Photo of the Week: Cosmos

 

Photo of the Week: Mexican Hat

 

Photo of the Week: Queen of the Garden

 

Photo of the Week: Fire Flower

 

Photo of the Week: Zinnia & Plains Coreopsis

 

Zinnia

Plains Coreopsis

Photo of the Week: Perfect Sunflower

 

Right click, open in new tab to zoom in

Photo of the Week: Butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa)

 

Photo of the Week: California Poppy

 

Garden update: It's been awhile...

Because there isn't much garden work that can be done in Iowa in the middle of winter. The first sign of Spring came on February 1st when my daffodils began pushing up through the mulch. Some of them are now in full bloom.

The best of the group

Angle 2

This afternoon I went out and planted seeds for several cool season crops: radishes, carrots, peas, and onions. I also planted onion sets for the first time. Those are in a separate section so we'll see how they turn out. I'm also going to try my hand at: broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, and kale. I had no success with those last year so I'm starting them indoors this year.

For warm season crops I'm planning on corn and sweet potatoes. I've saved three ears of corn from last season and am hoping at least some of the kernels will be viable. I really liked the sweet potatoes I grew two years ago and this time I'm going to try creating slips to overwinter indoors.

For non-food plants I've saved two heads of bee balm and planted seeds from those in about ten jiffy pots and planted those out in the garden. I hope these work out because bee balm smells wonderful and is right up there with lilac in my opinion. I also sowed seeds from cup plant last fall to try and kickstart a 'native' garden.

The biggest news is I finally got around to planting my year-old apple sapling outside on Friday. It looks a little worse than last summer but it still has green leaves. It was quite windy today and still gets chilly at night so I put a tomato cage wrapped in cloth around it to protect it. Hope it survives but if it doesn't I've got about twenty seeds chilling in the fridge that I could try.

Better times last summer

Photo of the Week: Iowa Street Cred

It ain't much but it's honest work.

 

Photo of the Week: First pea harvest

They were delicious

 

Photo(s) of the Week: Monarchs

Monarch caterpillars feeding on butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa)

 

Photo(s) of the Week: Backyard orchard

 Both have grown a bit since these photos were taken.

Apple

Pecan

Photo of the Week: Harvest

It's been awhile since I've done a gardening update so I thought I'd post a picture of my first harvest. It was definitely a learning experience. For example, critters really love eating melon flowers so getting even one cantaloupe was a challenge. The first melon got gnawed on by presumably a chipmunk or ground squirrel and I didn't notice the second one until frost killed off the vines. There wasn't much flesh and it wasn't sweet or tasty but it produced a surprising amount of seeds for next spring.

I had better success with the root vegetables. Lessons were learned with the sweet potatoes, namely that they like their space. Each container is holding three plants. The three in the top container were grown surrounded by carrots, cantaloupe, and sunflowers. The three in the bottom container were grown in more isolation

The carrots were pretty simple to grow and their size seems determined by how early they were planted. The largest one is a little over 13 inches long. In total I had 15 carrots but 4 were small and not worth harvesting so I left them to see if they will go to seed next year.

Overall I planted 4 cantaloupe seeds and got 2 to sprout, although one was extremely stunted. The six sweet potatoes were store bought plants. I don't know how many carrot seeds I planted but it was more than double what I ended up with.

Next year I plan to add corn, peas, and strawberries to the mix.

A very small gardening update

Over the past several weeks I've noticed something growing in one of my flower pots. I think it's some kind of oak or poplar but I'm not sure. Regardless, I transplanted it to the yard. Now we'll just wait and see.

Gardening: Nature is an Autocrat

As the title says, Mother Nature is an autocrat. All of the cantaloupe seedlings died and all but one of the sunflower seedlings died. So here comes Round 2. Tons of bird and squirrel-planted sunflowers have popped up though. I also scattered a bunch of marigold and California poppy seeds a little over a month ago and they are just no beginning to grow. I've also sown columbine under the existing crabapple tree (because I'm sick of mowing under there) and butterfly weed seeds in the mulch around the house.

As for trees the potted maple has begun leafing out although it's been slow going. I repotted it into a larger pot to try and help it out. Lazarus has has also leafed out although the main stem appears dead as it's begun sprouting leaves from a new stem. I've taken two cuttings from a ginkgo tree and potted them so here's hoping that in ~2 months they'll have taken root. I've also managed to save and pot two crabapple seedlings. Most exciting of all is that I was recently eating an apple when I discovered that a seed had sprouted inside of it, producing a root about a quarter-inch long. So I potted that and am now praying that it will survive. The Lord taketh but He also giveth.

Spring is here!

That means it's time to start planting and with fuel prices rising and food shortages on the horizon there's no better year to start. Last fall I harvested a "wild" sunflower growing near my house and this year I plan to grow numerous sunflowers along the south wall where there is currently nothing but peonies, spirea, and bare mulch.

One head of sunflower seeds and some crabapples.

Along the west wall there's more mulch, spirea, and sedum. I intend to plant cantaloupe in the bare areas here. I have grown cantaloupe in a pot before, producing one baseball sized melon.

In the northwest corner there is more mulch, spirea, daylilies, and coneflowers. I've also planted about 7-8 apple seeds here and am hoping at least one will sprout. In the southwest corner of the property I intend to plant the maple sapling I collected last summer.

Better days...

Winter was hard. The leaves dried up and fell off. I'm praying this means it's just dormant and not dead. Moving to the front yard I'll be removing the shroud from Lazarus the mulberry in a few weeks and praying that the rabbits don't get to it.

Lazarus

Just to the north of Lazarus I planted a sycamore seed. If that one fails to germinate I have several seed balls I can take more seeds from.

Lastly, I may or may not take some of the cedar saplings and transplant them to the north or northwest (if the apples fail) yard to create a windbreak and privacy screen. An alternative is the possibility of 'guerilla' planting them around town.

An abundance of cedars

Those are my gardening plans for this year.

A brief gardening update

It's late fall here in Iowa meaning there won't be much to do in the way of gardening until April but I do have a few things to share:

• I cut the end off of a plastic downspout and placed it over Lazarus to try and protect it from rabbits during winter.
• The potted maple is indoors and still green although some of the leaves have brown spots.
• I potted two cedars hoping I could get some growth out of them over winter.
• I found an American sycamore (Platanus occidentalis) seed ball in the parking lot of Hilton Coliseum and have potted about five of the seeds from it. If I can get one seedling out of it I'll transplant it outside when spring comes.

Lazarus the Mulberry

    Just posting some photos of Lazarus. For before photos just imagine a stick with crunchy, brown leaves attached to it.

The three mulberries. I haven't decided which one to keep yet.

The tallest one had its top snipped off by a rabbit.

I also happened upon a mantis lurking on some Sedum, waiting for a bee or wasp to come close.

Lazarus the Mulberry

     A very brief update about some plantings. A while ago I tore up (literally yanked them out of the ground) two mulberry saplings less than a foot tall and transplanted them to a more preferable growing location. Very quickly their leaves turned brown and dried up. I thought I had killed them. Despite that I continued to water them everyday since then and when I went to water them today I noticed that both had small leaf buds sprouting up and down the length of their stems.

    To say I'm thrilled is an understatement and because of that I've decided to name one of them Lazarus (I'll have to kill or relocate the other since they are growing six inches from each other).