GBBD: May 2015

It's Garden Blogger's Bloom Day! While this is the first time I've participated in probably...years...(I've been a very very bad blogger), I'm thrilled that hundreds of garden bloggers around the world are still posting photos of their blooms reliably every month.  Just about as reliably as these beautiful blooms in my May garden.  Visit May Dreams Gardens  blog to see more!

No-till gardening

One of these days, I'm going to collect all the materials to build a thick and proper lasagna garden.  But for now, the goal is to do take some action so that my raised beds aren't a fallow sitting duck, just waiting for any and all weed seeds to drift on in and take root.  Typically, by the time I'm ready to transplant my seedlings, my beds are filled with dandelions, shotweed, and creeping charlie.  

This spring, I started by weeding the garden well, adding a thick layer of compost and manure, then topping it all off with a thick (and it needs to be thicker than it is in the photo above) layer of straw.  Below, when I'm ready to plant, I'll be able to pull out the mulch and simply plop the seedling in the soil.  We'll see if this method reduces my weed-pulling time and how it lasts the season!  Do you "no-till" or use a lasagna gardening method?  How does it work for you?  

spring garden peas

Purple Asparagus

It's been perhaps 6 years and the asparagus is ridiculously fat, very tender, and on rough days, makes me feel like a competent gardener! In my raised bed, I add a layer of manure in the very early spring each year and mulch with straw as the asparagus begins to send up shoots.  Aside from the that, the only trick with asparagus is patience.  Here's some advice about growing and harvesting asparagus. If you grow asparagus, how long did it take before yours got really good?

Everyone: look at my hellebores!

I'm very annoying to my family members from about April through September.  Everytime we pull up in the driveway, "Wow, look at that striped clematis."  Everytime we walk up to the house, "Oooh, did you see the Asiatic lily?"  When we're in the kitchen, "Look at the blooms on the fothergilla."  And currently, "The hellebores - everyone!  Look at the hellebores!"  Can you really blame me though?

At the end of every winter, the hellebores get their simple tidying up... a few minutes per year of care, and...

...voila! Really.  I can't think of an easier, more gorgeous, carefree perennial.  Shade-loving, persistent even when occasionally snowed upon, and with a form that looks like a bouquet growing straight out of the ground.  And maybe also a bit because they herald spring, hellebores are probably my favorite perennials in my garden.  

hoooohhh my god, I've been busy in the garden

Trout lily aka dog's tooth violet.  Gorgeous flower, not sure which name is less  ill-fitting.  My favorite herald of spring.

No one ever did call me a liar.  Since my last post, I've sweat, planted, watered, dug, shovel-banged my shins about 4 times really hard, and spread mulch.  Lots and lots of mulch.  Though I have mother nature to thank for all the perennials below that have greeted me this spring, I have done a lot or work in my vegetable garden as well.  Back again, under the grow lights, or already seeded in the beds RIGHT NOW are: peppers (ancho, cayenne, habanero, jalapeno, pepperoncini, yellow bells), tomatoes (Cherokee, hillbilly, Japanese black trifele, yellow grapes), tomatillo, edamame, seminole and sugar baby pumpkin, Charentais melon, black garbanzo beans, French filet beans, chard, asparagus, herbs (thyme, oregano, parsley, peppermint, rosemary), rhubarb, raspberry, strawberry, arugula, mizuna, radish, beets, carrots, lingonberry, and peas.  The only thing not accounted for are the cornichon-type cukes - just because I forgot.  And that pisses me off.  But yes, I'm very pleased with all the work I've done thus far.  I'm definitely turning around the years of neglect my gardens have felt.  And now a visual of the perennials...

I snapped this photo just 4 days ago thinking I'd get to post them in time for Garden Blogger's Bloom Day.  I didn't get a chance too on the 15th, but now the hostas are all up!

So happy about this.  This big old dying silver maple is gone, leaving a lovely view of the creeping phlox from my living room, more sun for my vegetable garden, and a throne for the kid.  Below: blue anemone

Above: fox's grape  Below: checkered lily

Above: hostas working their way through dried leaves always reminds me of babies cutting teeth.  Below: euphorbia rudolph.

If there's one thing I can do really well, it's hellebores!  But who can mess those up?

Above: the blue anemone in full bloom (not as lovely as when they're just opening I think).  Below: great things in store with the peony, clematis, allium budding.  

Above: fothergilla...ah, fothergilla.  Is there any medium-sized shrub with great fall color that is more perfect? Below: one of my 5 lingonberries in bloom.  Pretty flowers, tart and tasty fruit.  Is there another small-space fruiting evergreen shrub more perfect than the lingonberry? No and no.

What's going on in your spring garden?