Pierre Met His Match

Pierre and Shadow like to garden with me. For those who haven't met the pets at Seven Oaks, Pierre is a tough cat I adopted as a six week old kitten almost exactly a year ago, and Shadow is my German Shepherd dog. She WAS adopted exactly one year ago today from the Town of Farmville animal control facility. (Shameless promotion: adopt a shelter dog. You won't regret it!)

Shadow lays within ten feet of me while I weed or plant. She chases deer off the lawn and out of the fruit orchard. This morning when I opened the front door to take her on her walk, the deer were just on the edge of the flower garden next to the driveway. One glare from her and the entire herd of six thundered away through the woods.

Both pets love being outdoors - it's hard to get them to come inside. Pierre stalks bugs and attacks with gleeful abandon. He loves the slate sidewalk in front of the house. He basks in the sun, then springs into action after beetles, crickets, butterflies and bees.

Yesterday we laughed as we watched him play, leaping and spinning to catch flying insects. Suddenly he was hopping up and down and shaking his paw. He slunk to the front door of the house and meowed to get back inside.

Shadow raced over and with a snap of her teeth, vanquished the foe who had hurt her best pal.

Yup, Pierre finally got stung by one of the wasps he catches!

He's fine, not even a bit swollen. I have a feeling the wasp just nicked him. But my tough, scrappy gray cat finally met his match!

Garden Update

Yesterday was the first break since this unseasonable heat started, so after dinner I raced outside to plant the perennials and annuals we'd bought last week. In went the yarrow, orange-red avens, mystery colored campanula (no label on the variety, just a nice fat healthy plant and the name "Campanula" on the label), and over two dozen bronze-leaf begonias (one of my all time favorites) and white, purple, pink and salmon petunias. Petunias thrive here in Virginia. I think it's all those cool nights and hot days. Last year I had just fountains of petunias all over the garden, and that was from a $1 clearance flat I grabbed at Lowe's. I love that clearance rack. What the clearance rack at Filene's is to a New York City gal, the discount plant rack at Lowe's is to my life as a country gal...

So in went the flowers last night. The butterfly garden got weeded and new plants added. The cocoons on the buddleia still haven't hatched. John speculates that nature won't let them hatch until the buddleia leafs out, so that the babies have enough food.

I've got a new yellow theme going up in the island flower bed in the middle of the lawn, and the poppy - the sole survivor of my first forays into poppy growing - has perked up. One half of the bed contains plants with all sorts of yellow and white colors: Stella d'Oro daylilies, yellow yarrow, yellow echinacea and echinacea White Swan. I've got a big white snowball bush there too and white peonies. I've added white petunias. On the other end of the bed are my pink crepe myrtles, lavender, Echinacea purpurea, and now hot pink petunias. I think it's going to be a love it or hate it with the color.

Wonder of wonders, the echinaceas I grew from seed last year have started budding. I've got White Swan, purpurea, and a yellow variety whose name escapes me now. The yellow echineacea has just started sending up flower buds - I feel like a proud mama at graduation!

The scabiosas are blooming like mad now, and my purple and white iris that smells like a grape soda pop is just about to bloom. The new irises in the back of the garden are also sending up at least one tentative bud. I'll finally get the answer to the question, "Which survived? The blue or pink irises?" since I can't read my own handwriting in my garden journal where I recorded what I planted and where last fall.

Best of all, out of my five peonies I bought from a catalog and planted in the fall of 2007 - four survived, and three of the four have masses of flower buds. Peonies are one of my all time favorite plants. I am stalking my Festiva Maxima now like a crazed fan outside of a starlet's window.

The Radishes are Here

It's official. Today I harvested our first-ever-crop! Ta-da! 100% organic, with some insect bites out of the leaves to prove it.

I planted the radish seeds on March 23. At the left are the red globe radishes called "Cherry Bomb." On the right, the elongated white and red radishes are a variety called "French Breakfast" radishes.

Here ya go. Please pass the salt. Dig in!

Organic Rose Care

I was on the hunt for some new roses this weekend, but couldn't find either a Peace, Tropicana, or a nice yellow to add to my little rose garden. I have five roses (if you don't count the rosa rugosa twig that lived - I stuck in the ground on the edge of the woods - it leafed out!). I have two climbing red "Blaze" roses, two gorgeous salmon pink "Sonia" roses (today's picture is my Sonia from last summer), and one tiny pink "Fairy" rose.

Many people warned me not to grow roses in the country. I heard horror stories galore from local gardeners. I'd always wanted to grow roses, so I bought some roses at the local discount store (aptly named Roses - not kidding here) and off I was into rose gardening.

My roses are thriving. The leaves are glossy and green, except for Blaze, which has the ruby bronze leaves I love. They turn green later. I've got buds galore on the Sonia. The Fairy rose has doubled in size.

So what's my secret? Organic rose care.

My roses are planted in the flower garden directly over our water well. Because they're all so close to my drinking water supply, I will not use any chemicals.

So here's how I cope with all that nature throws at my beauties - my organic rose care regimen.

• Rose Defense neem oil spray: I bought this at Lowe's and it is my defense against block spot, Japanese beetles, and all sorts of problems. It is made from neem oil, an oil derived from a tree in India. It is like magic. Although you have to reapply it every time it rains, it is well worth it. It keeps away black spot, mildew and fungus diseases, bacterial diseases, and insects. And it lives up to its promises!
  
• Japanese beetle traps: I've heard so many people say not to use them, but if I didn't use them my garden would be gone. Some say they attract the beetles. I hang mine on the trellis and change the bags frequently and it does seem to draw the beetles away from the roses.
  
• Hand picking the beetles off the plants: If you're squeamish about bugs, skip this. I take an old spaghetti sauce jar and fill it halfway with a teaspoon of liquid dish soap and water. I walk among the roses and just flick the beetles into the soap. They can't get out of the jar. I empty the jar in the woods. This wouldn't make enough of a dent in the beetle damage without both the neem oil spray and the traps, but it does help a bit.
  
• Compost: Lots of compost applied to the soil helps keep my roses well fertilized without chemicals.
• Mulch: I put a very thick layer of mulch around the plants. Not only does it suppress weeds, but it also keeps moisture in the soil. Works like a charm. I use coarse shredded pine bark mulch.
• Companion planting: I use a lot of companion planting for insect control. Some say it's an old wives tale, but since there is no harm in it, and it seems to do something good, I do it. I plant marigolds around my roses and lavender. Lots of heavy scents going on there, but the results are few insect pests other than the omnipresent Japanese beetle.

The Japanese beetles are not out yet - they will make their appearance in late May or early June. In the meantime, I am enjoying the glossy, healthy foliage on my roses, and continue the hunt for some yellow ones to add to my collection.

Stop Telling Me It's Easy!

I'm just about fed up with well-meaning folks who tell me that this plant or another is so easy to grow.

The sweet old lady at Lowe's who told me: "Blueberries are SO easy to grow here in southern Virginia. My sister in law's place is just full of them."

Mine dropped dead within days (I think it might have been hours) of their roots touching down. I felt like the Medusa of the garden, turning my blueberries to withered brown sticks.

The gardening "expert" who responded to my enthusiasm for poppies with, "Well go ahead! They're so easy to grow, they just grow about anywhere."

Anywhere must exclude my garden. I have the great poppy massacre in my garden. Two died, one hangs on and refuses to die. I moved it from its unhappy spot near the roses up to the front, full sun island of perennials and shrubs on the lawn. I hope it's going to be happy. But really, easy? Not in my garden.

The climbing shell flowers that Jefferson is said to have grown at Monticello? Can't even find their remains. The bleeding hearts installed in the shade garden? One struggling specimen out of five lived to tell the tale. The Virginia bluebells purchased by mail order? What Virginia bluebells? They never even made an appearance.

When you tell a gardener, new or experienced, that something is EASY to grow, the implication - unintended, I'm sure, but there nonetheless - is that if the plant dies: it's YOUR fault.

Saying something is 'easy' to grow implies that it will grow - and doubles the disappointment when it doesn't.

Next time someone asks you for an opinion on whether or not this plant or that one belongs in the garden, instead of gushing about easy it is to grow, talk about its hardiness. Enthuse about how you ran over it with the lawn mower and it lived to tell another tale. Regale your enthusiastic gardening friend with the story of how you accidentally dug up your iris before they emerged and you unintentionally split the roots only to have it redouble its blooms that year.

The truth is always that each garden is unique. Soil, light, nutrients, water conditions...many factors influence whether a plant will grow, flourish or die. Even the most tolerant plants will falter if conditions aren't right.


Thus my blueberries and poppies didn't like something about my garden. Unlike the coreopsis, which I am STILL picking out of every nook and cranny from where it self seeded in the flower bed, these aren't "easy" plants to grow for me. They will take more effort, and I need to decide whether the effort is worth the reward.

But really, please spare me the "it's so easy any fool could grow it" wisdom.

I may be a fool, but I couldn't grow it!

Wildlife Update

Back in New York City, my friends complain that garbage trucks wake them up at 5:30 a.m.. serenading them with urban songs in the alleys between the apartment buildings.

This morning at the same time, I was awakened again by our resident owl. He's been around a lot this spring. He wakes me up around 5 a.m. If I hear him while I'm walking Shadow, it's usually very early - just before dawn.

I love owls and used to visit a bird sanctuary at a state park on Long Island, stopping by the owl cages to say hello. So I had to find out more about our friend in Prospect.

I found a great website that helps you identify owls by their call. It's called Owl Calls & Sounds. I had a vague idea of some species that might live on the east coast of America, so I clicked on a few names until I found him.

He's a Great Horned Owl.

Way cool.

Here's what I found out about the Great Horned Owl:

• They are one of the most widely distributed owl species in North America (that means they are common)
• They are about 18-21 inches long
• They like deciduous and conifer trees (good news: maybe they like my pine forest)
• They hunt at night and eat rabbits, rats, squirrels, mice, moles, bats and weasels. If they're hungry enough they will eat porcupines and skunks!

So now I know who my morning guest is. But since we share very different taste in food, I'm not inviting him in for breakfast!

Perennial Kits or Do It Yourself?

So where do you fall - do you go for the prepackaged kits of plants sold in catalogs, or do you buy plants and do your own thing?

I've never gardened much with perennials before moving to Virginia. Frankly we didn't have enough room in my last two gardens. My parents' house in Floral Park, Long Island, had a garden the size of a postage stamp, mostly filled with my dad's chrysanthemums and vegetables. My in-laws garden in Huntington, Long Island, where I lived after I married, had clay soil, dense shade, and lots of lawn. Gee, why wouldn't they dig it up to put in more flower beds? Guess not, huh? I had to make do with what I had. Every bit of sun in that garden bed had a vegetable tucked in.

The only perennials I'd bought before moving to Virginia were 1) daylilies 2) platycodon (Balloon Flower - Komanchi) and 3) heuchera (Coral Bells).

I did work at Martin Viette Nurseries (Andre Viette's father founded it but it is now owned by another family) for three years, so I absorbed plant knowledge by osmosis. But perennials scared me.

When we moved, we had this awful bit of land on the side of the driveway. It sloped away very steeply, and was bare dirt. The dirt was hard packed clay with lots of rocks thanks to the digging that had to be done to create our water well. The slope faced south, with the thick pine woods at its back.

What to do?

Perennials. Lots of them.

That slope needed to be covered. The dirt eroded at a surprisingly fast and scary rate. So we rushed out and bought two perennial sun garden kits from Spring Hill Nurseries. Last March, I laid out the paths and got my long-held wish: a rose garden.

The perennial kits are great. We had good luck with most of them, except the hollyhocks. The hollyhocks either didn't grow or the Japanese beetles ate them faster than they could grow.

But the other plants...well, read on.

The kit contained purple yarrow, purple and blue scabiosa (which always sounds like a Harry Pottery spell to me), orange gaillardia, and white and yellow daisies, along with purple mini hollyhocks and big hollyhocks. We originally bought two kits. I called Spring Hill to ask for replacement hollyhocks, since so many didn't grow. They sent me two more full kits at no charge! So I now have four sets of plants growing on the slope.

Here's what thrived in southern Virginia:

1. Yarrow: I love this plant. It loves my hot, sunny slope. It has spread out in pools of green fronds and it is only its second year. I can't wait to see how it blooms!

2. Gaillardia: Not only did the plants thrive last year, with almost constant hot orange blossoms from June through November, but it reseeded. I saved seeds and have a flat of seedlings waiting to go into another garden. My plants decided to seed themselves and I'm excited to see about a dozen tiny gaillardia springing up among the other perennials. They already have flower buds.

3. Scabiosa: Not everyone's cup of tea, but the butterflies love the tiny pompom flowers. I think this one also reseeded. It loves the garden and seems very hardy.

4. Daisies: I wish I could find the original packing slip so I can stop calling them both daisies, since I know one is probably rudbeckia, and I feel dumb for not using the Latin names. No matter. Thriving, thick clumps of plants already came back, and I'm excited to see seedlings for these guys too. I've also got some plants started from seeds I collected last year.

There you have it - what worked and what didn't. What didn't are hollyhocks. The picture today is the one lone hollyhock that bloomed last year. It's a mini. Everyone asked me if it is a weed and my husband kept asking me if he could dig out the weed, pointing to the poor hollyhock. Sad, sad plant. We'll see what it does this year!

How Our Garden Grows

On Saturday we ran errands, then I joined Patty and her friend Gail at a country auction right here in Prospect. The farm auction was fascinating. We found out that the elderly couple who passed away had left their entire greenhouse business to their sons, and the men said they would sell plants directly to the public. They currently sell to the trade and at a flea market in Lynchburg. They invited us back to shop in a few weeks when the flats of annuals are ready and promised us "good farm prices". They won't have to ask me twice! The old Victorian farmhouse had a gigantic lilac bush that was over eight feet tall. It was already blooming and I had to stick my whole head into the bush and take a good drink of lilac perfume. An elderly lady walking behind me laughed to see my delight.

The farm auction was fun, but the dealers were out in droves from the big cities and outbid all us regular folks, so I hung out in the back of the crowd with the locals. I had only $10 to my name and even the cheapest items went way over that. At one point, the auctioneer held up a pretty - but cracked - glass candy dish. He started the bidding at $2, and I thought, "Well, maybe I can buy something!" But when the bidding went up over $10, I said a little too loudly, "Oh dear, that's really out of my price range." The man next to me chuckled and gave me a nod of approval. I think I'm starting to fit in.

How My Garden Grows!

With the temperatures soaring to 80 on Saturday and the heavy rains this past week, everything is sprouting. I spent time cleaning up the flower garden again and discovered my morning glories had reseeded. I've got glories sprouting up along the walkway and everywhere but where I want them, which is next to the trellis. I hope the blue ones reseeded. They're my favorite. I had blue, purple, pink and white planted last year. Today's photo shows the area from last June.

The Flowers About To - and Already - Blooming

• Bachelor's Buttons: My mixed purples, crimsons and pinks are in bud. My guess is I'll have flowers by the weekend!
• Dianthus: All of my perennial dianthus this year just have masses of buds. I can't wait.
• Phlox: If the deer don't find them like they did last year, the phlox are already double in size from their planting size last year and also heavily laden with buds.
• Gaillardia: Peeking out from new leaves are flowers buds. These hearty perennials are nonstop bloomers for me and I love their orange flowers.
• Trees and Shrubs: On our drive to Rustburg Saturday morning, we saw gorgeous Snowball viburnums just groaning under the weight of the big white flowers. Redbuds and dogwoods bloom everywhere. Azaleas are just starting to bloom. Tulips are almost done. The irises in Prospect - huge beds of mostly white iris in the front yards of houses dating back to the late 1800's - are already blooming. Mine are very far away from blooming, as are my neighbors. I think the south facing beds, so near the road and the former railroad track, may have a nice warm microclimate going. I have my eye on the peonies in front of a dilapidated old house next to the firehouse in the town of Prospect. Last year there were massive stands of pinks and Festiva Maxima. There's nothing like an old bed of peonies in spring to really lift your spirits. If they ever make a move to tear down that old house, I'll be first on line with my shovel to rescue the peonies. My peonies are a bit too young to have flowers yet. (I think; they may surprise me yet).
  

The cocoons on the buddleia are still intact. We can't trim the buddleias down and they are just going a bit wild, but I won't disturb the praying mantis egg sacs. We protect them carefully and try hard to make sure Shadow doesn't blunder into them when she 'helps' me in the garden.

John, his dad Jack, and I took a walk in the woods on Saturday afternoon and found all the redbuds. For those who have never seen a redbud, they are gorgeous trees that just burst with purple flowers. The bees love them. Our woods are full of wild dogwood too. Unfortunately, they were also full of Lonestar ticks, but luckily I'd worn light colored blue jeans and a light t-shirt and could get them off of me. That's our signal to stop walking in the woods unless sprayed with insecticide and covered head to toe. It's an unfortunate reality of life in the country that I'm only just beginning to get used to.

And on Sunday, She Rested
Sunday found me a bit under the weather, so after church, the couch was my best friend for the rest of the day. My gardening buddy Helen called with an invitation to come and play in her garden for a bit and take home some raspberry plants, but I had already nodded off. Perhaps I needed to recover from all the weeding I did during the week. In any event, she has plants waiting for me....

Farm Archaeology

Last night we worked until it was too dark to see. After moving some perennials and fussing with the lawn a bit, we decided to do clean up. We have a huge pile of scrap wood - bits and pieces from the porch and garden shed construction, wooden pallets that the shed materials came on - and we have been throwing them into what we call 'the ravine' but which is actually an odd, really steep narrow sort of gorge out in the woods. So we hitched the cart to the riding mower and drove another pile to the ravine, where we're hoping nature will decompose the wood.

The fox den appeared to have been worked on since we were last there, with a branch pulled over the entrance and a second 'back door' added. The food scraps we've been leaving in the woods were totally gone, much to Shadow's disappointment (That dog can find anything. She found what looked like deer vertebrae the other day!).

As we were moving the wood back and forth, John stepped on something that gave way. It was a rusty paint can. He brushed his foot over the thick carpet of pine needles and we found more paint cans, a farm bucket, and what looked like an old-fashioned oil can, all so rusted that with one step they crumbled into dust. There was also a bit of decayed work glove.

Looks like someone else had the same idea for that ravine!

We thought it odd to find these in the middle of nowhere, but then we realized that long ago, this wasn't such a long walk from the old barn and house. Our property was once part of a very large farm. The crumbling remains of the house are just on the other side of our creek. The house looks like it's from the 1800's some time and we heard from a neighbor that the date may be right - probably mid 1800's. The barn is an old tobacco barn and is held up by two huge trees that have grown on either side of it, forming supports. Tobacco barns are open and airy, with long beams near the ceiling. The tobacco plants are hung up inside the barn to dry. They lack animal stalls or other features you'd typically think of in a barn. These buildings aren't on our land, so we've been hesitant to go up and explore.

We've found the old fence lines out in the woods. Sometimes it's what looks like a tree stump, only upon close inspection you realize it's a fence post. Barbed wire pokes up in odd places from the ground, all rusty and threatening tetanus. We've followed what's left of the wire and it goes along the northern edge of our property following the modern day line. According to neighbors and friends, our land was planted with its current timber crop in the 1980's. From around 1940 to 1980, it was fields used for cattle, and before that, most likely cattle and tobacco. One neighbor whose family settled the area said tobacco, surely, since that was the big pre and post Civil War cash crop. The old brick tobacco warehouses that line the town of Farmville next to the Appomattox River attest to how important this crop was for the local economy.

Just about 20 feet in from the creek and the old tobacco barn, and just about 10 feet over into our property, we've found more relics of the farmers who lived here before us. An old mattress, only the rusty springs poking up.

I keep hoping for Civil War treasure, Indian arrows, or at least another set of bones like the ones I found by the creek (deer pelvis, as it turned out).

But who knows what tomorrow will bring to our farm archaeology?

Coral Bells

One of my favorite perennials is Coral Bells (Heuchera). Native to North America, they grow wild from Connecticut in the United States all the way west into the American and Canadian Rockies, and along slopes in California.

Coral Bells or heuchera grows in part sunlight to shade. Last year, I tortured this poor Coral Bells "Purple Palace" by including it in the flower garden - the mostly perennial, some annual garden along the driveway. That's the one I've told you about that gets bright, hot, direct southern sunlight all summer long for most of the day. I put the Coral Bells in the shadiest spot - at least I thought so. The poor thing shriveled up no matter how much water I poured on it, and I thought for sure it was a goner.


But plants are tougher than you give them credit for, and I found two of the three heuchera "Palace Purple" poking up through the soil in March. I transplanted them to a tiny area I just finished off next to the garage and right by the side steps up onto our wide Victorian front porch.

This little side garden gets only a bit of sunlight starting at 2pm, with mostly bright, shaded light.
I've added some hostas among the tulips and pansies too, so when the spring flowers die back, I'll have my little shade perennials.

It's also a nice small space, so my little resin statues, like the angel, look in proportion to the garden. I had small statues in the big flower garden next to the driveway last year and they were just lost in the space. In this small area, they're in proportion.


I like to use Coral Bells to line pathways. The foliage is interesting and stays low enough so that it doesn't overpower the rest of the garden. The flowers are pretty without being showy. The spikes of flowers can be profuse if the plants are happy; my mother's little group of them in our garden in Floral Park was thick and lush after a decade.

For more informaton on Coral Bells, please see:

• Dave's Garden
• Illinois University's Fact Sheet on Coral Bells

Perennial Combination

Drumroll, please...here is the perennial combination I put into the front of the house, right next to the steps and the porch. My perennial choices are highly dictated by what's available at Lowe's. Yes, I could head over to the fancy greenhouse in town, B & M (which has very nice plants) but my wallet is thin at the moment. So Lowe's it is. I had a gift certificate. The soil was hard, awful clay that had to be broken up with a pick axe. The ground was also compacted from the construction on the house. We broke it up, amended it with compost, then put down landscape fabric. The perennials went in, and we covered the whole thing with pine bark mulch. Sun exposure is mostly south west, with sun reaching the area around noon and direct sun until dark.

• The tall perennials in the back with the purple spikes are "East Friesland Salvia." I love salvia, and it does so well here in Virginia. I have salvia "May Night" in the butterfly garden and it's huge already!

• On either end are two dianthus "Neon Star". I love the spiky blue-gray foliage and the neon dark pink flowers. But what fascinates me most are the flowers. They're yellow as buds, then they open to that neon pink color. How does that work? I don't know. I have a few more in the perennial garden but they get lost among the bigger plants. Here I can really see them.

• This is the first time I am growing Blue Star Lithidora. I'm not sold on this plant yet. It seems fussy already and believe me - you won't survive this garden if you're a fussy plant. It sulks when it doesn't get drowned with water. That may be transplant shock. I don't know. Now it looks good. Hopefully it will survive. I do love the little star shaped blue flowers.

I've got all the books with all the 'rules' about perennial combinations. I ignore all the rules. I buy what pleases me. As long as the tall things are in the back and the short things in the front, it looks good to me.

What do you think?

Garden Progress

I stepped outside to snap some photos of the garden today, and while downloading my digital camera I realized that I had photos taken of the same area a little more than a year ago. I was shocked at the difference. See what only one year of gardening can do for an area? Look at the pictures below!


What a Difference A Year Can Make

The top picture - the smaller one - shows the mess that currently exists in the perennial garden. I've got coreopsis babies coming up every which way. Gaillardia has self-seeded too. And I think my white and yellow daisies added to the cacophony - either that or I have the worst case of artemesia (weeds) ever. But what a glorious mess! Healthy, green, abundantly teeming with seedlings...this is living soil at its finest. Finally!

The top picture was snapped April 15, 2009:



My poor azalea is somewhere in the middle of this picture below, which shows the same area just a few feet away. Can you see how the coreopsis has just taken over? Argh. Heavy plant moving this weekend for sure! But think about it - the seeds fell and I did nothing, and look at how many plants sprang up in the garden.






And this picture was taken a little more than a year ago, on May 15, 2008. The close up above (coreopsis photos) was taken on the far side of the trellis entrance, taken from the driveway looking back towards the woods. Look at the bare, clay soil, Doesn't it look awful? I remember that we had to take a pick axe to the soil to plant the perennials!



And just for kicks - this is what the land looked like in 2006 - 2007, right after the bulldozers arrived and the area was cleared. This photo was taken from what is now the bottom of the slope of the perennial garden. If you were standing in my driveway, looking at the garden as in the picture above with the trellis, it's the area far off to the right - only the picture was snapped looking up, with the photographer's back to the woods.






What a difference one year can make in a garden. As you can see from the bottom picture, the soil was hard clay. The land was originally planted in loblolly pine - the trees used to make paper. When we bought the property, we asked that three acres be cleared for the home and garden. What was left underneath was soil that was so devoid of life that when I took a sample into the nursery for a soil test, they actually called to ask where it had come from. They were amazed at how sterile the soil was - little organic matter, highly acidic (the pH was actually around 4 which is awful!) with poor drainage.

How did I make such progress in one year with the soil?

• As much compost, horse manure (contributed by a neighbor), and mulch as I could work into the soil
• Natural, organic fertilizers and soil boosters. The one I chose was from Gardens Alive. It works by adding special bacteria and enzymes to the soil to help the plants' roots take up more nutrients. Also, because the water that runs off this garden ends up into my water well from which my drinking water is drawn, I cannot use ANY chemicals, chemical fertilizers, or creepy sprays here. All organic, all natural or nothing. Seems to have worked.
  
• Thick layer of pine bark mulch applied to the top. This broke down over the year and added even more organic matter to the soil. Yes, it was acidic, but it also kept moisture from evaporating.

This took some effort, but it's mostly one-time effort. We'll reapply the mulch this year, and spread a little compost, but that's it.

I've already got flower buds on a lot of the perennials. Once I get this garden cleaned up and we get some blooms going, I'll post more pictures.

Happy gardening!

Garden Volunteers or Self Seeding Annuals

I love the term garden volunteers...I always picture a little army marching through the annual bed, gleefully volunteering themselves as seeds for next years' plants. Garden volunteers are self seeding plants, usually annuals. They pop up everywhere. For beginning gardeners or lazy gardeners, or simply people who need to cover a large area with flowers, they are an answer to our prayers.

Last year I bought two 10 cent seed packets at Family Dollar, a discount store in Farmville, Virginia. It contained 30 Bachelor's Button seeds, one package of all blue and the other a mixed package of blue, pink and purple. I directly sowed the seeds into the soil in the perennial bed next to the driveway in early May and promptly forgot about them. The conditions are tough in that area of the garden: hard clay soil with lots of rocks, a fairly steep slope, and hot sun most of the day.

The results? Beautiful clusters of flowers last year...and this year...garden volunteers!

Along with the coreopsis, the Bachelor's Buttons did a great job self sowing throughout the garden, so much so that I've had to move many of the seedlings.

Not bad for spending only twenty cents!

Here's a list of what self-seeded in my garden this year:

• Bachelor's Buttons (Centaurea cyanus)
• Alyssum (Lobelia maritima) - this self seeded during the growing season, so much so that I was picking plants out of the walkway. It's too early yet to know if it will come back this spring.
• Cosmos: I had a free package of cosmos seeds from a company trying to get my business. I threw them in the ground without a thought. Soon I had a massive stand of 3-foot tall pink and purple flowering cosmos on frilly greens. Unfortunately, a strong wind during a thunderstorm smashed them right over and uprooted them, and I could not get them to grow again. They did leave behind seeds, which are now sprouting right where they fell. Amazing! This year I have the same seed packet (that company just won't stop trying to get my business) and another of orange, red and yellow. I will place supports for these tall gems.

I've read a lot about other flowers that will self seed, but these are the annual that volunteered for another tour of duty in the Seven Oaks flower garden.

Self Seeding Tough Plants: Coreopsis Tinctoria

Gardening this weekend focused on plant rescue. Specifically, rescuing dozens upon dozens of plants that self-seeded throughout the perennial garden last fall and are now producing seedlings in unwelcome spots. After digging up my third bucketful of plants, I thought that self-seeding plants would be great topics this week, since not many people know about them. Today's focus is on the toughest sunny plant I've found: Coreopsis tinctoria.

Coreopsis tinctoria (Golden Tickseed)
Looking at the USDA map of North America, it's amazing that Coreopsis tinctoria grows wild in all states except for Alaska, Nevada, New Mexico and New Hampshire. How New Hampshire escaped I cannot fathom, since the weather conditions are so similar to Vermont and the nearby states. I can understand Alaska, for the winters may be too cold, and Nevada and New Mexico have such hot, dry climates that it's possible the little tickseed doesn't like it.

In Texas, according to the Wild Plants of Friendswood blog, Coreopsis tinctoria grows wild by the roadside.

The plants like firm, dry seedbeds, but not too dry. They flower more with fertilization, but be warned - they also produce more seeds. The plants grow wispy stalks one to four feet tall and produce small, sunflower-like blossoms. They do need full sun - the more sun, the better.

The seeds will spread out around the Coreopsis plant, but be warned; they can be terribly invasive.

In my garden, for example, I not only have new Coreopsis plants coming up around the circumference of where last year's mother plant was growing, but I have Coreopsis coming up in the driveway (I'm not kidding - in fact, these plants look the healthiest!) and among many of the other perennials. These have to be dug out, since I don't want coreopsis overshadowing the Echinacea, gaillardia and yarrow.

Too much Coreopsis? Try moving these tough plants to areas where they can naturalize. If they get too invasive, you'll have to weed them out.

For novice gardeners, Coreopsis is super-easy to grow from seed. Seeds are available from Parks, Burpee, and the other major gardening catalogs.

Wildflowers

I love wildflowers. Back on Long Island, the first appearance of cornflowers along the side of Jericho Turnpike was always a sign that June was here and we were on the cusp of summertime. As a little girl, the first dandelions, along with the budding maple trees, meant my April birthday had arrived. And I always tried to transplant wild violets when I found them in the lawn into the garden (they never, ever took!)

Yesterday, I stopped by my friend Annette's farm to pick up chocolate Easter eggs her daughter had made and for a little visit. She took me across her fields to share the beautiful sight of hundreds and hundreds of Virginia bluebells in bloom. I'd read about Virginia bluebells, and seen photos, and I'd even bought them from a catalog and tried to add them to my garden - but they didn't take. I wish I'd had a camera with me to capture the sight of the late afternoon sunlight slanting through the nodding blue flowers. It was like a carpet of blue against a wash of emerald leaves and grass.

Wildflowers are gifts to us. Unlike all the cultivated flowers we plant, wildflowers choose where to grow. They dictate to us what they will, and will not do. They cannot be cut and carried into the house like a tame rose or snapdragon. Instead, they wilt and suffer when stuffed into a vase and placed on a kitchen table.

Many wildflowers are also called weeds, but that's an inelegant name for a tough flower that's intricately woven into God's tapestry of nature. Many wildflowers are an essential part of His plan for life; monarch butterflies need butterfly weed and milkweed, and other flowers nurture bees and birds and insects and more.

Today my task is to weed the perennial garden. Along the dirt paths (still waiting for the slates and finishing cement I'm afraid!) there are nodding purple and white violets, my own volunteer wildflowers. I have no idea how they got there. The nearest violets are in the woods, hundreds of feet away. Whether by windblown seeds or carried on the soles of our shoes, or perhaps the pads of many tiny animal feet, the violets are providing their own show before the tame plants, such as my roses and lavender, add their colors.

And I have four boxes of wildflower seeds to sow along the back field, hopefully flowers that will choose to live with us.

But they may not choose to grow there. Do you remember what they said about Aslan in the Chronicles of Narnia? He's not a tame lion.

Neither, I'm afraid, are wildflowers. They are anything but tame.

Eat Your Greens

Spring greens are some of the easiest vegetables to grow. They also give me instant (well, nearly instant) gratification. I can start them early, and I can visit them when the rest of the beds remain empty and waiting out in the vegetable garden.

Greens are good for you. If your mom admonished you to "eat your greens!" she knew what she was talking about. Popeye, with his can of magical spinach that suddenly caused great, bulging muscles, knew a good thing when he found it too.

Greens are rich in:

• Protein. I'm not kidding about this. Among the plant kingdom, they're a really rich source or protein, ounce for ounce. People following a raw food diet have known this for you.
• Vitamins: Vitamin C, K, and others
• Iron
• Potassium
• Many other minerals, including trace minerals
• Fiber

Great greens that are both delicious and easy to grow include:

• Lettuce: Can it get any easier than lettuce? Grow it early, grow it often. Sprinkle seeds, water and about a month or so later, sit down to a harvest. If you don't lose it to slugs, you've got it made. Try Romaine, black seed Simpson, or one of the many salad mixes. I'm trying one especially made for southern weather this year - hopefully, I can grow it beyond the cool spring weather and into early summer. I think summertime in Virginia is going to be way too hot to grow lettuce, but my neighbors tell me they grow it almost to Thanksgiving in the fall.
• Spinach: Eat it fresh in a salad or cook it up. Either way, it's a great green.
• Kale: Some people don't like kale, but when grown at home and eaten fresh, it's sweeter than you expect.
• Swiss Chard: Green or rainbow colored, I'm in love with Chard. It's another "seed it and forget it" vegetable, too.
• Beet greens: You probably plant beets for the red root part, but beet greens are very healthy and delicious too. This year I'm growing an heirloom variety of beet called "Bulls Blood". The tops are supposed to be great for cooking. Haven't sown it yet (probably a chore for Monday), but it sounds great from the Burpee catalog.

How Seven Oaks Got Its Name

Friends passing the hand-painted sign on our driveway announcing they've reached Seven Oaks often ask me, "How did you come up with the name for the farm?" It's also the name for my writing, editing and marketing consulting business.

When we were building the house, we'd stop by to check in with the building crew. On many occasions, we noticed seven large birds majestically soaring over the fields and creek. One day, John and I stood with Jonathan, one of the workers, watching the birds. I waxed poetic about them.

"Look at the hawks! Aren't they beautiful? We'll call it Seven Hawks Farm."

"Ah, ma'am?" Jonathan cleared his throat. "Those aren't hawks. They're...buzzards."

"Buzzards?"

"Yes...like...ah...black vultures."

(For the uninitiated, vultures or buzzards are carrion eaters...and the black buzzards of Virginia are especially hated by farmers. They will take down livestock, especially smaller stock like sheep or goats, or peck the eyes out of newborn calves so they can kill and eat them. They are mean creatures. Useful in nature, but mean).

Since Seven Vultures Farm sounded awful, we searched for another term. We liked "Seven" for some unknown reason. It's lucky, but neither John nor I are superstitious (I owned a black cat for 18 years and often find my best luck on Friday the 13th).

On another trip, we checked on the acorns we'd planted along the edge of the field. John had carefully gathered acorns from the 100-year old white oak trees in front of his parents' house on Long Island so we'd take a bit of our home with us when we moved.

And there, growing in a little circle, were precisely seven oaks.

Thus we became: Seven Oaks.

Top 5 Cool Weather Vegetables

The blustery winds and sudden drop in temperatures today remind me that it's spring, despite the 80 degree day on Sunday. I did a quick check on the vegetable beds. The cabbage seedlings continue to lose their outer leaves, with the newer growth coming in strong. I'm not sure if that's normal or due to the compost-infused soil being too rich for them. The broccoli seedlings look awful, but they did in the house too; the strongest are already lifting their little leaves high to the sun. The Brussels sprouts took to their new home in the great outdoors quite well and are already looking much happier than they did in days. The spinach, Swiss chard, lettuce and broccoli rabe continue to thrive. And the radishes? They've gone wild, quickly adding a second set of leaves and working on a third.

My Top 5 Cool Weather Vegetable Choices

Here's what's thriving in the garden at Seven Oaks (zone 7 most of the time, full sun, rich compost-infused soil in raised beds)

1. Swiss Chard Bright Lights: This is my all-time favorite green, leafy vegetable, both for its color and how easy it is to grow in the garden. Have you ever eaten Swiss Chard? It's like spinach, but a little milder. You cook it just the same way or saute it in olive oil with a little garlic. You can also eat it raw, like lettuce. Bright Lights comes in a rainbow of colors. There's the usual green Swiss Chard, but dark orange, pink and yellow too. I grew this in the worst conditions (my former garden in Huntington, Long Island; heavy shade from a neighbor's trees, clay soil that was hard to amend, zone 6) and it did well. It's doing great here in zone 7, full sun, fully enriched soil. Can't wait for the harvest!
2. Broccoli Rabe: I'm growing an heirloom variety this year from Burpee. In New York, we always bought Broccoli rabe at the grocery store. It's like little broccoli crossed with chard. It's delicious. And this heirloom variety seems strong...it's sprouting like mad. I hope you can see something of it in the pictures!
3. Radish - French Breakfast: Do the French really eat them for breakfast? I have no idea, but the Burpee catalog promised me radishes so sweet I'd want to eat them for breakfast, so that's a start. They're supposed to grow well in hot, dry areas, which is what the garden will become in a few short weeks. I've also got traditional Red Glow Radishes.
4. Brussels Sprouts: I love Long Island Sweet, and they thrive anywhere. I grew them in containers on my deck on Long Island because we had such shady conditions in the garden, and they produced nice sprouts too.
5. Spinach: I've got two varieties going and my favorite is by far the Teton hybrid. It's tough, fast growing, and economical. We've got a little science experiment going between the Teton hybrid and a cheap packet I grabbed at Wal-Mart. So far, the Teton hybrid is outdoing the other.

Let's hope the weather warms up a bit in the next few days. Rain forecast for the end of the week, which will be great - especially since the tripod irrigator isn't hooked up yet!

Excuse me while I head out to the garden....

Perennial Combinations

As you can image, with temperatures soaring near 70 and bright sunny skies, I was out in the garden for many hours. On Saturday, we finished off "the boat" as we now call the long octagonal flower bed in the back of the house. John fussed more with the underground sprinkler line. I think it's fine, but he's not satisfied with the connector to the house. We're trying to get the backyard done so that the patio can be finished. I'm super excited about that, not just because we get another outdoor living space that overlooks the back fields and woods, but because John mentioned to the electrician who came to bid on the job that we are going to put a pond into the little flower garden. I've wanted a pond forever! We found a natural-looking fountain at Lowe's last year, so we are going to wait until the fall when hopefully it will go on sale. We planted more shrubs into the perennial garden and walked the property, noting the next projects to work on while we replenished the soil in the bare patches on the lawn.

The biggest project by far was finishing the front beds in front of the porch. What looked like a simple job of digging a few holes for azaleas and perennials turned into a pick axe and many smashed fingers. We'd both forgotten that the area near the foundation of a house is always packed with hard pan, clay and gravel from construction. Poor perennials. At least today they are getting watered!

I designed a perennial combination right by the front steps that I think will be lovely once it fills in. I used aalvia "May Night" in the back, and planted some rich dark pink dianthus in front, along with lighter pink phlox. I like how the dark blue-purple flowers and gray-green leaves of the salvia look with the textures and colors of the dianthus. The deer ate the flowers right off of my phlox last year in the perennial garden, but this close to the front steps I doubt they'll find it. I planted something new with blue, star-shaped flowers whose name escapes me. I'll have to pop outside and look at the tag. If it wasn't pouring rain, I'd take a few photos of the perennial combination too and post them. Maybe tomorrow....

In the vegetable garden, carrot seeds went in this weekend.  I'll wait another week or two, then direct sow the seeds. The onions continue to thrive, and the radishes too. The spinach is rapidly overtaking both the Swiss chard and broccoli rabe in terms of growth, but the lettuce is already looking a bit peaked. The strawberries are really runnning wild, but more poor blueberries are dry, brittle sticks. Ah well. Learning to garden in a new area always takes time. Gardeners need a lot of things. Rain, sun, time and patience among others!

Inspiring Stories

This is a wonderful article from the New York Times Home and Garden section. The stories remind me of my grandparents and parents. So stop your whining already about how tough you've got it!

Great Depression stories

And a big welcome to my neighbors and new friends who've found us through this blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc....Frog Bottom Farms in Pamplin City (population 199! what a city as they said to me in their email), Lec and family in Catalonia, Spain, at the Catalan Gardens (good luck on your olive crop), the Herzlers at Meadowlands farm also in Pamplin, and Patty and Ron over at Shady Acres Farms in Prospect. Welcome and enjoy the spring madness! Good luck with your spring planting and here's to a productive growing season.

Seed Starting

I'm back on my kick of writing about seed starting, but probably not what you think! As I write this, we're treated to yet another bout of cool spring rains. I'm happy for the rain; my seeds are all up, and need the moisture. We did get the irrigation system buried yesterday and the new nifty tripod sprinkler going. But I'd rather let Nature water the garden than tax my well any more than it has to be taxed. Outside, directly sown into the garden beds, my radishes, Swiss Chard, spinach, lettuce and broccoli rabe are all sprouting, and the onions and strawberries are thriving.

Seed starting begins so long before harvest that it's easy to forget the time and patience needed for it. First off, you have to plan the garden. That began last November when we carefully sketched out the beds onto graph paper, and I penciled in all my thoughts and dreams of the harvest. Next came the seed catalogs - oh, the seed catalogs! Since hiding my credit cards didn't work, I succumbed to the allure of the glossy catalog pages and bought way too many seeds. But that wasn't enough, so I raided Lowe's, Home Depot, Wal-Mart, K Mart, and the dollar store for more.

Patiently I visited the shelves in the basement and the glass jars full of perennial seeds collected from the beds next to the driveway. I printed calendars to know when to start my seeds, I sterilized my seed trays.

I planted. I waited. I prayed.

And now...they are here.

So much of life is like this. I was writing yesterday to a dear friend, a woman I have known for over 20 years who once harbored dreams of writing. She lamented that since her daughter was born she hasn't had time to put pen to paper and write the wonderful poems she used to write. She feels as if she's lost her gift, although I can tell you that by her emails the gift isn't lost, it is just sleeping until her daughter steps out to college and she has time to remember and awaken it.

I want to tell her that she's planted the right seeds through all the wonderful poems she's written. I have one framed and on the wall of my office. Those kind of seeds never die - creativity merely lies dormant until you awaken it.

I was speaking to a woman from church who wanted to know how I wrote all that I did; where did I get my ideas? How did I find assignments? How did I develop my consulting and writing practice? How could she do this too? I gave her the same strategies I've given to other writers, and she seemed upset, as if I was holding something back. I didn't. It's just that there is no special secret, despite what all the how-to and self help books tell you.

It's all seed starting...life is like seed starting. You plan, you plant the seed of an idea, you water it well, and you pray a lot over it. Then you wait.

I tried to explain this to the lady from church. She wants success now. She wants to know my 'secret' but there isn't any secret. I go to work every day. I put in anywhere from 8 to 12 hours of work a day. I send out query letters for assignments, I write. I do my best. Each action I take is like a little seed of opportunity being planted. I have faith that these seeds will grow into work and some sort of pay check, but I have no guarantee. Every day is like my garden; I step into the office and note what's grown, and what weeds need to be pulled.

You have to be willing to be patient. You have to be willing to plant a seed every day. You have to be willing to tend the garden. Most of all, you need faith in the process that something will flourish.

If it's time...God's time...it slowly unfurls into the perfect little being...or project...or plan.

Creativity is like seed starting. Whatever you dream of doing, it lies within you, waiting for the water and sunlight to encourage it to blossom.

I wish I could encourage everyone to garden. Nature remains the best teacher, and observing her rituals, flowing with her timing, spills over into everything I do.