Three Rivers Stone and Stepables Sedum
April 28th, 2008
I want to share a couple recent purchases I made for my garden, specifically, for a water feature I am building that I should be able to share in a week or 10 days.
The first is this gorgeous rock called Three Rivers Stone. I was at the stone place and wanted some boulders 12-18 inches square and wanted something interesting. I was just going to get generic glacial boulders which are cheap, but then I saw these, and I fell in love. They’re just so cool. Apparently they’re from a place in Idaho and it is the only place in the world you get these stones (a type of very very very dense & heavy sandstone). I’m guessing it is near three rivers or what used to be three rivers. There are shades of true purple, gold, yellow, rust brown, and even streaks of black (oil? Dunno, I’m no geologist) in some. They have so much visual strength and character. I bought about 2500 pounds worth and paid $500, including delivery, which is cheaper than I thought it’d be. That volume gains me around 20 (or just under) linear feet of wall for my raised water garden.
The second thing I bought were some “Stepables” ground covers. These were expensive, $45 a tray, but what can you do? “Stepables” is just a brand name for a company that sells ground covers that take foot traffic. I bought a tray that is 1/3rd blue sedum, 1/3rd golden moneywort (lysimachia aurea), and 1/3rd purple sedum. I know for a fact that all three plants are stupidly easily to propagate and had I had the option to buy them anywhere else, I would have, but I’d never even seen those types of sedum before, and I check out a lot of catalogs, ebay, and nursery websites. So, I bought them for the high price, but if you were to do the same I would recommend you do as I did and buy the minimum and then propagate them by yourself, they’re so easy.
I actually had a golden moneywort already (and had propagated it all over my yard), but I had bought it on ebay and I didn’t know what cultivar, if any, it was, and this stuff in the tray is more golden than mine, which is why I bought it originally (nice golden ground cover is good for contrasting foliage colors). So I figured I’d give this stuff a try and see how it compares to what I already had.
The sedum though, that stuff is for my water garden. Won’t that “Purple Form” sedum look great cascading down those three rivers stone boulders? I can’t wait.
To propagate either sedum or lysimachia get a tray like what you buy annuals in, recycle the ones you get from the nursery, fill it with soil. Then make a bunch of random small 3 inch or so cuttings from the plant you want to propagate, dip each in rooting hormone, stick it in the soil, keep it moist, and give it a few weeks. So easy. I’m propagating sedums constantly in the summer.
I’ll also be putting baby dwarf evergreens around the water garden, it is going to look great, stay tuned for pictures when it is done.
Better Gardening Through Science
April 17th, 2008I wrote a new article today, Better Gardening Through Science, check it out. It covers milky spore bacteria, mycorrhizal fungus, and water absorbing polymers. All essential tools for today’s modern gardener.
Selling Some Ditch Lilies
April 11th, 2008
I’ve previously blogged about ditch lilies here, and now I’ve got quite a few extras and am selling them on ebay for cheap.
Ditch lilies, also called tiger lilies, or common orange daylilies, are a species form of daylily. Hemerocallis fulva. Each plant has pleasing lighter green grass like foliage and 3 foot high flower spikes that flower in early summer to late spring. These plants spread very quickly using underground runners (unlike normal daylilies). They are tank-hardy, they will take anything. Which is why as I explained in my previous blog post I am using them to fill up the space between the sidewalk and the road.
I would not recommend planting these in among other perennials as they can take over, but if you have a defined space you want to fill, ditch lilies are a great (and cheap) choice. You can also just always plant them in ditches or in the middle of your lawn and then keep them in bounds with a mower, no edging needed.
Perennial Lettuce?
April 8th, 2008
It has been so nice getting out and gardening this past week now that weather has finally warmed up. You do not realize how much joy, or the sense of peace, it gives you until you get to flip that switch from being stuck inside to being able to go out.
Anyways, in inspecting my raised veggie bed I noticed two of these little plants growing where I had planted a mesclun lettuce mix last year. Obviously this is some type of edible leafy green, though I do not know which. What I find really, really, really, odd though is that the raised bed was entirely barren of living plants (as it should be after a hard winter) except two of this type, both looking pretty good. Obviously it had gotten frost bit at one point, but all told, I’m impressed.
I always thought all leafy greens were annuals, or otherwise would not survive a cold Michigan winter. And yet… there is the picture. I transplanted it as well as I was adding a whole new layer of compost to the bed, and so I can attest it has a fairly well developed root ball, ie it isn’t a recent sprout. It has to have been living atleast 3 or 4 months.
So, what do I have? And why is it doing so well? Does anyone know? It was a seed mix and I don’t recall seeing many/any of these plants back last fall and summer when I was harvesting, but it may have been hidden down below. Also, it could be that a few seeds of something got tossed in with the rest of the mix. I’m really quite curious. If indeed there is a type of lettuce that can handle extreme temperatures and still look this good I might just plant more of it.
Naturalizing Crocus in the Lawn
April 7th, 2008
Finally Flowers. Michigan had an abysmally cold February and March and all the bulbs and other plants were delayed, I heard that even one state to the South things were on schedule, but up here this is the latest start I remember in recent time.
But finally, things are waking up, and up first of course, are crocuses. So I get to see the results of the in-lawn plantings I did last fall.
Planting crocus in your lawn is a great way to plant more flowers without having to make more garden beds. The bulbs sit below your sod, the crocus foliage looks like grass, and by the time you need to mow, the flowers are done and it doesn’t hurt them.
You can naturalize your entire lawn, something I’d highly recommend if you’re putting in new sod or seeding for the first time after construction. You may need to shop around to find a distributor willing to sell you thousands of bulbs in bulk for relatively little cash but I think it’d be worth it. You would have, every Spring, a carpet of blossoms where your lawn should be. People will stop to take pictures, it would be beautiful.
For those of us with established lawns though, such a thing is possible, just much much much more work as we have to remove and then replace the sod.
What I did was just two small areas totaling probably 10 square feet together. I used an edging spade to cut the grass into squares of about 12 inches and then used a flat shovel to scoop them up in one piece. I then laid the crocus bulbs (technically corms) down on the exposed dirt, replaced the sod, and tamped down. It was a good deal of work, my sod was compacted and tough to dig, but I’m glad I did it. You’ll want to plant densely for a more powerful affect, so err on the side of too many bulbs rather than too few.
You will notice in the picture some dying grass, that is to be expected, the edges where you cut the sod will brown, but that should respond and fill in within a month or two in the Spring and of course be gone entirely in future years.
Probably when I buy a new house or otherwise have the opportunity to plant BEFORE sod is laid or seed is sown, I will plant thousands of crocus bulbs for huge swaths of color. For now though, I’ll enjoy what I’ve got.
Golden Yellow Ground Cover for Shade
February 26th, 2008
I have a beautiful laceleaf japanese maple with crimson foliage in a shady corner of my yard, and by shady I mean, really shady. It is in a corner between my shed and a large spruce, so that it literally gets 0 sun, except maybe around the Summer Equinox it might get a little. Anyways, despite having hundreds of pictures of my garden, apparently I lack even a single one of this nook that is in focus. So, I couldn’t include a picture of it for this post. (I included one of my options for planting there instead, read below).
Anyways, I’m a big fan of using contrasting foliage colors when laying out my gardens, and so I’ve always wanted a yellow or golden ground cover (or other short plant) to go underneath the tree. The yellow ground cover would contrast with the red leaves, making them see all the more redder (making them “pop” if you will) and vice versa.
One problem with variegated or oddly-colored (not green) plants though is that their coloring can be affected by sun exposure. Some plants are green in the shade and only get their color in the sun, others have color in the shade but “green out” when exposed to sunlight.
Currently I have a few heucherella ‘Sunspot’ but it would appear this heucherella needs a little sun to get it’s full color, as it is a drab green for me in that deep shade.
I have thought about getting a hosta, but.. in addition to contrasting foliage colors I also like to do shapes and sizes and I already have some hostas ringing that bed. Still, Hosta “Little Sunspot” looks good, and I know hostas will show their interesting color in deep shade (sun greens them out), but I’m not 100% sure about it. If anyone knows a small narrow-leaved golden yellow hosta, please comment. All the hostas around the bed currently have normal heart-shaped leaves, so a narrow-leaved one would still contrast and look good.
If it were a sunny location I would just use ‘Creeping Jenny’ aka moneywort aka Lysimachia nummularia ‘Aurea’. This is a vibrant yellow, fast growing (almost invasive) easy to replicate, cheap, ground cover. Alas, it needs sun to achieve the right banana yellow hue I am after.
In my scan of gardening catalogies I saw a plant I’ve no experience with. Veronica ‘Golden Halo’ (picture) looks great, and apparently grows in shade, but I’m unsure if it will achieve that color in shade or if it needs a little sun. I also saw some pictures of a Veronica ‘Sunshine’ (picture), but some of the pictures look awfully green so I don’t trust it.
Right now I’m leaning towards Heuchera ‘Citronelle’, it is the image pictured above at the top of this post. In my experience, heucheras receive their best color when in shade, and sunlight greens them, so, I would hope that this would be as yellow as it can be in the shade. However, heucherellas are closely related to heucheras and my experience with the heucherellas there hasn’t been good.
So, before I pull the trigger and order some of these, I’m hoping I’ll get some feedback from others. So please comment if you’ve grown any of the plants I’ve mentioned, or have ideas for ones I’ve not yet mentioned. Remember, it has to have yellow foliage, that will stay yellow in full absolute shade. Also, the spot is moist, and I am in zone 5.
New Wayside Gardens Coupon Bonus Code
February 26th, 2008This one is pretty good. $15 off $75. IF you spent $75 on the dot that makes it 20% off. I buy a lot of stuff from Wayside, they tend to provide good plants of good size, nice selection too. They’ve also made good for me repeatedly when a plant came dead or died shortly after coming. Anyways, looks like this offer expires 3/31/08.
AeroGarden Review
February 21st, 2008My wife got me an AeroGarden for Christmas. I had seen these before, and even was offered a gig consulting for the company with their Internet marketing, but overall held off because of our cats, and their penchant for eating anything I try to grow indoors.
My wife though was, apparently, willing to sacrifice for me a spot in our dining room the cats cannot reach and so she bought me one, with the included herb packet.
Other than gardening, my second most active hobby is cooking, and I do like using fresh herbs when I can, so this makes the product attractive to me. I get fresh herbs in winter. Anyone who has ever bought fresh herbs at the grocery store knows how expensive they can be.
Setup was fairly easy, and as an experienced gardener, altogether unconfusing. However a gardening newbie might not fully understand how aeroponics works and not find it all as intuitive as I did.
I received my first disappointment shortly after setting it up though. I always assumed you could grow anything you have seeds for with this system, but they instead seem to just use proprietary little seed pods, which aren’t of course as cheap as seeds from other sources. A little bit of a razor blade business model maybe?
So I had the herbal seed packet, which included two types of basil, parsley, mint, dill, chives, and cilantro. I set the machine up and started it going and waited. After two weeks everything was growing except the cilantro, after 3 weeks still, no cilantro. So I was quite happy because I think cilantro is nasty. I tucked some flat leaf parsley seeds I had in the cilantro pod and they are now growing. This makes me hope that maybe I will figure out a way to reuse the pods (the problem is, they will be full of the roots from the previous growth).
Since that time the basil has grown really well, but the other plants notsomuch, partially because the basil may be crowding them out. It wasn’t my choice though, there was an actual diagram included with the seeds to prevent crowding, apparently though, it just doesn’t work.
I’ve already used and harvested the basil a few times, but I don’t know when, if ever, I’ll harvest the others. They just haven’t grown enough yet.
The grow lights I find a little disconcerting. They appear to be normal fluorescent grow lights, and yet they give off way more heat than normal fluorescent grow lights I’ve seen before. Additionally they do not lock into their sockets, at all, and so every once in awhile I have to push them back into the sockets they have come loose from.
I also have run into the problem that happens to all who grow indoors, weak stems and drooping plants. Any gardener will tell you that plants develop strong stems in response to wind and other disturbances like rain. Plants grown indoors do not have this and so often end up weak and unable to support their own weight. I read a review where someone had setup a fan across from her AeroGarden on a timer to simulate a daily breeze, quite frankly I don’t want to go to so much effort.
Overally I have a mediocre opinion of this product. Okay, for herbs and maybe salad greens, it could be useful. But I don’t see it really being able to grow good veggies like peppers as the marketing material says it could, I don’t see the stems being able to support the weight. Additionally I dislike that you’re dependent on them for seed pods, and the light socket seems poorly made.
I don’t mind having it certainly, but I’m unsure if I would have ever bought it for myself.
Park Seed 10% Off Coupon
February 8th, 2008This is a really good coupon, I don’t think I’ve ever seen them offer such a nice coupon before. Especially if you’re like me with the potential for placing a really big order. Normally their coupons are like just $5 off, or a free plant (that I’m sure they’re way overstocked in) this though, 10% off is quite nice. I believe it runs through the end of this month.
Something to Grow: Black Currants
January 14th, 2008I was just reading an article about black currants and my interest was piqued. I am really into nutrition and apparently black currants have twice the antioxidants of blueberries, double the vitamin C of oranges, and double the potassium of bananas, among other health virtues.
But you cannot buy them in the store, even if you think you can. The currants most stores have listed, and indeed the currants most recipes call for, are a type of dried small Italian grape (so-called “zante currants”). The reason you cannot buy them is that they were illegal to grow for many many years in the US (big business in Europe though). Apparently it was thought that they acted as a surrogate for a disease that affected the white pine lumber industry and so to protect that industry they were banned. They are only now just recently making it back. So, if you can’t buy them, what choice do you have but to grow them?
They are also apparently very productive, producing a large amount of fruit per acre (or bush, I’m sure none of us are going to grow acres) , which means you get more value, in real dollar terms, from growing them than growing other things.
Though apparently they don’t taste good raw, you need to cook them and sweeten them first. I do hear however that they make really good jams and jellies, as well as sauces for meat, or even wine.
They’re hardy in zones 4-7, making them excellent for most of the continental US, especially places where you cannot grow citrus (the other way to get large amounts of vitamin C).
I think I might just get a bush. I’ve searched online and the only place I can find them presently is Gurney’s, and they’re sold out right now.
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