Spring Yard and Garden

We've been busy. Baseball season is starting (both boys are playing this year, so on top of Oliver's Tae Kwon Do, we basically have at least one practice, game or class every day now). The kids are still in a hybrid program for school so they go to school every day, but only a half day, so it makes working in the afternoon a challenge sometimes. When we're not working or shuffling from one sport to the next, we're outside enjoying the warm weather, sunshine and flowers. 

I did a pretty good job of yard cleanup in October, but once I had the appendectomy in November everything totally stopped. So there's a chunk of fall cleanup that I've been tackling, one section at a time. The goal was just to get things back to a clean slate for all the emerging plants and keep an eye out for weeds until I start mulching in May. 

In the back garden I had a lot of help to put things to bed, so it's not bad back here at all. I cleaned up the perennial herbs and strawberry beds in the back to give the plants space to bounce back. I planted peas and lettuce to get mid-April started. The paths need weeding. The tomato and flower seedlings in the house and greenhouse are all doing really well and should be a good size by early May. Right now it just looks empty. 

In the greenhouse I started some of my dahlia bulbs early for a head start. Every container I had saved is filled! And there are a lot of dahlias I'm not starting early - I literally had 6 bins of bulbs this year between the raised bed garden and all the ones in the yard. My ranunculus and anemone bulbs finally arrived too so they are in a tray pre-sprouting. These arrived MUCH later than I thought they would so it might be too hot by the time they sprout... but I'm hoping to give them TLC to keep them alive until next winter and I'll plant them much earlier. 

I'm focusing on doing a little every day. Some days that's just enjoying a bouquet of daffodils and watering the greenhouse plants. Some days that's planting elderberry bushes and lavender that arrived in the mail. Today it was pruning some branches. 

One of my fancy succulents is blooming in the greenhouse. Just look at those pinks. 

It feels so good to have the world coming back to life. The grass is green again, there are tiny leaves on most plants. The flowers are blooming and the colors are most welcome. 

The to-do list is massive... but most of it is for May. Mulching, planting the garden. Planting flowers in the containers. Getting the rest of the furniture out. Putting the pool back up because that was a highlight last summer (I'm a total convert). For now I'm just getting a jump start on what I can and enjoying the winter being over. 

Annual Garden Planning: The Raised Beds

It's that time of the year again where I tend my many houseplants and dream of spring while the world is cold and gray. I happily tend to my plants in the greenhouse this year too (and hide in the greenhouse from the kids as needed), it's like a secret bonus room of plants I can escape to. The thing that keeps me going the most though? 

Planning the garden for the spring. Even if I don't stick to the plan well. 

Honestly, my plans are rarely followed. For example last year, this was the original plan for the 2020 garden. I worked really hard on it with the intention of following it precisely. 

And this was the actual 2020 garden once I squeezed all the plants in. A lot more plants. 

I love the planning process, even when I know things will change a bit (in addition to rotating the four beds). Sometimes things die, sometimes things don't grow like they should, sometimes other things take over. The plan makes a nice foundation though and helps me implement all my learnings from last season. For example the dahlias - I didn't like the stems on my Preference and Totally Tangerine dahlias - they were too short for bouquets, so I'd like to move those to the side garden dahlia bed next to the driveway, where I can enjoy the blooms without frustration and bring in two new cutting dahlias. Right now I have ordered the American Dawn dahlia and I have my eye on a Penhill Watermelon. 

I've seen photos of other people's American Dawn dahlias and I'm always like OMG THAT COLOR. And every time I'm swooning over these giant pink dahlias, they turn out to be Penhill Watermelon dahlias, so I think these will be a happy edition. 

This year's plan garden plan looks like this:

The herbs, tomatoes and vine beds will stay mostly the same (other than rotating). For the herb beds I'm overwintering rosemary, lemon balm, lemon verbena, lavender and the peppers (habanero and jalapeno) in the greenhouse. Thyme, oregano and the strawberries always come back on their own, as should the st. john's wort. I'm planning on planting more calendula, chamomile, sage, sunflowers and borage from seed. Borage (has little blue flowers) is supposed to improve tomato production and I really think it helped last year, so I plan on making it a permanent addition to the garden. 

I'll have herbs in pots as well, just like last year, some are in the greenhouse right now. And I'm overwintering two hot pepper plants, so I'm hoping those come back. In the top right corner I planted nasturtiums in a huge pot, but these have been replaced by the brown turkey fig tree that is overwintering in the greenhouse. The pot will spend the spring/summer in the same spot as last year in the garden. Lastly, I want to plant morning glory seeds again against the trellis on the garage again because I really liked the look last year, even if they didn't bloom until October. 

The flower bed is changing a bit. Last year the globe amaranth plants went crazy, this year I'm planting one instead of two. I overplanted the lemonade cosmos - I did two rows when I should have done just two or three plants total, as they overcrowded each other and spread powdery mildew. I'm also moving the yarrow into the yard. I would like to do a mix of snapdragons this year in addition to the Chantilly bronze snaps - in year's past I struggle to grow snapdragons from seeds, but I'm hoping with the greenhouse this year I'll be able to do more. 

Not shown are the early spring crops - lettuce, peas, snap peas, dill that will go in early. I can't wait for spring...!

Garden Plan: 2020!!!

New Year, New Decade, New Garden. Well technically the garden was finished in 2019, but this is the first year I get to use it fully, with a full growing season ahead of me. *Insert overly excited squeal of glee here*

Since the new garden brings everything to a new level, I'm bringing my A-game. With 5 beds, more garden support structures and a mix of plant pots - this year is going to be my favorite year yet. It's going to be productive and beautiful. I found an incredible deal on amazon for tomato towers (like 10 for $12) so now I have enough support structures in various sizes for everything that needs it, plus a new archway and small obelisk I got for Christmas. And I even went and bought some legit reusable plant markers this year in bulk so I'll know what goes where all season long instead of things melting in the rain and leaving me to guess. Even a fully illustrated garden plan (to scale!).

Here's my garden plan for 2020:

Let's start at the top and work our way down.

The beds at the top are the perennial beds at the back that won't rotate.These are already planted with lavender, rosemary, thyme, oregano and strawberries. In the spring I plan on adding marjoram and basil, as well as two sunflowers in the empty spots because the one we planted last year was a cheerful addition I really enjoyed. The height added some nice structure to the garden, and who doesn't love a sunflower? The aqua ring on the right is the large aqua pot I added last summer, this year I want to plant nasturtiums in there to cascade down.

The four main beds rotate each year, I've always rotated them clockwise so I will continue to do that out of habit. This means the top left bed will be tomatoes (they were bottom left last summer). I've planted as many as 12 tomatoes in a 4x8 bed and as few as 6. I think 8 is the magic number to give them space to grow properly and fill the bed, so that's my plan for seed starting this spring. It's hard to choose just 8 but I think I have it narrowed down to 2 sweet 100's cherry, 1 yellow pear, italian paste, early girl, beefsteak, purple cherokee and bloody butcher.

One thing that's new this year will be a new archway/arbor over the center path in the garden between the two back beds. In the tomato bed I'm planting green beans at the bottom to grow up the archway vertically (they never seem to need much horizontal space, so I think they will work fine here). In the bed on the top right, I'm planing malabar spinach (a tropical warm weather vine with leaves that taste exactly like spinach) to grow up the other side. In this bed will also be carrots, musk melons on an obelisk support structure, cucumbers on their usual 3 panel trellis (which is hard to draw so forgive the weird shape). There will be a couple rows of bright lights rainbow swiss chard and I'm filling the extra ground space with nasturtiums here because I enjoyed them so much last year. We are taking a break from squash and pumpkins for a full 3 years to attempt to break the cycle of the squash vine borers that keep destroying my attempts at zucchini.

(image again for reference and less scrolling)

The two bottom beds are for cut flowers. Having so many flowers in my flower cutting garden last year was an unexpected joy. It was meant to be a filler, a stopgap since vegetables didn't have enough time to grow, but I just loved it. The endless bouquets were such a treat and I loved that the more I cut, the more flowers grew. It inspired me to learn more, watch video tutorials from Floret, and discover that flower farming is a legit thing. So this year, I will have a dedicated dahlia bed and then one with a mix of my favorite zinnias, chantilly bronze snapdragons (totally new to me) and globe amaranth (which I grew last year in my border garden beds and they just make the best cut flowers). You can see all the dahlias in my dahlia obsession post.

At the bottom of the drawing is the back of the garage, with the aqua flower pots and white trellis leaning on it. I'm hoping that some of the begonia bulbs I saved from last year will come back and can be planted in the smaller pots and in the big pot with the trellis I want to plant a morning glory from seed to climb up. The pink rose on the bottom left will hopefully take off next spring and cover the garden entryway arbor with pink blooms. It ended its growing season strong so I have high hopes.

Below is the drawing with plant labels. Sorry it's hard to read my admittedly bad handwriting at this scale, but if you click on the image you can see it full size. And probably still not be able to read it, but at least it's bigger.

Everything in the garden plan will be from seed (or bulb) except the basil, because I cannot for the life of me grow basil successfully from seed. The tomatoes, snapdragons, morning glory, and globe amaranth will be started indoors in early March.

I have plans for the rest of the yard as well (more flowers to start from seed, plans for the rest of my split dahlia bulbs, and other new additions) which I will hopefully have a chance to share soon. Some things flourished last year, some things didn't. Some things that did well the year before never came back and had to be replaced. Who knows what won't come back this year. It's the way of garden. A dance with mother nature, equal parts joyful and frustrating.

Mulching + Updated Backyard Layout with Plants

The garden redo is crawling along. The weather wasn't cooperating, and our schedules have been crazy. Mike is on gate duty and I'm building the raised beds (which is easy, but monotonous and slow). And all the rain makes the lawn grow like crazy, so I feel like Mike is always mowing it.

The other piece of the puzzle is the dirt delivery for when the beds are finished (almost there!). And in order to have dirt delivered, the giant mulch pile has to be gone... so I've been mulching. 4 cubic yards to spread around. And after all of Morgan's digging and destruction, it's been much needed. Plus a nice layer of mulch just looks SO good every spring.

(4 cubic yards is A LOT of mulch. Think of it this way... those bags one gets from Home Depot? Each of those is 1-2 cubic feet of mulch depending on the size of the bag. A cubic yard is 27 cubic feet. So Basically I have 108 bags of mulch to move. And for .25 acres, that's a lot of mulch, but I have a lot of garden beds!)

This year I have a helper. Matt has my gardening gene. Not only did he start his own garden, but he's a slave driver when it comes to mulching. He LOVES to help me mulch. For his birthday he got his own gardening tools and wheel barrow, and he thinks it's the greatest thing ever. He's somehow managed to make it look so fun, the neighborhood kids gave me a half hour of free labor trying to figure out why Matt liked it so much, which is hilarious.

Here's Matt's garden too.

He  insisted on lining it with stones, which I think is so adorable. He dug up the grass and added soil from a hole Morgan dug. He picked out the pansies first and later asked for more flowers from other nursery runs, digging his own little flower holes, putting them in and filling the dirt back in. PRECIOUS. He also waters it all the time by himself. The fence is there to keep Morgan from trampling it, because she has no respect for gardening.


On another note, I've updated the backyard layout with the new plants! It's overwhelming, but also I like keeping track of what should be where. Things in red are the changes.

Things to note:

Left side
The asparagus is possibly dead. We had one tiny stalk come up this spring, and that's it. Morgan Mayhem loves asparagus so much, last Summer she not only ate all the fronds as they sprouted, but when those were gone she dug up and ATE the roots too. I almost totally wrote the plant off, but then one sad little stalk came up, it's hidden behind the fence now and I'm hoping more little fern fronds will come up next.

On the tiny patio strip we have the new gold flame honeysuckle, an annual black eyed susan vine and filled in a couple gaps with dahlias.

My new sunset bi-color butterfly bush was planted between the other honeysuckle vine and the trimmed back forsythia bush.

On the other side of the forsythia bush, once I trimmed it back there's now a gap between the raspberries and forsythia. This used to be where we had mint before it died off (seriously I thought mint could survive anything, but apparently not!). Do I put leftover oregano here? Try again on the mint? Let the raspberries move in?

Around the dogwood tree there is now more creeping phlox... Originally I wanted a ring but the little sprouts of it died (they survived in the front yard but not back here). Then our local garden center had two HUGE phlox on sale for like $3 each, so I nabbed them. I also want to add another aster under this tree and under the tree in the front for more fall color.

Next to the dogwood tree is Matt's new garden.



Down by the new garden we have our thornless zephyr climbing rose. It is sitting in a pot until the garden is ready, for fear of trampling it. So far it's fine. And it will have a lovely arbor to climb up by the end of the summer (hopefully sooner).

Down the line I planted two lilac bushes and a red bud sapling... but they died. So they aren't included in the diagram anymore. Sad! I need to contact the nursery to see if they will send a replacement, but I'm pretty sure it's from all the wet weather. Root rot has killed things back here before.

Right side
Next to the garage behind the fothergilla shrub, we have the new David Austen Lady of Shalot climbing rose. I can't wait for it to bloom (and it will have a trellis).

Past the two slates is the current strawberry patch. The plan however is to move these to the non-rotating back bed in the garden with the herbs. I'm not sure what I'll plant here next, but I love the possibilities!

Along the right side all along the fence, almost everything is the same as last year and I just filled it in with dahlias in the (marked) gaps. And where Morgan damaged a few things, I've filled that in with additional dahlia seedlings sowed for this purpose. Also the second discount phlox in the front where one of my blanket flowers didn't come back (It was a victim of Morgan's digging last fall)

I added a lupine to the back where the delphinium was (also didn't come back... this might have been Morgan, but it also wasn't doing very well, so I'm not sure). Lupines don't like to be transplanted so I put it in a biodegradable cup planter... hopefully it works! Also a globe amaranth where I had a dahlia last year... I'm very hopeful this will take off...)

In the bed next to the grill/deck,  I added a couple of new phlox to the front (it's a great front row filler), the extra lavender in front of the crepe myrtle, and dahlias in the gap.

The right side back is the same as last year. Nothing died (thank goodness) and I haven't needed to add anything new here.

Front yard
Along the front I added a couple purple balloon flowers and a yellow/apricot blanket flower in front of the shrubs that have a little room. They are really small... hopefully they survive! Last year I did the same with some blanket flowers and butterfly bushes in the bac and didn't think they would make it... but then by the end of the summer they were great.

The mailbox garden is the same except for a globe amaranth on the right side (when facing the house). The grass died here so I just naturally widened the bed, which led to a gap that just "had" to be filled!

I also added a couple of snap dragons this year. Usually I don't plant many annuals in the ground (just pots), but I really wanted some extra pops of color.

So that's the updated yard. And it's mulched, so now my focus is 100% back on the raised bed garden project... time for a dirt delivery and an update on the raised bed construction!