Monday, March 18, 2019

Garden Planning

It's early days, but I have been out in the garden looking for signs of life. This photo was taken last May 6th, and I can already tell what did and didn't work. At this point the weeds hadn't shown up in force and I was delirious to be finally getting these new beds planted. Now they are just showing what lived and what didn't. Must say I am disappointed to see no lupins, but I am determined to try again.
The coneflowers are coming back in full force, and that thrills me. These are last year's pics.

I promise to give the new 2019 plants more room to grow, and will mulch immediately to keep down the weeds. Nick my reluctant gardener has promised a load of mushroom compost and I will be topping off the beds which will nurture and prevent the terrible weeds I had in the flower beds last year.


I will definitely do marigolds again, and of course lots of basil. The day lilies are looking good and in between, them, I see sprouts of peonies bursting through.
I got more peony roots, bleeding hearts, and Asiatic lilies, plus daylily roots, and they got planted already.

What didn't work was where I planted sun loving plants only to see them get spindly from being in the shade too long. This time I have transplanted my hosta to that space and am confident they will prosper.
I also made an expensive mistake with my eleven hydrangea. I had Nick build a berm around the fence and I put them in there and while they did fine during the season, the massive rains we had washed away their soil, exposing the roots and killing many of them. The few that do have leaves will be transplanted to a safer spot. Darn. We live and learn.

3 comments:

  1. Your garden for it just being the first season, turned out so pretty. Moving things around and figuring out what works and what doesn't is what we all go thru. I vow to keep on top of the weeds this year. I redid my big bed in front and added hundreds of pounds of free edging rock that I hauled home. I am hoping I didn't lose one of my lavender plants. With the extreme heat we had last year I should have watered more. Lesson learned. I always enjoy seeing the pictures of your garden and it inspires me to work hard on mine. take care!

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  2. I love your garden! Now my trick for holding weeds at bay is to lay down layers of newspaper, wet it,& then layer with straw & wet it down again. The newspaper dissolves by next season. Would think it would work fine with mulch in a pretty flower bed. Just the thought of getting a truckload of mulch/compost, etc. makes me giddy.

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  3. Oh, Boy! Garden time again! I love to see what you do each year. I'm in Washington State and things get started a little later here. We have had snow recently, and although it's nice and warm today, we're expecting colder and wetter in the near future. It's hard to wait this time of year for perfect garden weather.

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