#garden log

[b-beams]

did not let the woe about my physical abilities and energy levels get the better of me today and instead did 10 minutes of gently digging grass from my flowerbeds!!! very beautiful very powerful!

[continent-of-wild-endeavor]

I went to a plant swap today! Got to chat with some gardening ladies, gave away some mint & comfrey & Jerusalem artichokes, plus field pea seeds, and picked up some fun stuff for my gardens.

Left front is borage (Borago officinalis), which I've grown before & found to be easy & nice to have, though I don't particularly want to eat the leaves. They taste nice, but they're unpleasantly fuzzy. Perhaps I'll do fancy things with the flowers - bees like them, too!

Back left is a couple of sweet peppers - "Lipstick" variety, I think.

Big guys in the middle are swamp sunflower (Helianthus angustifolius) and blue mistflower (Conoclinium coelestinum), and behind those are hiding a couple of little pink coneflower plants (Echinacea sp.).

On the bottom right, two Amish paste tomatoes.

I'm not sure where I'll put the flowers yet - start a flower bed somewhere, or just in the fenced vegetable garden where they won't be in danger of getting mowed? - but they can sit in their pots for a few days while I decide.

[meliorist-midoriya]

yeah hi guess who figured out how to finally change the music on my desktop theme—

it's now a whopping hour long playlist! so if you'd like some soft instrumentals to listen to as you peruse through my blog, they're there :')

[salbidum]

Planted last night: 2 really beat-up looking fennel I got for 50% off at the hydroponics store. From the big flower farm beloved of certain fantasy authors: a new yarrow (my old one is spreading but turning off pastel and this one is red), mountain mint, pennsylvania sedge under the oak tree that I’m constantly trying to derode, sweetgrass out front behind the muhly grass. I feel some pressure about the sweetgrass because if I am going to grow someone else’s sacred (and endangered) plant for my own non-sacred curiosity I feel that I should at least try really hard not to kill the plant through neglect. And killing plants through neglect is kind of my gardening process generally. Cue multiple months of me accidentally nurturing this poor grass to death, maybe. 

Still not planted: coral honeysuckle (at last! $10 cheaper than at the in-town garden store), canadian wild ginger (don’t eat it it’s poisonous though probably not in culinary quantities). 

Also still not planted: 2 pawpaw trees that have been hanging on in nursery containers for weeks, I’m the worst, I just need to completely re-start making potting soil in order to plant them and also get new burlap bags about it. 

In semi-related news I think I’ve hacked how to insulate burlap bag shrub/tree planting from too much drying and I think the secret might be straw bales again. Straw bales are cheaper than filling more bags with soil, even homemade potting soil, and they break down beautifully. Every time I go out to manipulate my straw bales there are a million earthworms in them. 

Oh: I’ve verified that my cucumbers are quitting at the “nymph” stage because this plant isn’t making male flowers. I’m considering going over to the community garden with a bunch of q-tips and trying to find a pollen donor.

[puniballs]

Still going strong. I learned my lesson that I'll need cages for the lumpy boys next year. Feel bed for the bepis plant being smothered by them. Hopefully I can have my new bed made up by next year so I can have more room. The melon sprouts still look about the same.

[continent-of-wild-endeavor]

Today I planted flax (for fiber!), pawpaws, and two Sun Sugar tomatoes. I even put cages on the tomatoes right away; I am very On Top of It.

I had way more pawpaw seeds than I'd realized, so there's like 10 in each of those pots, and I'll have to cull them down later. I also took 15-20 of them down in the woods & threw them around down near the creek.

[continent-of-wild-endeavor]

Garden log 3/31: Things I'll take credit for but have put no effort into this year

Yarrow is thriving, blooming already. I think I've succeeded at using/camouflaging that stump in the middle of the garden, finally, by covering it in perennial flowers with dense greenery.

Oregano, escaping from under the herb bed. She's thriving; I see no downsides.

[continent-of-wild-endeavor]

Garden Log 3/28

Indoor seeding of basil, parsley, cilantro, tomatoes, peppers, and some 7 year old echinacea seeds just to see what happens. Oh and golden flax seeds, similarly, bc I had them in the pantry & an extra container.