*To the Smurf theme* La, la, la la la la! La, la la la LAVENDER!

A moment of brilliancy hit upon me a couple of days ago.

I've been pruning my Munstead lavender quite a bit as of late, noting its sad misshapen Quasimodo-esque appearance, trying to free it up so that the inner new growth will look fantastic rather than blob-tastic. (BTW, if anyone can direct me to a miniature Notre Dame Cathedral that is weather hardy, that would be EXCELLENT to place next to my lavender).

After some massive pruning, I saved some of the small pruned bits to soak in vinegar for a hair rinse and then looked at the massive amount of leftover cuttings.

I can't bear to throw anything away if it can be propagated ('cuz that's just what I do) so I wondered if they might root up easily and after a couple of weeks and some new growth coming from the pot of cuttings, that answer would be a very easy YES.

Awesome. But what to do with all this lavender other than gifts?!  This is the epiphany... as I've been trying to go a little prettier in my garden and attract pollinators, I will outline my somewhat unattractive wood raised beds with the lavender and make mini-lavender hedges!

Ta da!

As with many things I've learned in life, and in my home, when something doesn't look good, cover/hide it until it does.

As it turns out, research on Google proved this to not be an entirely unique idea, but rather than just edging, I plan to keep it neatly trimmed all the time.  Besides, if I don't, I won't be able to reach into my beds with my short little arms anyways.  (Flashback to 3 years ago:  Me to my husband building the beds, "Those look a little wide... I can't reach really well into the center..." fuzzy past blurble something response from husband that probably equates to an "oh well!" or "Grow longer arms!" :P)

As it turns out too, the lavender I have: Munstead and a random clearance Spanish lavender I picked up on the cheap at Lowe's/Home Depot is perfect for edging because it's naturally lower growing.  Talk about weird luck eh?

I'll probably start out in the corners of the raised beds and maybe a little in the center of the sides, ignoring the far back facing north side because of the amount of shade and potentially ignoring too the skinny center path between the beds just so I can be sure I have plenty of walking room.

So excited now about this project (until I have to maintain it of course...)!  I hope by the end of fall it will look great!

Wishing and hoping and thinking and praying...planning and dreaming...

...of some plants...

(to come my way or be in the area for reasonable price...)

specifically:

-fuchsia (the edible kinds)
-bamboo (UPDATE: A nice reader gave me some plants! woot! Sis in law offering too, hurray!)
-luffah squash (EDIBLE, btw! Sad though because I can't grow it since I'm waiting a year to ride myself of borers...!)
-martynia (so cool looking on M.E.N.)
-winged beans
-cardoon
-every scented geranium ever (Dangit! Goodwin Creek is having a sale *sniffle*)
-ok, I take it back, everything on this Mother Earth News heirloom plants link 
-um, and  probably every herb from Richter's
-curry tree
-spicebush (delicious sounding!)
-sweet woodruff
-ranunculus (they're pretty spiffy looking and awesome sounding when it rolls around in your mouth) (UPDATE: Home Depot had a buy one bulbs package get 2nd free!  A friend was so kind to help indulge my bulb lust.  Blooms in June! *cross fingers!*)

-aconite (need something to break the blah-ness of winter)
-more daffodils! (My grandmother, when I was little gave me a tiny bottle of perfume, Diorissimo I think, that smelled like daffodils I thought.  I never used it as I don't like wearing perfume, but I loved to sniff it.  The perfume went missing one day and I've never encountered it since.  Daffodils also remind me of the Wordsworth poem, a favorite of mine) (UPDATE: more sis in law kindness!)

So, if anyone is aware of any of these plants just hanging around or being sold in the area or are in need of thinning, I'm here, waiting with bated breath and trowel to help out with some thinning or at least will know where I could eventually purchase these pretties!

Hellebores aren't a bore!

Hellebores, aka Lenten Roses are what keeps me going in crummier times when the weather reverts back to rainy, colder nastiness.

It's a tough plant that makes me think of s bike chick or something, with those leathery dark green sharply serrated leaves, the older ones often scarred and slightly tattered up (if you leave them as long as I do in their au naturale state, not pruning off the old bits).

It's interesting to watch the stages of the flower development, sometimes a difficult task as their heavy heads are always drooping towards the ground.  The young "flowers" (I suppose like most flowers at their best) are at my favorite stage with their yellow green cupped circle of the hellebore's true flowers.  The larger petal-y areas surrounding the flowers are actually the sepals/calyces of the plant, usually a longer lasting section of a plant than true flower petals.  Bells of Ireland are another plant I like that with a similar "flower" concept. 

Later when the "flowers" get older the inner true flower shrivels up and a pod fills the inside of the sepals, which is equally pretty and I will try to document.

Here's some more pics of my Hellebores on a nicer day (pardon the sort or repetition, I often find subtle differences in light or angle that make them interesting to me.  Also, as always, click on pic to expand):

Fickle things: Ladybugs

I've been slowly taking indoor plants into the screened sunroom where the air and slight light change will hopefully acclimate them to the outdoors before I thrust them entirely out there to fend for themselves.

One plant that I've been aching to chuck out is my ornamental pepper, Black Pearl.

Out of all of my plants, the ornamental peppers have suffered greatly from an aphid infestation that I couldn't shake this winter despite repeated neem sprayings until I simply killed the Tricolore garda and then the Purple Calico soon thereafter (which I think got water logged and rotted too... my bad, I had a container that was spiffy and thought I'd be good at not overwatering.  Crud.)

The Black Pearl has held out pretty well out of all of them and was attacked last.  I didn't know of the infestation for quite a while I think because the new leaves on it are this lighter green the aphids hid in.  Later when they moved on to the darker purple leaves/stems did I CLEARLY see them.

Learning from my prior neem frenzy with the now dead other ornamental peppers (and there was poor light, and it's been cold in the house! They were weakened I say! Weakened!)  I just started snipping off the severely infested bits and made a good effort to check every day and squish any aphid stragglers.  Ick, that was a sticky mess.

So, as the weather appears to be more regularly now, I moved it into the sunroom and lo and behold, there was a a LADYBUG on the screen area, basking in the sunshine.

I promptly snatched it up and thought, "Haha! Now I've got you, you stinking aphids! Meet my leetle friend!"

Then placed the ladybug onto Black Pearl. AND, like all ladybugs it tried to fly away.

So I put it back on the plant.  It attempted to fly away again, but hit a leaf above it (brilliant bug, obviously).  Either ladybugs have a bad sense of smell/sight because I placed it on a plant with a veritable feast in front of it, and it didn't care.  After this long and starved winter? What gave?!

Luckily it appeared to start sniffing around and moving its mouth parts like it was really getting at stuff and began to explore the territory.

"PERFECT!  It's like my own aphid ROOMBA!" I sort of cackled in my head and rushed off to get a pic of this momentous occasion.

When I got back the ladybug had decided to fly off and thus, no pic could be got.

Then I found a small stem COVERED in aphids and got a bit huffy and chucked the Black Pearl outside in a sheltered location.  Here's where I do a little prayer hoping that the aphids will not like the weather and just melt down or something (like be discovered by smart ladybugs) and allow my Black Pearl to continue growing merrily along.

In the mean time, I've started some new Tricolore Garda and Purple Calico ornamental peppers from seed again.  Luckily for me, those things really put out little pepper fruits!

I feel like a weird voodoo priestess or something

GAH.  The seeds in the mini greenhaus have been coming along merrily, even the purple calico ornamental pepper (I've determined ir's that one rather than mixing it up with the tricolore garda, as the leaves are purple), EXCEPT I noticed that last couple days that a couple seedlings keeled over.


GOSH DAMP IT!  It looks like there's some damping off going on.  I've possibly been a little too water bottle spray happy and the cracks in the plastic of my geenhaus obviously have not done a great job venting (I know, not their purpose, but I still had hope).  I also had been gone for a while and got carried away by other household things I probably was not opening up, checking and airing out the seedlings enough as I should.

I've pulled out the sad flopped over seedlings, only 2 and it looks like that they're all purple calico peppers and it hasn't spread too much I hope.

As a potentially too late method to prevent further damage I'm taking one from the Gayla Trail/Martha Stewart advice book (not a collaboration, just things they've mentioned in the past) that I constantly forget to use: CINNAMON.

So, there I was with a palm full of cinnamon in front of my little seedlings just blowing all this powdered cinnamon into the greenhaus box and on the seedlings and surface of their dirt in fervent prayer that this will protect them or heal them and whatnot.  It reminded me of all those cheesy stereotypical scenes from movies that had an indigenous medicine man/woman blowing some sort of mystical powder on their patient or something. 

Everything in there smells delicious at least.

*sigh*  If I had been smart I'd have blown the cinnamon on top of the surface of the pots BEFORE I plant the seeds.  I've never really had a damping off problem before, so I'll just hope that it doesn't proceed to total seedling meltdown.  My own personal tomato/pepper/tomatillo Chernobyl I swear.

Pot cleaning, the lazy way

I've been weening myself off of bleach for a while now (other than my toilet tank cleaner, so hard to let go! Anyone know of a good alternative?), in favor of washing soda, borax, baking soda and oxyclean (which I think is like dry hydrogen peroxide, didn't check the chemical formula).

I'm trying not to use bleach because of its effects on my lungs, the environment and its potentially carcinogenic nature (I know, I know, what isn't carcinogenic nowadays...) But as many good gardeners are supposed to wash their pots out with a dilute bleach solution to rid hem of disease I've been in a bit of a quandary.

My solution thus far, part in due to laziness/timeliness is to place my pots outside, in the sun and ESPECIALLY the rain where the rain can naturally clean all the dirt and grime off of them and let the good ol' UV rays of the sun kill whatever is on them.  Like bleaching your clothes in the sun is my theory.

No chemically water to dispose of and really, no work at all! It's great!  Anyone have any brilliant ways to wash their pots (children not included)?

UPDATE: OK, I clean vinegar with everything... and after a couple of "what about vinegar?" comments (from my sister included) I feel like an idiot.  Where was my brain (as usual?) when I wrote this???  Ooops, too busy noshing on morning glories.  JUST KIDDING.

Tales from the Garden: Orange Thing

So while poking around my garden searching for a already established good low groundcover to fill the garden paths of my large garden beds, I contemplated the woodland/Indian strawberry (edible, but no flavor, best for the birds) that's taken over the main shrubbery/azalea bed (which I'm fine w/ because that means no mulching, woohoo!)

I started pulling up some that was invading a pebbly portion  of a path adjacent to this bed when I noticed this:

Thereupon I flipped out and screaming in my head, "WHAT THE HECK?!" and many frightening things such as strawberry blight or rust or whatnot flitted through my brain.

ALL of the woodland strawberry runners that I pulled had this weird orange-y spotted stuff on it, as did a lot of the stuff at the edge of the bed I was pulling from too.

Off to Google I went and my racing heart was able to slow down after I have concluded that all is well. Well, mostly.

(

(another closeup of the horror)

What I think my woodland strawberry has here is some orange slime mold.  Innocuous from what I have been reading unless the slime mold decides to totally smother the plants, but as I have so many I am not worried.  The slime mold probably cropped up due to the wet weather we've had as of late and has been partying right beneath my nose.

I'll keep an eye on it and see if it makes any moves I don't like, but for now, it's some additional color to the garden?

This slime mold scare made me rethink my idea of using the woodland strawberry as a good path groundcover (it's invasiveness is frightening and I shuddered if my husband was to mow over it and it were to get into the big compost pile we chuck our grass clipping into).

So, I've pulled up a bunch of the oregano I allowed to spread as ground cover underneath some other bushes  and have placed them in the garden paths.  I'm hoping that they'll spread nicely and I'll get a good oregano scent when I stomp around on it in the garden and supposedly oregano oil keeps the mosquitoes away (HOPE).  Either way, probably more pleasant than the strawberry in the long run.   In addition, I had some straggling roman chamomile and stomped it down into the path as well in hopes that I'll get some green apple-y scented goodness too this spring/summer AND also popped some pennyroyal that was running around in the back of the beds in hope that the sun sheltered area will allow them to flourish.

May there be scented deliciousness this summer by my garden beds!
 

It's official: Melissa officinalis sure gets around

As I mentioned before, the lemon balm, aka Melissa officinalis, LIKE THE MINT, is slowing making its way around the garden.  In the path... in the gutter areas... by the compost bin.. in random places in the yard.

In the yard it will just get mowed of course, cool, fine.

In random places in the garden beds, not so good.  Plus, I like to utilize this stuff or at least give the herb away so others can enjoy the agony of keeping it in order it's lemony presence.

As its Greek/Latin name says, Melissa means bee and you can surmise this is a great bee attractor with its tiny little flowers develop later.  This is a plus as I am trying to attract more pollinators, so the plan is rather than seek and eat/destroy this herb, I'll be moving it around to far corners of the yard to try to increase bee/pollinator production, yet keep it in places where I hopefully will not accidentally drag seed around when I cut the stalks.  It's always so hard for me to cut the stalks when there are flowers on it because the nectar starved bees go at them even when they're in seed it seems.  Another note: CARRY A PLASTIC BAG TO HOLD SEEDS IN WHEN I CUT THE SEED STALKS OFF.  This would probably prevent all the seeds from going everywhere in the first place.

Unorganized gardening (bending down for a weed here that catches my eye, pruning there) walking aimlessly around in the garden is fine, fun and relaxing, but you'd think I'd have learned my lesson with crazy plants like perilla/shiso/beefsteak plant and now lemon balm.  Brill.

The Taming of the Mint

Being a gardener with very little brain sometimes I do dumb to extremely dumb things.

Like, plant mint in my herb garden... unpartitioned and not in a container >_<.

My mom in law warned me about its invasiveness... which I was aware of and breezily said, "Oh, I'll just keep it in check by making lots of mint tea all the time..."

Ha. ha. ha.  Yeah, it's jumped a mini barrier I had and now I have been digging the undershoots up and laying down some cans to create a barrier.  At this point, I don't think there's any chance I can eradicate it at this point, not like I want to either, but it does need to be tamed/kept tame.

(I still need more cans to fill the barrier up, and so I guess a lot of canned tomatoes need to be eaten soonish :)  (I think I'm going to try a double barrier too, which I suspect might be futile, but hey I can hope)

They really need a garden tool that looks like a lion tamer's whip to handle this.  Oh... oh yeah, I did win a cobra head tool (thanks again Anneliese!) a while back... probably a good start to my hot minty mess.

It's such a a pity too, because while I like mint, my husband doesn't for the most part (he can't even handle mint toothpaste).  He does fine with it in certain ethnic food dishes, but yeah, at my house I am the mint consumer of the year.

Mint, like basil is also one of those great herb types that have a  MILLION varieties that sound great.  I'm rescuing a chocolate variety that got pot bound and sucked up water like mad and was thus sick and dried out for a while, but they're real survivors... too good almost.  Like the roaches of a post apocalyptic plant world.  But yes, variety!  Lemons, limes, Vietnamese versions... so many it's astounding, but unless I have some good pots or a field... no extra mints for me.

(

(Augh! There goes ones now... getting between the cracks towards freedom!)

Mint! The natural FreshMaker!(Please don't sue me Mentos!)

Garden Update: Plants bolting like greased lightning!

I didn't think the weather had gotten that nice, especially when I went away for a last minute trip for about a week, but over that time my tatsoi mustard decided to bolt when I wasn't looking:

It looked delicious, beautiful and rosette leafy when I left it, I made a salad from quite a few full heads before transplanting these guys before I left (to bolt, honestly) for eventual seed saving.  I still didn't expect the dramatic metamorphosis in the week I was gone.

They look great, and if they're like other mustards, will probably give me a plethora of seeds (ha, anyone seen the Three Amigos?) 

I wonder if my moving them might have stimulated bolting, or if one near 70 degree F day when I full-on gardened prior to my departure kicked them into bolting gear? Probably that one day, I don't think I've ever heard of transplanting to cause bolting.

In anticipation of the tatsoi mustards going to bolt, I planted kohlrabi seeds right next to the mustard base so that I'll have something to make up for mustard once it seeds and I have to cut it down.  Not sure if this will work well, but I figured I might as well give it a try.

Another plant that's bolted (and has been in that state for quite a while now) is the baby bok choi).  It's nice to see some flowers in this weather, and their spoonlike cupped leaves beneath the flowers are pretty dandy too.  They've been in flower for good time... I wonder when they'll seed.  I realized that I didn't eat the bok choy as often as I should have, but I think I hadn't prepared/research enough recipes.  Ah well, seeds for me.

My gargantuan garden to do list is 3/4 done (except I always keep thinking of things to add to it...) The biggest change was some of the planned garden layout.  This change is due greatly in part to my rampant strawberries.  The daughter plants/offshoots have been wild and I have not had time to move them/thin them properly, so either I should allow the beds to be primarily strawberries, thin the strawberries to plant seeds in the bed with them,  or I need to seed start and plant large enough seedlings in with the bed to be able to compete (terrible I know) with the strawberry plants.  I'm going with the latter and will just start some seeds on a nice sunny day outside and then plant them in the bed.  There would be no way a seed could find some sun and air in that mess.

Here is the new garden setup (click pic to see all the detail):