The Last Little Project of the Fall

A ton of rain fell ten days ago (seriously, more than 6 inches in three days) and left the yard and garden a sodden mess. The only walking we did across the yard for the next three days was to feed the fish! But once it dried out a good bit, I was able to dive into the one remaining fall project - making a new bed for the nandina hedge at the back of the lot. Our back boundary is partly fenced, partly filled with a euonomous hedge and partly open. About 18 months ago I started moving volunteers of Nandina domestica into a line (or sorts) to start completing the existing hedge with nandinas. We already have nandinas around the front porch and they produce a lot of volunteers so it was the perfect way to thin the existing growth and at the same time provide plants for a new area.

In order to control the grass and provide a better growing situation I took edging and laid out a bed around the plants that I had already planted. But here's where my problem began. There are many types of edging one can use in the garden and I made a bad choice. Well, at least I installed it poorly. I used a plastic edging that came in six-inch pieces that are pointed on one edge. You pound them into the ground and then hook the next one in as you pound it. The problem was that I did not keep them straight. The resulting bed was a double S-curve. It was difficult to cut the grass beside it, and it looked stupid!

So, my final project of the fall was to pull out the old edging and replace it with a new straight edging. After all that rain the ground was softer than normal, so last Saturday I dove in. I had previously done the homework: measured the length of the bed (20 feet long) and calculated how many feet of material I would need. And I bought the material several weeks ago. This time I chose a steel edging that comes in 8-foot lengths which interlock and are stabilized by driving spikes thru tabs built into the strips. In order to install this edging you must either have soft enough ground to drive it down, or you have to cut a slit for it. With the softer ground, there were only a couple of places that I had to cut a slit with my root knife and those places were where I was going thru heavy grass and having to cut the roots out.

First, I laid out a straight line. Using two iron bars that I drove into the ground at each end of the proposed bed, I ran a rope line and used it to keep my edging straight. Now, if it were my father-in-law doing this project, the edging would have been measured up and down and sideways. For purposes of my boundary, I did not feel the need to do that. I simply used the line to keep the steel strips "mostly straight" over the eight-foot run. The final result is that the bed looks fine, because no one can see the small deviations that exist. The only hard part of this whole project was turning the corners. The steel is bendable, but it's hard to do. I could have enlisted help and used a vice to make exactly straight square corners, but my bed is not that formal and I preferred a softer, rounder corner; so I simply measured where to bend it and then stood on the strip and pulled it up until it was bent about 90 degrees. I have previously used this type of educing and found that if I hammered directly on the edge, some of the epoxy coating chipped off, so this time I placed a board over the edge and hammered on the board. For the corners, I put the board diagonally across the corner so that I could sink the two sides at the same time, and more evenly. I started on the "back" side of the bed - the side that abutts the neighboring property. I wanted this side to be the most straight and look the best - just as one puts the "pretty" side of the fence facing the neighbors.

There was one final problem, of course. I was about 18 inches short on material. It comes in a number of short pieces, as well as the 8-foot lengths, but nothing that really fit well with what I was doing, so I did not close the rectangle on the final side. Instead I used a couple of the old plastic pieces from the former edging. The result is fine and no one will really notice - if I don't point it out to them.

This new bed is slightly wider than the old bed and because it's straight, it now includes some areas that were previously planted in grass, so the next-to-final step was to stray the grass and weeds that are now inside the bed. As soon as they die, I will do one final weeding and put in some mulch for the winter. So now it's Mother Nature's turn. I have straightened out the bed and will have a good mulch done next weekend, so now I need the shrubs to grow.

[A couple of notes:

First, the gorgeous flowers at the top of the post are Camellia sassanqua. Altho I am not sure of the variety, I think it's 'Merry Christmas'. This is a member of the camellia family that blooms a bit earlier in the year than the "regular" camillias. My sister-in-law gave me two last year for Christmas, so this is their first time to bloom in the ground. They are covered with buds and if we don't have a long and really cold spell of weather, they will bloom thru Christmas and maybe into January. My "regular"camillia doesn't normally bloom until the week before Christmas and by then if it often frost damaged. These blooms are particularly pretty with the bright yellow stamins. I was thrilled when it popped into bloom the middle of November.

I am planning a series of posts during the dead of winter on various how-to gardening topics. How to choose the right edging for your location will be one of them. ]

On Hiatus

Dear Friends,

I have moved for a while from the Garden Bench into my garden, i.e., I am concentrating on my gardening blog for a while. After all It's My Garden!

Please come visit me there.

Out From Under my Rock!

[Note: the following was written October 23. Same excuse as last time!]

Sometimes work just completely interferes with life. For the past three weeks I have hardly lifted my eyes from my desk, and yesterday when I finally had a few minutes I discovered fall is arriving.

When last I looked around me the Bradford pears looked like some flamboyant Marilyn wannabee had roamed through the neighborhood smooching them randomly and leaving her lipstick on their tips. Suddenly I saw trees in all shades of red, and started looking around to see what was happening. The maples run from their normal green through yellows and oranges and into reds, while the evergreens provide their steady background of green needles. Everywhere I look are the beginnings of the gorgeous season of trees. As much as one loves Spring's rebirth and the first glimpses of willow green, Fall brings her own exuberant color and that last gasp of excitement before the calm sleep of Winter.

A walk through the garden and I find that the chrysanthemums are starting to bloom, with the promise of many more to come. The pale coral ones - whose names I have lost - are in full bloom and the pink ones that came from Mitchell's mother's garden are full of buds. They are the old fashioned naturalizing type of flower, so will make a blanket of subtle color in another couple of weeks. And the "pacific daisies" - which are really chrysanthemums, too - are on track to bloom about the same time and will make a lovely ground cover for us.

And, there is always a treasure or two if one looks for it. Right now it's the Monk's Hood. Although totally poisonous (and therefore a terrible choice for a garden where there are children or pets around), it is a lovely purple spire standing high above the rest of the plants. Monk's Hood is a challenge for me. I have tried it in three different locations and still have not found the right spot. I suspect it may be an issue of water, not sunlight.

Of course, though, all this beauty reminds me of the work that lies ahead. It's time to start the serious deadheading for the end of the year. That's the kind of thing that can be done broadstroke, but there is plenty of it to do. The silver lining of this particular cloud is that it will all go in the compost pile and by spring we will have new humus to top dress the garden.

It's especially nice to live in a place where we have bloom about 10 months out of the year, and where we will continue to enjoy a flowering yard until Thanksgiving.

Return to The Project

[Note:When I was suffering my writer's block over at the Garden Bench, I did continue to write about the garden, but fell way behind with uploading photos. And, this blog needs pictures! So, I have updated and uploaded. This was originally written on September 25th.]

As I told you last time, I need to re-do the xeri-garden. I have loved it all summer, but if it's going to be really great in the future, I need to stop and smell the catmint and fix some things.

Too wide. Altho it is a great size for its site, I lost track of one of the big rules of laying out a garden. It is too wide and I cannot reach to the back to weed and to work on the plants. The
landscape timbers that I used come in 8-foot lengths, so it seemed simple to just cut them in half and make the bed four feet across. If I were eight feet tall, that would be fine, but at 5'3", I can just barely reach three feet effectively. So, I need a way to make it easier to get into the bed so I can reach across it. The answer is to install some pavers so that I can kneel on them and extend my reach.

Too shallow. I admitted earlier that I didn't put enough dirt in the bed. In my heart of hearts I knew that when I put in the original dirt, but I was so tired that I did not want to deal with it then. I just wanted to finish the bed. So now I need to add dirt.

Too long. Altho I had no real understanding of how large the xeri-plants would be, I still did not buy enough plants to fill the final space. So, I have bought additional plants and need to move some others around to use the space to a better effect. The agastache 'Ava' and the catmint nepenta 'Walker's Low' are both more than twice as large as I had expected, so they are planted too close together. By spreading them out a bit, I can fill more space and they will have more room to expand some more. I want the bed to look full, but the plants don't have to tumble on top of each other to be pretty, and look full.

I have spent the past two weekends fixing the xeri-garden and am finally happy with the current state. Last weekend I mixed growing medium - hereinafter "dirt". Mitchell needed additional dirt for his square-foot-gardens. There is a specific recipe for that, so I just bought extra ingredients and tried to make enough for my bed, too. Remember that I need 5-6 inches more dirt over 32 square feet. I estimate that at 16 cubit feet of dirt!

Mixing dirt on that scale is hard work. First one dumps all the ingredients onto a large tarp. For me it was three different types of humus, vermiculite, and peat moss. To mix them together you first rake them together and then "tumble" the pile by pulling the tarp from one side to the other in both directions. The goal is to get the mixture to look the same throughout the pile. I made enough to top off Mitchell's bed and started to fill mine - when the rain came! I put what was left back into the big bags and stored it for later use.

It was clear to me that I did not have enough to fill the whole bed, so this weekend I bought some pre-mixed gardening soil, more peat moss and some perlite. I was not able to find vermiculite, so substituted perlite. It tends to clump a bit more than vermiculite, but when used in a fairly small amount, it does fine. So this morning I dumped all the soil I made last week back onto the tarp and added new ingredients. More mixing, more tumbling and I had enough new dirt to finish filling my bed.

Now the hard part. I had to dig up all the plants, add the dirt and replant everything. I emailed the nursery where I bought most of the plants and asked what I should do about the broken agastache 'Ava'. Their recommendation was that I "cut it back hard" since I have nearly 60 days until the first hard frost. In our area that is around November 15, so I am cutting it close, but I have hope.

By day's end I had a new bed. I added five new plants: Three Beard Tongues and two Evening Primroses. Penstemon digitalis 'Husker Red' will be the new "big plant" in the far corner. It should be three feet tall at maturity. Two Penstemon mexicali 'Miniature Bells' will fill the mid-space and the primrose Oenothera fucticosa'Youngii-lapsley' are in the front. Under all the catmint and 'Ava' I found three of the small penstemons that had disappeared. I think they are 'Elfin Pink' and 'Violet Dusk' but will not know until spring. I moved them much closer to the front of the bed to give them more room and some sun!

I also moved all of the sedum 'Neon'. It was also too far back in the bed and hidden under the spreading xeri-plants. When I transplanted it in the spring it was not strong enough to hold up its stems, so they flopped this year and were buried under other foliage. I cut everything back this time, so that they should grow up strong and tall next spring and stand above the surrounding plants.

And finally, you will notice a path of small pavers down the length of the bed. These are for kneeling on so that I can reach the back of the bed to work in it. They are close enough together to put my kneeling pad over two, or I can use them "as is". It will make my work easier, but once spring comes and the plants start new growth they will pretty much disappear from sight.