Meyer lemon tree looking a little sad...

Well, had to bring in the Meyer lemon for winter; unfortunately the only spot inside with decent lighting is by a vent, which I think is drying it out (note leaf drop and browning of edges).  Any tips on care would be appreciated.  I plan on picking the 2 lemons within the next couple weeks (or when they finish turning yellow, so maybe that will help...

L is for lemon

October Updates: 2 new apple trees and rain garden planted

Cherries and apples

My favorite part of fall has always been apple picking, now, with some luck, in just 2-3 more years,
we'll be able to do this from our own backyard.  Home Depot was having a 50% off all trees sale, and I couldn't resist--2 year old potted trees for less than $30--how can anyone pass that up?

In the photo above, you can see the cherry tree from last spring on the left, in the center is a yellow delicious tree (I'm assuming this is the same as "golden delicious," or at least I'm hoping, since I bought it primarily for the purpose of it being a great pollinator), and the one on the right is a honeycrisp (my husband's favorite eating-out-of-hand apple).

I had tried to pre-order a 4-in-1 antique apple tree from Stark Brothers, but apparently they were sold out, but I'm still waiting on a shipment of a Burbank July Elberta dwarf peach tree from them.  It's supposed to arrive Nov 3, in homage to my husband's great uncle, Luther Burbank.

Also, I planted the rain garden and bought a couple extra plants that are still in pots--queen of the prairie which produces amazing pink cotton candy like blooms, an echinacea purpurea, and a rudbekia with vanilla scented leaves, that I can't remember the name, but they were also 30-50% off.

Rain garden

It's been raining on and off for the past few days, so hopefully it is paying off (haven't seen any basement leaks yet).  I'm thinking I might need to move the drain pipe over to the far left, as the slope of the yard leads to more pooling on the right.

Additionally, I planted some tulip, narcissus, and crocus bulbs, but I still have a few dozen more to plant, when I get the time.

Pulled the tomatoes out of the ground and planted some spinach seeds in a cold frame.  The seeds are from 2012, so I'm not sure what the germination rate will be, but I'm hopeful for at least 50%.   I guess we'll see in another week or so...

Fall Rain Garden

Since we sometimes get some leaking in our basement when there is heavy rain, I had started researching the use of rain gardens as a way to help control water flow.  Found a really comprehensive guide through the Wisconsin extension office and ended up purchasing a per planned garden of 64 plants at Prairie Nursery.

Below is how we dug up the front lawn for a an approximate 15'x7' garden.

With all the super dry clay soil, it was really hard work and ended up taking about 4 days working in 1-2 hour stretches, but it finally got dug.  Today, I borrowed my dad's rototiller and added a bit of top soil, manure, and compost to help loosen and enrich the soil a bit.  Then, I laid out the plants according to the plan ( plus 2 additional butterfly weed plants for clay soil that I bought).

Tomorrow, I am hoping to actually put them in the ground, since this Thursday there is an 80% chance of rain, so we'll get to try it out for the first time.  It will probably take a couple years to get established, but I'm really looking forward to having a beautiful low maintenance native prairie rain garden.  I am hopeful it will attract butterflies, dragonflies, and birds that we can watch from our upstairs balcony.

I also bought a Nannyberry tree, which is supposed to have pretty white flowers in the spring and raisin like berries in the fall/winter, but we haven't finalized the location, but I was thinking of putting it by the back corner of the house. You can see it's starting to turn pink below ( you can also see the new spicebush starting to turn golden yellow behind it.)

Since it's been a while since my last posting, I'm also including a few pix of the bird feeder /climbing vines pot with cranberry honeysuckle and pink and purple clematis.

Our mysterious pumpkin vine that planted itself.

And a few pictures of the square foot butterfly garden and limelight hydrangea starting to turn pink.

From the Butterfly Garden, Meet Mona the Monarch!

Well, after growing milkweed for about three years, we finally had gotten a monarch caterpillar (see post from July 14) and were able to raise it all the way to adulthood.  Turns out "Mona" was actually a male (you can tell by the 2 black dots on the bottom wings).  What a great learning experience for both me and my little one!  I'd never seen a butterfly go through metamorphosis and it was so truly amazing to see this huge butterfly emerge from a tiny chrysalis.  In the picture below, the chrysalis is only about 2.5 in, but when the butterfly emerged, the wing span was something like 4.5 or 5 inches.  I couldn't believe it all fit in there!

Although it emerged yesterday, we waited until today to release it, since it was pretty cold and rainy yesterday.  The butterfly was super fast, and didn't stop to sip on the flowers, but instead just flew as fast and as high as it could into the sky; really a beautiful sight...

I'm thinking of growing a spicebush to attract the spicebush swallowtail butterfly ( and to use the leaves for tea).  Their caterpillars resemble little snakes with false eyes, which I thought would be really fun for Maddie to see.  The local nursery just got a shipment in, and a 3 gallon container costs $39...I'm tempted, but I also recently put in an order for a peach tree for the fall--a Burbank Elberta Dwarf Peach, as an homage to my husband's distant relative, botanist Luther Burbank.  Then again, isn't any plant purchase really a gift for all, so you can never really have too many?

Also, a couple weeks ago I picked up a few flowing vines--a cranberry vanilla honeysuckle a blue ravine clematis, and a pink clematis that I can't remember the name-- Menard's had the clematis on clearance for just 50 cents each-- who could resist?

First tomato harvest!

Picked our first tomatoes of the season today--delicious yellow cherries.

First caterpillar sighting!

Just found our first caterpillar on one of the milkweed plants.  I'm hopeful that it is a little monarch since it looks striped black and white.  I've just been looking for chewed up areas on the leaves; are there any other telltale signs to look for?

Siamese twin sunflower?

I've never seen anything like it, but when my sunflowers came into bloom this week, one of them was double-sided (see image above).  At first I thought it was just two blooms that were really close to one another, but upon closer examination, I realized they were actually fused together.  Is this common with sunflowers, or any other flower, for that matter, or is this just some sort of genetic aberration.  Any insight on this would be much appreciated.  Thanks!

July 2014 Garden Update and Inspiration for Next Year

Butterfly Garden

Sunflowers are growing like crazy, probably about 6.5 feet now.  Just added a top dressing of additional Mel's Mix soil and sprinkled some free coffee ground compost thanks to Starbucks.  Can't wait for all the flowers to be in bloom; we've had a few butterfly sightings, but not too many yet.  We officially registered the garden as a "Monarch Weigh Station" through the Monarch Watch website.  I thought that would be an added incentive to maintain and continue to expand the butterfly garden over the years.  

With the success of the sunflowers, I started thinking ahead to next year and what we might grown when I came across the idea of creating a "sunflower house", basically a little shelter created by sunflowers where little ones can sit out of the sun (see Sample at savvy housekeeping).  That seemed like something my three year old would love, as she already likes playing hide and seek with the regular cluster of sunflowers. 

If that goes well, perhaps in another two years, might try making a more permanent structure like willow hut as seen on Earth Play.

Veggie garden is doing well.  Had to restake the tomatoes; next year I'm going to try and experiment with trimming all the side branches so that they don't get so wild.  Still battling with the bunnies who have effectively decimated the strawberry plants :(.

June update: Mel's mix paying off

The sunflowers are growing like mad!  They are almost five feet tall now (fence is 4ft).  I think they have been growing ~4in a day lately.  Their stems are almost as thick as the trunk of our cherry tree.  Can't wait for the buds to open.  Also, the violas and sage have grown bushier than I have ever seen violas or sage grow (see close up below).

The Health Kick tomatoes from my parent's neighbor are also doing well and I finally started staking them with bamboo.  I always have trouble staking tomatoes--I never know if it should be more like a lean-to kind of support, or if the tomato vines should be tied directly to them, so I've just sort of rigged up a tippee-like system.

(If someone can tell me how to flip photos on Picasa, it would be much appreciated.)

Even Maddie's fairy garden is bursting our of it's pot--check out the columnar basil and lemon thyme spilling out.

Also, we have currently been able to harvest a few a strawberries before the rabbits have gotten to them, which has been nice (see horizontal pic above).  We have 12 strawberry plants, which seems like that would be enough, but we only are able to get 3-4 berries per day.  Any tips on recommended # strawberry plants per person?

I think the secret to the Mel Mix soil is that it's not like as soon as you plant things they just sprout up like crazy, rather that it works slowly over time to develop better roots so that eventually the above ground plant grows into something amazing (assuming the birds or rabbits don't get to first...).

We've actually put up a bird feeder to help distract birds and bunnies (who eat the cracked corn that falls to the ground) away from the garden.  They ate all the feed in 1 day.

Since some of the wild flower seeds didn't germinate, we planted a few milkweed plants and joe pie weed for the butterflies  (see sunflower pic above).

Garden Update May 2014: some successes, some failures...

Well the plants are finally starting to fill in.  The strawberries are looking great, tomatoes in back are doing okay, but some plants never really amounted to anything, namely the baby carrots, scallions, and snap peas...maybe I planted them too late in the season (mid April).  May replant something else in those squares.

Below is the butterfly garden.  I've spotted robins pecking around there, so perhaps that's why many if the wild flower seeds didn't sprout.  Again, may fill in those squares with something else. 

On Thursday, Maddie and I replanted her "fairy garden".  It has columnar basil, lemon creeping thyme, sedum, and curry plant (white leaves).  Maddie specially picked out the fairy and named her "cherry berry".

Also wanted to post updates of the grafted cherry tree and the lawn with microclover filling in the bare spots.

Square foot garden beds

Put together SFG recipe for "Mel's Mix" (1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 compost) this weekend. Very hard work.  Would not recommend attempting to build boxes, make soil mix and plant the same day.  Started to rain, so I didn't actually attach the grid (just laid it over the top), but I guess the smells from all the compost proved too irresistible for our dog.  That little garden girl got caught "black pawed"!  It's a good thing I hadn't put any seeds yet!  I just wanted to be sure the soil was ready to go since it is supposed to rain for the next few days and I thought it would be good for the soil to be thoroughly moistened.

Also, just got my shipment of micro clover from Bailey Seed.  According to what I've read, over-seeding with micro clover will help provide nitrogen to your grass ( clover is nitrogen fixing), is more      resistant to drought and pet urine, will blend into grass and stay green year round .  It's a little expensive (~$25 lb), but hopefully it will pay off in the long term.  We're supposed to have the lawn undergo core aeration next week, so I plan to seed the backyard with clover afterward.  Anyone else have any experience overseeding with clover?

Snow in April?!

Our poor cherry tree---wasn't expecting a snow storm in the middle of April.  Wasn't sure how best to protect the buds, so I just covered it with a garbage bag...any other tips?  Oh, also upon closer examination of the individual graft tag, I found that there are actually 5 grafts--there is also a Van cherry graft --a nice bonus.

4-in1 cherry tree now planted

Picked up the tree over the weekend and planted it in the backyard.  Couldn't put it in the spot in the corner that we had originally wanted since in digging the hole, we found the neighbor's tree roots extended into our yard about 15 feet, which was disappointing.  However, hopefully this spot will work out okay; gets at least 6 hours of sun and can be seen from the playroom.  The tree includes grafts of bing, Montmorency, Royal Ann, and Rainier cherries...now we just have to wait another 2-3 years to harvest, so by then the kids will actually be able to help pick the fruit.

New Cherry Tree

Over the weekend we bought a grafted cherry tree with Bing, Montmorency, Rainier varieties during our favorite nursery's opening weekend.  Since the weather out here is still a little iffy (can range from 30-60 degrees F from morning til night), we're still waiting to plant it for a few weeks.  Should take about three years for it to bear fruit and I can't wait to be able to pick multiple varieties of cherries all from our own backyard, although I wonder if multiple graft fruit trees fare any better, worse, or the same as regular single grafted trees...I guess only time will tell.  Also, I figure that once the tree starts baring fruit, depending on how well each graft fares, we might buy an additional tree of just that variety.

First blog post!

Biodome Seed Starter

My Little Garden Girl

Hello, this October our family finally put down roots and moved into our new "forever home".  Our backyard is basically empty, so with help from my trusty sidekick, Maddie, and Mel Bartholomew's book on square foot gardening, we plan on starting  a couple square foot gardens.  Last weekend, we bought  the supplies to make two 4x4 square foot gardens out of cedar.  One will be for vegetables and the other for a butterfly garden.  Above is a picture of some of the seedlings we've started in the bio dome from Park Seed.  Unfortunately, they're looking a little leggy, but I'm hoping that by the time we plant outside, they'll be okay.  I read that if you plant tomato seedlings sidewise, they'll start rooting all along the stem, so I may try that.

Anyone have any tips about starting/building a square foot garden?