Seven Oaks Is Now Get Your Hands Dirty Gardening

Well! Bet you were surprised when you visited the Seven Oaks blog today. I gave it a little facelift of sorts and transformed the blog into an online magazine. You can change how you view it using the navigation in the left margin. I wanted a more modern look to it, and am taking steps to transform this little blog into a website dedicated to you, the newcomers and beginners to the world of gardening.  Get Your Hands Dirty Gardening now has its own website address. It's also the name of my gardening book, which has been out of print for a few months now as it gets it own update and move to a new fulfillment vendor.  Yes, lots of changes here, but all good!

In the meantime, the garden is just starting to wake up even though it is February.  The yellow crocus are blooming, as are the white snowdrops. I'm buying potting soil today to start my tomato and pepper seeds. I feel like winter will never end yet it is flying by. Yet we realized this weekend that in just a few short weeks here in south central Virginia, we will be once again working outside in the garden.  We started making our task list: order mulch, check soils, weed vegetable beds, start seeds, tend to the fruit trees....

I can't wait. Each fall, I'm grateful for the reprieve, but by January I'm ready to head back outside and get my hands dirty again. Nature knows best, however, and gives me a few more week so rest before gardening season begins.

I hope you like the new layout and the new information and resources to come.  Please drop me a comment at jeannegrunert@gmail.com and let me know your thoughts on the new design.

What's in a Name? Everything When You're a Plant!

Learning the Latin or scientific classification name of a plant may seem daunting at first, but it's important. The more I learn about plants, the more I realize how important it is to be precise. No two plants are alike just as no two people are alike, and knowing the precise classification of a garden plant can potentially mean the difference between choosing one that's hardy for your location or choosing one that needs all sorts of pampering.

If you'd like to learn more about understanding scientific classification and plant names, I have written two articles this week addressing the topic:

• Hub Pages: Understanding Scientific Classification of Plants

• Main Line Gardening - The Importance of Latin Plant Names

Beware the Gardening Expert, Because We're All Gardening Experts

Water on cauliflower leaf in my garden

Beware the gardening expert, because in truth, we're all gardening experts - and perpetual learners.

I just finished participating in an interview for Hobby Farms magazine on seed starting. I don't know which, if any, of the information I shared from my personal experience will appear in the magazine. But it felt rather odd to be interviewed for Hobby Farms.  I first subscribed to that publication over a decade ago. I found a copy of the magazine on a newsstand in Penn Station one evening while waiting for my train; of all the places to find a hobby farming magazine, I'd put Penn Station in New York City dead last on the list, but there it was.

Hobby Farms fueled my dreams for owning my own hobby farm someday. Here I am today, being interviewed for the same publication that inspired my own dreams of living in the country. God has a great sense of humor; I always sense loving irony in the universe. I've written personal essays where I've described "my life always comes full circle" and here's another example of that - the magazine that fueled my dream is now asking me to comment so I can fuel others' dreams.  I shake my head in wonder and mingled fear. How did I suddenly become quotable? Does this mean I have to hide the dead plants when the neighbors come to visit?

I think that all gardeners are both experts and perpetual novices. For everything you learn, you discover there are a 100 new things to learn. Gardening is one of those things you just sort of learn by doing. I learn more from my mistakes than anything else. For example, my potato mistake.  I never grew potatoes before; this year, I've harvested not one but two crops.  John dug up another 20 pounds or so this past week.  Although I thought I'd harvested all of them back in July, clearly I missed some little spuds, and they decided they knew better than me and flourished, producing a bumper crop.  I got some tips from my neighbor Mel, who gave me the original batch of seed potatoes, a bag of sulfur, and some advice, but it's really been trial and error.  I have a feeling I'm going to be digging potatoes from that bed for a long time to come. 

The first year I moved to Virginia I read in some 'expert' book that cabbage could be planted in the spring here, so I raced around planting cabbage, broccoli and all the fall crops I knew from Long Island. Talk about a disaster. Well, it was a disaster for me but not for the cabbage moths, who really feasted on the sudden early spring growth of their favorite plant. I think I supplied the whole moth larvae population of south central Virginia with food that year. I remember picking a head of cabbage and dumping it in the sink, only to pick little yellow worms out of it.  Eeew!

This year, I did the smart thing; I talked to neighbors and asked them when they planted their cabbage and broccoli.  I asked one local fellow whose family has farmed these parts since the late 1700s. Now if he doesn't know the answer, nobody will.  He said plant it in the fall.  I've got beautiful heads of cabbage and broccoli ready to eat out in the garden now, and probably some annoyed insects, but tough luck - we'll eat the cabbage, thank you!

No matter what I grow, I'm always growing. Experience teaches us gardening; we garden writers and teachers just transmit the knowledge.

Checklist for Easy Fall Garden Clean Up

I just wrote this article today on Fall Garden Clean Up, providing readers with a checklist of 10 points to cover when they're cleaning up around the garden and preparing the garden for the winter. I'll a little behind this year on my own gardening tasks - we're still weeding, pruning and mulching the fruit orchard trees and planting our annual 300+ daffodils out there. I've started pulling up dead vegetable and annual flowers, and trimming back some of the perennials, but I have a feeling I'm going to be out there working until it snows! The early frost sure took a toll on the garden and got me all off-kilter.

However, I will use my own checklist to make sure I cover the important stuff.

Read the article here:  Fall Garden Clean Up Checklist

Gardening as Meditation

Have you ever looked up from your weeding to realize that an hour flew by in a quiet, gentle peace, like water flowing in a quiet stream?

Or you're pruning a shrub, and the breeze nuzzles your hair while birds sing, and you breathe the scent of a thousand flowers in the evening air, and you realize in your heart that this is peace?

Last night, we went on our usual 2-3 mile walk with Shadow, then returned home. It was a sticky evening, humid and warm, but there was nothing I wanted to watch on television and I'm tired of news programs. So I said to John, "I'm going outside to putter for a bit - I won't be long." I slipped on my gardening gloves and Shadow and I retreated to the flower garden. I had four large pots of perennials started from seed this spring that needed to be transplanted, columbine and penstemmon, and a pot of Dusty Millers my father in law had bought for me. Trowel in hand, I carried my pots to the garden, dug in the soft soil, and gently patted the flowers into their new homes.

Of course as I wandered among the flower beds, weeds demanded to be pulled, and so I used each empty plastic pot as a weed receptacle. Soon, I had weeded the pathways - yes, despite the landscape fabric, sand, gravel and stones, a few weeds do manage to sprout and must be pulled before they spread. Ditto for the various grasses, which always seem to prefer the flower beds to the lawn areas where we want them to grow.

As I puttered and pulled, patted and pruned, dusk descended on the garden. Birds sang quietly in the woods behind my back and the breeze stirred my perspiration-dampened hair. I looked up to a spectacular sky of blues and indigo shot with veins of pure ocher and gold; sunset.

During our walk, many worries and fears crowded my mind. I tend to be a worry wart. As a child,  I'd lay in bed at night and worry that I hadn't done all my homework or that I wouldn't hit the ball during gym class baseball games. I was a bundle of anxiety before I had a real reasons to be anxious. 

I'm like that now. I worry about everything. My mind can go in about a zillion fearful directions to the point where I feel paralyzed. No amount of logic helps. I've heard that fear is "False Evidence Appearing Real" and that's me to a T; false evidence appears real, and I worry.

So you can image how my evening walk went. I walked and talked with my husband, and we had fun playing with Shadow, and every time a bit of quiet came into the walk, my worrying mind started in again.

Yet as I picked my head up from the garden, my gloves caked with good red Virginia clay and a bucket of weeds by my feet, I realized that for the first time all day, my mind was quiet.  No worries chattered and poked at my subconscious; all was quiet, peace, serenity. My mind was tranquil, my spirit serene.

People go to great lengths to create meditation gardens, and they are lovely places for the spirit. But I find that gardening is meditation. It is better than anything I can take to sooth my spirit, it is more prayer for me than anything else. Gardening is my meditation, my serenity.  A simple evening of weeding resets my worry buttons like nothing else until this morning I rise secure, ready to face the challenges of the day, the spirit of lingering peace offering rest.

Is a Garden Ever Really Finished?

Last night after supper, and after the sun ducked low enough so that the pines could provide shade, John and I finished cementing the stones together to complete the paths. The landscape fabric is down. We'll haul pails of pebbles from the pile where the truck dumped them onto the pathways, but the hardest part of creating the garden is complete The hardscapes are in place.  My dream of no longer weeding pathways is complete...or at least weeding them once every few weeks, instead of every weekend!

To celebrate, I found a picture of the original garden, taken April 2008.  I had mapped out the paths that March using rocks.  Do you see the little pink phlox planted on the hillside? That and a handful of daffodils were the only plants in place.  The trellis at the entrance was added that month, too.

Flower garden, April 2008

And now today, three years later -

Flower garden, May 2011...from a slightly different angle, but this is the same slope.

Is a garden ever really finished? Do you ever put down the trowel and say, "Glad that's over, now I can go back to watching reruns of the Andy Griffith Show on TV Land?"

We completed the main pathways this weekend. But we now plan to extend the pathway, clear a bit more into the woods, and I have already mentioned - loudly, repeatedly - that I want a huge statue of the Blessed Mother. I want to build her a grotto, actually, a la Lourdes. In my imagination, I see water splashing through a grotto or a rill.  Maybe if I win the lottery and can afford some workers to dig it for me....!

But in all seriousness, gardens are never finished.  My beautiful garden took three years to coax from the hard clay soil. It was so damaged from years of tobacco growing and pines...so acidic the laboratory who did the soil analysis called me and asked me where the soil came from (I'd taken the sample in Virginia but brought it back to where I was living in New York to have it tested; the poor lab guys wondered where the heck it came from!) It was so devoid of life I couldn't find a single earthworm in the soil for years.

Today I watered the petunias with the garden hose and out hopped toads - several of them - a mad scramble of amphibians dancing under the hose. Mockingbirds, kinglets, goldfinches, hummingbirds and cardinals play among the flowers, landing on the larger bushes and on the trellis. Bees of all types hum among the flowers and butterflies are busy sipping nectar from the butterfly bushes.

I don't have a magic touch and I don't have a magic wand. I don't spend hours out there every day, either.  If I could tell you anything at all about gardening, it is this; nature is forgiving.  Flowers add joy.  Don't hesitate to try something, anything, to get your garden growing!  It is the most worthwhile thing in the whole wide world.

No, gardens are never done as long as there is a gardener who loves the garden.

Garden Volunteers Blooming Today - Sunflowers

Self seeded sunflower, blooming in June

I love sunflowers. They didn't grow very well for us on Long Island, and the chipmunks got most of the seeds. We had one very fat chipmunk living in the drain pipe next to our patio at our old house on Long Island. My father in law would plant sunflower seeds in the garden bed next to the drain pipe.  We'd catch the rotund chipmunk digging in the soil, stuffing his cheeks full of seeds, and racing back for the safety of his drain pipe. My husband always wondered if the little creature grew to be any fatter, would he get stuck inside?

I haven't seen any chipmunks on our little farm, and the sunflowers we grow are grown against the long southern wall of the house. Last fall I was lazy and didn't take the sunflower seed heads in like I did the previous year. The birds found them quickly, and we had a wonderful show of goldfinches and other birds on the abondoned seed heads.

I thought no more about it until this spring when we noticed "weeds" growing among the shrubs on that side of the house. The weeds quickly grew into sunflowers - and because they got such an early start, they're blooming today, in June instead of August.

Pink clashes with the red - but the petunias had other ideas!

Another group of volunteers that appeared just a few weeks ago are the pink petunias shown in this picture. I planted red - clear red - to make a nice contrast with all the yellows and oranges going on in the garden. Pink clashes. The petunias beg to differ. All along the area where I planted pink petunias last year are newly emerged volunteers.

My front window boxes are planted with geraniums that I wintered over.  This year, more volunteers emerged - geranium seedlings! Today we counted four altogether. They grew in the oddest places. Some are tucked up under the damp shelter of the azaleas, a few are under the porch overhang, and one is just next to the sidewalk. Honestly, if I tried to start seeds there they'd never come up, but these seeds found a way!

Lastly, I've got clusters of pansies growing under the shady stone wall of my back deck.  I've planted lots of pansies there in previous years, but this year switched over to impatiens.  Then I noticed the pansies coming up all over the place. I've got white and yellow pansies nodding among the impatiens.

Garden volunteers offer fun surprises. You never know what you're going to get when the plants start seeding everywhere.  It works for my unsophisticated country casual design where anything goes.  My plants know where to grow!

Coreopsis self seeded among the daisies.

Welcome New Followers and How Seven Oaks Got Its Name

We've reached a new landmark on the Seven Oaks blog - 50 followers. Welcome! I hope you enjoy tales from Seven Oaks, our 17 acre timber farm here in the middle of south central Virginia.  For those new to the blog, we moved onto this little piece of heaven on October 1, 2007.  Since then, we transformed a bare dirt clearing into the gardens you see on this blog.  Almost everything we grow is grown 100% organically.  We grow fruit, vegetables, herbs and flowers for our family's enjoyment and consumption, and the rest of our land is planted with loblolly pine, a marketable timber crop used by the paper industry. Except for a little piece of land bounded by creeks on all sides and very swampy, almost everything here is pine trees. We're zone 6b in a good year, almost a 7, and in a bad year we're closer to a zone 6.  Old timers say that our town has its own zone and the farmers here tell me that is true; they have learned it's best in our little part of the world to read nature's signs rather than rely on the weatherman.

Spring 2011:  Blooming shrubs, perennials, pathways and hardscapes.

Spring 2011 - pathways, plants and more

Before moving to Seven Oaks, I lived on Long Island.  I worked as a marketing executive for a global publishing company in New York City.  I adore New York City, particularly the area around Lincoln Center where I used to work.  But I really love life in the country and life as a freelancer.


I hope you enjoy the Seven Oaks blog. Do leave a comment, and you can email me too.

Curious about how Seven Oaks got its name?  No, it's not because there are only seven oak trees on our entire property.  It's a funny story and you can read it here: How Seven Oaks Got Its Name
Thank you for following this blog!

Some Women Go Shoe Shopping While I Go Sedum Shopping

My new quote of the day (and it's mine so you can quote me): "Some women go shoe shopping, I go sedum shopping."  I wrote today about the joys and perils of gift plants versus garden center purchases on my weekly column/essay at Main Line Gardening.  I invite you to visit their site and read the fully essay.  Photos are from my garden.

Don't Look a Gift Plant in the Sepals - gardening essay for MainLine Gardening by Jeanne Grunert

I also received the nicest compliment this week from reader Barb over at SFO Mom (who also has a terrific blog, and you can find her link in my blogroll somewhere in the messy sidebar here).  She said, "Your book has given me confidence to start an herb garden this year."  I got a real lump in my throat at that comment. I've always wanted to inspire somebody and it is so nice to hear that my gardening book did that.  I want everyone to have fun in the garden.  It's so worthwhile, so rewarding to grow something - anything! - whether it's a little pot of geraniums on your front steps or a windowsill of basil and herbs.  Try it!

Rain, Rototillers, and Waiting for Plants

Sometimes I think spring should be called the "hurry up and wait" season. I love spring; don't get me wrong. What gardener doesn't love spring, or for that matter, who doesn't love spring after a winter of ice, slush and snow? March entered not like a lion but like a lamb, bringing unseasonably warm weather to Virginia.  My peach trees are in bloom alongside the pears, and I'm grateful that the trees were buzzing with bee activity.  Maybe, just maybe, we'll get some fruit this year, although the trees are still very young.  Everything is blooming - tulips, daffodils, crocus, forsythia, heather, peach trees, pear trees, Redbud trees.  Even the grass has taken on a twinkly emerald hue as the frequent rains and thunderstorms bring much needed moisture before the heat parching begins in a few months.

We managed to find a neighbor willing to lend us a rototiller; thankfully, they had two, a narrow one which we borrowed and a big one which they plan to use.  Thank you Joan and Mel for your kindness and generosity to us!  After a frustrating session last weekend where my sudden inspiration to actually read the directions printed on the handle got it started (don't ask; starting this rototiller is like an evil game of Twister, only if your foot slips it's going under the blade. The engineer who designed this thing had a sadistic mind.)  We got the areas near the existing flower beds rototilled, with just one area left near the entrance to the driveway left to weed...and yes, there are more big, ugly, thorn-filled, nasty bramble bushes, ragweed and you name it left in this pile.  Its days are numbered.

And that's where we're stuck in terms of getting outside work done.  The plants I ordered from the mail order catalog not only aren't here yet but their phone isn't answered. I managed to get hold of customer service via email, who keeps telling me my order is with the shipping department, but they can't give me a better idea of shipping times.  Every time we decide "tomorrow is the day we will tackle the last weed pile", it rains.   Same for the pathways in the garden, which require us to haul out the cement mixer and mix fresh mortar.   I keep looking longingly at the paths, but every time we start thinking about finishing up the edging, rain is predicted.  And you can't dry cement in the rain!

Rain might be a good thing, however, since rainy weekends means the house gets cleaned...and spring means the pets are shedding.  Shadow, the long haired German Shepherd dog, has begun the annual spring shed, which means gigantic tumbleweeds of dog fur the size of guinea pigs in the corners and on the rug.  I stocked upon vacuum cleaner bags and the current one is already half full; normally they last months, but at this time of year, thanks to the annual fur shedding, I could keep the company in business alone through my orders.

Spring is here, rain, dog fur, weeding and all.  Come to think of it, I'm sort of in the mood to clean....well, about as in the mood as I ever get to clean.....but that will bring me full circle back to weeds and dog hair, so I think I'll hide in my office and do more work and writing today.

Happy spring! What's on your gardening agenda this weekend?

Gardening Cleanup for Spring

This weekend we spent hours readying both the vegetable gardens and flower gardens for spring.  With unseasonably mild temperatures on both Saturday and Sunday - it was in the 50s and 60s respectively - we decided to tackle two chores: cleaning up the horrible mat of weeds on the edge of the flower garden and filling the raised beds in the vegetable garden with compost.   Of course, two projects led to about 10.  Isn't that the way of the garden? You start one thing, which leads to another, and before you know it you're ankle deep in mud. 

The flower garden along my driveway tends to get weedy, possibly because it's next to the lawn and I think weed seeds just blow right off the farmer's fields across the street and also from the lawn.  Critters probably track in those weeds, too!  Last year we could not keep up with the weeding in two spots. We still have pallets of stones stacked and waiting to go onto the walkways, and weeding around the pallets was impossible. A big mat of some kind of grass just spread and spread, engulfing a small part of the driveway and creeping into the iris and day lilies.

On Saturday, we began digging up the mat of weeds. What a chore!  But luckily for us we got there just in time. Underneath the mat of weeds, choking for lack of sunlight, were crocus and daffodils.  We moved a stone that had fallen off the pallet or been carelessly thrown onto the weedy patch and there were at least 30 crocus, struggling to grow under a heavy slate.  I felt like I'd done my good deed for the day as we uncovered all the pretty spring blossoms.

It took several hours of heavy work with a pick axe, hoe and shovel, but we managed to dig up the mats and at least chop back what we couldn't dig up so that we can put down some landscape fabric on the area we want to make a garden path and smother out the rest of those things.

After church on Sunday, I changed my clothes and headed out to the vegetable garden. I had stopped at Wal Mart to do some grocery shopping and meant to pick up only one package of Swiss Chard seeds in the garden center there - but I left with Swiss Chard seeds and more flower seeds: alyssum, shade flowers, nasturtium seeds, poppies.  And then of course I spied lily of the valley pips and I wanted to add lily of the valley along the stone wall of our raised patio at the back of the house, so those found their way into my shopping cart.  Then I spotted seed potatoes (potatoes specially grown for gardening) and horseradish.  Hmm, into the cart those went.  I came home with the trunk of my car filled with groceries and gardening supplies!

I thought my long-suffering spouse was going to have a fit, but he approved of my purchases. We ran 12 wheelbarrows of compost back to the raised beds and then paused to stretch our aching backs and survey the area.  We talked about what grows well - greens, like Chard, spinach and lettuce; beans of all sorts; roots crops of all sorts.  We agreed to forgo the melons this year since the ones we buy at the store or Farmer's Market just taste better.

We decided to pull up what looked like just a few mint plants and ended up being an enormously thick mat of mint.  We had to dig up the entire raised bed!  That necessitated refilling the bed with more compost, of course.  Because I can't let a plant go to waste, we moved the big mats of mint down to an area at the bottom of the hill at the base of the fruit orchard, where rainwater tends to erode the soil.  We planted the mint in that area. Who cares if it grows a bit into the woods or out onto the lawn?  Mow it!

Next we tackled the strawberry bed.  My poor strawberries were planted too close together, spread out all over the place, and had a big hunk of grass growing in the middle. We dug up the whole bed, split up plants, removed the grass, and replanted the whole kit and kaboodle.

I planted the lily of the valley pips, then planted two bags of gladiolus bulbs against the foundation of the house.

Then we headed inside, poured ourselves drinks, and collapsed in front of the TV.  We were both popping Advil last night and grumbling about sore backs, but this morning, as I sit in my office and glance down at the flower garden, it's nice to see the plants instead of the big ugly mat of evil weeds!

Today's pictures are taken in our fruit orchard.  We planted crocus and daffodils throughout the orchard.  These are the first crocus of spring, blooming at the base of an apple tree.

Happy gardening!

Garden Centers

This morning I stepped into the garage to put aside some stuff for recycling, and the odor of potting soil, bird seed and fertilizer zapped me like a time machine, transporting me in a whirl of sensory memories back to childhood treks to the garden center. 


Sundays during my childhood were dedicated to two things: God and family. At 10 a.m. my mom, grandma, and the five of us would go to Mass (my dad went to an earlier Mass to usher).  After Mass, we'd drive to the bakery and buy fresh, hot cinnamon bread and a cake for Sunday dinner. Mom would make a big roast of some sort for 1 p.m. Sunday "dinner" and the eight of us would have a leisurely midday Sunday feast.

After midday dinner, if relatives were expected for a visit, they would arrive sometime around 2:30 and stay until about 4:30.  If not, the family went on an outing - to the duck pond to feed the ducks and play, to see Christmas lights or fall foliage, to buy pumpkins and apple cider in October, or during the winter, to visit one of the local garden centers.

The greenhouses at Gardeners Village or Garden World were like tropical paradises on a cold snowy winter day. The moist, green smell delights me now as it delighted me then.  I'd run from table to table, touching cactus spines, sniffing orchids that smelled like chocolate, staring at pots and garden gloves.

Gardeners Village had a pet department and my parents knew that I'd be safely entertained there. Pepper the Parot lived in a big cage in the middle. He was rumored to be old - very old - close to 40.  Pepper could say "Hello" and lots of other funny things.  I'd often leave on these Sunday trips with a new goldfish for the family's fish tank.

My dad loved garden centers and spent happy hours browsing the shelves. He loved to try the most modern chemicals, too.  That's where he and I differ - he never met a chemical fertilizer or pesticide he didn't love, and I've never met one that didn't give me the creeps!

From the seed packets arriving in late January to the rows of big plastic Nativity scene characters and toy Soldiers in December, these trips instilled a love for garden centers in me that eventually led me in my twenties to work at one of the major ones on Long Island and today still transports me back in time.

I have a big plastic turkey window decorations that my mom bought for me when I was six years old on one of those garden center jaunts. Tom Turkey, as my husband calls him, is ugly; he smells funny, like burning plastic wires, when the sun strikes his bumpy plastic chips too long. He's missing his feet because sometimes in my childhood I decided to operate on him and remove them. But I don't care. Just seeing him hanging in my window at Thanksgiving is enough to make me smile and remember those long-ago trips to the garden center.

My friends also know me so well that guess what we have planned for my springtime birthday?

You guessed it; a day trip to Lynchburg's garden centers.

Garden center memories....do you love browsing through them too?

Crows and Other Pests on the Birdfeeder

After I posted the bird feeding and bird gardening ideas, a few readers sent me emails. How do you keep hawks off the bird feeder? (I imagined a cartoon-like hawk salivating over the tiny birds eating at the feeder).  How do you keep squirrels away?

I knew that squirrels were pests at feeders. For a while last year I had to take down the bird feeder and the hummingbird feeder because our little group of gray squirrels realized they could climb the trellis at the entrance to the garden, hang by their toes, and shake the feeders to get food. I had no idea what was happening to the hummingbird feeder until I actually saw the squirrel leap on it and put his little mouth to the port where the nectar releases for the hummers.  He'd get some momentum going and swing the hummingbird feeder like a bell, and drink the nectar sloshing out!  I'd found the local squirrel with a sweet tooth, all right.  My dad used to shoot BB guns at the squirrels but I can't do that; I just can't hurt a living creature, and while I could shoot to scare it, I'd probably hit something else instead.  So I just removed the feeder for a few weeks until the squirrels went elsewhere.

But today my feeder was plagued by crows....lots of them. They found the one crust of moldy bread I'd thrown under the feeder. I filled the feeders last night in anticipation of the storms heading towards us. The birds tend to eat more seed in the 24 hour period before bad weather. I really believe they can sense the barometric pressure and know instinctively they have to hide under bushes for a day until it passes, so they stock up on food.  I stocked their food supply, but the canny crows were watching.

I sent Pierre out to chase them away but they returned quickly.  I can see their beady black eyes from up in my office, so I watch and tap the window glass to frighten them away whenever I notice them.

If anyone's got tips on how to keep crows off the bird feeder, share!

What I Learned About My Garden This Year

Cinnamon basil in the herb garden

It's cold and rainy out today, and the forecast for the weekend called for temperatures in the twenties.  We hit two yearly milestones this year; first frost and the first time we used the fireplaces in the house.  Both occurred on November 1, marking an end to summer.

I look back and feel as if the gardening year flew by.  I look ahead with pleasure to the publication of my latest book, Attracting Birds to the Garden, which is in the galley proof stage now, meaning it's getting closer to reality, and work on the next books in the From the Garden series.

Sometimes when you're so immersed in the daily realities of gardening you lose track of what you've accomplished.  I felt like this year I had more failures than successes.  The drought and extreme heat really did take their toll on the gardens, but I did try some new things with success.

The frosts this weekend will kill what's left in the vegetable garden. Before the plants are but a memory, I wanted to share a few notes from my 2010 gardening adventures, both indoor and out, and just general adventures from the farm.

Sweet Potatoes
It was my first year growing them and I had no idea what I should do.  I thought I'd killed them at first. Instead, I harvested a bumper crop. I realized something very important, too. Root vegetables grow very well in my garden.  Next year, I plan to try a few more, including some unusual varieties of potatoes.

Carrots
Carrots love my garden. I love carrots. It's a match made in heaven.  Once again I harvested a bumper crop of long, sweet, juice Nantes-style carrots. More please!

Cantaloupe
Once again we had a bumper crop of cantaloupe, but they all came in at once and we got so sick of eating them that many went to waste. Now that I know they do well despite droughts and heat waves, I want to try a few different kinds and stagger the planting dates so the harvesting dates may be a bit staggered, too. That will keep me from getting sick of them!

Moles
Shadow found a mole digging in the vegetable garden. I ran and looked them up, fearing I had a new creature bent on eating everything in sight. I learned that moles are harmless, except for the roots they disturb.  Shadow's attentions discouraged the mole and she left the garden to live next to the shed, but I learned a lot about wildlife.

Bluebirds
The bluebird house Phil made for us attracted its first nesting pair this spring.  I could sit in my chair inside the house in my plant room and watch the parents feed the babies.  It inspired me to write Attracting Birds to the Garden; those baby bluebirds gave me such pleasure and joy every time I saw them.  It was a delight.

Groundhogs
Did you know they can climb trees? I didn't, until Shadow chased one straight up a pine tree.  That fat, furry rodent hung by his claws to the trunk, chattering its teeth menacingly while my dog went crazy at the base.  She could be a good hunting dog I suppose.  She is wonderful for keeping critters from the garden!

The Garden Path Construction Update

The paths are shaping up! (and that's my garden helper, Shadow, at left.)  We finished about 75% of the cement work on the rock edging and this weekend, we finally found stones for the paths that we like. Guess what they are? They have the oh-so-sexy name of "Masonry Gravel" and were hidden among bags of cement at Lowe's. Now why Lowe's would put similar bags out in the garden area (where we were originally looking) and this one particular stone among the boring old bags of cement and mortar mix, who knows? All I know is that we stopped by Lowe's before an evening out to dinner to pick up cement, and as John studied bags of cement I found the stones. They are close to what we wanted, so our plan is to buy a bag or two every time we go into town. How I'm supposed to lift a 50 bag of rocks I have no idea. I think the staff at Lowe's is going to run the other way when they hear my cheery voice, "Excuse me - can you help me load this into my car, please?"

We are laying out rolls of landscape fabric, which is the dark-colored mat you see in the pictures. It's tacked down with U-shaped metal stakes which hold it firmly in place. It kills weeds underneath and stops them from germinating.  Next, we layer the pebble-gravel. The slates are different thickness, so we must rake the pebbles into place to ensure the pathway stones are relatively stable. Lastly, we brush off the stones  and make sure the gravel flows to the cemented in place rocks edging the paths.

Already I am excited. That's one nice, long strip I won't have to weed this summer.


Building a Flower Garden in Two Years
Before: a bare, steep slope of dirt, mostly red clay. Soil pH was about 3.5 - 4 to start with. The New York based lab called me when I submitted the soil sample; they wanted to know where it came from (considering they usually dealt with New York soils, that really does make sense - Virginia soil is different.). They had never seen such awful soil.  The lab tech I talked to in 2006-2007 said the soil was completely devoid of organic matter and so acidic he wanted to know what had grown there before. He said, "You've got your work cut out for you."  I'll say....


In March 2008, I used small stones to outline beds for the flower garden. I worked organic soil conditioner from Gardens Alive into the earth, lots of compost, horse manure, cow manure, and more compost into the slope.  I planted perennial kits from Spring Hill Nursery. We began the endless buying trips to Lowe's, adding whatever pleased us.  And I grew most of the perennials from seeds. The rose garden plants were a birthday present in 2008.

In 2009, we shored up the hillside temporarily with thick pieces of wood. Rain washed the original sand bed under the slates right into the butterfly garden and woodland beds, killing lots of plants. Annoyed? You bet.  Time for most compost....

2010: the paths are shaping up. The perennials are thriving. I'm tucking new flowers this way and that way in among what's there now, and we have so many volunteers I'm digging them up and moving them about.  The wildlife loves the garden. While we worked this weekend, a huge frog hopped out of the butterfly garden (hope he wasn't planning to EAT them) and I've seen large painted turtles and lizards of various kinds.  Birds this weekend spotted in the garden include mourning doves, sparrows, goldfinches, and an Indigo bunting.

This is what two people (well, mostly me, with hubby on the heavy work and cement work) accomplished in just two years. If you're dreaming about creating a garden, YOU CAN DO IT.  I was a city kid. Yes, I was fortunate to grow up in a family who gardened as a hobby and with my next door neighbor Mr Hoffman who loved to garden and didn't mind me tagging along. But I'm self taught.  If I can do this, anyone can, including you.  Grab your trowel and get your hands dirty! Go play in the dirt today!




Below - what it looked like in 2006-07 after the land was cleared - you are looking west, as if standing on the path pictured in the today photos.

TODAY -  The garden this weekend. You can see the path with the fabric down in the upper left.  You are looking southwest.

The Vegetables are Coming

The vegetables are coming! Thick and fast and organic and wonderful. I've frozen three gallons of chard and spinach and just dried a pint's worth of oregano. I have been cooking up vegetarian dinners of chard, garlic and olive oil topped pasta that are so heavenly I crave more. Raw salads are the order of the day for lunch.





Here's an update:

• The corn is knee high. Our friends the Hertzlers tell us that crows ate so many of their corn seed that they had to replant it and they lost a lot, but although I've seen crows studying the corn they didn't touch ours yet. (hope I didn't jinx myself here) (but I don't believe in jinxes!)
  
• The cauliflower has actually started producing heads! I had huge leaves and no cauliflower, but I've never grown it before and I thought I was doing something wrong. Nope. It just takes a long time to develop.
• The tomatoes are all about 10 inches tall. Peppers are thriving. The eggplants look terrible! Something is eating the leaves, plus the cold snap in May really stunted them. Cucumbers have revived.
  
• The basils, rosemary, parsley, dill, chamomile, sage, chives, thyme, peppermint, stevia and sweet woodruff are growing like weeds! I have another tray of oregano sun drying on the porch.
• Onions are almost ready!
• The blueberry bush that died LIVES! It came back to life and now sports four jaunty leaves.
• Watermelons, cantalopes, squashes...they have lovely little leaves. Did you know that Moon & Stars Watermelon has green leaves with yellow specks, just like the fruits do? I didn't know that. I thought mine was sick until a gardening friend reminded me that the fruit looks like that too!
• Beets are beeting...they're about the size of golf balls now! The Bulls Blood beets, a Victorian heirloom, is much more robust than the Golden Beets.
• Turnips are turniping...they're also about the size of marbles right now.
  
• We planted green bean seeds...not up yet.

Yes, I'll get out and take pictures this week. I'm late on my flower garden progress report too! But I've been swamped with work....trying to find more freelance work takes time too.

Happy Wednesday!