The iris have been blooming for about two weeks now, which is a tried and true indicator of when the weather is finally warm enough that you can put all your frost sensitive plants into the garden. Here on the southern coast of Maine, that usually coincides with Memorial Day, which is when I usually venture out to my favorite local garden center and pick up seedlings for the garden.
This year, since it’s been warm early, I actually went after work on Monday (and could have gone anytime in the previous week), which was nice, because I was able to avoid the crazy Memorial Day crowds. My haul is above.
I’ve decided to go pretty easy on the side garden, since it’s so hard to fit anything else in there, and also pretty hard to find sun-loving annuals that don’t need constant watering. I bought one flat of zinnias, and two flats of moss roses, which I’m trying out this year. The moss roses are succulents, so I’m hoping I can not have to water those very often.
I’ve also set up a mini herb garden in the side garden with mint (which I already had), parsley, oregano, sage, thyme and cilantro (which I was able to get from my mother, since it’s self-seeding in her garden). I was smart this year, and put them in individual pots, which means I should be able to bring them all inside for the winter.
For the back yard pot garden this year, I added a new heuchera with orange foliage, a cranesbill geranium with lovely, feathery, purple foliage, coleus in orange and red, and my regular impatiens. Unfortunately, in the fit of industriousness my landlord had when he was getting the unit downstairs ready for new tenants over the winter, he hauled away the two oak logs I was using as plant stands, so I don’t have quite as much height in the back yard garden as I would like (the impatiens in the strawberry pot in particular are suffering from the lack of extra height). I’m going to try to find a substitute for the logs, but I haven’t had much luck yet.
This morning, I started cleaning up the side garden. It was already quite weedy, so I pulled out an entire bucket of greenery, which included a bunch of the ivy, which really needed cutting back this spring. I started re-mulching, but only had most of one bag left over from last year, so only got about two thirds of the bed done. I’ll hopefully be able to pick up some more mulch today, and since I have tomorrow off for the holiday, I’m hoping to be able to finish neatening up the bed tomorrow. I also need to take a look at the annual hacking of the beach rose bush, which is already fairly out of control.