Design

For those of us in the Eastern US, an excellent 'window of opportunity' for planting trees, shrubs, and perennials is now through mid-to-late April.  It's planting time. Yes, containerized plants can be planted all year round, but it's a lot easier to get plants established in fall or spring, when adequate soil moisture is available. We've had plenty of rain this spring, so the soil has been recharged (to some degree) from the droughty summer and fall last year.  Waiting much later than the 3rd week in April in the Piedmont of the SE US is not so good, as plants have to depend on supplemental water to establish root systems, often in high air temperatures. Warm-season veggies are in another category;  they're definitely best planted after soil and air temperatures are thoroughly warm.  And supplemental water is always needed).  I'm still babying my tomato seedlings on a heating mat under lights in the garden shed.

A quick trip to a local big-box home supply store required an initial detour through the garden center's display of vegetables and herbs (not the point of the excursion!) It looked like there were more plants than the last time I visited. I wasn't surprised with the array of hardy kale, cabbage, and other transplants. Even the herb varieties offered up looked OK, although cilantro and arugula transplants are decidedly unsuited to the warm spring weather that's just around the corner here. But I've got to give the transplant producing company credit for being proactive and imaginative; they had snap pea transplants (!) for sale (also labeled as sweet peas...), onion plants in 6-packs, and a number of other things that I hadn't seen offered before in previous seasons. Now snow peas are very easy to sow directly, and best grown that way, but geez, what a clever idea to try to get folks to buy a 6-pack for more than the price of a packet of seeds? They were attrac...

I cleaned up beds in the main vegetable garden and the satellite garden today. It was nice to be back in the garden, after too much time focused on other things. I fussed (to myself) about being late to do these things, but whatever. All things in their time. After a Sunday morning walk with my gardening companion (and my gardening assistant - aka my husband and dog), I set to work pulling up spent tomatoes, peppers, and lagenaria squash, and started amending beds for planting. I planted this bed with Inchelium Red and Early Italian, with multiplier potato onions in a small patch towards the thyme.

I'm definitely ready to get my hands back in the garden. I miss the grounding of checking plants, cleaning up beds, and sowing seeds after a couple of weeks of having my attention required elsewhere. This perennial border appreciated Tropical Storm Fay's moisture a few weeks ago. Three flats of native perennials are waiting to be planted. They're from a family-owned local native plant nursery ( Carolina Wild ) and are destined for the pollinator garden next to the Nature Center and in the front meadow at home. The nursery proprietors, both young and knowledgeable, grow an excellent selection of plants from locally-collected seeds and cuttings, most of which are difficult (if not impossible) to find unless you grow them yourself. I had pre-ordered a selection before her Garden program on Friday, but couldn't resist adding quite a few more. I also have lettuce, chard, mustard, kale, and other greens to sow in the main vegetable garden (not to mention cleaning up the r...

Our front yard didn't always look this way. When we moved in, it was a long dull expanse of lawn, punctuated by a row of magnolias and dogwoods, in alternation with a single white pine. Beyond that was a dying red tip hedge, planted by the second owner (we're the third owners). We've lived here almost fifteen years now, but it didn't take long for the young trees that my gardening companion planted to make a difference. Now, it's like a natural woodland, with a variety of native hardwoods developing the canopy, with an understory of small native trees and shrubs. All that we did was try to recreate (and speed up) what nature might do in a open field, if there were ample seed sources nearby. We had to provide our own saplings; but the regenerative power of planting is as simple as digging a hole, amending the soil a bit, and keeping a young tree or shrub watered through its first seasons (and maybe a bit during exceptional droughty times like now.) An nice comment ...

There's no dearth of advice about growing fall vegetables, but it's definitely a matter of figuring out your particular weather patterns, growing benefits and challenges, and thinking creatively about what to try (and sorting out what you read, and the location of the person who wrote it). Our Southeastern U.S. Zone 7 (determined solely by frost dates) is quite different than Zone 7 in coastal Oregon, for example. And, different species need different lengths of time to mature before frost, and are affected by shortening days and cooler weather depending on the species (and cultivars), too. a red-stemmed chicory looking unfazed by heat and drought And, the recommendations of 'plant in mid-summer' or 'plant in late summer' are not terribly helpful when it's still 95° in the late afternoon. As a beginning vegetable gardener some years ago, I had the (very mistaken) notion that fall vegetables were planted in the fall. In hot summer soils, trying to germina...

The morning was lovely: cool, not humid- perfect to notice things in the garden. The blue flax ( Linum perenne ) was a striking clear blue, against our weathered gray fence. The deep purple of May night sage, Salvia nemorosa , made a nice combination with it. The main vegetable garden is waiting for tomatoes and peppers, while the satellite garden's onions, garlic, and potatoes are flourishing. I'll be planting squash seeds there this weekend, to rotate in as I start harvesting the garlic and onions.