A Good Past Couple Days

As the title says, a good couple days.  Started Tuesday grocery-shopping.  I'm not happy without fresh fruits and veggies, and holidays always throw my shopping schedule off.  People come out in masses for picnic, BBQ, and travelling supplies.  The lines are long.  So if I forget to shop 3 days before, I wait til the day after.  And I forgot that (since July 4th was a Sunday) July 5th would be an "observed Federal holiday" and govt contractors general follow the Feds (for the practical reason that there is no one for them to talk to).

So I shopped Tuesday.  It was nice to have broccoli, asparagus, and buttercrunch lettuce.  It was nice to have peaches, berries, cherries, grapes, and oranges.  

In the afternoon, I FINALLY planted a lot of flower seedlings in the newly-cleared bed where I planted pole beans a month ago.  The beans are 6' tall already.  But because they are on a trellis, they only use a 6" strip at the edge.  So there was all that extra space.  Those green things in the bed are pulled weeds, brushed off before I planted.

I had all these perennial and self-sow seedlings, so in they went!  I got 3/4 of all my flower seedlings in the ground.  It doesn't really matter if they do all that well this year.  They will be good enough for transplanting to more permanent spots in the late Fall.  After planting them, I watered them deeply.

I had done some repair work on a fan-sprayer a few days before.  The holes were clogged and poking a needle into the holes didn't improve things much...

So I drilled out all the holes.  Unfortunately, my smallest drill bit was larger than the original holes, so the water didn't spray very far.  But I realized I had made a high-volume, low-pressure fan nozzle.  That has been quite useful.  Had I realized the consequences of the larger holes, I would have done it deliberately before.  I still have 2 other fan sprayers that work as intended, so nothing but a gain in this.

Yeah, I built the tripod it sits on...  Very adjustable.  So I replaced the 2 nozzles with a stadard fan nozzle.  The drilled fan nozzle is great for raised beds as it waters from edge to edge quickly.  The round nozzle is on the deck hose since the round spray suits the round planter pots well.

Which left the next major problem the overgrown daffodil/tulip bed.  They don't care about the weeds, but there were blackberries and loosestrife invading the bed.  The bed is about a 30' circle, and there are daylilies growing along the edge, a sunflower bird-feeder in the center and a 4x4" post to level the stepladder I need to fill the feeder.  

So I took out the riding mower to clear the weeds and blackberries.  It was awkward guiding a large mower in a small space, but fortunately this new mower has a button that allows the engine to keep the blade turning while in reverse.  And the blade deck is slightly offset to one side so you can get at edges with the wheels getting in the way

I was able to (slowly) mow almost everything I didn't want down close to the edging.  There were places I couldn't get at.  That's where the hedge trimmer came out.  I was able to cut down the weeds and grass right up against the edging.

More importantly, I was able to slide the narrow hedge-trimmer blade between the daylilies and cut off the wild blackberries near ground level.  In a couple of days the cut stuff will turn brown and I will know what to rake out.  That will let me see which weeds and canes I missed for another go with the hedge trimmer.  The battery was running down and needed recharging anyway.

The riding mower was set at 3" height (there is a path of  pavers and I didn't want to chance hitting one with the mower blade) .  Now that most of the weeds are cut down that low (and I can see where the pavers are),  I can use the small electric mower set at 1" to cut them down further.  Then I will will cover all the non-daylily area with permeable black fabric to kill the weeds by next Spring when the daffodils want to emerge.  

I covered it with solid black plastic a few year which worked OK except rain pooled on depressions and mosquitoes grew there so I kept having to poke wholes in it.  THe permeable fabric will solve THAT problem.

The transplanted flower seedlings seemed a bit beaten down by the sun,  so I watered them again.  It is amazing how much water dry soil needs sometimes.  The first watering a couple days ago had an inch of water pooled on the top before it soaked in.  Even then, my moisture meter today showed it was dry 6" down.  So another full inch of water on them.

And I put up a shade cloth for them.  The pole beans provide some dappled shade in the morning, and a couple of trees provide late-afternoon dappled shade, but mid-day is full-on sun.  So I stuck a a couple of 6' stakes in the ground and clipped a shade cloth on them.  Covers most of them.  By complete lucky coincidence the seedlings that want the most sunlight aren't covered.

I wish I had more pictures to show.  I forget when I'm doing gardening stuff.  Too-focussed, LOL!  If the transplanted seedlings survive the shock, I will have pictures to show in a few days.

I have a dozen Balsam flowers and a few Maltese Cross to plant.  I have a few places I can put them, but haven't decided where yet.  I think about that tomorrow.

Gardening And Yardwork

I had a successful day today - I planted 6 annual sunflower seedlings!  There was a lot more to the day's work, of course, but by the time I planted the sunflower seedlings, I felt I was done.

For starters, the temperature reached 88.5F according to my 2 different brands of digital wireless outdoor thermometers*.  In April.  In the shade.  And I didn't spend much of the day in the shade.

My PRIMARY desire for the day was to plant the sunflower seedlings.  For some reason, I sow 6 sunflower seeds every Spring, and never get around to planting them before they are too leggy and weak to thrive.  They are always "last on the list".  Partly, I never have a really good spot to put them.  Well, this year I did.

I have mentioned before that I set up 3 edged beds in the back yard.  One is for wildflowers, one is for  Spring bulbs and daylillies, the last is for bee/butterfly/hummingbird flowers.

In the center of that last (middle) one (only 10' in diameter), I wanted to plant sunflowers as a centerpoint.

But I had trimming to do first.  I mowed the lawn 2 days ago and the more constructed beds I create, the more trimming there is.  My new Ryobi 40 battery-powered string trimmer does a grand job!  But you have to USE it, so I did that first to get it out of the way.  It was a lot more work than I expected.  The trimmer battery last about 40 minutes; I used that up and set it to recharge.



While I was waiting, I took my hedge-trimmer and dead-headed all the Spring bulbs, and I have more bulbs than I used to (when I could do that with my sheep-sheers).

Still with time before the string trimmer fully charged, I caught up on making more plant labels.  I found a great deal on metal plant labels last Fall and got 120 for 50 cents each.  Plastic labels just don't last.  After that was done for all my existing crops and some specimen hostas, I went back at trimming the yard with the string trimmer.  It takes longer to trim than to mow the whole yard!  And I was using it to cut down an invasive vine, an invasive self-sowing spreading loosestrife (Lysimachia Firecracker) shipped to me in error as a Coreopsis, and some self-sowing Salvia(?) perennial I regret ever planting.  I'll keep cutting them down until they all die!

I was pretty much used up for the day, but remembered the sunflowers.  I HAD to plant them, sweaty and tired as I was.  My idea was to set a 1' diameter 2' tall wire cage in the center of the bed and plant the sunflowers around it attached to the cage.  I measured out the center and set the cage there with some stakes to hold it in place firmly and used an auger to drill 6 holes around it.  It was awkward reaching around the cage to set the seedlings in while not stepping on newly-emerging hummer/bee/butterfly seedlings, but I managed it.

I have a couple hundred plant clips (another good deal I found, and endlessly useful), and supported the sunflower seedlings  to the cage with the clips.  The clips are about 1" around, so they wont restrict the stems.


Support 2' high should help the sunflowers stay upright, but if not, I can attach a 2nd cage on top of the 1st.  Yes, I should have just planted the sunflower seeds directly and they would have been sturdier.  But I always try to rush the season by starting them indoors.  Next year, I will sow them direct.

But for once, they are planted and have a chance.