GARDENING: It’s that time again when “last year’s blisters, failures and misfortunes have been replaced by enthusiasm” and optimism for the next season in the garden. Some 2022 resolutions. https://t.co/NHeJdrj1fy
— The Associated Press (@AP) January 19, 2022
No pics this week, because I can’t post what I haven’t gotten…
… Just a short while ago, we were doing all manner of fall gardening and yard care. At the end of the season, gardening can seem more like a chore than an enjoyable hobby. We harvest vegetables, fret about mowing the lawn, deal with leaves, clean perennial beds and have to plant garlic before the frost.
Now, however, the memory slate has been cleaned. Somehow we’ve forgotten all the hard work last year’s gardens entailed. Refreshed, we find ourselves spending an afternoon browsing the internet looking for this year’s seeds or thumbing through an actual, hard-copy, seed catalog planning this year’s gardens…
Here are a handful of 2022 resolutions that acknowledge some new approaches to our hobby:
* For one thing, this is the year for gardeners to fully recognize our role in dealing with global warming. Those two-cycle, gasoline engines used in our yards, for example, are no longer environmentally acceptable and need to be phased out of home gardening. This season, accelerate replacement of your old mowers, blowers and weed eaters with manual, battery or corded versions. Even just skipping a session, mowing just once a month, will make a huge difference.
* Next, gardeners are well known for sharing. Make some of your plantings for the greater good. For example, we gardeners have the ability to help increase pollinator, butterfly and bird populations, which have been in serious decline. All it takes is planting a few things that support them. There are enough of us that, combined, such efforts will make a huge difference.
And with over 85 million of us gardening, planting a row of food to donate to the hungry will have an impact on millions of people without food security…
Probably because we have yet to get enough snow to hide last year’s failures, this year’s new seed catalogs have not inspired me to the usual dreams of excess. I still need to finish redoing the raised beds in the front yard, as the pitiful rootpouches of waiting iris and hemerocallis transplants attest. And that’s not gonna leave me (or the Spousal Unit) energy or attention for more than a minimum half-dozen or so ‘essential’ heirloom tomato plants. So y’all get to mock me if I break down and set the credit cards on fire over the next six weeks…
What’s going on in your (planning / memories / indoor) gardens, this week?
germy
I bought one of those manual push mowers about 30 years ago. I really loved it because it brought back memories of my childhood. I still have it today, but it sits unused in our shed.
For the past ten years we’ve been lawn free. We transformed a grassy yard into stone paths surrounded by flowers and vegetables. It’s great not to worry about lawns anymore.
Baud
@germy:
I want to be lawn free.
germy
@Baud:
It can be done.
raven
We wrote the last check for our renovation Friday and our new tenants will be here the 1st to furnish it. My wife said “you are really going to miss those guys” and she’s right. I was very good at staying out of their way and letting them work but enjoyed shooting the shit when it was appropriate. I’ve known the main dude for years and we had lots of connections. The other guy is a real craftsman (actually both are) and he worked his ass off. I fed them cajun food a couple of times and even gave them little parting gifts just for fun. I’ve posted pictures of the cherry counter but it’s worth it to show the finished product
Oh yea, we didn’t really have a budget but we are $20k over what we refinanced.
OzarkHillbilly
Pics or it’s just another tall tale.
debbie
@raven:
It really is very beautiful. Lucky tenants!
raven
We had a wire fence on the rental but the boss lady wanted it taken down so I got one of those metal post remover jacks and took it down. We had the trees trimmed back off of the house and it really looks different. The new tenants can us some area for gardening but, since they only play to be here part-time, they probably won’t.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Looks even better finished.
raven
@debbie: We are so lucky that we were able to get the contractors! We didn’t pull any permits so our taxes won’t go up (as a result of the improvements anyway). The parting shot from the guys was “it’s great to work with people who do things right”!
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Yea, our only regret is that we won’t be living there with the fully insulated, new floor repainted crib!
satby
Well, we’re about 2″ into a predicted 4-6 inch snowstorm so far. Glad I don’t really have to go anywhere until tomorrow.
In garden dreaming, if I have to pull out last year’s frost damaged lilac bushes, I want to replace them with shrub roses from David Austen. The catalog has me drooling.
raven
These dudes live where we got the cherry slabs.
mrmoshpotato
@satby:
Our front sidewalk is all powdery. Who’s up for a quart of Mexican hot chocolate?
HeartlandLiberal
@Baud: I am planning to turn half of the front yard, which is so shaded by a sweet gum and white pine tree that grass will not grow, into a garden of shade loving plants this spring. We just replaced the driveway, and widened the curved walk from it to our front door, so major replanting is required in general. (And it costs a LOT to replace a concrete driveway. Sheesh. But it had to be done. The 30 year old one was crumbling.)
Ken
The banner of that AP article makes gardening sound like getting drunk — pledges during the hangover never never never to do this again, then after a bit “well, maybe just once more…”
Maybe having children is a better analogy.
OzarkHillbilly
This week I get started on starting my 27 different flower/wildflower seeds. The wild thyme, milkweed, yarrow, and yellow coneflower will be first. I’ve been trying to grow yellow coneflowers off and on for years. They’re an Ozark native but rare around here so I’d really like to get some established.
Geminid
@HeartlandLiberal: Vinca Minor* aka periwinkle does well in shade and semishade, and stays green all year round. Some people call it invasive, but it’s not hard to spade out of an area where other plants are desired. It spreads above the ground by runners. Grows best with little fertilizer, like Plant Tone.
One virtue of periwinkle is that its dark green leaves make it easy to spot lighter green weeds like chickweed. Over time it gets dense enough to more or less choke out weeds. It also seems to coexist well with shrubs and bulbs.
*Vinca Major, Minor’s rough cousin, is to be avoided. But I’ve never seen it sold, just see it in old plantings.
p.a.
Had the front done in stone, it’s dead north and shaded by the house; really makes life easier. Told the landscapers: plants that require little maintenance/pruning and drought resistant as I’m an indifferent waterer. Dwarf butterfly bushes require almost daily deadheading, but other than that, spring/fall basic maintenance.
On a previous upgrade different landscapers planted holly as door sentries. I think they’re beautiful even without the red berries. After the fact I discovered they planted some sort of asian holly: black berries.? Now I may be an atheist but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the Christmas spirit?
mrmoshpotato
Have cucumbers, build house.
Gvg
I have been seed starting for about a month now. A lot of plants need to be started now in order to get established in Floridas short spring and survive the summer. I do this every year. I have to start them under wire cages I made for this, because the critters around here always dig in seedling trays immediately if I don’t. I made the cages out of hardware cloth. I have about 10 and I can put 4 trays under each. I am almost full so I will have to wait to start the next round.
I am also rooting camellia cuttings from my Uncles garden. It is not the best time for it, but I may not have another chance. He died a few years ago and my Aunt died at Thanksgiving. Their daughter plans to sell the house and is not a gardener. Mom has been trying to get permission to take the cuttings ever since and got permission on Thursday so it had to be done right away. My mother wanted it so much. I think their might be something about wondering if we will remember her…and take care of her garden. It is not even her brother, it is my dad’s. She is as much of a gardener as I am and her own gardening is getting harder. I have to go help her fairly often.
I thought about sending camellia pictures. They bloom around town this time of year.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone ???
OzarkHillbilly
Do it, I dare ya. ;-)
charluckles
I have loved the battery powered equipment I have used. I’ve been impressed with the power and ease of use. I don’t have the first clue about small engines so I really should have made the move earlier. This spring I am looking to switch to a battery powered chainsaw.
Spanky
@Geminid: Our vinca minor is going like gangbusters under the pines, which is not the case with a lot of ground covers.
Black and Decker’s quality really went to shit after it was sold off a few decades ago, so it was with a lot of scepticism that I ordered their 20 volt hedge trimmer, but it worked so well that I went on to order the 20v pole saw. Works great too, though the carbon fiber pole makes it a bit bouncy until it’s tucked snug in its kerf. My one complaint is that the chain dulls faster than I think it ought, but maybe I can find an Oregon that small.
Anyway, my small contribution to getting off the 2-cycle bandwagon. Oh! That and the awesome 36v Makita with the 16″ bar, but that’s too new to really talk about.
Van Buren
I have never owned a gasoline powered tool. I used to have a push mower, but I was too incompetent to keep it in good working condition, and now have a cordless electric.
My big task that ought be done soon is to put fencing around the tulip beds before they start to come up and the rabbits eat them. We had fencing up when we planted in the fall, but the guy who did the fall cleanup took it down and then put it back up in the wrong place, and I was physically unable to fix that at the time.
MagdaInBlack
@mrmoshpotato: That…led me down the rabbit hole where I discovered ” Keeping a Grocery Store Lobster as a Pet” which was pretty cool !
raven
@charluckles: Lithium has changed everything@!
Cermet
My aquarium “garden” has finally turned around – had a terrible case of brown algae* covering everything. My Madagascar Fern has now come back and is growing like no tomorrow. All the plants are growing well, too. I might even add some tropical fish to better set off the plants and provide some extra plant food from their waste.
*One fights brown algae with … green algae! I built an “algae scrubber” to ‘eat’ all excessive nutrients in the water. An algae scrubber is a device that fills with green algae and filters the water – one removes the green algae bi-weekly in the device to grow a fresh batch. Greatest invention for any aquarium – fresh or salt.
MomSense
@satby:
I miss my roses. They just didn’t do well with the current weather pattern here.
OzarkHillbilly
I got so gd tired of yanking the cord on my Husqvarna line trimmer only to have it run like shit when it finally did start that I went out and bought a battery operated one. I’m a convert.
MomSense
@raven:
I would like to teleport myself to that adorable house and not bring the dog hair, clutter, and anything from my current house.
I’m at that point where I don’t know what to do with all the stuff and I want to radically change all the interiors.
WaterGirl
@germy: Too bad we don’t have any way to see photos of that! :-)
OzarkHillbilly
Back when I moved around a lot I had a method for paring down the stuff I’d have to move. With each and every item I would ask myself 2 questions.
#1: Have I used this in the last 6 months?
If the answer was no, I’d ask a 2nd question:
#2 Am I going to use it in the next 6 months?
If the answer was again no, out to the curb it went.
Of course I made exceptions for things I was emotionally attached to (like things that had once belonged to my sister Peggy), but those were very few and far between. It was very rare when I couldn’t fit everything I was taking with me in a single P/U load.
Losing almost everything but my tools in my divorce hardened me against becoming too attached to stuff, so I wouldn’t expect my method to work as well for anyone else. Still it might help.
Benw
@rikyrah: good morning!
This year we want to replace some of the grass in the front yard with a flowering tree and ground cover. And hope the peach and apple trees we planted last summer survive. And weeding. So much weeding.
WaterGirl
@raven: I know what you mean, raven. The year the huge tree crashed on my house, it was 5 months of repairs, and you do get the feel for when you can shoot the breeze and when to stay out of the way.
I was so glad to get my house back when they were done but it was kind of bittersweet. I used a woman-owned company (I know the owners) and everyone on their crew was a person you would want to know in real life.
When the house was finally done, I gave each of the people who had been there a lot a hand-written thank you note with either $50 or $100, depending.
WaterGirl
@raven: I am wondering this morning if your previous tenants hate you :-) because you created this gorgeous super-charming house only after they moved out.
Not criticizing you, obviously, because it’s not anything you could have done while they were still in the house! But maybe kind of like you leave a job because the workload is impossible, or maybe you are seriously underpaid, and then when you leave they hire two people to do the job you were doing.
WaterGirl
@Ken: I have actually thought about writing a letter to myself with whatever it is I vow I will NOT do again in the garden – and asking a friend to hold on to it and give it to me in early spring the following year.
Josie
@MomSense:
I’ve been in this fix ever since the last move from a 3 bedroom house with a big garage for storage to a 2 bedroom with no garage. Things are stacked in some places so that I feel like a hoarder, and no dog sheds as much as a corgi. I was planning to tackle some of it today, but I hardly know where to start.
satby
@MomSense: I’m a bit worried about that too, because lilacs are pretty indestructible and they barely survived, with such severe damage that it will probably be five years before they recover fully. But all the own root shrub roses I’ve planted have done pretty well and David Austen’s five year guarantee makes the higher expense seem worth it. I’m running out of room in my yard though ?!
satby
@Josie: right there with you sister. And I have to start making headway because it’s so annoying to have all this stuff to deal with.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
Me too, and I’m never going back to a gas lawn mower.
jnfr
My amaryllis is finally in full bloom!
Big flowers!
I potted this bulb up on Nov. 12, so you can see it’s taken its sweet time to get there.
MomSense
@Josie:
@satby:
I should be dealing with it right now but I just can’t face it. I’m taking my mom to the movie theater to see the Bolshoi Ballet perform Jewels instead.
Even in the before times we had the theater to ourselves for ballet and opera so we are going to wear our good masks and have some fun.
I had heat pumps installed in October and for the most part they didn’t interrupt furniture placement EXCEPT my bedroom. UGH. My bureau is really big and it has a larger mirror with a jewelry drawer on the top. The only wall they could put the heat pump is the only wall my bureau fits on except the wall my bed fits on. I can’t put them both on the same wall. So my mirror is on the floor in front of my closet and I just can’t face the chaos of moving everything. I have a bookcase full of books that I need to move, and boxes under my bed where I store fabrics, yarn, photos.
I hate it the way it is but I don’t have the energy to deal with it.
MomSense
@satby:
We’ve had weeks of really cold temps and no snow cover to protect the plants and shrubs. Then we get months of cool rain in the spring and early summer and all of a sudden the switch is flipped and we go to extreme heat and no rain. The plants and shrubs experience shock. My roses didn’t recover.
joel hanes
Systemic insecticides are the very devil.
Neo-nicotinoids are implicated in the ongoing drastic plunge in insect populations.
Eschew them.
Benw
@jnfr: WOW
Kristine
@raven: I really love that counter.
Kristine
Looks like 4-5″ of sand snow here in NE Illinois. I won’t need to break out the snowthrower–the shovel and broom will work just fine. Cleared the lower part of the deck, sidewalk, and some paths across the lawn BEFORE COFFEE so Gaby would have places to rest in between explorations.
This should bite into the 10″ snow deficit we have so far. I don’t know what type of snow they use to calculate this–the current batch would melt down to only a fraction of an inch of rain.
I brought the mini roses indoors for the winter. One has 5 buds, one of which is opening. Winter roses. Plans for the spring include proper mulching to reduce weeds and figuring out what to do about the two dwarf crabapples that were planted too close together 16+ years ago and have now intertwined to form a great place for the squirrels to rummage. I could trim back for size, or eliminate one. They’re a Louisa, a weeping variety, and a prairiefire, which is a shrub variety with gorgeous magenta blossoms. Both are supposedly rust-resistant, but maybe these two were grown before resistance was bred in–the prairiefire in particular has taken a beating the last few years. I sprayed them with copper last spring and that helped, but I’m still pondering next steps.
raven
@WaterGirl: There was no way to do the work without them moving out. We barely broke even on the $800. a month they were paying and it was never meant for the way they used it so, no, they got what they needed and they needed to move on. Plus the guy tired to buy it from its and was well aware that it would take $70K plus to do the work and we ain’t sellin.
Spanky
Well, there goes any idea I might have had of moving to Canaan Valley. (I once considered it.)
WaPo link.
Kristine
@MomSense:
We’re in the same place. I need to get rid of a bedroom set that’s too large for the 60’s shoebox ranch bedroom as well as a display cabinet. Then there’s the junk in the basement, the garage. I should just chuck things without looking at them because if I’ve managed without them all this time, do I need to keep them?
oldgold
“January: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving the road to hell with them as usual.” Mark Twain
Well, before I begin mixing up the concrete, I resolve: 1) to plant, harvest and eat a tomato. ( A feat not accomplished since Kate during Ike’s quiet reign of ho-hum ) 2) to attract a flying, fluttering wonderfully winged flower to the Butterfly Garden section of West of Eden. ( A feat not accomplished since its planting at the dawn of the millennia )
In connection with my aforementioned paving project, a wise individual once observed: “That there is a paved road to Hell and only a stairway to Heaven, says a lot about the anticipated traffic patterns.“
WaterGirl
@MomSense: Around here, it’s not so much the really cold temps that kill the growing things, it’s the freeze, thaw, freeze, thaw that gets them.
The plants were built (so to speak) to deal with the cold but not with the crazy ups and downs we have now.
WaterGirl
@Kristine: I have never heard the term “sand snow” before. Is that another name for light, dry snow?
WaterGirl
@raven: That’s because you’re smart.
My comment was meant as a back-handed compliment; it’s so beautiful now that it would be hard not to be jealous. I know they had a really good deal the whole time they were there.
Spanky
@WaterGirl: The gritty, granular stuff, that might have started out as mist, way up there in the clouds.
Kristine
@WaterGirl:
I don’t recall if I read it somewhere or made it up. I have names for the different types of snow, based on consistency or how I have to deal with them. Sand snow. Push snow. Corn starch snow–the stuff I can push with the shovel up to a certain point at which it packs together and stops dead.
A friend calls the mucky slush-snow combo “oobleck.”
dyspeptic
@Baud: My historic town requires the front parkway to be lawn, which is hilarious given the time of the original Olmstead plan, lawns weren’t really a residential thing. Otherwise I’ve been able to rid my self of grass (some ornamentals) in yards back and front and with the right planting it isn’t that much more work than a lawn
WaterGirl
@Spanky: Huh. I don’t think I have ever seen gritty, granular snow in Illinois. When it’s misty here, it turns into a frozen glaze on the cement.
jnfr
@Benw:
It’s my first!
WaterGirl
@Kristine: Love the cornstarch snow concept. That totally happens with some kinds of snow.
I have one category for snow, which is that all snow is awesome.
At a second level, there are two kinds of snow: 1) Snow that’s low enough that I can plow through it with my CRV in order to get out of the driveway, and 2) snow that is too tall for me to plow through it. (The second one rarely happens!)
I gave up shoveling snow several years ago.
WaterGirl
@jnfr: Congratulations! I love Amaryllis but I believe it’s not safe if you have cats, so I end up giving them as gifts. At least someone gets to enjoy the beauty!
JustRuss
I did the same, 26 years ago. Then got divorced and moved to a rental with a lawn, and the old pusher is getting used again. The place came with a gas mower, but I only use it in the spring when the lawn is tall and wet.
Modern electrics are great, I have a cordless blower and trimmer.
Skookum in Oly
We’ve been using electric mowers for a number of years now. I just couldn’t take the noise and trouble, our current mower came with two batteries. I used a friend’s battery-powered pole saw this summer on some high branches – that worked great, and I want my own now.
My gardening resolution this year is all about making this *our* garden – getting rid of everything that doesn’t work for us, organizing and setting things up the way they should be, so they work for us. We bought the house we’d been renting for 7 years in Olympia, the landscape was choked with invasive weeds, the house is in minor disrepair. (I think we did the 7-year itch wrong, weren’t we supposed to move instead of buy & dig-in?) However, when faced with the (truly sweet) offer of buying and rehabilitating this house versus packing and moving into a different one, of course we chose to stay – location, location, location, right? (And the very best neighbors! And a very tight, pricey rental market!)
We previously had 7 forested & cleared acres in the country. This lot is only 150′ x 50, and located just above downtown, with two mighty Douglas fir trees along the street shading us from the summer afternoon sun. I’ve been dry-shade gardening under them since we moved in.
Since there is no landlord to tell me no… away with the front lawn! It is becoming large raised beds for Mike in Oly’s historic iris collection and cottage-gardening proclivities. I’ll start the build and fill on that next month, as the prep work on that got finished over the fall. The gravel driveway will get re-aligned and relaid at the same time. This past two weekends, the long and narrow north yard has been transitioned from a shady, soggy no-man’s land to a work-yard where I can pot things up, store rocks and masonry, and keep the trash & recycling bins out of sight, but handy. The similarly long and narrow, but very sunny south yard is where I will be trying my hand at small-space, vertical food gardening – ever-bearing strawberries and raspberries in containers did great last year, but I am eager to try growing strawberries vertically in PVC piping. A cutting bed will go beneath the living room windows. My list for Territorial seeds this year includes carrots, zucchini, yellow crookneck, green beans, salad greens, and spinach. I also plan to grow new potatoes in a tower, and to let some sugar pie pumpkins and decorative gourds trail about. Lots of elephant garlic will go in the flower beds.
All means the back east yard project of a roofed patio, watercourse/koi pond, new fencing and shade garden will have to wait another year or two…
oldgold
@WaterGirl:
This morning I read last evenings threads. I reserve Saturday nights for liberally ingesting liquid toxins.
Well, my comment at 54 was, in part, a reaction to your Saturday evening post.
raven
@WaterGirl: The original tenant, before foghorn leghorn moved in, is the bride’s hairdresser and the last appointment they had she didn’t charge her because it was her birthday!
WaterGirl
@oldgold: My mom always used to say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Turns out that she was right.
That was not the conversation I thought we would be having, but it was interesting, and there were some great nuggets tucked in with the rest.
satby
@Skookum in Oly: Sounds fantastic! Take pictures so we can see, pls.
KRK
Today I am finally going to start staking out the new hedgerow that I have been planning for the past year. Roughly 450′ of native shrubs and trees to mark a boundary on three sides between my yard/garden and the cultivated field beyond. Staking out today, and hopefully can start planting next weekend. November would have been a better time to plant, but now is okay and we’ve finally had a temporary break in the incessant rainfall.
Yesterday I accomplished the first weeding of the year and did some belated wildflower sowing. Got to enjoy the flock of trumpeter swans rooting around in the potato field next door. They’ve been here since late October, but will be flying north in the next month or so.
White & Gold Purgatorian
On the subject of battery operated outdoor tools, we have had good service from the Greenworks 40v tools. We have 2 chainsaws, a string trimmer, blower and pole saw. They all use the same batteries, which are 4 Ah and last quite a while. This morning I used the 12” saw to cut up 3 dogwood trees and a few limbs from larger trees, about 2 hours work in all on a single battery. We’ve been using these batteries since 2013. All chainsaws leak bar oil, even at rest, but it does seem to me that these leak more than our gas powered saws do, although nowadays we seldom use the gas saws unless we lot of big stuff to cut all at once. These are just so convenient and they always start when you want them.
eachother
This winter has caused a lot of significant damage. There were entire trunks bent by the snow load and major branches broken off. Now there will be clean-up projects and reorganization of formally established areas of impact. Opportunities perhaps?
J R in WV
@Spanky:
My brother and I used to backpack winter camp up in those mountains, 45 years ago. It was so remote and quiet. Then one trip a troop of boy scouts came through, was really noisy. Plus my back was giving it up from when I was hit by a car in Mississippi back in ’72.
WV can get really really cold. Not often, not for long, but when the gas freezes off — wow it gets cold fast!