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Has Achieved Nirvana |
My second batch of alpine strawberries is here! A total of ten plants, a few each of a bunch of different varieties (Alexandria, Mignonette, Pineapple Crush, and Reine des Vallee).  And one of them already has a flower!  Now I have to figure out where to plant them.... 
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Has Achieved Nirvana |
I pulled weeds today and I’m sure it was a waste of time. The local weeds look something like a dandelion but with stickers. Same long tap root - breaks when I try to pull them out. There’s also something that looks/smells like onion, or maybe garlic. It firms little bulbs on the root like onions and isn’t easy to pull out either. We’ll see how long they take to come back but I suspect I’ll be using Roundup.
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
Pulling weeds by hand is a kind of meditation....  Soil has to be at the right moisture level to pull up weeds with taproots. If it's too dry or too wet the roots tend to snap. I use one of these kinds of weed pullers, except the handle on ours is much longer:  The other stuff is probably wild garlic: https://www.ortho.com/en-us/li...ions-and-garlic-lawn I've gotten pretty good at digging it up, though i don't have much of it.
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Has Achieved Nirvana |
I just got my weed puller out today. Snowed this morning, but sun came out and it’s melted. Feels so good to be in the garden!
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Jodi| Has Achieved Nirvana |
 Have never grown potatoes before and have been reading up for quite a while about how to grow them in containers. Stumbled upon an article yesterday that introduced a new concept: determinate vs indeterminate potato varieties. Kinda like tomatoes, indeterminates keep growing as and the harvest is later. If you keep mounding soil, they'll keep forming potatoes till the end of the season. The determinate plants are smaller in size and you can harvest the crop sooner. The potatoes grow in one layer and you don't have to mound as much to get a crop, making them ideal for containers. And just to make it even more interesting, unlike tomatoes, when you buy seed potatoes they aren't marked as to which type they are. And there doesn't seem to be a comprehensive list of which varieties are determinate and which are indeterminate. I think one of the two types I bought is determinate and the other is indeterminate. Live and learn. Meanwhile, there were tons of people at Menards garden center buying tomato plants and snapdragons yesterday, just in time for the frost and freeze warnings later in the week.... 
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
Interesting, I had no idea (about the potatoes). I used to grow and harvest them in my compost pile every year - not on purpose, but they grew really well in there, from the scraps, so I just let them be and then would sift and turn the compost (and harvest the potatoes) in the fall. Worked really well when we lived in NW Washington State, but probably would not work as well here. I am sore today, everywhere, even my hands - from crawling around on the ground yesterday digging grass out of my beds!
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
I ended up putting grocery store flowers in the pots. I'll put the hardy herbs in the ground around the "bad topiary."   Any guesses as to what kind of juniper this is? 
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| Pinta & the Santa Maria Has Achieved Nirvana  |
I love those 3 fountains, Steve! Did you bring them with you or did they come with the house? | |||
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
Me, too! I've always wanted a basalt pillar water feature like that in my yard. Unfortunately not a DIY project for me anymore (can't lift and dig to get it all installed) and I have so much to do in the fall with leaf cleanup that I don't want to add fountain maintenance to the list. But I'm super jealous!!! Have you thought about some kind of screening/backdrop behind the fountain, like between the fountain and the fence? Something to set off the fountain and also provide some privacy from all the adjoining homes? Could be something evergreen, or a trellis that you grow a vine on....
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
The fountain came with the house. It actually sits at what was ground level with dirt and rocks mounded up to meet it. I’m surprised it survived the winter, but it did. I want to screen off some of the side fence but haven’t decide how I want to do it. Possibly some sort of raised planter. I saw some local flat stones I really like at the Arboretum yesterday but have no idea how expensive they are.
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
Anyone used coconut coir mulch? I bought this at my Costco but am not sure if I'll use it or return it and buy some regular mulch at Home Depot. This stuff is more sustainable than the cypress mulch I used to use, but not sure how effective it is as mulch (floating, blowing away, rate of decomposition).  https://www.costco.com/megamul...oduct.100365369.html
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
Frost warnings up tonight. High 20’s. My neighbor says to put towels over the flowers in the pots. Does that do any good?
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
Never used towels (was always covering large areas with old bed sheets) but I imagine they would work. No plastic. https://blog.growjoy.com/2020/...or-frost-protection/ What’s planted in the pots?
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
I’m not sure as they weren’t marked. They look like miniature petunias and there is a spiky purple thing in the center of each pot. I do have the pots off of the patio deck. No big deal if they die. They were cheap and I can get more.
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
BTW, those containers are gorgeous. And I don't know junipers. They like sun and I ain't got much of that in my yard so I haven't planted them. There were some in the front of our house when we bought it but we took them out years ago. I like the way they look but the ones we had were stickery. Not friendly" plants. .
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