Garden Planting List

TO BUY SOON AND PLANT THIS FALL
Scarlet Runner Beans
Painted Lady Beans
Nero di Toscana Cabbage
Bull's Blood Beets
Detroit Dark Red Beets
Fava Beans
Clover?
Bulbous Fennel
Parsnips
Kale (Russian red/Ragged Jack)
Kale (Blue-curled Scotch)
Dwarf Siberian Kale
Radicchio, Verona Red
Filderkraut cabbage
Wormwood (as garden border, to prevent animals)
Check Washtenaw Conservation District native plant sale
Butterfly weed
Hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla; hoping for bluish lavender. . . did you know the color of the blue/pink ones depends on soil composition? aluminum and a slightly acidic pH makes blue; some interesting info on organic gardening of hydrangeas here)
Hydrangea Anabelle
Red hydrangea

SOONER?
Warm weather greens
Peppers

NEXT SPRING
Amaranth
Vietnamese Red Amaranth
Rhubarb
Joe Pye weed
Tickseed (Coreopsis)
Showy Sedum
Bee balm (seeds)
Trachelium
Catchfly
Delphinium
Matuncana Sweet pea
Pentas kaleidoscope
Penstemon
Achillea
Red hydrangea
Annabelle hydrangea

WISH LIST
'Boule de Feu' Hibiscus
Clematis
Hosta?
Lantana
Irises
Daffodils
Tulips
More Lilacs
Trellis
Blueberry bushes
Raspberries
Dragon heart geranium
Columbine (Aquilegia vulgaris) 'Tower Dark Blue'
Cyclamen
Red Spider Lily (Lycoris radiata)
Bicolor butterfly bush
Peony: perhaps Buckeye Belle or 'Burma Joy' something pale pink like Madam Calot, America,
Gardenia
Park's Peony Poppy Flemish Antique (Papavar somniferum paeoniflorum)

And so much more . . .

Tools & implements wish list
Soaker hose
Mosquito head net
Composter (I use a heap right now, and it's a challenge to turn when fighting the mosquitoes) or manure fork
Garden hose reel
bow rake
pointed shovel
rain barrels
bat house

Week 2: A long day's work in the garden.

I'm being rewarded with my first big bloom on a plant I bought with no sign of flowering: a deep orange-colored flower on the Maltese Cross I planted (above).

The other plants in that bed are doing fine, growing slowly but surely.

At the end there (above), you can see the cilantro and parsley are holding their own. I think they're not liking the hot days we've had intermittently, but I spread the bed with a bit of compost and manure and cocoa bean mulch after taking these photos, so I hope that will help all the plants along.

In the front of that bed, the phlox and zinnia seeds I planted seem to slowly be peeking out:

Also pretty happy is the hydrangea plant, and beside it, the butterfly bush, below:

The purslane bed on the right is doing splendidly:

The one on the left (below) is still growing up from tiny little plants.

In that same bed, the mint is much happier:

Behind them, the eggplants are growing slowly. I saw a little purple bloom on one of them, but sadly I knocked it off after I took the photo while I was watering.

The tomatoes seem to be growing slowly. I hope the compost/manure mix and mulch will help them a lot too.

The herbs generally seem pretty happy.

The only one that really doesn't look too happy is the lemon verbena, there between the basil plants and the variegated sage above. I'm not sure what is going wrong there.

The pineapple sage and horehound above seem to be growing steadily, and the chocolate mint is thriving.

My fight with the "lawn demons" continues, though. Since they weedwhacked the best bed of mint I had, below, I surrounded that one too with a ring of rocks (below). I would have done before, but they got to me before I had a chance to, while I was in Ann Arbor at the end of the long power outage. I'm mad, but I know that the mint will come back, probably even hardier than before.


I'm taking similar precautions along the border, where I've also planted mint. Now I'm experimenting with other kinds of materials, including tree branches and broken pottery, since I'm not sure I have quite enough stones to cover every boundary clearly.

Despite their best efforts, the mint still is growing nicely there, and I don't think it will be long before I really do have a nice (edible) border covering that ugly PVC.

That other variety of mint is also thriving in the little bed at the front of the walkway:


The walkway is also improving in appearance as the purslane and that other succulent fill in a bit. Some are still pretty small, but I expect that they'll grow in time. Their older siblings are already looking nice and bushy.


And despite my having thinned it considerably, the purslane is still growing in in patches of grass where the sod is thin.

In the garden plot, I know I have some more work I ought to be doing. Things are dry, and I know they want more organic material to thrive. It's hard, though, because the mosquitoes have been so thick over there, and every time I start working the soil, they're on top of me and I have a couple dozen new bites almost immediately. The peas, especially, have been suffering.


Still, there's been some growth. The okra plants below are shooting up.

And the vines of the squash and melon plants are moving along.

The melon plants have begun to flower.

The beans are growing (below), though I think a rabbit or other critter may have gotten to one of them.

After taking the photos, I did a ton more work, adding compost/manure almost everywhere, working it into the soil where I could, and adding topsoil in some places too, and cocoa bean mulch in some. I also did a BUNCH more planting, including Oriental poppy, larkspur, sunflower, more zinnia, marigold, black-eyed Susan, purple cornflower, snapdragon, lettuce, spinach, carrot, radish, zucchini, redbud, strawberry, sweetpeas, and mixed wildflowers.

I'll update ASAP to show how things are getting along.

Living "sturdily and Spartan-like"

Well, I spent nearly the entire day in the garden, which was exhilarating, and also a bit exhausting. I'm having a blast with it, remembering the joy of working the soil, interacting with plants, and getting a bit of exercise, sun, and fresh air.

It's also both rewarding and humbling, seeing the landscape transform with your labor, and also seeing how much depends on time, weather, and so many other factors you have no control over. And, realizing how, even if you push yourself, there's only so much you can do in a day. It cultivates a sense of acceptance of both my strengths and my limitations that feels very healthy, very connected to what I feel is fundamental to being human.

I am sitting here after my long day's work and a simple supper of fresh salad, homemade rye bread, olives, and salty Bulgarian feta cheese, and I just poured myself a cup of Moroccan-style tea made with green tea my brother carried home from Taiwan and fresh mint I clipped just moments ago in the garden. It smells positively glorious.

As far as the garden work goes, the biggest part of the labor was the process of ripping up grass and weeds out of the area of the pathway (this is what it looked like before). I was inspired to try to expand the purslane planting into this area, to see if it would cooperate as a groundcover. Given that the soil is very shallow and comprises more compost than real soil, it's not a fabulous place for planting. But since the purslane had already started cropping up there a little bit, and since the plant only develops a fairly shallow root system, I thought it might be worth a try to get more to grow between the paving stones.

I almost finished; I just have a few more weeds to pull, and I obviously need to clean off the paving stones and compost the remaining grass pullings.

Above: Here's one spot of the newly replanted purslane, which I was hunting all over the garden amidst the sad, anemic, dry grass today.

While I was at it, I also transplanted some succulents from a patch at the far end of the lawn into the entrance to the path (above), and into the bed beside it, with the Moroccan mint plant (below). I also marked this little bed (below) with stones, once again against the lawn demons.


And, also, between the bricks outlining the herb garden (above and below). I thought if they got covered a bit by succulents, perhaps it would look a bit prettier. I don't love the delineation of the space with the bricks, but it prevents misunderstandings with the lawn maintenance guys who have a tendency of getting on the riding mower and destroying everything in its path.
Finally, I also did some weeding in the purslane bed next to the steps. I think I'll harvest a portion of the largest plants already in the next week to encourage root development on the plants. And to try my new crop! Hooray . . .

Garden Tour: Week One.

Looking at vegetable garden advice is getting me so excited, and wistful. I wish I had planted even more in my garden: carrots, lettuce, beets, broccoli, potatoes, kale, spinach, chard, peppers, zucchini, brussels sprouts, cabbage, cucumber, more green beans, bigger tomato plants, fava beans, and rhubarb. I think I can still add some of these, for a fall/early winter harvest. But next year I'm going to be prepared by spring, seriously.

Anyway, I promised more photos of my garden. I'm going to try to be be annoyingly diligent about keeping track in my blog of how it's growing, so be prepared. Complete identification of the plants to follow in an edit tomorrow.

WEEK ONE.
Here we are, after a week of planting. From what I remember now, I bought the plants two weeks ago tomorrow, on June 15, and started planting on Saturday the 21st, starting with the herbs and perennials. I moved onto the beans, eggplants, and tomatoes early this past week, and finished up planting the rest of the vegetables today.

Above: The herb garden, clearly delineated to protect it from idiotic landscapers who weedwack everything that's green. From the back, going in concentric clockwise circles from the outside, there's chocolate mint, sweet basil (ocimum basilcum), French tarragon, thyme, oregano, sage, dill, mother of thyme/creeping thyme (thymus serpyllum), rosemary, horehound (marrubium vulgare), pineapple sage (salvia elegans/s. rutilans), basil (variety unknown; Thai, maybe?), more sweet basil, more tarragon, Russian sage "Taiga" (Perovskia afriplicifolia), salvia, lavender "Munstead" (Lavandula angustifolia), Sonata carmine cosmos, rosemary, variegated sage 'tricolor' (salvia officinalis), lavender, English lavender, and German chamomile (Matricaria recutita). I also sowed in seeds for phlox and zinnia, along the borders, that obviously aren't visible yet, though I thought I saw a little sprouting already today.

Above: The path leading to my cottage, along which I've planted mint borders. You can see a little patch of it there beside the light on the right side, and smaller plants on the far side, beside that black PVC piping they seem to think makes for neat borders beside lawns here in Michigan. To my aesthetic, it's just ugly.

Above: Another patch of mint of a different variety from most of the other stuff, at the very beginning of the path on the left side. I think it is Moroccan mint, but I can't remember: I bought and planted it in the garden plot last year.


Above: To one side of my door, here, I've got the eggplants, and in front of that, a new little bed with mint and purslane.

Above: Close-up of the eggplants, week 1. They're the Japanese variety.

Above: Close-up of the mint, which I transplanted from the far side of the garden. I'm pretty sure it's standard spearmint.

Above: The other side of my door, where I've got another bed of purslane and a little more mint.

Above: Close-up of the purslane. I've been digging it up from ALL over the garden and transplanting it into these beds to cultivate consciously since Scrumptious kindly pointed out to me that it is rich in nutritional content. Since then I've also been reading rather obsessively all about it.

Above: The tomato plants, which I fit in on the other side of the door, behind that other bed of purslane and mint.

Above: Being out in the garden inspired me to cut the dead growth off the butterfly bush (to the left). Now it looks so pretty next to the hydrangea (to the right).

Above: Some of the perennials I planted. From left to right, they're Maltese Cross 'Molten Lava' (Lychnis x haageana), summer sun (heliopsis), Columbine 'Music pink and white' (Aquilegia), Beard tongue (penstemon dwarf hybrids), and Blue Queen salvia. I also planted flower seeds -- a kind of daisy, California poppies, zinnia, and phlox.

Above: In that same bed, there's Italian parsley and cilantro on the far end to the right.

Above: My raised beds on my garden plot across the way. They aren't tidy or pretty, but I hope they'll do the trick.

Above: From back to front, on the left: Something I lost track of the label for and can't identify, but I think may be okra, garlic, butternut squash, and acorn squash. On the right, Blue Lake beans, sugar snap peas, cantaloupe, and a sweet potato.

Above: Some close-ups of the veggies.

Above: Sunset dappling the herb garden with light. You can see the lake in the background. So very peaceful here.

After snapping all these photos, I went for my first swim in the lake this year. It was simply glorious, alternately warm and cool, so refreshing, so fresh against my skin. I breathed deeply and looked up at the sky and felt somehow more human than I have in quite a while.