Down In It

Stone border added along road

January 11, 2026

planting log, herbaceous | permalink

Following some advice on the fediverse after voicing frustration about people driving their vehicles through landscaping where I'd recently mulched and planted a bunch of native seeds, I added a border of large stones every six feet or so just inside the curb. The biggest probably weighs 100 lbs or more, but most were like 30 or 40, some less. I scavenged them from elsewhere on the property - some were along the edge of the patio, some I'd used to make a border around the herb garden, two I'd put in front of apple trees I planted on the eastern hillside, and the last was one I'd previously moved from the very back of the yard to the edge between the grass and the various shrubs behind the bird feeder on the terrace. It amounted to 11 of them in all. Around them I planted hemp dogbane (Apocynum cannabinum) seeds, which I'd collected from the back of the terrace in November.

Fall 2025

January 11, 2026

planting log, trees, herbaceous, seed collection, wildlife, seasonal review | permalink

Fall was busy, but that's starting to be a refrain. Every season is busy. I feel like there is a lot of work to do, and I want to get as much of it done as soon as possible so there's more time for things to grow. To get bigger, to spread, to produce fruit, to begin to crowd out the grass, to block the view of the road and the gigantic increase in traffic due to a stop sign being put at one end of it (seriously, somewhere between 50% and more than 100% increase, the exact number depending on getting some raw data from the township for a recent count they conducted). I wrote very little about my activities, so much to catch up on here. I may later go back and add posts for a few of these things, mainly so I can link back to them from future posts and the rough map I'm making.

The biggest project of the season was cutting down the Japanese Maple in the front and planting two Eastern Redbuds (Cercis canadensis) in its place.

I planted two additional trees, both of which came free of charge from the township's shade commission: a White Oak (Quercus ruba), in the southern woodland edge, and a Black Tupelo (Nyssa sylvatica), in the northern woodland edge.

A few existing trees have become tall enough that I'm no longer worried about the deer topping them, and so cages were removed. However, there's still the risk of rubbing. So I did some research on a way to do protect the trunks with natural materials (rather than, say, plastic guards), and found the suggestion of burlap. I bought a 35-foot roll of 3-foot-wide burlap from a local hardware store, then cut sections of about 3 or 4 feet long. I then placed these around the trunks, pushing open small holes between the threads to put limbs through where I could, and tied the ends together with some twine. It seems to have been a successful - only one showed a little rubbing, but no further after an adjustment. On the other hand, the serviceberry near the road that I planted either the first fall or spring after moving in needed more protection. Deer have been keeping it trimmed, so I finally put a taller cage around it.

Transplanted somewhere around 50 to 75 common blue violets from my vegetable garden, most to front meadow along road but also a few between the tulip tree sapling and elderberry in western woodland edge. I also collected a fair number of their seed pods and spread the seeds in the same area. American plantains and yellow wood sorrel were also moved from the vegetable garden to the same places, though not nearly as many.

Another big project (maybe 15 hours over a few weeks) was planting literally thousands of native seeds, mostly herbaceous but also some shrubs/small trees. I have no idea the exact number, but somewhere between three and five thousand. The vast majority were tiny tiny seeds that you just strew on the open surface (and hope for the best), but many others were ones that I planted into the soil (and hoped for the best). My plan is to do this every fall, for at least the next few years. Most of them I bought, but some I had collected from existing plants in my garden. Here are the species, with the collected ones indicated with an asterisk, along with location:

• Hickory - at end of driveway, in northern woodland edge; these were given to me by MH, via a friend of his
• Lupinus perennis subsp perennis (Sundial Lupines) - front meadow along road
• Antennaria plantaginifolia (Pussytoes) - western woodland edge, in wood chips between rock wall I built and bald cypress; on eastern hillside
• Rhus aromatica (Fragrant Sumac), which first needed to be hot-water stratified and soaked - western woodland edge mostly, but also some by new white oak in southern woodland edge and some by new brushpile on terrace
• Conoclinium coelestinum (Mistflower) - front meadow, in mulched area in front of butterfly milkweeds
• Penstemon hirsutus (Hairy Beardtongue) - southern woodland edge
• *Apocynum cannabinum (Hemp Dogbane) - front meadow, right at edge of road; in front of blueberries on terrace; in front of blackberries and raspberries on terrace
• *Lepidium virginicum (Virginia pepperweed) - front meadow, along road
• *Plantago rugelii (American plaintain) - front meadow, along road
• Geranium maculatum (Wild Geranium) - front meadow, along road
• Iris versicolor (Northern Blue Flag) - front meadow, along road
• Amsonia tabernaemontana (Eastern Bluestar) - front meadow, along road
• Tradescantia ohiensis (Ohio Spiderwort) - front meadow, along road
• Solidago odora (Sweet Goldenrod) - front meadow, along road
• Cornus amomum subsp. obliqua (Silky Dogwood) - southern hillside
• Packera aurea (Golden Ragwort) - at corner of front of house
• Hibiscus moscheutos (Swamp Rose Mallow) - southern hillside, around existing red osier (that's a wet area and both like wet feet)
• Amorpha fruticosa (False Indigo) - I mistakenly bought a ton of these seeds so they went just about everyone in heavy doses: northern woodland edge, along border of brushpile on terrace, along the log border in middle of terrace, front meadow in grass next to roadside mulched area, at end of driveway, probably other places
• Viola pedata (Bird's Foot Violet) - around new white oak in southern woodland edge
• Clematis occidentalis var. occidentalis (Purple Clematis) - beneath red or black oak in western woodland edge
• Clematis Virginia (Virgin's Bower) - around lamppost in front meadow and pole on front porch
• *a tall goldenrod, either Solidago altissima or Solidago canadensis
• *asters - on terrace
• Carex eburnea (Ivory Sedge) - in backyard, beneath playset after desodding it
• Asclepias incarnata (Swamp or Rose Milkweed) - southern hillside, terrace

I also planted a few things in pots and put them in my fenced-in vegetable garden for some protection from being dug up, like the eastern redbuds I mentioned above:

• Hickories - ones from friend of MH and also ones given to me by a contractor that did work on our house
• Symphyotrichum novae-angliae (New England Aster)
• Physocarpus opulifolius (Prairie Ninebark)
• Staphylea trifolia (Bladdernut)
• Swamp Milkweed
• Sundial Lupines
• Silky Dogwood
• *Cornus Florida (Flowering Dogwood)

Stored some seeds I collected paper packets:

• Asters
• Goldenrod
• Eastern Redbud
• American Plantain
• Hemp Dogbane

I finished making the birdbath stump that I'd started in summer, or at least enough for now. Two-thirds of the top is chiseled out. Maybe I'll do the other third sometime. At first I thought it wasn't working, because the first time I filled it, it was empty about 30 minutes later. But it just needs to get water-logged and then it will hold water for a while - possibly a couple days (which is great, because I don't want stagnant water to be around for mosquitoes to lay eggs in, and perhaps it drying out is a good trap for them). Idea came from National Wildlife Federation, David Mizejewski, Attracting Birds, Butterflies, and Other Backyard Wildlife, 2nd edition, 2019 (p. 73).

Other things:

• planted mountain laurel
• bought more elderberry cuttings that will be arriving later this month or early next. Of the dozen I'd planted last year, three or four did not survive.
• bought and put out a "leave the leaves" sign.
• split firewood
• harvested first apples - from the black arkansas tree - with my daughter.
• planted garlic
• put vegetable garden beds to bed
• read A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion for an Uncertain Future by Benjamin Vogt

Summer 2025

September 29, 2025

trees, shrubs, herbaceous, vegetables, fruit, lepidoptera, seasonal review | permalink

On the tree front, I transplanted a few small saplings (4 or 5 inches tall at a maximum) from one place to another: I found a small eastern redbud (cercis canadensis) growing between two of my blueberry bushes, and moved it near the picnic table on the terrace, for eventual shade. I attempted to move a black walnut out of the yard and to the western treeline, but it did not survive. Similar thing with an oak, but on the other side of the driveway. But then I was successful, after being more careful with the roots and more frequent watering, with moving two other oaks out of the yard to the same place. I attempted to graft a few cuttings from the apple tree at my mom's house, whose apples I learned to juggle with. Neither survived. Did not help that it was not the correct season for it. I will try again either late this fall or early next spring. I identified, with the help of MH, three black walnuts. (I was worried they were the non-native alanthus altissima, "tree of heaven".) Two are good where they are, but the third is in the herb garden and so that will have to be moved once we get closer to winter. Removed the fencing on a couple, but then protected with burlap in mid September to protect from deer rubbing.

In shrubs, I found a great laurel (Rhododendron maximum) naturally root layering while visiting my mom, and I think it has successfully taken to my place on the western edge, although growth is slow. Of the 12 elderberries I planted in February, the range of success is pretty wide: of the nine that survived, one is about 4 feet tall (with a new shoot from the ground the same height), another is nearly 3', a couple are close to 2', and the rest are between 1 and 2'. The ones doing the best I had to put bigger cages around, twice. I'm starting to have fencing on hand when I need it, which is convenient and no further expense.

Perhaps the biggest effort of the season was at the herbaceous layer, namely removing the crabgrass that had taken over the four-foot-wide strip of mulch next to the road that I put in last year. That little patch - what I'm trying to make into a "roadside meadow" - has been a bit of a pain in the ass. First I heavily mulched it to kill the grass. A fair amount of weeding grass that survived was done a number of times. Twice I tried to start a holly hedge, and both times it failed. I spent a lot of time planting lupine and blue vervain seeds in it this spring, and mostly they were eaten by the deer. And then the fucking crabgrass. It took a good five or six hours worth of work to remove it all, and then an hour getting and spreading mulch, and then the occasional 15 minutes of weeding here and there to get what survived. After that, beginning in late August, I spent several mornings every week digging up and transplanting blue violets, and the occasional spotted spurge, from my vegetable garden. In all, it ended up being about 40 or 45 of them. I planted them right at the edge of the grass, every six inches or so, hoping they will help to keep it out. The spurge went further in, toward the road. I really like those two plants together. At times I found seed pods from the blue violets and tucked them into the mulch beyond the spurge. I also started a little patch of yellow wood sorrel on the other end, also dug up from my vegetable garden. A couple American plantains got transplanted on that side as well, and some of their seeds spread. Little bluestem seeds sown at the corner with the driveway, but no germination and probably wrong time of year (going to try again in spring).

In other places, non-native thistle was removed, native pokeweed was frustratingly removed by the spouse, grapevines removed from azaleas (I'm actually not sure of nativity of either of those, come to think of it, nor if the vines are really grapevines). Various things trimmed around the AC units. Bricks and rocks moved from one place to another. Got (self-)certified with National Wildlife Foundation, and put up a sign.

The herb and vegetable gardens were good, in addition to being a source of blue violets and yellow wood sorrel. Tons of tomatoes. Cherokee corn, but I need to learn how to harvest/cook it properly if I try it again. Damn groundhog ate the green beans a number of times, resulting in not many harvested. Peas got thrashed by deer, I think, just as they were beginning to first ripen (they ate the tops of the plants, not the pods, damaging the whole plant anyway). I gave up after the second time it happened and the plants didn't seem like they would recover. That was also a disheartening moment. Decent garlic harvest.

The backyard orchard: peaches grew, but I either waited too long to harvest or the trees are just too young (or some other reason that caused them to be dried up and molding when I checked on them in July). Of the seven apples on the apple trees I counted in May, there are three still left on the Arkansas black. Not sure what happened with the two other trees, but the one missing from the black is from me trying it way too early. Have since read up and discovered that it won't ripen until probably November and with perhaps three months of storage after that.

In addition to the black walnut (and redbud), I also identified:

• bittersweet/climbing nightshade (solanum ulcamara, not native)
• various asters (native)
• common dewberry (Rubus flagellaris), common copperleaf (Acalypha rhomboidea), and white vervain (Verbena urticifolia) (native)
• Virginia Pepperweed (lepidium virginicum, native), whose seeds I collected, spread, and stored (it's plain but still pretty, seems like a few more would be good)
• white clover throughout grass (trifolium repens, not native)
• monarchs, monarchs, monarchs
• definitely much more that maybe I'll add later

Finally, I read Attracting Birds, Butterflies, and Other Backyard Wildlife by David Mizejewski/The National Wildlife Federation (2nd ed., 2019).

Asters blooming

September 19, 2025

herbaceous, observations | permalink

Most of the asters, mainly on the terrace though there are a couple elsewhere, are in bloom. Ten days ago I noted that one was about to bloom. I think it was two or three days later that it did, and in the meantime the others have started. I think there is at least one additional species I didn't notice before. It's in the cluster in front of the larger of the two peaches, the one planted two years ago, but haven't been able to identify it yet. Not a lot of bees on them yet. I remember feeling the buzzing around them last year. Maybe it was later in the year.

Asters

September 9, 2025

herbaceous, observations | permalink

I took a stroll around the terrace today and noticed that an aster was about to bloom, and then when I looked closer I realized there were actually two different kinds of asters growing right next to each other. One was shorter and more bush-like, while the other was taller and just had a few stems on its own. I used Inaturalist's Seek app to identify them, and it came up with small white aster (Symphyotrichum racemosum) and hairy white oldfield aster (Symphyotrichum pilosum). So that was cool - I only thought I had one type. But then, as I continued my stroll, I found one that had purplish leaves and stems. Seek identified it as a calico aster (Symphyotrichum lateriflorum). So not one, not two, but (at least) three types of asters since I let it go wild when we moved in three years ago. Seek has been wrong before, so I need work to verify those IDs, but it's at least a start.

New natives

August 16, 2025

herbaceous, observations | permalink

I identified three new native plants in what I'm currently calling the southern woodland edge (a fancy name for the strip at the corner of the road and our driveway that I've reclaimed from grass): common dewberry (Rubus flagellaris), common copperleaf (Acalypha rhomboidea), and white vervain (Verbena urticifolia). I also realized that there was a potential that what I thought was American plantain (apparently pronounced "plan-tin", not "plan-tane", Plantago rugelii) was actually a different species, and so went looking for some information on how to properly identify it. I found a page from the website "Edible Wild Foods", which had an excellent video comparing it with a similar, but non-native, species, Plantago majora. Thankfully it appears I have the native one, or at least of those I looked carefully at.

New growth on asters

June 27, 2025

herbaceous, observations | permalink

New growth on asters is up about a foot, in some places more. I thought (probably mistakenly) that last year there had been new growth on the woody stalks from the previous year, but not seeing any now.

Spring 2025

June 22, 2025

trees, vegetables, fruit, wildlife, herbaceous, shrubs, seasonal review | permalink

It felt like spring was a lot of effort and not too much to show for it. On the other hand, this work of taking a sterile lawn doused in chemicals to something that actually contributes to and supports the local ecosystem does not happen overnight. I think I need to be more mindful of that, especially at moments of setbacks, of which there were several this season.

I'm going to try something a bit different for this reflection of the past season and go by layer. So let's start from the top: one shade tree went in, a black cherry (prunus serotina). It is at the corner of our property, several feet back from the road. After oaks, it is one of the best trees to plant to support a wide range of wildlife.¹

I also planted a few understory trees: an American hophornbeam (ostrya virginiana) and two American hazelnuts (corylus americana).

The black cherry and the hophornbeam came from the township's Shade Commission, while the hazelnuts came from MH.

There was also some work on existing trees: at the end of April, I cut about three feet off the American hornbeam I planted last spring, so now it's about two feet tall. Last year, it dropped nearly all of its leaves during the summer, but then regrew some of them towards fall. I didn't have high hopes that it was going to make it, but then the bottom of it leafed out. Aside from being much shorter, it now looks as healthy as it was when I planted it. I think it probably gets too much sun, so hopefully the black cherry in front of it puts on a few feet in the next couple years to give it a bit of shade. I also extended the fencing on the pear tree and apple tree I put in last season, after removing the top I'd placed on them as a temporary measure. The fencing is now six feet tall rather than four, and so is sufficient for deer protection. I'm not sure how many more trees I'll be putting in, but I'm going to find and use six-foot fencing going forward so I don't have to do that again. Live and learn.

I identified the tree - now about five feet tall - growing in the vegetable garden. It's a northern capalta (catalpa speciosa), which is great luck because I wanted to get one of them. I have not yet decided whether I'm going to do the work to transplant it or just let it go and garden around it. On the one hand, moving it will be a decent amount of work (and it might not survive) and perhaps it could act as a good pole for a pumpkin to climb? On the other, it will probably shade too much of the garden. I'm torn. But I can't be torn for too long, because late fall/early winter will be the best time to move it if I'm going to.

I also have a tentative identification of another tree, which somehow has survived unprotected to about four feet tall in the mulched area in the backyard. It may be an ash - I need to look more closely at it.

So that's the good news on trees. Unfortunately, though, the oak I transplanted last fall did not survive - or at least not as a eight-foot-tall tree. The only sign of life was one shoot coming from its base, which was eaten by some animal within a couple days. I'm reluctant to cut it down, mainly because of how much work it was putting it in but also because I still want to believe it will come back. But I will probably do so between now and next spring. I would like an oak in that spot, so in the meantime I'll probably dig up one of the little saplings I frequently find in the lawn and put it there, under some protection.

The second attempt at a holly hedge failed. I'm going to continue trying, but on a much smaller scale. I'm going to take a cutting or two from one of the existing hollies and see if I can get them to root in water. I think I'm also going to have to protect them from wildlife - while some simply didn't root, others were eaten.

A few shrubs went in: another northern spicebush (lindera benzoin) and two red-osier dogwoods (swida sericea). I put the spicebush between the other two I'd planted in May 2023. I did not cage this one, mainly because it's rather large and probably needed to be pruned after the transplant anyway. I'll watch how much it gets eaten (so far fairly minimal) and then perhaps just cage all three of them together if necessary. I think I need to get one more in that area, opposite the others, to make it too thick for the deer to reach the middle so they'll do better. I did cage the dogwoods. Fucking deer.

I ordered and planted four bearberries (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi), which are doing well. I also tried to propagate several more by root and stem cuttings, but only one may have been successful. It seemed like it was alive the last time I checked.

I spent a lot of time preparing various native seeds for planting outside and then planting either them or the resulting seedlings. None of them developed into full plants, if they grew at all. I knew that would be the case for the milkweeds and blue wild indigo (baptisa australis), but I thought I'd get some decent-looking sundial lupines (lupinus perennis) or literally anything else (black-eyed susans, columbines, purple love grass, little bluestem, buttonbush, blue vervain), but nothing is taller than four inches, except maybe the butterfly milkweeds. I haven't seen a sign of the black-eyed susans, purple love grass (eragrostis spectabilis), little bluestem (schizachyrium scoparium), buttonbush (cephalanthus occidentalis), or blue vervain (verbena hastata). I'm hoping some are just putting down roots and will come up next year. Even if not, I suppose it's ok. I have double that number of species that I'm going to plant in the fall. Seeds are relatively inexpensive (and sometimes free); I'm going to load the ground with them every spring and fall, with the occasional season off to give myself a break.

Removing lawn continued, but at a slower pace than I would have liked. Aside from areas where trees went in, it amounted to maybe 20 square feet.

In the vegetable garden, now nearly double the size it was last year, most things that I planted came up. The things that didn't: about half the corn, most of the Detroit Bull's Blood beets, and none of the handful of cucumbers. Those only accounted for a very small amount of the space, though, and I moved other things that were too thick into their spaces. So everything else came up and grew well, until deer (I assume) got into the raised bed and destroyed the 130 pea plants that were over four feet tall. I was able to save maybe a quart of peas. I'd wanted to keep saving them to replant year after year, but will have to buy some next spring now. Something has also been getting in and eating the green bean leaves. I'm not sure if that's also deer (maybe a rabbit?), but soon I'm going to extend the fencing from four feet to six feet tall. If the green beans are still being eaten, I guess I'll have to put in better protection at the ground level.

I was doing more weeding (mostly grass of one sort or another) than I wanted to, in both the vegetable garden and in the areas where I've removed grass and mulched/planted other things. It's frustrating because one of the reasons I'm trying to remove the lawn is to lower the amount of maintenance needed. And things I've planted are either growing extremely slow or being eaten by deer, allowing room for weeds. It's doubly frustrating because some of it is coming from my compost. I'm hoping that by next year, after another round of native seed planting in the fall, the good things will begin to out-compete the bad things. In the vegetable garden, I think it's now mostly under control from grass clippings I put down, which will have the added benefit of keeping soil more cool and more moist during the hot summer months that are now upon us.

One thing that I did that I had not planned on doing was creating a small rock wall on the western edge of property. I was originally just digging out some rocks so I could plant one of the bearberries, and got carried away, digging up giant rock after giant rock with the help of a neighbor's pry-bar he calls "the persuader". It certainly persuaded the rocks out of the ground much easier than any tool I have. I like how it turned out, and that makes a clear distinction between the grass and the mulched/wildflower area. (Eventually I also intend to start removing the lawn on this side of it, but that's probably at least several years off.)

Other tasks completed:

• fill small sinkhole next to driveway with mulch
• identify groundcover with yellow flowers in space between us and neighbors (lesser celandine)
• empty rotating compost barrel
• transplant blue violets from hillside with grass to new rock wall and hillside with apples
• transplant some of the pussytoes - I don't want to lose them when I eventually get around to removing grass on hillside below flowering dogwood
• plant white hyacinths from MH&DW
• plant sunflowers from MH
• weed and spread woodchips around chestnuts, oak, and maple
• do soil test in vegetable garden
• sharpen mower blades
• Read Chris Baines's How to Make a Wildlife Garden

1. According to Doug Tallamy. I saw this once before but the most recent place was on the May 15, 2021 episode of the Native Plant Podcast.

Peonies done blooming

June 6, 2025

herbaceous, observations | permalink

Peonies are done blooming.

Milkweed propagation

May 3, 2025

milkweed, herbaceous | permalink

During evenings from February 27 to March 7, I planted, among other things, 45 common milkweed seeds - that I'd saved in the fall and then cold stratified (some moist and some dry) in the fridge for a couple months - in pots in my basement. Just one came up about three weeks later. But I left all the pots where they were for a while and kept watering them. Then I mostly gave up and reused the soil for other things, except for one pot, which I moved up to the living room and put in a windowsill there. That was probably three weeks ago. And I kept watering it every few days, though I figured it was a lost cause. Wouldn't you know it, though? One came up. So 2 out of 45, given the conditions I put them in. I'm assuming it was temperature related. If I try this again next year, I'll try them in a warmer spot, probably in late March or early April. At the same time, they spread well on their own, so maybe I'll just dig up some new ones that come up if I want to give them away.

Lesser celandine vs blue violet

April 20, 2025

herbaceous | permalink

Here's a couple of leaves from low-growing plants in my yard that look similar. The one on the left is slightly smaller, smoother, silkier, and has more shallow veins than the one on the right. The plant the left leaf belongs to has a small daisy-like yellow flower. I believe it's lesser celandine (Ficaria verna). The flower for the one on the right is purple. It's some kind of violet, and until I saw the many different kinds listed at the Native Plant Trust while writing this and looking for a link, I thought it was common blue violet (Viola sororia, which they call woolly blue violet). That might be right, but I need to take a closer look, especially at the flower, to be sure. Lesser celandine is invasive, while the violet is native.

Milkweed propagation

March 16, 2025

herbaceous, milkweed, observations | permalink

Three butterfly milkweeds have sprouted, each from a separate pot, but all from the ones planted on Feb 27 or 28. Three beebalms have also come up.

Flower seeds started

March 5, 2025

herbaceous, milkweed | permalink

Over the past week, I started a bunch of flower seeds. Roughly:

• 45 common milkweed (from my yard)
• 45 butterfly milkweed (from my yard)
• 7 swamp milkweed (from local nature center seed library)
• 66 bee balm (from my mom)
• 130 columbine (from my mom)
• 40 obedient plant (from my mom)
• 20 daisy (from my yard)
• 80 blue-eyed grass (from local nature center seed library)
• 13 swamp rose mallow (from local nature center seed library)
• 8 unknown (from a seed pod I'd snagged while traveling in central PA; curious to identify it)

That's 450 seeds in all! For most of them, I only used half of what I have, and I'm going to directly sow the remaining ones outside in the next few weeks. (Except for the common and butterfuly milkweeds - I probably have 1000 of those.)

All except the bee balm were cold stratified in the fridge for two months, which I think is cutting it close. The columbine I did only dry, but all the rest were half dry and half moist. For the moist stratification, I used unbleached coffee filters (which held up very well). I'd first moisten a filter on a plate with a thin layer of water on it, hold it up to let the excess water drip off, and then put it on another plate before adding seeds and wrapping it up to about the size of a half a roll of pennies. Then the filter went into a ziplock bag, labelled, and finally when they were all done, they went into a small plastic container. Similar thing for the dry stratification, just minus the coffee filters. Both containers then went into the back of the fridge, where I patiently waited for them to do their thing. And now I'm waiting for them to do their next thing.

Soon I'll need to figure out where I'm going to start the vegetable seeds, because there's not a hell of a lot of space left under grow lights. I'm hoping I can move the flowers to windowsills once they start to come up to make way for the veggies.

Morning glory blooming

June 12, 2024

herbaceous, observations | permalink

I've never had a morning glory before, and when I was picking out seeds for the vegetable garden earlier this spring, either I or my daughter thought it looked pretty, so we picked a packet up. I planted all the seeds - maybe 20 to 30 - and just a single one came up. It grew inside for awhile, and then I planted it at the edge of the raised bed a couple weeks ago. I hadn't noticed it even starting to form a flower bud, and then today there was this glorious flower:

Planted remaining sunflowers

May 29, 2024

herbaceous | permalink

In the morning, I planted the last of the sunflowers that I had under lights in the basement. There were 4 in one pot and 2 in another. The roots were bound well together so I just planted them by the pot - four went into the decaying center of the large tree stump on the terrace, and two by the sidewalk. Overnight, the ones by the sidewalk had already been chomped - but I'm not sure by what. They were just cut off at a stalk segment, but not eaten. The tops just lay on the ground next to the stalk stumps that were about 4 inches tall. The ones in the tree stump survived.

In all, that's about 50 sunflowers I planted. About 20 have survived, with most doing well except the ones on the hillside that haven't grown much and are a bit spindly. I think next year I'll try a few less and also wait to put them out maybe two weeks later - so maybe around May 1.

One tray of the seedlings inside on April 3:

Daffodil bulbs planted

February 25, 2024

herbaceous | permalink

I had wanted to plant these in the fall, but ran out of time to do it. So in they went at the end of February. In total, I probably planted 50+ bulbs. They are along the steps up to the terrace, then in a cluster at the top, and finally between two of the pillars.

They all seemed to do well.