Grass Villian

I posted our plans for having a beautiful green lawn. My husband and I are officially over the whole grass thing for this year! Ahem, before I rant, let me focus on the attributes of lawn filled with grass.
(Here's where I leave a blank post.) No, in all seriousness:

• grass is nutritious for cattle (I honestly would feel better if we were growing grass for horses and cows)
• grass prevents erosion of topsoil
• grass provides the nitrogen soil needs 
• grass contains chlorophyll 

Ok, I am really scrambling for any other reason it is beneficial in suburbia, but moving on to our mistakes so that you can avoid repeating them.

Before

Before

After

 As you see above, the month of April started out great. We were able to redo the landscape. We even planted our trees, shrubs, and grass seed hours before a week of gentle rain. We were elated.

Downpour

 After the week of rain, we watered with the sprinkler for at least 30 minutes a night. The temperatures went from up 70s down to the 50s and our dying rye grass sprang to life. That's actually what you see in the after picture posted above. Twenty-one days passed and not a single blade of grass came up.

So we were back to the store grabbing a bag of rye. We figured the rye comes up in 7 days and it would stop the rest of the summer grass seed from washing away. The last week of April, first week of May turned into torrential rains. 10 - 20 minutes bucket and gully washers. All our grass seed washed away because it was too cold to germinate. The rye looks beautiful. For now we will enjoy the last of the rye before summer burns it up.

Rain washing down the side of the hill

washed away dirt

what washed out

used to spread the grass seed

 Moral of our garden mishaps?

Rye is great from Fall to Spring. Wait to plant summer seeds until the temperatures no longer dip and the spring rains aren't around to wash it out! Establishing grass seed requires patience, a lot of water, fertilizer, great soil, and ideal temperatures!

My advice is don't give up, take your time, and "if you don't succeed, try, try again." For us we will attempt it again next year.

rye grass

Name that bush

Healthy bush

I need help naming this bush. I have searched google to no avail on this one. Here is a picture of the healthy bush next to it. I would be forever grateful if someone could identify what it is. I am afraid the unhealthy bush is getting pretty close to being past saving which makes me sad.

Unhealthy bush

 The unhealthy bush pictured left, has already lost half of its size because the limbs were completely dead. The limbs broke off in one snap. I'm hoping to discover the name so I can look up how to treat its problems. The leaves are not falling off, but it is not producing any spring leaves and the old leaves have burnt spots and some type of mold on them as well.


Exactly on the other side of the house, the landscapers planted this bush. I think it may be a Dwarf Burford Holly? It's leaves are turning yellow. I read this is an iron deficiency. Due to the wet winter we have experienced, it seems the heavy rains washed the iron from this shrub. They don't like to be watered a lot. I amended the soil with iron and it seems to be perking up a bit, but we still have been having quite a bit of rain and am not sure if I need to keep adding more iron or what.

Dwarf Burford Holly? Sickly

Current

Garden Plans

7+ ton additional pile

Spring break weekend was busy! The funny part of this week was we did not plant trees. The whole point of this spring's prep ended up incomplete.

So what happened? From my last post until now a lot of shoveling was involved! All Tuesday and Wednesday I shoveled dirt and pushed the wheelbarrow because I was too impatient to wait for us to purchase a cart for behind the lawn mower. The 7 ton dirt pile managed to fill in the holes and extend "the beast" partially. We simply ordered another load of dirt. Communication somehow became muddled and we received twice as much as before. I wanted to cry.

halfway finished

Here sat a pile twice as big. We now only had four days to complete our list. The clincher was the muscles sore from the previous two days. Another pile of mulch was added to the list of piles needed shoveling, but at least we had our cart to tote it all in!

The good part of all of it is, although we still have not planted our evergreen trees, our yard is mulched for another season and we got the grass seeded right before the rains came. Now we wait. The grass is supposed to come up in 10-21 days and then we can seed whatever washed away.

halfway sloped

completely sloped and seeded

We did decide on a local place to order our evergreens from and are waiting to see how it will turn out. They are supposed to deliver and set the trees in the ground for you. That would be amazing.

Cucumbers

Marketer  Cucumber

Marketer Cucumber

Dill Cucumber

These pictures make me sad. This was the last time the plant was healthy. They ended up dying off before I could harvest many. Cucumbers require a lot of fertilizer. They loved the soil I planted them in due to the fact that the chicken manure was at the bottom of the compost pile, but alas the rain!!!! This time of year the rain we receive from the costal hurricanes dumps right on our location. We have the greenest grass in the region, but it also bodes ill for our corn and cucumbers.

I have yet to figure a way to keep these plants well fertilized and healthy during these rain storms. They don't have time to dry out. For this fact, bugs, mold, washed away fertilizer, and lack of sun was the demise of these beauties.

Banana Plant Mutilation

My kids have mutilated my deck plants so many times by now it is not even funny! We brought these plants in during May when the nights would dip below 60s. One Sunday afternoon, we came out to the living room to a sight of a banana tree shredded to bits.
I about cried. It takes this plant 3 years to produce bananas. We have YET to have a plant make it to that third year. The longest we have kept one from being frost bit or mutilated by the kids is two years. I will say, they self propagate very easily!
Simply expose some of a bananas root and it will produce another plant. We are almost up to 11 plants this year. So far the one original plant we have bought produces 11 plants. of those 11, a handful survived our elements. From those 3 that survived we have had many more. Now if one could survive until its harvest!

Magnolia

This tree has been through the wringer. Due to the low humidity and extreme cold we experienced, it has quite turned brown. Keep in mind, magnolias shed their leaves year round. This was entire branches dying on me. I went to further investigate and to my horror discovered mold on the leaves, spiders, and all sorts of bugs. I hope some of the bugs are helping the poor tree.

I ran inside to do some research because it is not doing well, but the verdict was pretty hopeless. They develop diseases in the soil. Apparently, Magnolia roots are shallow. Advice discourages the use of fertilizer....pretty much anything to aid the trees.

I can cut the branches off that died, but truly much of anything you do to mess with the tree, hurts it. Basically, from what I understand, your best time to ensure a healthy tree is when you plant it initially.

So before I throw up my hands in despair completely, I tossed some rotten tomatoes around it to up the acidity level, and covered it with mulch. The only help I can truly give it is to cover the ground in 3 inches of mulch.

RoundUp Saga Continued

Rhododendron 2014

As you may recall, I addressed the RoundUp Wars in a previous post. You can see from the above picture where my husband sprayed. I was bemoaning the fact that so many of my beautiful plants look sickly this year.
The past four years we have lived here they were vibrant. My husband piped up, "oh, their is nothing wrong with them, that's just where I sprayed roundup. We'll know how resilient they are by how well they survive."
whaaaaa!!!!! For those who have not seen this Rhododendron shrub in past years, here is a picture below.

2011

Full blooming flowers, leaves not drooping, a healthy plant

Tree Stump mishap

Tree Stump Garden

Today's mishap features my children. It came as no surprise. As I was digging this garden bed, in the back of my mind I envisioned the mishap. My children were merrily digging along with me.

We successfully raked the decaying leaves away to reveal rich mulch. All morning, the kids were merrily digging away. I explained to them once I planted seeds they would not make mama happy if they dug. We headed into lunch.

I thought, I was being smart when I planted the seeds during naptime. Ha! After nap time, they rushed right back to dig. I had forgotten by this point. After a few minutes of dirt flying in the air, they began to fuss in fight. I heard their feud and discovered my poor seeds plight. Not sure where these poor seeds will turn up, but I'm gonna pretend they're laying nice and pretty, in their designated spot.

RoundUp Wars

Easter Lillies below the Azaleas

I am not a gardener. I love to garden, but I am learning right along with everyone else. I could not figure out why my healthy Easter Lillies were dying. Much less the dead grass on the other side of the house.

My husband and I have different methods of handling weeds. We have different perspectives on what makes a yard look presentable. Come to find out he has sprayed his beloved roundup along all the edges.

I gulped. Stated, "no wonder they died" and left it at that for the most part. I'm the organic gardener here. He is the conventional landscaper.

We haven't clashed yet. He lets me try to keep weeds under control organically, but puts his foot down when it comes to the actual yard.

With a big sigh, I stop writing this post.

Tornados, Rain, Flooding

Photo taken by husband

I am thankful our yard drains well. It's sorta at a slant. Either way, I am supposed to be planting the summer garden seeds, but am thankful I put it off yesterday. We had tornados, rain, and flooding around the area with more expected today.

Within 15 minutes our property was a yard of flowing water. If I had planted my seeds yesterday they would have been washed to the other side of the yard!

The Death Grip

Herb

Marigold

Continuing yesterday's theme, this is a picture of what happens to new plants.  These two leaves are considered the plants baby stage. When other leaves appear called the plants' "true leaves" , the plant can be transplanted outdoors. The problem with plants in the beginning stage is they are fragile. Plants do not like the oils on human's skin. I brushed up against that one marigold and within minutes it wilted. By the end of the day, it had withered. I call it the death grip.

When growing from seed indoors:

• Please, do not touch the plants with your bare skin
• Water the soil preferably into the dish and allow the soil to soak it up like a sponge.
• The greenhouse lid is needed only for the initial incubation.
• Personally, I like to rotate the greenhouse to ensure the plants grow straight.

Where to Begin?

Wildflowers in our yard

Where to begin? Last night was the "final straw" of mishaps for me. I pouted.  Today is a new day.

This weeks mishaps consisted of the following:

• Forgot my camera at my mom's house. (hence no posts here)
• Kids playing in the mud....which is fine, but they do not understand that after playing in the mud, they might as well stay in their clothes.....so yea, two laundry loads of muddy clothes
• The youngest deciding to carry the eggs to the house, cracking one egg and deciding to pick it up.
• The final straw: The kids shutting the lid to the portable green house. The heat fried my flowers and I cried.

I pouted while vowing that gardening was for adults with no responsibilities or children. I fumed about all the "patience" of waiting wasted. I bemoaned the fact that my precious marigolds had lost their chance to be planted with the spring plants. Here's to a new week of gardening.

Almond Trees

A few years back, (maybe last year?) my in-laws had bought me some Almond trees. Two of my children have varying allergies. When compiled together, their allergies create a long list. One allergy they do share is nuts. They are specifically allergic to peanuts.....so, what does almond trees have to do with this allergy?

Almond tree waiting to be planted

They used to eat almond butter. Thankfully, their reaction to peanuts is mild. Because one of them itches after eating almond butter, we switched to sunflower seed butter. There is only one little problem. My husband and I discovered we love Almonds. In comes the Almond trees. We initially were going through so much almond butter, we thought it would be cheaper to start growing our own almond trees and processing them into Almond butter.

I can't remember when we received the first batch of almond trees. My husband maintains that it was not the right time of year to plant them. All I know is we planted it in  a pot to wait until we could plant them in the ground. Next thing we know the pot was standing there with no Almond tree! It had been a windy day and the wind had snatched the tree right up since the roots were shallow.

Lesson learned: don't plant almond trees in pots.

Seedling Advice

The last burnt Spinach plant on the right

Most of my seeds have come up indoors. My main problem is getting seeds to survive my family. Here is my advice....or maybe pet peeves for handling seedlings:

1. Please!!!! refrain from from touching these tender plants! The oil from our skin does not do well with many edible plant leaves. This is why you see gardeners wearing gloves. They not only want to keep there hands clean but also protect their plants.
2. Refrain from over-watering seeds. Seeds can drown in soil conditions.
3. Be kind to seedlings when it comes to the process of hardening them off. In other words, wait until their true leaves appear. The first two leaves of a plant are not their true leaves, these fall off once the plant is old enough and have enough leaves to capture more sun.
4. Do not set seedlings outside, with the clear lid on your portable greenhouse, when it is over 45 degrees! I know this and did it anyway.....just burnt up all my beautiful seedlings.
5. Make sure the seeds are planted deep enough so that the plant doesn't shoot up very tall, but have a shallow root system. This causes the plant to die very quickly.

Sunflowers vs. Squirrels

Beautiful Sunflowers

Sunflower hedge

Had you known me before 2011, you knew I thought squirrels were adorable. We had one side of our house with no plants to protect it from the afternoon sun. I planted sunflowers straight into the NC soil. Boy did they grow!!! They had huge heads and I had a ton of sunflower seeds. I read you were to harvest the seeds by covering the heads with paper bags......the heads were too big to fit into the lunch size paper bags so I tossed them up on my back deck. Next morning I discovered a squirrel eating sunflower seeds and I thought it was so adorable!!!!

I ended up sweeping the deck of all the sunflower shells the squirrel left behind. I decided the next year to plant the sunflowers in a circle. They grew tall with beautiful heads......one day, I looked out and two sunflower heads were snapped clean off. I did not understand. The next day I glanced out and caught a squirrel jumping from the tree above unto the top of the sunflower head. Being too heavy for the sunflower head, the squirrel snapped the head right off. I still didn't despise Squirrels.

It wasn't until I discovered where all my juicy plums were disappearing to did I detest the squirrels. Originally, we had blamed the deer. One day I discovered a squirrel merrily taking a bite out of each plum.

Lessons I've learned with sunflowers:
Don't plant near tree branches
The heads grow heavy and will eventually droop to one side due to the weight.

circle of sunfowers

Rocks Are Expensive - Who knew

Thankfully, the big rocks came with the yard. The previous owner had them in a huge pile in the back yard. The little rocks are another story. We saw it pretty pricey to spend money on rocks. Compared to mulching this area every single year, it looked a bit more frugal.

Well, the local farm that sales rocks mentioned $80 a ton and $40 for delivery.....don't quote me on the exact price, but it's a close estimate. I went online and saw a great "deal" cheaper than $80 for a certain amount of pounds......boy, did I not know what I was getting myself into.

I never considered the fact there were different sizes of rocks. I never considered having to match the color of rocks if you bought from two different places. How deep they should be to keep out weeds, ect. The box of rocks, <ha! actually boxes came in. I excitedly opened them and my jaw dropped.

There in front of me was stones and they only covered maybe 6 square inches of the front garden. We went to Home Depot instead and bought some more tiny pebbles that sorta matched the color we had bought. There in my front yard sits a daily reminder of how not to cut corners.....what was supposed to have saved us money ended up costing close to $200.....yea.... all for rocks.

This wasn't the end of our follies. When we went to lay the black paper down, to prevent weeds....well, we laid dirt on top to hold it down.....it was a windy day. Yes, we basically destroyed the whole purpose of that black paper, ha, ha.

This year when discussing the front garden, we opted to weed out the top weed covering and just leave those pebbles. The next owner can deal with how to keep it low maintenance.

Tulips!!!!

Spring 2011

I spied a whole cauldron of tulips this year. I cannot describe my excitement!!!!

I fell in love with our house because of the yard. The yard was complete mess of weeds. The grass was so bad that the neighbors were begging us to cut it before we even bought the house!

In the yard was this cute wooden cutout of a sunbonnet girl. Her face was hidden by the bonnet and she was in a bent position of smelling the flowers.

My husband insisted on throwing out the garden specimen, but see.....Growing up, I secretly wished for that one garden ornament to be in my home yard. I saw that little wooden figure in the yard, saw my husband's delight over the open floor plan and knew in my heart of hearts this was going to be our home.

That coming spring, I peeped out the kitchen window to discover the first blooms. These beautiful red tulips were bravely flourishing in the 30 degree weather. We had considered throwing out that wretched cauldron when we moved in! Well, as any novice gardener would do....that coming spring I promptly added fertilizer. I accidentally dumped a lot of bone meal in the pot. I was so sad.....for three years I've waited, trying to decide whether to throw out the pot or what.

Then last week I spied a ton of leaves bravely unfurled. I am impatiently waiting for some flowers to appear any day now!

Gardening Mishaps continued

2010 Winter

2010 Winter

2011 Summer

2011 Spring

Since I haven't been busy gardening this past week, it's about time for some gardening stories. When we moved here, the back deck sported the most beautiful hybrid, climbing roses. I mistakenly thought, climbing roses meant you had to tie them straight up and train them to grow. My assumption nearly killed them. The first two years, I meticulously tied each shoot straight up the trellis. Sometimes I would even try weaving the shoots between the trellis slats.

2012 Winter

2012 summer

 Those poor roses tried so hard to stay alive! When we had moved in, there were so many and they bloomed year around, as seen in the winter picture. They were fragrant, and the leaves were so beautiful and waxy looking. After I tied them up and weaved them, that summer. there were maybe one or two roses.
It wasn't until I researched climbing roses did I learn:  

1. climbing roses don't climb
2. they grow horizontally with shoots coming off vertically.
3.  roses bloom when the the plant hangs down
4. leaves grow when the plant faces up
5. they love banana peels
6. I still need to learn to prune them.

Front Garden

Front Yard Spring

 We have about as much happen to us with pictures as with the garden. This is last year's early spring of the front yard. I had a ton of more pictures when the yard was in full bloom.....but I have lost all of last years pictures somehow.....this is the third time I have lost a TON of pictures, but I'm not going to dwell on that upsetting fact.

Front garden Iris bed

So! Time to introduce the front garden, aka the front porch. Aside from the Irises everything you see was already planted here, when we bought the house. (In case you haven't figured it out yet, I fell in love with the yard and that is why I wanted to buy the house, lol.)

There were - emphasis on were - two huge gardenia bushes on each side of our front porch. Huge is an understatement. Massive! Any other big adjective you can throw in there. And, oh was their fragrance, heavenly! Their flowers gorgeous! Their leaves so shiny and dark - and I came along. :) Suddenly the buds dropped before they could bloom, the leaves turned black with some type of mold and the under part of the leaves was turning yellow! I was panicking. What had I done? Did my very presence turn all that was beautiful in my yard to dust?!

Front Yard Gardenia that survived

I began to read everything I could. I discovered the pesky little bug called white flies related to aphids. This pesky little insects populate in the absence of ladybugs and praying mantises, aka beneficial bugs. The bush protects itself with layers of what is called black mold, but this layer also blocks out the sun and if not treated will turn the leaves yellow from lack of sun. So I got out my garlic, soap, and aspirin spray. I put on gloves and rubbed leaf by leaf the mold off and sprayed the under leaves. For two long years!!!! I also hatched a daring plan. The biggest no, no in the gardenia world is transplanting. I decided to endeavor to transplant them right back into their holes. With my husband's truck we pulled them both out and I proceeded to provide them a high acidic environment of pine needs, epsom salt, and fresh garden soil. The instructions state to transplant very quickly if you must, and to not expose the bulb root too long, but to leave clumps of dirt to it. After transplanting, you are to pack down the dirt firmly so no air pockets appear. So we did. The instructions I had the hardest following was the fact you must, must cut the bush 3/4ths back so that it focuses on its root system.....well, I had an issue with this fact. Only leave 1/4th of the bush standing?! No way. After I did it to the one bush, it looked so dismal; I couldn't bear to cut back the other bush. What happened? It died. As you can see in the above picture, a bench replaces the lost Gardenia bush now.  So I have successfully transplanted one of the gardenias and it no longer has any black mold. It has tons of flowers, ect.  My next adventure is to propagate from the bush.

Aside from the Gardenia bushes, there are six Azalea bushes, a Hosta plant, Easter Lilies, Tiger Lilies, and Wandering Jew plants that came with the front garden. Some friends of ours came over one day with tons of Irises and I tried to fill in the empty places with those. The big stones are from our yard. The tiny stones are the most expensive price we have paid for any of the gardens yet! I will have to write that story next time because I am tired.

Front Garden Azalea bed

Biggest Dream, Largest Failure

Potted miniature Orange Tree

Potted dwarf Lemon Tree

I am being facetious when posting my potted trees. They provide plenty of lemons and oranges. The oranges are not ready to eat since it is a young tree. So we just let them fall off and the kids throw them around. We accidentally grew two more Orange trees from two of the fruits that fell. The lemons do not survive our children's repetitive beatings and pluckings....well except one or two brave lemons. It takes the (fruit?) a year to be ready! Anyway, this post is actually about my Plum tree, Peach trees, Pear tree, and Apple tree!

The first year we moved in, we harvested an entire basket of the juiciest plums ever! The second year.....none! There was not one solitaire plum on the tree. Initially. we accused the deer. The third year, we discovered some kind of worm eating the buds before they had time to turn color and squirrels ate the rest. That is when my detest of squirrels became very real.....I'll save that story for another time. In early Spring, I went all out. I pruned that poor plum tree (mostly likely, completely wrong), mulched, and fed it. This past summer, I eagerly awaited my efforts. Nothing. There were these beautiful leaves and not - a - single - plum. *shake my head*

Soooo, the poor peach trees have a worse story. There were two trees. The second year one of the trees had the juiciest peach ever and it was huge!!!! Well....my husband was mowing and ran right into the tree, bwahahaha. These trees are still babies. Knocked over the one tree, to a point that we just decided to uproot it. The other one, with the peach, turned out was suffering from silver root rot? - not sure if I said the correct term.....so no more peaches. We uprooted it.

The rest of the trees we just planted last year in apology for destroying the original trees planted here. My husband ran into one again, lol! The pear tree, I think, We have an argument over where we planted the apple and where we planted the pear. :) Fortunately, he only stripped the branches and so we're awaiting it's full recovery this spring.

We won't mention what happened to our nut trees....ha, ha, ha! Ok - would you believe our Almond tree blew away in the wind?! True story. :) As for the Walnut tree, can someone tell me how to harvest them when they have fallen? So far we just let the squirrels bury them.