The Shade Garden Is Planted!

The beautiful shade garden, with the hostas in front.

My shade garden is all planted! I can't wait for yummy fiddleheads, currants, nannyberries... mmmm.

There are three 'producers' in this two-tiered garden. The ferns will produce yummy fiddleheads in spring while the currant and nannyberry produce berries in the fall.

Everybody else is there either as ground covers (the periwinkle vine and hostas), as insect attractors (meadow rue, periwinkle, jack frost, bleeding heart all have blossoms at different times), as mulch providers (the hostas, because of their big leaves)... and of course, all of these plants are truly beautiful!

Close up meadow rue blossom: what a beauty.

The Dangerous World of Landscaping.

Disfigurement by lawnmower.

Crippling heavy-rock-lifting related injuries.

Really bad sunburns.

These are all the real dangers that are faced by any person intrepid enough to explore and attempt to alter a landscape. Sure, some tools exist to help us avoid these pitfalls - like sunscreen.

But there is one tool in landscaping and gardening that no amount of preparation can prepare you to handle.

I am of course talking about the credit card.

That's a lot of plants.

Take, for example, a recent sojourn to the local gardening center. I wanted to get a few berry bushes while they were still dormant, some manure, seed potatoes. The usual.

But then I saw them.

Perennials.


The first shipment of perennials had just arrived, and I became blind with garden lust. The next thing I knew, I had completely filled one of those giant rolling carts with the plants seen at right, which will soon make up the greenery in the shade garden I am building. --->

It was madness.

These plants won't be able to go in the ground for at least another week. So why did I buy them now?

There are two correct answers.

1) Lack of self control and patience.
2) I figured I could 'multi-task': get these beauties hardened up while, at the same time, waiting for the day to come when I could plant them. This, instead of buying them two weeks from now, and then having to spend another week hardening them.

In the meantime, my plants sit happily in a giant tub that, when vacated, will become a potato planter.

Be careful, friends and readers. It's a dangerous world out there.

One Hundred Onions

Today I planted one hundred onions! Well, I planted one hundred onion bulbs anyways.

I put half of these in containers in a very sunny spot, and the other half in my "productive patch" beds. Also in containers, beside the onions, I planted potatoes. My container potatoes far outperformed my in-ground potatoes last year, and were much easier to harvest, not to mention easier on the soil. In order to keep digging to an absolute minimum, potatoes in containers just makes sense! I'll see how the onions do in containers, and take it from there.

I also worked on the design for the rest of the garden. I had great inspiration for the especially shady, spruce stand directly beside the house on the east side that features about 20 spruce trees, their in-soil fungal friends, and absolutely no other plant life: terracing the slope!

I plan to dig the slope in so that it forms little roughly-flat terraces, held together by rotting-wood retaining walls. I'll fill them with composted soil, plant them with uva ursi, some ferns, nannyberry (a shade loving, native north american berry) and whatever other plants are needed to flesh out a thriving shade polyculture. Then I'll mulch with moss. I think this area would also be a great spot to grow edible mushrooms, because it is directly beneath a drain pipe that drips almost all year, and the soil is generally damp.

Another benefit of terracing, especially with rotting wood, is that it will help conserve the water that flows down that slope. Brilliant!

I'll work on the design for that tonight, and hopefully get started in the morning.

Can't wait for tomorrow!