Wednesday, April 20, 2022

How does my garden grow?

Our new plants are growing! And flowering too!!

Now if I can just not kill them. Knowing when to water is challenging. We got a couple of good rains since planting in the planting bed. But this week the weather is not cooperating. I was hoping we would go on getting a good solid rain once a week. I heard a storm was expected yesterday, but we only got a few drops. 

So I just went and watered the plants a little and gave the maple its weekly deep watering.

I also took some photos. It is a little windy so I wasn't able to get good close ups of the flowers:



Yesterday I also noticed that the maple is leafing out. Here is a close up of some of the new leaves. 


It is still so tiny that it doesn't show up very well in photos as a whole tree. But here is one from my office window this morning:




The next morning: 

We had a lot of rain this morning since I wrote the above (my rain gauge said 3/4"). So now the maple has had two deep watering's. Oh dear. At least I only gave the planting bed a little sip yesterday so the big drink it got this morning should be ok. Meanwhile the maple is due for it's monthly "Seamist Root Stimulator" treatment. It is a liquid concentrate that I am supposed to dilute in a gallon of water. So that means more water... But one gallon isn't really very much... is it?

Several days later:

I haven't seen any butterflies around the garden yet. The main wildlife we get are squirrels and neighborhood cats.

He seems to be surveying his domain.
It's better than some things he could be doing!


Other news is that we got a new roof. We weren't planning to and didn't even know it was needed until last week. That's what the sign in the yard is about. I'll try to post about it next time. I was going to do that with this post but it was taking too long so I decided to finish this to let you know how things are growing while it is still fresh and exciting! The irises are about to bloom too. So next time I'll try to include some of those.

Here are some better photos of the flowers: 

Salvia Greggii


Gulf Coast Penstemon

Thursday, April 7, 2022

Planting in the planting bed

The plants are in! We finally planted in our new planting bed. 

I use the term "we" somewhat loosely. I sprained my ankle a few days before, so my main contribution was supervising from a lounge chair. John and Roger, a coworker from John's office, did most of the work. 

It was a mild sprain so I did sometimes get up to get things for them (and to take a few photos!). That is until the sun and heat were too much for me. Then I went inside. This spring seems like winter and summer are fighting it out to see which will win. One day winter is on top and the next it feels like summer is winning. 

It was a big job. It would have been a much bigger job without Roger's help. So in case you read this, Roger, thanks again!

We started gathering plants several days before. All but the desert willow came from Val's nursery, Motherherbs Garden, in Cedar Hill. 

We got the desert willow a week before
from Weston Gardens, in Fort Worth. It was a lovely spring day.

A few days later on Tuesday afternoon we got the other plants from Val's nursery. It was so cold that day I didn't think of taking photos while we were there. It felt like winter was back for sure. I was seriously tempted to just hide in her green house where it was warm and let Val and John collect the plants. This photo is when we were unloading them at home onto our patio.


The first job was to dig a hole for the desert willow and do a perk test. John did it the night before planting. It took about two and half hours to drain. Val said anything over two hours is considered poor drainage. It means we won't need to water as often though, so that at least, seems like a plus. 


Hole for perk test

Saturday morning he removed the mulch from the bed temporarily and put it in bags to reapply after the plants were in.

Then he took separate photos of each kind of plant together in their pots with the label showing so we would have a record of what's what. I'll try to do another post soon with a close up of each kind of plant and tell what they are.



Then he put everything in place according to Val's design (below). 




The checkerboard is where the dead stump from the old ash tree is. It is a few inches below the surface. We had the stump ground down when the tree was removed. But it only went several inches down. John removed what he could of the smaller roots around it when he was building the bed, but this part was too massive to remove. He inserted molasses into it (see previous post) so hopefully that will help it break down. The bigger black square is where Val suggested we could put a bird bath or something. But now that we have planted everything it doesn't look like there is room for it there after all.

John and Roger planted the desert willow first (that is the W in the diagram above).


Roger planting native yarrow around the desert willow. (After planting I pruned the desert willow per Val's instructions by removing the bottom two branches and a little of each of the top branches as well.)


Val said to water the plants just before planting them. He watered the planting bed the night before.








All done but the mulch


John and Roger taking a celebratory drink of water :-) after a job well done. 


John putting the mulch on.


It's been twelve days since we finished planting. I feel happy with the way it looks and I look forward to seeing how the plants grow and flower. 


The desert willow after removing the bottom two branches and pruning some off the top branches: 

It's the taller twiggy thing. The shadows are from our neighbor's oak tree. It gets a brief period of shade in the morning. Most of the day it's in full sun. 


 
View from my office window.