Garden Notes

I’m really not sure where the weekend went, gardening-wise. I did manage to get everything potted up (four bags of potting soil later – I usually do one and half a year…)

Here’s my biggest experiment:

From left to right are the tomato, pepper, and Swiss chard. Since the Swiss chard was a whim, I’ll be the least broken up if that doesn’t work, but it’s so pretty, I am actually hoping it does well.

The pepper and tomato should be interesting. I’m far enough north that I’m pretty much at the mercy of the weather to see how well they do. Too rainy a summer, and they’re doomed no matter how well I feed and weed them.

I also attempted somewhat of a clean up of the side bed, which had to wait until after work today. The rose bush from hell is running rampant. The above is what it’s done to my hybrid iris. I’ve cut down everything you see above, but I think what I’ll have to do, once they die back, is take out all the rhizomes (and they’ve been in there long enough that they’re probably due for a clean up), and then dig up all the rose roots. I may even try to see if there’s something I can bury that will at least keep the rose from over running that side, though I suspect that’s a losing battle.

I thought my tiny iris hadn’t survived the winter, but I found a small batch of it in the middle of rose bush hell. I pulled those out and have them in a pot for the moment. I definitely need to figure out a better place to put them for next year. I missed having them bloom.

I also deadheaded the last of the bulbs. The bed is still completely overrun with daffodil foliage, but it’s so green it won’t be going anywhere soon. It makes the bed looked very over stuffed with all the pots I have in there right now. I have to remind myself how empty it looks once the foliage dies back.

My final act of today’s clean up was my first harvest. I picked the first batch of salad mix that I sowed a month ago. The spicy mix came up so much faster that I thought I’d only be picking that first, but by this afternoon, the regular mix had caught up enough that I picked both. Salad with dinner was very good tonight.