grow to see what's pretty and what will grow without me trying too hard. Smartweed is actually quite pretty in the late summer. So I just wanted to picspam some of my latest doings. I got a bunch of carnivores and other plants at a native sale this last weekend. Sadly, not everything to planted right away because of severe allergy attack. Bah, tree pollen.
Backyard last fall before the cold starting knocking off the pond plants. The carrots and broccoli in the back all made it through the winter, although they didn't do much until about two weeks ago. Now they're going crazy.
Backyard as of two weekends ago. The old bed was all rotten and misshapen, so we pulled it out and put in a new one. Hoping to plant veggies in the new bed, although I'm not sure if it'll get enough sun. Our property backs up on a wetlands preserve (one the reasons I plant natives) and there are a lot of really tall trees. High summer it gets at least six hours of sun, but as you get towards fall and the sun shifts, it doesn't. This was made out of left over pond frames and lining. I had to line it because the wood was pressure treated.
Front garden, the patch up the driveway and then to the left. I do, occasionally, have to buy nostalgia plants. My mom had globe thistles in her garden when I was a kid and I spent many hours watching the bees and other insects that visited. I finally had a good spot to put them at the end of my garden here. And giving away the lirope that was there before made me really popular on freecycle. :D
Carnivorous plant bog! Not quite done, as you can tell, but by the time I got to this on Saturday, the rubber was already too hot to touch. Plan is to cut that back and build a sort of mound edge around to keep the neighbor's grass clippings from flying in when she mows. I'm also putting a rain barrel on the downspout in the back there and hooking up the overflow to go through the bog. I have a bunch of Sarrencia sp. pitchers and hybrids in there, as well as a couple of sundews, Venus flytraps, cranberries, a bog orchid and what I think is a bog violet. The last two were stowaways on the carnivores.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-28 02:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-28 01:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-28 12:44 pm (UTC)Our previous garden was also on clay subsoil, but at least there it was the developers' fault, because they scraped the whole site down to the subsoil when they built. We bought our house FORTY YEARS after that happened, and barely an inch of topsoil had managed to regenerate. It was incredibly frustrating. I had good luck with lemon balm, spearmint, pineapple sage, and day-lilies. Lots of people in my neighborhood had luck with echinaceas and black-eyed susans -- mine didn't survive, but my new garden has a good three inches of clayey topsoil and the black-eyed susans and garlic chives were already running rampant when we moved in.
For tons of info on edible plants that tolerate shade, check out Edible Forest Gardens by David Jacke and Eric Toensmeier (which I was just pimping over on
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-28 01:31 pm (UTC)I'll have to check out that forest book. Like I said, the back yard doesn't get a lot of light, but I don't have a whole lot of room in the front for veg, although I do squeeze it in around the ornamentals. My other problem is raccoons. They mostly leave the plants alone, prefering to screw with the water gardens, but then they'll decide to be destructive. They'll take bites out of green tomatoes and then literally smear the rest around the deck. So I'm experimenting to see what they'll leave alone.