All about my lawn... yawn.

So 3 years ago when we first moved in,  we cut out half the back deck which took up most of the yard and paid ALOT for sod.   Which proceeded to be annihilated by dog poop.  All that's left is the random bits of green you can see in the picture.  Now that we've learned better and the dogs are restricted to the side of the house, I decided to give a lawn another go.   We plan on putting stone down too (hence the pile of brick behind the play place) but instead of putting out the big bucks for sod again,  I opted to try the green, mulchy Patch Grass by CIL.  Luckily,  it was on for half price at $6 at Canadian Tire.  I did alot of raking,  loosening soil, and filling in holes with fresh fill (leftover from the hole my husband dug for a sandbox under the play place).  I soaked the ground as per instructions,  spread some regular grass seed over the whole area, then laid the Patch Grass thick with 4 bags. After only a week of daily watering it's growing already!   You can't see the little sprouts in this picture but I've been wanting to post a "before pic" so i figured I'd better before it gets too thick.  I'm hoping it will be a relatively inexpensive fix.  I figure once it grows in I will need to fill in patches with another bag but all in all I hope to have a new lawn for $30!

Oh btw,  the birch trees shed their little wormy seed things over the past couple days.   I won't rake that up until the grass is established.

Juncus Gem continued

And here's the end result!  I realized I had the pot a little too high because unforunately I drilled the root holes a little too high.  It looked better higher out of the ground but to give the plant as much room for root growth as possible I decided to lower it

When I took the pot out, it was obvious from the night's rain that my drain tray idea worked to pool the water.  Now I wondering if maybe it will result in stagnant water but hopefully once the roots start growing out of the bottom of the pot then it will use the pooled water.  Also, as I mentioned, it will be easy to remove the drain tray if I have to.

 

Here is the garden with it's new perennials.  I've added two fountain grasses on the right in front of a tiger lily my friend gave me.  The juncus spiralis in the middle.  Two new day lilies on the left to accompany the one I already had (one came from my friend again).  I've shown the before and after.

 

Here I added two small blue fescue to either side of the siberian irises (mid-left).  To the far right by the wall is an ornamental grass again that my friend gave me.  It isn't much right now but hopefully next year it will fill out nicely.

 

And finally, I removed the asiatic lilies that were awkwardly placed next to the irises and added them to the right side of the sedum (middle) to complement the ones on it's left side.  You can't see them because of the oversized zinnias in the front (plants always seem to grow taller than the package says).  I also added a wormwood in the right hand bottom corner to provide root shade for the clematis and as a complement to the white of the euonymous on the left hand corner.  Another great thing about the city consultant visit was they were able to tell me the names of the perennials that were already growing in my garden.  Otherwise I would have NO idea what a euonymous is, and don't even bother asking me how to pronounce it!

A Juncus Gem in my Garden

  
It's been almost two months since my last garden update so as you can imagine there's been lots of changes.  I certainly haven't been having a bumper vegetable crop but the few peas I have had are so sweet; the lettuce tasty; and the spinach disappointing but the tomatoes, carrots and squash are yet to come.  I don't think the onion and garlic I planted from kitchen scraps have taken although the garlic was sprouting when I first planted it.  I've learned so much and one thing I won't do again is companion plant nasturtiums.  The variety I grew were huge and took over the bed but their multi-colored blooms are really pretty.  I was prepared for the squash:  it's outgrown the trellis I made and is now taking over the fence!











 
Psst scroll over each picture to read more about it.

My flower garden is still in progress.  The zinnias grew to oversize and are blooming and the marigolds have just started.  I had a rep from the city in for a consult about water-conserving and native plant gardens.  So I've picked up a few perennials as they gone on sale which brings me to the Juncus.

 I saw this gem of a plant with it's crazy curls and when I read the growing instructions which said it needs lots of water I thought "Perfect!  I'll put it in the trouble spot where my neighbours eavetrough overflows and nothing else will grow there."  When I got home I thought "But what about when it's not raining?  It gets really dry there."  That led me to the Internet of course and after combining mine and a few of others' ideas, I've come up with a really cute feature for the garden.

The juncus plant needs tons of water and is best planted in a constantly wet spot, or near (or even in a few inches of) water.  It also spreads it's roots and starts shoots.  I thought that maybe transplanting the juncus to a larger pot and burying the pot in the garden might hold some of the water.  I drilled some large holes in a pot to allow some but not all of the roots to reach the bed.  I dug a hole in the bed just deep enough for the pot to be about 2 inches above the surface.  This was only for the aesthetic appeal.







As I was digging it started to rain and the hole began filling up.  This tells me that once the rain reaches the clay-filled native soil it isn't draining well anyways.  I still wanted to make sure the soil sta
yed wet enough so I came up with the idea to put a plastic plant drain tray underneath the pot.  I hoping this way some of the water will pool.







If it doesn't seem like the plant is thriving and I want to check the drain tray, I can simply pull the pot from the ground, which hopefully will mean less disruption to the plant.  I also made sure that the plant wasn't directly under the leaky eavetrough to prevent damage to the foliage during heavy rains.

Finally, I topped the soil in the pot with white stones and I think the end result is fantastic.  Unfortunately, I lost too much daylight for my flashless cellphone to take a picture so I'll have to post the results plus the new perennials tomorrow!

 

 

 

 

 

Garden Update #1

 

I have a little going on in the vegetable garden.  Everything is up and growing except marigolds which were old seeds my Nan had so I guess they were no longer fertile.  I planted new seeds so they should be up in no time.  They only took a few days in my flower garden.  The nasturtiums I planted with the spinach and peas are the tall ones here.

 

 

 

This one above is the carrot, lettuce, and squash bed.  I can only have two squash plants per mound so I transplanted a couple into these hanging planter bags.  You can grow squash hanging so I thought I'd give it a try in these bags I had lying around.  I hang them in a couple of weeks; I guess to let the roots dig in.  I will add a large trellis against the fence later for the squash vines to climb on. I also transplanted a couple of nasturtium because they are squash companions, they trail very nicely and of course they will add a colorful touch.  The seed packet says nasturtiums do not transplant well and indeed they wilted almost immediately but I just added lots of water to them and they came around.

 

 

 

Our first harvest!  I had to do quite a bit of thinning of spinach and lettuce.  The spinach have tiny baby leaves. They were yummy.  My daughter who is a little rabbit gobbled both up.

 

 

 

 

 

Here is one of two tomato and basil, and peppers and nasturtiums planters.  I had to move them to the front yard because they were not getting enough sun in the back.

The peppers were not sprouting so I bought more seed and as I was planting I noticed 3 or 4 sprouts in one pot.  I planted new ones anyway and will thin later.

 

 

Finally, the flower garden is slowly coming along.  Everything is up and as you can see the hosta is HUGE!  I did add some forget-me-nots as well because the evening primose isn’t coming in as well as I like.  Hopefully it will help to fill in the gaps and the purple and yellow together should be really striking!

 

 

My first smartphone and my first "real" garden!

I'm very excited to have my first smartphone. In the past, it was mandatory to have a data plan in order to have a smartphone, at least in my previous province.  I wasn't paying nearly twice as much per month for that, no thank you.  But with the renewal of my contract with Telus (plug here:  Telus has always given me excellent service) I was happy to sign up for the free smartphone with no data plan.  With Wi-fi at home and Tim's and McD's, I'm rocking my smartphone.  And hopefully it will make it easier for me to blog more often.

On to my garden. I've dabbled with gardening for a few years but just had a flower little patch and a few pots.  In our new home we have garden beds already made and a few perennials growing.  I've been obsessed with gardening this past week weeding, digging, dumping fresh soil, raking and seeding.  I've made a vegetable patch in the backyard and put in lots of flowers out front.  Here are a few pics of the "fruits" of my labor.

This is the vegetable garden to the left with spinach, and peas at the top, and carrot, lettuce and squash interspersed with garlic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To the right you’ll see the beginnings of lettuce with the taller garlic at the top.  I will clip the leaves of the garlic soon to allow the plant to concentrate on the bulb.

 

 

 

This is a little squash peeking through.

 

 

This is essentially the flower garden that came with the house except for a few changes such as the hosta on the right that we transplanted from the backyard.  I’ve planted white and colored zinnias, some pink flowers my Nan gave me (she doesn’t know the name of them but says they are beautiful), snapdragons, marigolds my Nan gave me, evening primrose, and cosmos.  I know a lot!  I hope it turns out as nice as I plan.

 

 

 

 

A few little zinnias are all that’s up yet.