Hello everyone, I managed to bruise my thumb joint last weekend and had to take a couple days off of both typing and working in the garden. Before doing so, I happily put down some aged horse manure that I got in a trade with another gardener. Though I didn’t realize it at the time of the trade (as it was in a non-opaque bag, and the gardener didn’t mention it), it has been mixed with thin sawdust-like wood chips, so it is easier to handle than straight-up manure and forms a nice mulch-like substance. I added it to most of the crops and to the highbush blueberry bushes and the gladiolas (which I had finished planting; I can’t remember if I’d already finished planting them the last time I mentioned them or not). It seems to have especially helped the glads, which are sprouting much more vigorously now. I still have some in the bag, and am planning to add it to the dahlias when I finally plant them (hopefully later today). More recently, I’ve cut down some saplings that had sprouted unbidden in an area where there’s no official garden (one of them was about 15 feet tall!), and have planted some perennials I got in the nursery’s annual 50% off sale of all small-potted perennials they had yet to sell (which seems to be occurring earlier than usual this year, perhaps fitting in with what seems to be a general trend towards only selling larger pots over the summer). I got eight and planted five of them earlier this week, the last three still waiting. The ones I planted were one of three sea thrifts, as well as another hen and chicks, a second nodding onion (see below for more on them), a perennial baby’s breath, and … something else. In addition to the two further sea thrifts, a Sedum album (that is huge, at least twice the size of its pot) is waiting to be planted.
I also got a surprisingly big pot of Egyptian onion AKA walking onion in another trade with a local gardener, and planted some of those in the front garden before my thumb injury, but have the rest in the pot in back waiting to be planted there. Generally alliums that propogate themselves vegetatively are the best candidates for partial shade, from what I’ve read. Oh, I think I haven’t updated since I finished planting the beans either – so, yeah, I also did that. [I should post a list of the beans I've planted. So far, I've been too disorganized.] I spread the aged manure over the bed after finishing planting them. They’ve reacted quite well to that and also the string of warm, generally sunny days we’ve had since, and I noted this morning that a large percentage have sprouted. This morning I harvested my first two snap beans (‘Yellow Arikara,’ one bean of which had a small, circular hole partway through it, but no other damage – I’ve never seen the small circular hole on a bean in my garden before, and am curious as to what could have caused it), two peas (‘Golden Sweet’), and four more fava/broad beans (mix of cultivars). The fava beans are through at the farmers’ market, so my own garden is now my only supply for the remainder of the growing season.
I noted this morning that the purple-podded beans, which have been flowering for a couple of weeks, on and off, are now rapidly forming pods with the nice (to a bean) weather we’ve been having. The scarlet runner beans are still growing prolifically, but have yet to flower. There is one little cucumber that has been growing for over a week, and the cucumber plant is still flowering daily. Someone left some grass clippings near the front garden (I don’t know if they did it on purpose or accidentally) this morning, so I used them to mulch the little patch of cowpeas and such, which dries out so, so fast in the windy weather we’ve been having.
In terms of flowers, the cardinal climber is flowering, much much earlier than last year, and the first morning glory has been flowering, the one I got at the nursery, which has the biggest flowers I think I’ve ever seen on a morning glory. The calla lilies (the ones that have perennialized here, despite their supposedly not being hardy in my climate; to recap for those that have not been reading long, I got them from a gardening friend, and one survived the first winter here, and then when she gave me more I planted them all in the same spot as the one that survived, and then last winter they all not just survived, but appear to have produced three new calla lilies, presumably by offsets) have been flowering for a little bit, and just today the Salvia patens that has also survived two winters in the back garden (despite also not being supposed to do so) put out its first flower. Last summer it didn’t flower at all (unless it happened while I was on vacation for a week) so it was nice to see its first vivid blue flower when I went out to water the back garden’s pots.
The cup plant abruptly budded up after our next to last downpour, but its buds have yet to open. The first echinacea bud is starting to bloom now, though, and there are multiple further buds on that plant and my other echinaceas. The nodding onions (a native allium, Allium cernuum) are budded as well, and much to my shock, one of my asters is also budded! I have seen mums blooming in other gardens, so my suspicion is that the exceptionally cool temperatures (until recently) have been fooling some autumn-blooming plants into thinking it is, in fact, already autumn.
