Gardening With The BeesWatch our garden (and knowledge) grow!

Today we started our indoor seeds. Two weeks behind last year, but the snow really put a damper on our gardening spirits.

We planted: canning/cutting tomatoes, Roma tomatoes (for sauces), yellow pear tomatoes, hot pepper mix, jalapenos, sweet peppers, cauliflower, marigolds, impatiens, and snapdragons.

My sister provided us with two light fixtures and I filled them with grow-light bulbs in preparation of the new sprouts. Can’t wait to give it a try!

Today is our first warm weekend day, so I’m taking advantage of it. Our flower bed “winter interest” is still sitting out in all its decayed glory, and the time has come to be done with it in preparation for new spring growth.

Here are before and after shots of my work on the front bed, but I actually cleaned up a total of five flower beds today.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

I filled the compost bin to overflowing!

Don’t look now, but the back of our house looks… not good.

A combination of unfinished siding, unfinished painting, unfinished landscaping, and a triple-access mound system makes the view a little rough. In an effort to improve the look of the mound system, but still allow pump-truck accessibility, I started the first steps of a natural visual barrier.

Removing sod is always a fun time. Because of this, I try to work it into all my yard projects. As done on other sod removal occasions, I continued to transfer all removed sod to the trench valley in hopes of someday filling in the shallow ravine left by a 2005-ish mound system installation.

In the process, I found a home for some donated hostas from friends. I repositioned the hose reel stones to better accommodate the spigot, and repositioned the circular stepping stones to make a path to the future dining patio.

Sadly, this is as far as I got in 2010. I hope to continue this endeavor in 2011.

I love this vibrant color!

Today I planted the herb seeds indoors: Basil, Cilantro, Dill, Lavender, and Parsley. I also planted Moonflower seeds and started the Morning Glory seeds soaking.

With the surprising 64-degree weather, I took a walk around the yard today with the dogs to see how things fared the winter months. Here are some observations:

• All five of our blueberry bushes were nibbled down to within an inch of the ground. Yikes! Stay tuned to hear if they come back. I’ll have to read up about protecting them from hungry creatures. I found it funny that whatever ate them completely ignored the forsythia plants interspersed among the blueberries.
• My tulips are already four inches high! Wow, last I looked they were just peeking out of the soil. Suddenly their wide, thick leaves are fully formed and reaching for sun. Likewise, the thin leaves of the daffodils have shot up around ten inches. The sunny warm location must be the trick. I greeted them all with smiles and removed stray twigs and bark to help them feel comfortable.
• No asparagus sprouts observed yet.
• Although no green buds yet, the first-year grape vines feel flexible. I hope they made it through their first winter in the ground.
• Need to decide if we will spray the fruit trees this year or let them be “organic”. The buds on the trees are definitely more obvious than last time I looked. Can easily see the bud size difference when comparing a pruned/fallen branch to a live one. Exciting!
• The irises are already back to life, with flat triangular spikes poking up all over.

Joy.

For the record of this blog, here are shots of our garden and front flower bed at this time.

Yes, we finally pulled out the lettuce and spinach that had taken over. I know, I know, it has been a busy summer. Look at those tomatoes!

NOTE: This is what happens to flower beds when you use vegetable compost. Yes, those are “volunteer” pumpkins and tomatoes growing in a newly-created front garden bed. You’ll notice the irises are standing their ground. There are three baby pumpkins on these vines!

As fun as this is, I think I’ll be pulling seedlings like this next year before they get this big. Not exactly the look I’m going for in the front yard.

I hate weeds. I hate that our front walk got this out-of-control. Today was the day I put things right. (That’s Benji above, sniffing out rabbits. He asked me not to use this photo, but I like that he distracts the eye from the menagerie of weeds.)

Here we go. As always, this turned into a larger project than I had anticipated. Not only am I pulling all weeds in sight, but I have decided to make the front shrubs obey.

And here you have it! Look at those sparkling clean sidewalk cracks! How absolutely satisfying. Now, stay like that!

Because Benji is a single dog this summer, he is a very spoiled boy. He got to come along on our trip to buy flowers today at a crazy-big annuals sale at Schroeder’s Flowers. Thank you to their staff for letting Benji peruse the rows and rows of annuals in the greenhouses with us. He appreciated the hospitality and was made to feel very welcome. He even got a drink from the hose!

We came home with loads of flowers. Many ended up in the front flower beds where some color was needed, and some ended up in the back yard, as you see below. I don’t really care for the whiskey barrels in our yard, but until they are moved, I gotta make due. Looks like this one could use some TLC, no?