I LOVE MY NEW MULCH!

There's really nothing of value to say here. I just love my newly mulched beds at the front of my house!

I was kind of going for a Japanese feel to our plant choices when we first landscaped this area. It was inspired by the two gangly rhododendron that refused to come out of the ground, even when lassoed with chains and pulled by a truck. Since we had to give up moving them, I decided they had a bonsai flair about them, so I surrounded them with low growing complementary plants with silver and burgandy colors to them, like Japanese Barberry, Blue Star Junipers, and a Cutleaf Japanese Maple tree.

I REALLY wanted an authentic stone lantern to finish the look, but hey - you can't be $30 at Bed, Bath and Beyond for a fake one. It's even got a solar powered light in there! The grass is blue sedge, and the burgandy creeper in front of it is called Voodoo Stonecrop.

This is my show-stopper spring perennial flower on the front walkway called "Helleborus" or Lenten Rose. Everybody loves these guys and they are so easy to grow. They are a perennial evergreen for part to full shade areas, and the prickly leaves make them deer resistant. In my zone 6, they start blooming in March and are in full swing by April. Eventually the flowers fade to a pretty dusky green color.

The purpose of this bed is to hide the various septic pump equipment, like the lid to the tank and weird pipes and stuff. I made this my pink and blue bed, although it's too early in spring to really know that at this point. The main features are the three hydrangeas in the middle, along with some dicentra ("bleeding hearts"), astillbe, spirea, columbine and some grasses. This bed actually looks better now, since Tom, my official workhorse, has since edged all around it.












These are baby astillbe, which look kind of like furry snakes - surrounded, of course, by my gorgeous mulch.








Last but not least is my 173 Brunswick Pike memorial bed, replicating the garden I had in my very first house either by flat out stealing the original plants (it was a long 9 months before that thing sold) or finding the exact same plants already in place at the new pad. And just like at my old house, I still can't get anything but weeds to grow up that damn trellis. When this bed grows up more, it will have lots of shade friendly plants, since I seemed to have absolutely no sun where I used to live. Some good shade perennials here are lungwort, Jacob's ladder and dead nettle.

And now for the final tie-in .... doesn't my mulch look great?!?!?

Potato Woes

I forgot to mention potatoes in my spring garden line-up, which is not surprising. Potatoes and I have a sordid history. One of us in this relationship is just not giving 100%, and for my part, I'm blaming the potatoes. Even with my best efforts, my potatoes tend to not live up to their potential. The potatoes, I imagine, would likely complain about my lack of consistent watering and general laissez-faire gardening style. Still, I'm not giving up just yet. Homegrown fresh potatoes are out of this world, and completely unlike anything you can get at the grocery store. So in 2009, I'm attempting three different planting methods that I haven't tried before.

1.) Trenching

This is the method I got from the handout at Agway where I bought my potato starts. Apparently potatoes don't appreciate being plopped into dense, clay-like soil and just left there. The proper way to treat them is to build up the soil around the plant at the stem, giving new potatoes room to form. In my raised bed, I dug two trenches about two feet apart, and planted potato starts around a foot apart in the row. As the sprouts grow, I'll pull down the dirt from the sides of the trench to keep the plants covered. Hopefully this will improve crop yields.

2.) Mulching

I knew there were other methods of growing potatoes, so some quick internet research resulted in a great page from Irish Eyes Garden Seeds. This page has complete start to finish potato growing tips, including two alternative planting methods. Mulching is when you prep the planting bed like you normally would, but instead of trenching, the potatoes get placed on or just below the soil. Mulch, like straw or shredded leaves, gets placed on top 6 to 10 inches deep. Continue to replenish as the stem grows, and harvest normally.

I don't have a picture of this method, but I don't have high hopes for it either. The only room I had left for them was out of the fence perimeter and solidly into the wilder parts of my yard - groundhog/mole/vole territory. Also, because it's not within reach of the hose, these guys are going to be subject to the watering schedule of mother nature herself. So, uh, yeah. Good luck out there potatoes!

3.) Cage/Garbage Can Method

The above link at Irish Eyes Garden Seeds calls it the cage method, and this eHow article talks about growing potatoes in a garbage can. Either way, this is a great method if you have space constriction, are growing vegetables in containers, or have problems in the past with diseases in your soil. As a member of the Solanaceae (Nightshade) family, potatoes are prone to the same diseases as peppers, tomatoes, and eggplant. To avoid passing these diseases through the soil from one year to the next, you should not plant potatoes (or any other family member) in the same spot for three years in a row. If you have a small garden, crop rotation by these standards is pretty much impossible unless you are using containers.

Since my potatoes religiously die back early from some kind of disease and have a low crop yield, I'm overly excited about this method. I took the hints from the Irish Eyes Garden Seeds article about planting in containers 18" across and at least 2 or 3 feet tall. I put finished compost in a layer at the bottom, and put dried chopped leaves on top. The trick here is to keep the pots watered well, which is not my strong suit. Wish me luck - and greater attention to detail.

OK, I have so many entries in my head to write, but I really ought to be taking advantage of this coolish morning to get some work done. See ya!