October 2009 Archives

This weekend I planted my tulips.  It took two days.  Here are some of the starting supplies:



That's 1/2" galvanized steel wire, scissors, and Colour Magic tulip bulbs from Breck's.  Other supplies include bolt cutters, landscape fabric, garden dirt, hardwood mulch, plastic edging, a hammer, and a MP3 player loaded up with energetic rock songs. (That last item is very important.)

The idea is to build a wire cage that will keep squirrels, chipmunks, and moles (or voles? which is the herbivore?) from chowing down on the tender tulip bulbs.  They ate my saffron crocuses last year.  They're not getting my tulips!

Here's the site.  I had to remove some curved brick edging that had become completely encased by wire grass.  I looked at the 6 inch deep trench and thought "Hmm ... I think my design plan just changed."

 

So instead of making lots of little rectangular bulb baskets, I made one big circular one.  This took forever.  This is why the MP3 player is so important - to keep me out in the cold, damp yard wiring stuff together instead of staying in the warm house and leaving the tulips to the marauding yard critters.




Here's another view of the cage.




Here's the cage positioned in the trench.  This was the end of Day 1.




The next day, I filled the trench a little with dirt and then put the bulbs into the cage.

 


Then I wired strips of chicken wire over the top of the cage.  I'm glad that I recently had a tetanus shot.




I covered the bulbs completely with dirt.  Then I put down the landscaping fabric and the edging.  I was careful to leave the ring of tulips uncovered by the fabric.  That edging stuff really got on my nerves. Like the wire, it prefers to be tightly coiled and attempts to revert to that position whenever possible.




And then I mulched the whole thing.



I'm going to let the wire grass bake in darkness under the fabric and mulch for a week before I cut holes in the fabric to plant pansies in.  I should mention that I also made a little collar of landscaping fabric around the base of the mailbox to ensure that grass doesn't come through there. 

I just hope the tulip bulbs manage to make it through the wire and the mulch.  Hopefully the mulch that's over the tulips will keep the grass down to a manageable level.  (i really hope so!) 

I think it's going to be sunny for a few days, so I decided to unmulch my fall garden.  Some of the little seeds are already sprouting!

I had to look at my diagram to figure out what is sprouting.  So far, the Osaka Purple mustard and the red violet tatsoi are sprouting. Yay! 

Today I planted my Fall garden.  It's in containers.  Containers will hopefully be much easier to keep weed-free. 

Here are the containers:



That's bamboo leaves on the top of the pots.  The meteorologists say that it's going to rain all week, and a friend advised me to lightly mulch the seeds to keep them from floating away during the rain.

And here's a diagram illustrating what's in the containers:



I have another gigantic terra cotta pot elsewhere in the yard, and it's planted with garlic and Osaka Purple mustard.

Today at the local farmer's market I bought this cool variegated hydrangea:



The blooms are supposed to be red.  Neat!

I forgot to take a picture of the cute violas I bought. Well, they'll look better once I fix their little bed and put them in it, anyway.

Saturday I harvested tulsi and I'm attempting to dry it.  I have the green tulsi drying on screens.  I ran out of space on the screens so I'm also drying some red/purple tulsi in a bunch. 

It took a couple of hours to drag off all the bamboo and grapevines that I cut down yesterday.  I guess what took the longest was paring down pieces of grapevine that I'm going to make baskets out of.  I also picked the bunches of ripe grapes off of the fallen vines - I ended up with a plastic grocery bag full.  I had to keep the bag closed up so that the local yellow jackets wouldn't set up shop in it!

I finally managed to get the second tea shrub planted. *whew*  Then I decided to go dig a hole for the butterfly bush.  I was nearly finished with the five gallon-sized hole when the shovel clanked onto what turned out to be some sort of drain line.  Um, oops.  So I filled that hole back in and am looking for a new site for the butterfly bush.  I'm trying to position it near the garden so that hopefully pollinators will wander from the bush to the veggies.

And I planted the daffodils. 

Gosh, I'm tired.  But I guess I'd better start picking through those grapes ...

The weather today was perfect.  I cannot imagine better weather conditions.  A few stray clouds floated by on the breeze, and it was not cool enough for me to wear long sleeves, but I only broke a sweat around noon when I was ripping the wild muscadine vines out of the bamboo.

My initial goal today was to plant the shrubberies.  I have quite a collection of shrubberies-needing-planting now: butterfly bush, ume (tree, not shrub), and the other tea bush.

I plunked the ume into the ground, then decided that I want to put the tea bush near it.  Unfortunately the precise location I wanted to put it is near the chain link fence that was overshadowed by muscadine-infested bamboo. So I decided to solve that problem.

I got a little carried away.  I ripped and yanked and chopped and snipped away at vines and bamboo stalks for hours.  There are piles of vine and bamboo in the yard now.  I left the piles right where they are because when my husband came out to look, he noted that I had disturbed a yellow jacket nest somewhere along the way, and they were all milling around the stacks of vines and bamboo. So I decided to come back to that tomorrow. Eek.  I'm amazed and grateful that I didn't get stung!

I recently learned how to make baskets out of vines, so I'm collecting the muscadine vines for basketry. My husband is going to try making tej (honey wine) from the grapes.

Woohoo, yay Fall! :D

I also weeded the front herb garden a bit and noted that tulsi is growing through the cracks in the sidewalk. Wow. Tulsi is hard core. :P