Pandemic Garden Club
Mar. 8th, 2025 02:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scrubjayspeaksWelcome to the March edition of Pandemic Garden Club! Growing good things in strange times!
Anyone is welcome to comment with what they're growing right now, things they would like to try, problems they're encountering, and questions they have. Share resources, answer questions, shout encouragement.
As for myself...
Sorry about missing last month. While recovering from surgery, I had neither the computer access nor the energy to deal with compiling a post.
Y’all, the weather has been...a lot. It warmed up enough that the fruit trees are flowering. Then we got rain. Then cold. Then more rain, with a surprise freak hailstorm that hit my tiny town harder than anywhere else. It has been two days and there are still huge piles of accumulated hail. This clump slid off one of the shade clothes at the front of the house. The other gave way under the weight and will have to be reattached. The two on the side are currently sagging under many pounds of hail, which melts during the day and refreezes overnight.
We got some rain, and I got this shot. Seeing a little water drop cupped in each palmate leaf was just the epitome of the season.
One solitary goldfields flower, braving the weird weather.
The grape hyacinths came up in a few spots again. It’s funny how I can evenly distribute a type of bulb around the castle garden, and over the years, the plants will decide which spot they favor well enough. The daffodils always prefer the north side, while these like the south side, and so on. The tree at the center is just a skinny thing, and the whole area is small, so it’s hard to believe there’s a significant range of microclimate right there. And yet.
For Christmas, my mum had given me two sets of little solar-powered mushroom lights. I finally got around to setting them up. They now form a fairy ring around the tall ash in the wildflower garden. I love anything that glows or lights up, and I love anything to do with mushrooms, so these are a joy.
Anyone is welcome to comment with what they're growing right now, things they would like to try, problems they're encountering, and questions they have. Share resources, answer questions, shout encouragement.
As for myself...
Sorry about missing last month. While recovering from surgery, I had neither the computer access nor the energy to deal with compiling a post.
Y’all, the weather has been...a lot. It warmed up enough that the fruit trees are flowering. Then we got rain. Then cold. Then more rain, with a surprise freak hailstorm that hit my tiny town harder than anywhere else. It has been two days and there are still huge piles of accumulated hail. This clump slid off one of the shade clothes at the front of the house. The other gave way under the weight and will have to be reattached. The two on the side are currently sagging under many pounds of hail, which melts during the day and refreezes overnight.
We got some rain, and I got this shot. Seeing a little water drop cupped in each palmate leaf was just the epitome of the season.
One solitary goldfields flower, braving the weird weather.
The grape hyacinths came up in a few spots again. It’s funny how I can evenly distribute a type of bulb around the castle garden, and over the years, the plants will decide which spot they favor well enough. The daffodils always prefer the north side, while these like the south side, and so on. The tree at the center is just a skinny thing, and the whole area is small, so it’s hard to believe there’s a significant range of microclimate right there. And yet.
For Christmas, my mum had given me two sets of little solar-powered mushroom lights. I finally got around to setting them up. They now form a fairy ring around the tall ash in the wildflower garden. I love anything that glows or lights up, and I love anything to do with mushrooms, so these are a joy.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-03-11 12:58 am (UTC)This past weekend BiL and Spouse fetched three cubic yards of dirt from the place that composts restaurant scraps and Spouse filled the four raised beds I acquired and set up in the back. The plan is to buy plants this coming week or two and get the Victory Garden started. We've got more dirt than room for it, but I have a few planters that are due for digging up and replanting.
Trying to figure out what to do with the front bed. No matter what I put in the weeds overtake them. Pulling out the weeds doesn't work. It's mostly clay, shells, and rock anyway. At this point I'm thinking I do one last pass for gladiolus and start cutting it like it's the rest of the lawn. We'd have to pull out the bricks I used to define the front of the bed, but that's not much work. And we have dirt to fill it in with.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-03-16 05:17 pm (UTC)>>We've got more dirt than room for it<<
Oof, yeah. We get twice-yearly trailer loads of compost from the green waste processing place. Then we spend the next six months slowly whittling away at it and thinking, why did we get so much???
Regarding weeds, yes, it's a struggle to decide how aggressive it's worthwhile to be with them. I'm hoping in the wildflower field to slowly push them out with reintroduced native plants. That's been studied as a useful method--clear just enough to create an advancing line of desireable plants until the balance tips in their favor. We'll see how well I accomplish it.