New East garden – delphinium over 4’ high
After lighting the wood stove on Friday night, I pretty much just stayed near it all weekend. I was done with being so cold! Saturday my #1 intern took me on errands and plant shopping. On Sunday I didn’t do much at all, just stayed where it was warm and read or watched videos.
On Monday I was up at 6AM and got a load of dishes in the dishwasher and then got laundry started. I rested a while then got ready and went out to clean out a flowerbed at 9AM.
But before I started that, I had some new plants to get into the ground. I’d found candytuft so I put that in the New South garden. I also planted one of my phacelias there and I put down more FlowerTone. All the rain we’ve had will have leached the more soluble nutrients out.
Once the candytuft was in, the next thing I did was get the 2 clematis I’d bought a while ago into the ground. They were ‘Jackmannii’ and ‘Niobe’, a red one. The surviving clematis was only about 1’ tall and not looking so good. Hopefully these will take.
I started in that corner by the clematis and weeded my way around to the downspout. Next I put down more FlowerTone and more of the biochar compost along the stone wall, and then planted all the sweet peas. Hopefully they will do better this year.
In this garden I planted:
2 portulacas,
2 marigolds
1 English wallflower
1 calibrachoa
1 Canterbury bells
1 balsam
1 snapdragon
1 phacelia
The grass and weeds had gotten pretty bad between the stones in the walkway so I sat down with a dustbroom and scissors and removed all the stuff. In doing so, I pissed off thousands of tiny red ants. The dustbroom worked really well keeping them away while I worked.
I also weeded the thyme along the walkway as I went.
I wanted a scented dianthus last year, and had forgotten to buy seeds on my orders. All I could find locally was this type. I’m not fond of how it looks in the New South garden but it does have nice scent.
Spirea – first flowers open
I was out until 1PM. I got cleaned up, my notes made, and photos and went inside to sit down for a while. Later I got a shower but outside of changing laundry loads over, not much else got done.
Mid morning my son went out and started the weedwacking. He didn’t have much string left. For some reason I completely forgot to buy string for the new weedwacker. Sigh…
So this is as far as he got before it ran out.
Late afternoon Tom arrived to put the exhaust on the truck. He got it mostly done, but needs 2 more clamps and another small section of pipe. He also decided to try to get the backup lights working.
Monday night is to be the last cold night, down in the 40’sF. On Tuesday it’s to warm up and hit 80F during the day, and upper 50’s at night. Much more seasonable.
On Tuesday I’m hoping to get out early and get some more plants in the flowerbeds, the Back Porch garden, and maybe one of the 2 Steps gardens, before my helper friend arrives at 9:30AM. We will be resuming work on the Big garden’s tomato area. I hope to get artichokes planted and some seeding done. We can also transplant the horehound once we know where it goes.