Manure for Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day is a time for flowers and brunches and manure spreaders! Manure spreaders? Well, yes – my Mother’s Day present this year is a manure spreader. It’s a lovey shiny device that we fill with composted manure. I pull it with the lawn tractor and the spreader does a good job of placing a thin layer of compost onto the pasture. It’s a great improvement over tossing compost out of a wheel barrow with a shovel!

We decided to replant a couple of our horse pastures this year. Used to be, you would go to your local feed store and ask them who they recommended for tilling and replanting a pasture. Used to be, there were always a couple older guys around who did this. They would bring over a small tractor with all the needed implements and do the job. But ‘used to be’ isn’t now. Nobody is doing this sort of work for hire around here. We had to become the old guys who put in pasture. We acquired a tiller and used it hour after hour, tilling up the clover and weeds that were taking over the grass. We filled in the holes and the dips in the field. We spent hours picking up rocks. We tracked down horse pasture seed – this was tricky because there is a shortage of pasture seed. We searched all the local feed stores and found just enough seed. Then we needed to get the manure spreader. We found a place in Washougal that sold the spreader, and after a long day of driving we made it home with the device.

It took a few weeks of work, but now the seed is sprouting. A mist of green covers the soil. We’ll let this new grass grow and thicken for months before we put the ponies on it. It has been a lot of work, but it is worthwhile. Now we have to get back all the other projects that we set aside. There’s a lot of mowing and weeding to do. And I know I have a vegie garden somewhere. I saw it before this project began…

Rosie’s Onion Patch

Rosie, the Gardener

This is planting season here in the PNW. Peas have been in the ground since Feb. Lettuce starts are in and it’s a good time to plant onions. Planting has been a bit haphazard this year due to Rosie, being as she thinks it is her responsibility to help. When I dig in a garden bed, she tries to dig next to me. When I shoo her away, she just finds another place to excavate. I think some of those lettuce starts have been planted and dug up 2 or three times.

Last Saturday, I got half the onions planted. I put the remaining onion starts back in the basket and set them on a table outside the back door. I figured they would be fine there overnight. But I forgot about the Gale Warning. Round about midnight, the wind kicked up to 30 knots or so and anything not hammered down went flying. This included my onion starts. They were still tied up with rubber bands into neat little bundles, but those bundles were rolling around the back porch.

When the dogs went out in the morning, Rosie spotted the bundled onion starts and knew instantly that these were the best, new play toys. I walked out a few minutes later and wondered what she was tossing into the air, then I saw the overturned basket and I knew that my future onion crop was in the jaws of my puppy. I did what any panicked gardener would do, I ran towards Rosie yelling, “No, not my onions!”

Rosie reacted like any playful puppy, she flung the little plants skyward with zest. This time the rubber band failed and the bundle broke up. Folks, it was raining Walla Wallas! But not all of them were reaching the ground. Remember that 30 knot wind? It was still blowing. Some of smaller onion starts stayed airborne. Last I saw them they were heading for the daffodil bed or beyond to the neighbor’s place.

Most of the onions hit the ground and Rosie and I scrambled to pick them up. I got most of them, but she grabbed a few and headed for the blackberry bramble around the old stump. Rosie played with her pilfered plants, flinging them around and pretty much burying some of them in the dead leaves and dirt. She wasn’t eating them, so I didn’t barge my way into the sticker bushes. I just let her be and she came out in a few minutes.

Later in the day, we got a good soaking rain, so any onions the pup accidentally planted ought to do just fine. I don’t know, I may clear that bramble out next summer and find a few lovely Walla Walla Sweet onions. Maybe Rosie is going to be a good garden helper…

Smoke Sky

It’s quiet outside, similar to the quiet of snowfall, but without the fun of possible snowball fights and snow angels. It’s quiet because of all the smoke. The sky is an odd shade of yellow gray, almost a sepia tone. When we go outside we put on KN95 masks. They do a good job of filtering the smoke. But the ponies and the dogs don’t have masks, so we are trying to limit their activity, keeping the ponies in the barn, keeping the dogs in the house, keeping them quiet. But the berries still need to be picked. Gardens still need to be watered. Animals need to be cared for, so we go out and we focus on the task at hand. Not on the sky, not on the smoke, just on getting through the day.

Sweet Pea Nook

This spring we did a lot of ‘shop on the farm’ projects. If we wanted to build something we hunted around and tried to find possible materials here on the farm. There was a weedy corner in the veggie garden that we weren’t using, so I decided to make it into a Sweet Pea corner.

I poked around and found the metal frame of an old shade shelter that could be repurposed as a Sweet Pea trellis. We fitted the pieces together, tried to make it level, and I planted the sweet pea seed. Some of the seed came from the Sweet Pea garden at FinnRiver Cidery and some of the seed came out of a friend’s freezer where it had been in cold storage for over 10 years. I nicknamed that seed the ‘Phoenix’ seed, because it rose out of the cold and lived again. (Yes, I know that phoenix rise out of fire, but it was the best I could do )

Now we have this tiny, fragrant nook in the corner of the garden. It’s a place to sit for a moment, to breathe in the sweet scent of the flowers. A place to think about rebirth from a freezer or other stasis situations. And a place for imagining and planning more ‘shop on the farm’ projects…

Getting Going Again

Well, after a hiatus of three years, I am back – posting on my blog. The gardens are more colorful than ever and this spring (now summer) we have had enough heat to get all the plants growing and blooming. Over the last year, I have evicted many of the invasive or ‘thug’ species that were waging botanical warfare in the garden. I still have trouble with the concept of leaving enough room for plants, but I am getting better at that. This is mostly a test blog to see if I can re-activate The Demented Gardener. And I really have to get outside and spread mulch in the perennial garden before a new generation of weeds sprouts and stages a covert assault on the Delphiniums!

Surviving the Storm

I watch the sky a lot, watching for wind, gauging the strength of it. Medium strength winds can send a sailboat skimming across the water in a perfect afternoon sail. But if you double that force in summer when all the trees and shrubs have lofted their billows of leaves – you can have problems. We had an afternoon in June where the wind gusted up to 45mph and swirled past the garden beds. Branches broke. Perennials snapped off at the base. My one tree rose cracked its trunk and did a face plant in the dirt. I vowed to plant only short plants in the future. But now when that storm is just a meteorological memory, I can see that the wind wove my garden into a surprising tapestry. Hollyhocks lean into Rose Campions. Shasta Daisies poke up through Rose foliage. Perennial Linaria wander throughout in shades of light pink and lavender. These color and texture combinations would not occur in an orderly garden where all the plants are forced to stand upright in their place like schoolchildren lining up for a class photo. My garden is more like recess on a beautiful day. The plants are supposed to stay in the playground, but they are free to move and combine as wind and weather encourage them.

I propped up the tree rose and tied it to a strong stake. We’ll see what the next storm brings.

Spring Again

The soil temperature is finally warming up, encouraging soil microbes to increase their levels of metabolism. Seeds that sulked in the ground for weeks are now sprouting. Their internal temperature sensors must be telling them, “Go for it! This is the moment, before the weeds smother us. Time to grow!”

I’m planting a new variety of Rhubarb, Alaska Rhubard. The story is that this variety was bred as a ‘no fail’ plant that gold prospectors could grow in the wild places of the North. All these many years later, some patches of Alaska rhubarb still thrive and mark the locations of the old mining camps. Modern gardeners have collected these stalwart plants and distributed them through the ‘Would you like a Cutting?” network. I collected my cutting from a friend on Marrowstone Island . I’ll grow a clump, then distribute more cuttings to friends and perhaps donate some to the Master Gardeners plant sale next year. This is, literally, the home grown method of maintaining genetic diverse and useful plant varieties.

Snow in the Garden

We have snow again which is perhaps more discouraging for the gardener than the plants. The plants are determined to grow. Perennials are pushing up through the winter mulches. Young salad plants are thriving in the greenhouse. And the buds on the plums are plump and almost ready to pop. The energy of the plants is a welcome contrast to the grayness of the sky.

The sweetpeas seed is huddled in the cold ground. Sweetpeas can handle cold soil, so I expect they will be up soon. Not quite all the sweetpea seed is planted. The Seattle PI ran an article on sweetpea culture. At the end of the article, Renee of Renees garden seeds recommended ‘April in Paris’ as the most fragrant variety. The statement caused a run on ‘April in Paris’ seed. Like so many others, I hurried to the nursery to buy this fragrant wonder. The well stocked seed rack had a gaping hole where the seed packets had been. I was assured by the nursery staff that they had reordered the seed. Sure enough, a week later, I received the call that my treasured seed packet was in. Before I could get there to pick it up, a friend gave me a pill bottle with a dozen ‘April in Paris’ seeds. Once I pick up the seed packet, I’ll have more than I need. I’ll just have to hand the seeds out to other friends in need of a fragrant sweet pea, cream colored with a lavender trim to the petals. Really, this is a plant will transform the neighborhood!

Plants in pots

Most gardeners have an area in their yards that they call a ‘nursery’ area, that sounds so much better than ‘scratch and dent’. But the word ‘nursery’ is probably too nuturing a word for these areas. These places are where you stick the plants that you don’t know what to do with. These are the, “I really shouldn’t have bought this,” plants. The cistus that languishes in the pot because you finally figured out that they will become big and sprawly and you really wanted the more compact and brighter green one. The landscape trees that you bought on sale, at the season’s end then realized you had no good place for a 100 foot tall tree. Don’t even ask how far the lower branches will spread. Yes, I have a ‘nursery‘ area.

Yesterday we began to find places for the unwanted plants. We negotiated the placement of the trees, balancing the need for horse pasture and horse riding space with the need for roots and branches to spread. We finally came up with a plan for the rambling wisteria. We planted the rescued rel japanese maple, now that it looks like it will survive.

The nursery area isn’t gone, but it is greatly reduced in size. And that’s a good thing because I am going to the Northwest flower show tomorrow – with a car. I know there will be a blueberry, or a clematis, a gorgeous peony or a golden raspberry that will need a home in my garden. I promise, the new plats will stay in the nursery row for a few weeks – max.

Garden Catalogues

I have been neglectful of this blog, my web child. Life has been rather overwhelmingly chaotic with winter storms and snows and holidays. The everyday care of the live animals and plants took precedent over writing about them. But now the snows have melted, plants are recovering from being frozen, and there are new lettuce sprouts in the greenhouse. I’ll be back tomorrow to write more. Right now I have a large pile of garden cataloges to read. Aren’t all the new Echinaceas lovely?