Garden Log - April 20, 2008

I feel lucky for my relative lack of soreness, because I've been putting in some heavy hours (and heavy compost, and heavy mulch) these past few days. It's just been so nice out. The buds on just about everything have swelled up and opened. In fact, this little lemon tree that Lindsay got me for my birthday has begun to flower. Shortly after the shipping and transplant it dropped 80% of its leaves. Just recently it grew buds all over and now it's flowering. I'm glad to see it's not doing as badly as its looked like these past few months.


Here's another plant in a pot. I've been thinking about getting a bay tree for awhile, so I nabbed this guy when I saw him at the farmer's market. Thanks Renaissance Acres!


Now I've been all over the yard, but let's kick it off with that south wall garden. Today, with help from Kristy, I got my trellis set up and planted some White Niagra Grapes from Downtown. Grapes, trellis and all cost me about $20-25, with the posts courtesy of my friend Dan. Kristy also planted some of my rapini in this bed for me.






And here's a close-up of the grapes and their trellis. This shot was taken in the evening, so the lighting isn't ideal.


Switching poles, here is a shot of an impromptu garden I put in on the north side of my house. This was grass and dirt and debris up until yesterday. Now it's home to some woodland strawberries, a wintergreen plant, and one red, one purple, and one white trillium. I got the trillium from another vendor at the farmer's market who cultivates it. I'm hoping it will spread heartily and I can transplant some into the woods behind my house. I'm also expecting the wintergreen and strawberries to fill out. Again, I managed this garden pretty cheaply with $24 of edging and quite a bit of mulch.


Here are my new fruit trees. I planted three Gumi trees (more on these in a future post) on the west side of the house, and two Ussuri plums on the north side, near the road.








Moving back to gardens, I've saved the best for last. This is my new deck garden, also a bit impromptu. I rescued the logs that I edged it with from across the street after a tree service came to tidy things up over there. Here's an early shot of it, after installing the edging.


And here it is today. I've moved some of its original contents around and added some new things as well. For reference, here are some photos from last year.




The rocks wedged beneath the log are mostly from my lawn, under the sod. The yarrow was moved over from the side and the rapini went in today. In the middle of the rapini is an American Black currant. The frame has a little clematis I put in last year. Also, you can't quite see it in this photo, but I got the log to kind of ride out of the soil. I'm really happy with how this edging turned out.


And on this side I've put in a cup plant and a "rattlesnake master." I plan to fill in the empty space soon.


So that's it for now. I plan to build my raised beds early this week.