Gardening Gods, Why Do you Forsake Me

Posted on July 24, 2009 by Meredith

Gardening is still such a mystery to me. What should work doesn’t, and what shouldn’t work does. I know there are all sorts of Murphy’s Laws when it comes to this crazy hobby. Here’s what I’ve discovered about the way gardening works. Gardening gods, why do you forsake me?!!

*Why is it that you promise yourself most determinedly that this time you will not buy any plants, and when you get to the nursery you realize that not just one, but two of your most coveted hard-to-find plants have just arrived off the truck? (here is more Dutchman’s Pipevine — the other, non-pictured is a native milkweed I rarely see)

*Why is it that you wait so long for the first monarch of the season, and when you finally see one you discover all your milkweed is covered in aphids?

*On the same note, why is it that ladybugs show up when there aren’t any aphids and leave before the ferocious onslaught of the little sap-suckers?

*Why is it that your darling dogs have an impelling need to lay on and compact any dirt you till, and another impelling need to dig up any freshly planted garden bed? (This photo, by the way, is of the naughty dog that keeps getting in the pond. She’s usually camera-shy. Don’t be fooled by her gorgeous fur. It hides an imp.)

*And why is it that your yard can have plenty of available (dog) fertilizer but you can’t use one bit of it to make compost?

*Why is it that the bag that spills in the car is not the bag of pine straw, and not even the pleasant smelling potting soil, but the compost made from cow manure?

*Why is that you set out birdfeeders for hummingbirds and cardinals and what you get instead are gluttonous, wasteful doves and predatory wasps? (Ok, really, I get them all.)

*Why is it that the pond you enjoy so much attracts, among other creatures, hornets and wasps that take a nice long, happy drink before going and killing your beloved caterpillars? (Sad note: the monarch caterpillar in the milkweed picture above, along with all its buddies, disappeared during the writing of this blog entry. Stupid, but necessary predators.)

*Why is that you attempt to sacrifice yourself to the gods for some rain by putting up a metal trellis while standing on a partially metal ladder with wire cutters and a hammer in your hand and thunder and lightning in the distance, and all you get is a few sprinkles, like a spit in the eye?

*Why is it that you don’t realize you have to stop at the grocery store on the way home until after you’ve covered yourself in stinky compost while bagging it at the nursery?

*Why is it that you buy a beautiful tree that you are determined to keep alive because it needs to shade the A/C unit and because it is replacing one that died, and it dies while the one that the dogs dug up multiple times over the winter is the one that is thriving? (Actually, three trees the dogs mostly destroyed came back and are doing well.)

*Why is it that the young trees you rarely water (including two you forgot about for weeks in your garage after the last frost) survive, but the ones you faithfully water on a recommended schedule die?

*Why is it that the plants you still haven’t managed to put mulch around are doing better than the ones you surrounded with three inches of mulch?

*Why is it that the most amazing, beautiful sights in your garden happen when your camera is nowhere near?

*Why is it that a random new seedling grows in your yard and you have to wait until it gets big to find out what it is, or whether it is friend (keeper) or foe (weed or invasive)? This one looks like a friend, I hope, but I don’t know what it is yet.

*Why is it that your son doesn’t want to work outside when it’s hot, but then when it’s cool and overcast, he still doesn’t want to work? Oh wait, I know that one.

*(from the son) Why is it that your mom always makes you work, but barely ever lets you goof around? Oh wait, I know that one. (from the Mom: clearly I just let him goof around)

*Why is it that your beautiful plants take so long to grow, but your weeds grow like… well, weeds?

*(from the other son) Why is it that every time you want to plant something, your mom doesn’t have a plant to plant? But when you don’t want to plant something, she has lots and lots.

*Why is it that you lovingly make several cost-effective environmentally-friendly thistle socks for the birdies, and the finches tear such big holes in them until the socks won’t hold any more seed, making you want to reconsider plastic? (technically these two are the brand-name socks — I’d already removed the destroyed homemade ones… I guess I better get busy making more)

*Why is it that you work so hard to create a great garden for your new veggies and then realize that you managed to let some of your herbs die in the process?

*Why is it that you can spend so much time making your outside yard beautiful and neglect your poor house plants?

*(from the husband) Why is it that dinner isn’t ready yet? Oh wait, I know that one.

Got any to add? Please share them! I have a feeling this is a non-ending list!

Author’s edit on 7/26/09: How could I forget this major one: Why is it that I finally start gardening, and Texas finds itself in the middle of perhaps its worst drought ever, with drastically reduced water availability and temperatures over 100 degrees all summer long?

Pumpkin Army Bases, Day 15

Posted on July 20, 2009 by Meredith

I think I need a better name than Pumpkin Army — this veggie gardening endeavour just gets bigger and bigger. I’ve now added corn to the plan. Alas. This is what research does for you! It also gets you: trellises!

I’m back from camping. It was good fun — and nice to have a change of pace. I’d like to say that all my plants survived my absence, but I’m happy that most of them did (mourning the rest). The seedling army grows.

And of our three swallowtail caterpillars happily munching away before we left, we found one chrysalis, so we’ll try to monitor it for butterfly-ness. Of course, it’s in a place that is very hard to get a picture, and it’s also in a place that the butterfly will have a hard time getting out of without our help.

Though my DH didn’t quite get to all the plants, he certainly tried, and it was nice to return home to additional hoses and hand sprinklers so that I don’t have to drag hoses around to water those plants far away from civilization, my house. (It’s not that I hadn’t thought of it, I just was trying to avoid spending the money!) In addition, he made great progress on the raised garden beds, which means I will soon have the cantaloupes happily planted.

The jack-o-lantern pumpkins are going to be spread around the yard and will have to brave possible trampling by dogs, scary because the vines are so important to the size and quality of the pumpkins. I’ve got three jack-o-lantern pumpkins in the ground now, with more to come, maybe. I put them in little mounds, and for now I surrounded them with rocks to help the dogs avoid them. One of them is near some other plants, so I’ll have to guide the vines other directions, as best I can. It will have to do — those vines are growing so fast that I wanted them in the ground as soon as possible. I’ll get some marigolds and radishes near them for bug repellents. It’s apparently not the right season to grow radishes, but if they’ll keep the bugs away, I’ll try!

The cantaloupes will be in a raised garden bed, grown vertically on a trellis. All in all, we’ll have three raised veggie beds (for now, haha). The cantaloupes will be in one, along with corn and some marigolds, and sugar pumpkins will be in another, with some more corn. The third bed will be prepared for yummy fall planting goodness. The third bed was made for me by my kids this weekend, their first project working with drills and saws and whatnot!

To prepare the area, we dug out the grass. It was dead, so other than dealing with the hard soil, it was no loss and only somewhat of a pain. Then, with the frames in place, I mixed in compost into the existing soil. I expect some plant roots to extend into that soil, so I wanted to enrich it somewhat. How hard was the soil? Casualty, one shovel.

For the main bed soil, I decided to follow “Mel’s Mix” for square-foot gardening. I talked with the folks at Natural Gardener before doing this, and they had various suggestions (including Mel’s Mix), but nothing really any better or worse. The other option I considered was mixing compost with more of my clay soil, but that would have involved more digging. Forget that! Once I got the stuff home, I read on the bag about dust concerns with the vermiculite, and I felt a little concerned that I’d made a bad choice, but a little more research online made me feel better.

In mixing the soil, I felt a lot like Hermione in front of a big cauldron at Hogwarts. It was fun mixing it, I admit. I did add in some bonus clay soil from a pile in the yard, for good measure. It’s that secret ingredient in my special sauce.

Because someone at NG told me that peat moss can be a pain to get wet at first, I decided to wet down the soil well and plant tomorrow. Sure enough, I had to work with the peat moss in a big soup of mud to get it to soak in the water. Then I really did feel I was creating a magical potion! Tomorrow will be a good planting day. First I’ll get the trellis wires in place and the grid. Then in will go the cantaloupes and marigolds and some corn seeds.

Side story… While I was digging the soil for the frames, I found a weird, soft little tube. At first I thought that it was, pardon me, some old dog poop. But then it split open, and a spider carcass fell out. Squeal. And then lots of little spiders came out and crawled over the spider carcass. Shriek! While I was wondering whether they had eaten the spider, more horrors awaited me… the legs of a gigantic spider appeared. And they MOVED. And more baby spiders crawled out and over the legs… By now, I’d made loud enough noises that the kids came running over. And finally the whole spider slid out, and it was the biggest spider I’d ever seen in my yard. Yes, tarantulas are even bigger, but I haven’t seen one as a resident yet. Despite my startled reaction to the sudden appearance of this spider and her babies, I find her beautiful. Can you see some of her babies in this picture?

It turns out this spider is a female trapdoor spider, and she creates a silk tube-like burrow for hunting purposes, laying eggs, and feeding young. I felt some major guilt about disrupting this little family. But once the babies left the tube, all I could do was scoop up (with the shovel) some of the dirt they crawled upon and get them to a prepared garden bed instead of letting them get buried under the dirt I was lifting and turning. The mom spider went to a shady spot, because she looked so shiny and that “carcass” I saw was probably her molted exterior. Or perhaps her mate, eep!

Hopefully they’ll survive. Guilt, guilt. Live, spiders, and go eat my pest bugs!

Speaking of horrific creepy-crawlies, check out this bug I found in Oklahoma. At first I saw beautiful wings and thought it was a really unique and large moth. But then I saw the head and its enormous pincher-like mouth. My guess is it’s not a moth! This bug was more than 3 inches long, front to end. Imagine this bug about the size of a house. It’s got B-movie horror written all over it! Edit: I googled and determined that this is a female dobson fly. Takes some of the fun out, knowing the name, doesn’t it? 🙂

We saw a pretty cool leaf butterfly of some sort there, too, and many spiders. This picture didn’t turn out as well as I’d like, but I like the overall effect of the image.

The Oklahoma state parks seem to be very nicely managed and maintained, more so than some of our Texas ones. I loved that they had litter bags to help people keep the trails clean. My only complaint was that they didn’t offer any recycling options for bottles or cans anywhere. We kept our recyclables and brought them back to Texas with us. Green points earned!

I loved the bark of the pine trees at Robber’s Cave.

All along the highways and in the state park itself, the beautiful but very invasive mimosa silk tree could be seen. I have a close-up of the flower, but I felt too guilty about admiring the beauty to post it. Bad invasive, bad!

At least it’s prettier than the invasive Chinaberry all over Austin.

The Austin Pond Society Pond Tour was this weekend. I have lots of pictures to post over the next couple of days!

Bugs, blooms, and visitors

Posted on May 28, 2009 by Meredith

The butterfly garden is growing like crazy. New blooms appear daily, including lovely Purple Coneflowers and Zinnias, and there is soon to be an open bud on one of the Flame Acanthus. The Winecups that once attempted to take over Earth, however, have finally died back with the oncoming Texas heat.

After wanting soaker hoses for a long time, I finally purchased several for the butterfly garden and other areas. The butterfly garden alone took four, but already the plants are happily growing faster in response. I’m in the process of covering the hoses in mulch, at least until a pelting rainstorm exposes them again. No complaints here — I’ll take the rain anytime!

This Zexmenia (Wedelia texana) really stands out near the Blackfoot daisies (Melampodium leucanthum).

One of the fall-planted drought-tolerant Society Garlics (Tulbaghia violacea) has its first bloom, which means I must have done something right. What a beautiful lavender color.

The Spineless Prickly Pear Cactus (Opuntia ellisiana) seems to love our old heavy soil — it has already doubled in size since I planted it this spring. Maybe I exaggerate, but it certainly is bigger.

I don’t know the name of the insect below, or whether it is friend or foe, but it was quite fond of this young Purple Coneflower this morning. (Edit: It appears to be a Longhorn Beetle, genus Strangalia. Larvae bore rotting wood, while adults eat nectar and pollen.).

But nearby I did find definite foes. My Zinnia leaves have been getting eaten up a bit — upon closer look, there are several baby grasshoppers feasting away. Sure, they might look all cute and stuff UNTIL THEY EAT YOUR PLANTS! I’m worried about the grasshoppers — as an organic gardener I see them as difficult to get rid of. Time to do some research!

But still, the zinnias are stunning. Two blooms so far. The other ones need to catch up!

The pond progresses, and I’ve begun planning the plants for inside and outside. The inside is easy — I have a few plants from a friend in Houston (thank you, Kim!), and I’ve chosen a few others for inside the filter falls and in the pond. But the outside is the real challenge — what I plant will help turn this “volcano-like” pond into a beautiful limestone pond to admire and enjoy all the more.

The pond is attracting wildlife already — there has been a hawk hanging out near the backyard the past two days, more dragonflies are zipping by, and I saw a toad hopping along the ground near the pond. The problem with wild creatures is they don’t want to stick around while you go get your camera!

We got our composter a few weeks back, finally. After much research online, I selected the Tumbleweed composter for its easy turning. I chose the “prettier” green one, thinking that I didn’t need the black one for heat absorption, given that we live in Texas. It’s nice to have a place to put our green food bits other than in the garbage. My big complaint about the composter, though, is that it is not made of recycled materials, for the most part. I seriously considered switching to another composter just for the sake of using recycled materials, but I decided that I was more likely to appreciate and use Tumbleweed’s design. I do hope they will revise their product at some point, or offer an alternative. It’s possible that over time the recycled composter will break down sooner (not meaning long-term decomposition) — I’m not sure.

When I planted this Texas Esperanza (Tecoma stans), rainstorms threatened to drown it. Apparently it liked it, and it’s thriving in its little corner by the fireplace wall.

As I take close-ups of the pretty blooms in my garden, I’ve become quite aware of how much dog hair floats about my yard. Some people have to pull up weeds. I have to pull up weeds AND dog hair in my garden. Here’s Gregg’s Mistflower (Conoclinium greggii), complete with dog hair.

Ah well, at least the outside of our house is consistent with the inside!