The perfect planting mix

Every tree, shrub or flower we plant in our yard gets "the treatment". It is a very simple mix of soil amendments that works quite well and I would like to share it with you.

In our wheelbarrow, I mix 1 bag of store-bought topsoil, 1/2 bag of store-bought manure and several shovel fulls of peat moss.

Mix this well in the wheelbarrow. After I have dug the hole to the proper depth and width, I lay in some of the mixture, place the tree, shrub or plant into the hole and proceed to fill the area around with the mixture. Sometimes I will either mix in the soil that came out of the hole, or add it as a top dressing. Mulch with either mulch or leaves or pine needles and water well. Remember to keep watering for a couple of weeks after planting.

We just added 3 new Japanese maples to our collection. They were purchased at Southern States during a great sale they had this summer.  Right after we bought them, the weather turned real dry and hot, so I put off planting them until last week. I kept them in dappled shade and watered them well during this time.

Next spring we should have some nice new buds on these fine specimens. The color of the leaves this fall was very promising. They were Acer Shiraswanum Palmatifolium, Acer Palmatum Purple Ghost, and Acer Palmatum Full Moon.

To mulch, or not to mulch. That is the question.

Every year I see hundreds, no thousands of people raking, bagging, blowing huge piles of leaves frustratingly with a small electric blower, filling huge tarps with leaves, only to put them in bags, ready to go to the landfill. Really?

The plastic bags alone will not decompose for 1000 years. You use paper bags? Really? I'm not going down that path. There are  a few ways you can save the planet and still have a nice yard, in fact a better yard, and I will try to share my thoughts on the matter.

First, you don't have to have that yard that looks like you have a full time staff of groundskeepers. I tried that a few years ago. I would get angry when leaves fell on my newly raked yard, curse when the neighbors (who never seems to clean his yard) leaves would blow into my nice clean yard. Clean? Yes. Spotless? No. Ain't gonna happen Mr. Gates.

What are leaves anyway? I see free fertilizer! So I compost just about all of my leaves. In the first part of the season as the leaves are falling as they are now(see pic above), I lower my mower deck, and mulch the hell out of them. Most of the time you can't even tell there were leaves on the lawn. The only thing that throws the mulching mower for a loop are pine needles, but it still cuts them up and eventually they will break down faster this way.

Why not leave them there and do nothing? Well, for one thing it looks like no one lives there. If you leave the leaves and debris on the ground, they get wet, mat up and cut off water, air and sunlight to the ground. They will eventually break down, but it will take a long time, and everything under them will die. When you mulch, you are increasing the surface area of the leaf exponentially therefore giving more area for air and water and bugs and whatnot to break it down. It also reduces the "pile" by 2/3's. See pic below.

After most of the leaves have fallen, and most of my neighbors have joined my collection, I will start to clean out the beds. I do blow these out, into the yard, where I mulch them there. Some are blown down to the back of the yard where they will join the compost pile. The yard loves it and I save on chemicals, time, energy etc.

Autumnal feelings

'Tis the time once again where everything must die or go dormant. The bursts of color are in some ways pleasing and others, sad. The bright colors signal the end of the growing season and are a joy to witness. On the other hand, for those of us that enjoy working in the yard, growing things from seed, bringing things to life, it is rather sad. Three to four months of cold hard weather are ahead, here in Virginia we don't really get the hardest of the winter weather until February, which in its self, is good I guess, meaning that we only have 1.5 months of truly cold, harsh weather.

Walking around the yard yesterday, I was able to snap these pics, and some are from last year. The colors are more vibrant when the sun is shining and coming through the golden or orange leaves. The Ginko has yet to color its usual solid yellow color. The trees downtown have already dropped near my sons apartment. I guess ours will burst forth in a few days, giving us the fleeting glimpse of bright yellow leaves, leaving almost as fast as they appear.

The seasonal work has yet to be performed, clipping all of the growth that will soon be dead on the Gladiolas and the Ginger Lilies, adding some mulch over some of the tuberous rooted plants so, if we have bitter cold weather, the plants will survive for next year. I don't rake. I blow the leaves out of the bushes and from around the house and mulch all of it with the lawn mower. It saves on the amount of fertilizer I use and the lawn loves it. No bags of leaves to the landfill where they will probably last for 100 years.

There are still a few plants to be planted, namely three Japanese Maples purchased over the summer. It got too hot and dry to plant them after we got them, so I left them in their pots and kept them in a semi-shady place and watered them well. They have great color and should do just fine come spring.

Don't be so quick to judge

A few years ago, when we first started our garden in earnest, I was quick to judge all critters. Almost all bugs, caterpillars, bees and so forth were a menace to my efforts and should be dealt with harshly.

But there is one thing that my wife has taught me, and slowly it is really sinking in, honestly. Educate yourself about everything. This goes for your gardening endeavors, your political leanings, history and everything else we deal with in life.

That first year, we not only started the planting of shrubs and trees and flowers, we started a vegetable and herb garden. Things were going to plan, plants growing, flowering and producing various edibles. We planted some Fennel and to my horror, there were several nasty caterpillars eating it all up! Something had to be done! I immediately took them all off and executed them with my heel. Feeling good that I had saved my garden from these voracious vegans, my wife told me that they were swallowtail butterfly caterpillars. Damn. I am a killer. A horrible person.

I hit the internet and educated myself about these creatures. They are fascinating! They lay their eggs where there is a good food source. Their offspring will do the same and so on. We have been excited by the amount of fauna that has taken to our yard. Between the butterfly bushes and the Gauras our area is, pun intended, a beehive of activity. Although sadly we rarely see honey bees, the bumble bees, and others from that family are busy, the smaller bees, we used to call them sweat bees and other more wasp-like bees love the smaller herb flowers like those on the garlic and rosemary bushes.

So the following year I left them to their foraging. And to my surprise, they did not destroy the fennel plant. You could barely notice any evidence that they were there. This fennel plant, by the way, has survived 2 winters and acts like a perennial now. I went out today and took these shots. I counted 6 caterpillars. Things are looking good!

Ticks and Lyme Disease

One Sunday in June of 2012, I thought I had gotten the flu. All the symptoms were there. Body aches, fever, chills. I waited it out a couple of days and it only got worse. Horrific headaches, chills like I had never had before, and all of the flu-like symptoms were ten fold. I went to the doctor and they had no clue, but ordered a blood test per our request. Most of my wife's family have had Malaria, and said that my symptoms were just like Malaria symptoms. We had been to India 15 months before, but also know it is not unheard of people getting Malaria in this country, just very rare.

A second set of blood test came back positive for Lyme disease. I was put on a heavy dose of antibiotics that Friday and by Sunday, I was coming out of it. All I can say is that it kicked my butt. A few days later we found a tick on my wife's hip. So far so good.

This leads me to tell you that this year is bad and everyone should check for these nasty critters. I never found the one on me, but the saucer-sized deep red area on my hip, right at my waist line, was the only physical indication that she was there.

Image sourced from the internet

Certified Wildlife Habitat

I am proud to announce that our yard/garden has been afforded the distinction of a Certified Wildlife Habitat by the National Wildlife Federation. It states that this habitat is certified in the National Wildlife Federation's worldwide network of mini-refuges because of our conscientious planning, landscaping and sustainable gardening, that wildlife may find quality habitat; food, water, cover and places to raise their young.

Roses

Rosaceae Rosa. The mind can be overwhelmed with the varieties. It takes a special gardener to know exactly what they have or want in a Rose. I had never had a rose bush before I met my wife. My parents always planted them, but they inevitably failed, as my parents, really my father, planted a lot of plants, but without the proper knowledge of how to plant, where to plant, when to plant and then how to take care of said plant(s), I was left with nothing. I longed for a great yard and plantings and couldn't wait to get my own place. Several places later and I am here.

For the last few years, we have planted several varieties of roses in our garden. My wife is particular of color and of course they have to have a smell. Not all roses have that distinctive rose smell, I have learned. As usual, she chooses, and I dig the hole. I am then rewarded with great rose plants that I get to enjoy almost all year. They seem to do well in our yard. The pruning is carefully done by my wife as there is a special way to prune roses and according to my wife, I am not privy to that.

Please enjoy some of the photos I have taken of the varieties in our garden. We planted three new ones a couple of weeks ago and they are doing well. My wife knows what she ordered, bareroot from the internet, but I will have to wait and see. It is kind of like xmas, not knowing what the present will be!

Butterfly Bush

Buddliea. There are many different kinds of Butterfly bushes, especially in the last few years. Cultivars have sprouted up everywhere. We have several kinds in our yard. We try not to have the everyday colors, but some are still. My wife is partial to the yellow butterfly bush, Buddliea x weyeriana or Sungold. We have a dwarf version that has not bloomed yet, so I will get some images later. The next one is a very dark purple, Buddleja davidii Black Knight. It is actually very dark, darker that the image shown. The other is Buddleja Davidii Empire Blue. The pictures are below. We now have butterfly bushes that grow all over and we have to pull up the errant ones. The yellow one does not reproduce.

Ladybug

The Lady bug (Coccinellidae) is probably the best friend a gardener can have. They have no cons, only pros. They eat only bad insects and sip some nectar, and they will police tirelessly until all pests are gone, stopping periodically to mate.
We had an early aphid infestation on our Autumn Clematis (clematis peniculata) this year, but we are trying really hard to cut out pesticides and other chemicals in our yard.

We ordered 1500 Ladybugs from the internet and a couple of days later we had a box of Ladybugs! We released them as per the instructions. A couple of days later, they were all gone. So we ordered 4000 the next time. When I released them, they hung around long enough to mate and completely eliminate the aphids after a few days!

Jasmine

Trachelospermum jasminoides is a species of flowering plant in the milkweed family, Apocynaceae, that is native to eastern and southeastern Asia, into Japan, Korea, southern China, and Vietnam. Common names include Star Jasmine, Confederate Jasmine, and Trader's Compass.
We planted one plant a few years ago to hide a propane tank. Knowing full well that it might not survive our winters. We now have 3 placed around the yard. The one we planted first, next to the house is the largest. I guess it gets protection and a little warmth from the house. The one under the Cherry tree is also doing well, and due to a mild winter this year, the one we planted out by the street to eventually climb up the barren street pole, is doing much better. It seems to always take a hit in the winter, but comes back.

If you want a plant that exudes one of the most incredible smells on earth, look no further. For about 4 weeks now and still going strong, these plants have been feasting our noses to one of the most pleasant smells known to man. Early morning, out on the porch, late in the evening, after a hard day in the garden, they honor you with a fresh and inviting fragrance.

Poppies
Papaveraceae Eschscholzia.

We planted these California Poppies a couple of years ago and they have really taken to our area. They have survived some snows and bitter cold and still popped right back. They have been propagating profusely on their own.

Tulips

Liliaceae Tulipa.

We planted dozens of bulbs in the fall. This year we knew we needed to add some topsoil to the beds, so planting the bulbs was easy. My wife just placed them were she wanted them, sprinkled some bone meal around them, and I dumped 8-9 yards of soil over all the beds. We had some wonderful color this year!

The beginning

While this is not the beginning of our garden, this is the beginning of blogging about it. We want to share our trials and tribulations of gardening, landscaping and photography of plants. We have a lot of specimen trees, shrubs and flowers.