Baby steps towards the future gardens of Beebe

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Lily left the valley
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Re: Baby steps towards the future gardens of Beebe

Post by Lily left the valley »

So I had found a very brittle and missing pieces tag barely clinging for dear life on one of our hollies, and I finally figured out a way to put what could be seen of the words to help me find what kind, exactly it is. Apparently this tag is for a "Blue Princess", and if matched with a "Blue Prince", together they make happy berry babies. I have no way of knowing if the twinsie on the other side of the stairs is a boy or not. :confusion-shrug: But...what kills me is what is promised in regards to this particular holly that someone decided to plant right smack against the porch.

From the website:
Your Holly will grow up to 15 feet tall with a 10 foot spread.


No wonder the darn thing is already beating the snot out of anything even close by--plant or cement. :hand: So now it's looking like we need to figure out where to move this sooner rather than later...
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Lily left the valley
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Re: Baby steps towards the future gardens of Beebe

Post by Lily left the valley »

We picked up our rain barrel today, and while at the transfer station, I noticed a rather largish roll of coated metal wire fencing. I asked if we could have it, and the fellow there was most happy and helpful to hand it over, especially when he mentioned "It will need some work to right it again, " and I replied, "That's ok. I've got time to spare." There's over 40' of it that is in near to perfect shape just a bit of crinkling from transport, the last 10' or so could use a bit of rework, which is fine by me. It's an odd width, just shy of 3', but maybe the former owner didn't need the full 3'. I checked on the web, and we just saved roughly $40 on materials, depending on where we might have bought it. :dance: I also found out the transfer station is planning to start putting out items that are still in good shape and advertising same. He offered us a moulded post on box mailbox and a seeder, both of which were perfectly fine, but we can't use a post on box here, and we're really getting rid of any lawn grass, so I couldn't think of a use for the seeder, so we declined. We chatted a bit about how folks toss things out that are in perfectly good shape and shook our heads.

So now I have at least a temporary yet non invasive fence material for the compost this year. Hopefully next year, I'll be able to start getting some willow and working on the living hedge to replace it. I'm still not sure if we'll try to gate off the front of the three bays or not. It will really depend on how much the current compost bay gets disturbed for food bits. If needed, I can use the remaining mesh for a gate and cover. I'm planning on using some of the trunks of the oak saplings dotted all over in the back woodsy area as stakes. It will take a while to get those all dug out, as some are quite tall.

I have to move some flowers and level the spot where the rain barrel will go. I hope to do that tomorrow, weather permitting. We are going to try to set up a natural splash guard/run with a long flat rock I found in the yard and the gravel we have an abundance of for the overspill hose to run down towards if the bin gets that full. I'm going to try transplanting some of the nearby growing mosses and ferns to surround the area to help prevent weeds from trying to move in there. I'll likely use some of our cardboard as a temporary weed barrier to help them establish. We're supposed to have rain in the afternoon, so I'll probably go back to the dollar store to pick up the mini buckets after we have it in place so I can start working on the rain chain. Whenever that gets done, I'll put it up. I don't know if I'll have the overfill splash set up in time before the rain. Time will tell.

We think we've picked our spot to move the rhododendrohn that isn't doing too well in its current spot. We're still debating about the hollies, but we did find, curiously, that both of them are showing berries! So both are princesses, and someone in the neighborhood must have princes, because otherwise I don't know how they managed to produce the berries other than by the help of pollinators from the neighborhood. We won't be moving them until later this year, though.

I also finally made a positive ID on another plant today, the transplant which is not a native, but not invasive: "Emerald 'n Gold" Euonymus fortunei. "It is widely cultivated as an ornamental plant, with numerous cultivars selected for such traits as yellow, variegated and slow, dwarfed growth. It is used as a groundcover or a vine to climb walls and trees. The following cultivars have gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit: Emerald Gaiety, Emerald 'n' Gold, Emerald Surprise." [per Wikipedia] More detail here at the RHS website. I may have to move it again because apparently it only does well in full sun if the area is water rententive, and I put it at the top of the slope, thinking the tendrils could grow downwards. It's already yellowing more than it used to and showing a bit of leaf burn. I've had to water it every day, so I think that spot is too much sun.

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Manalto
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Re: Baby steps towards the future gardens of Beebe

Post by Manalto »

A good rule of thumb is that variegated plants take some shade, preferably in the afternoon. The variegated E. fortunei cultivars are not invasive, but keep an eye on it for reversions to the solid green form, which is a common occurrence. The green is much more vigorous (more chlorophyll) and will run rampant. I've seen it move from the edge of a property into the woods and up the trees.

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Re: Baby steps towards the future gardens of Beebe

Post by Lily left the valley »

Manalto wrote:A good rule of thumb is that variegated plants take some shade, preferably in the afternoon. The variegated E. fortunei cultivars are not invasive, but keep an eye on it for reversions to the solid green form, which is a common occurrence. The green is much more vigorous (more chlorophyll) and will run rampant. I've seen it move from the edge of a property into the woods and up the trees.
Good to know. I did know of their tendency to climb, especially if given means, but I did not know when the leaves are greener, they'll grow faster. Thank you for that.
~~~
Something I forgot to mention, in the stand of iris on the east side of the house, they are finally showing a scant few buds starting. The ones out front still have not. I know all the patches need a rigorous working to let them "breathe" again. I'm still sad the bloom in the garage bed died so fast. No further blooms on that patch yet.

The neighbors also asked the other day if we have the wild strawberries, to which I answered yes, and they mentioned the berries were quite good. They're still in flower, so we'll see how those do over time.

One tricky bit I realized when I was filling the water can last is that all the milkweed has clustered close by, and it's getting hard to path there without touching them. Not sure what I can do about that. I need to weed between them a bit, and I'm hoping that helps. We still don't have a hose.
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Manalto
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Re: Baby steps towards the future gardens of Beebe

Post by Manalto »

There are early-, mid-, and late-season iris. Maybe the iris blooming at different times are two different types, or it could be that one location is warmer and sunnier than the other, which will cause them to bloom earlier. Iris blooms are a result of the conditions of the previous year. If this year's flowering is disappointing and you pamper them, next year will be the payoff.

Any milkweed you don't want is easy to remove with a sharp upward tug. They snap off neatly just below the ground. This happens to me with the stand of milkweed that I've let colonize the bed near my lawn. The ones on the edge have a tendency to flop over, so it's off to the compost pile.

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Re: Baby steps towards the future gardens of Beebe

Post by Lily left the valley »

We were running an errand today, and I finally found what I'd been looking for in a metal variant that wouldn't break the budget. It took longer to find this than I thought it would: a strainer I can use to get the safety glass out of the one bed, plus whatever other garden needs I know I'll have over time. So happy with this. The rivets are still solid, so the handles aren't loose at all. There's a bit of surface rust on the handles, but I can clean that up easy.
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The rain seems to be laughing at me, with sun showers on and off today. I'm waiting for the next break to get back to setting up the rain barrel. That might not get finished today unless I want to get wet, and it's not a warm rain. :sad-darkcloud:

Manalto wrote:There are early-, mid-, and late-season iris. Maybe the iris blooming at different times are two different types, or it could be that one location is warmer and sunnier than the other, which will cause them to bloom earlier. Iris blooms are a result of the conditions of the previous year. If this year's flowering is disappointing and you pamper them, next year will be the payoff.

Any milkweed you don't want is easy to remove with a sharp upward tug. They snap off neatly just below the ground. This happens to me with the stand of milkweed that I've let colonize the bed near my lawn. The ones on the edge have a tendency to flop over, so it's off to the compost pile.
I'd read up on irises a bit, as we have a few evidently different varieties, based on size alone. Here's a fun shot I managed today--still haven't found our better cameras. :-(
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We have roughly 24 milkweed so far. I don't want to break any off, but I have them on my list of "transplant directions to find" list. I still don't know what to do about the two that seeded between the concrete slab and the foundation, as we've not managed to make time to reset the slabs yet. I should have the transplant part figured out by end of weekend. So much weeding to do still too. One day at a time.
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Re: Baby steps towards the future gardens of Beebe

Post by Lily left the valley »

Early morning ID on another flowering plant in the front. It's the most numerous flowers in this image, and it's called "Fleabane" or Erigeron. The flowers started off a strong lavender, but soon faded to white. This is typical, I found out. "From the Greek eri- (early) and geron (old man), referring to the flowers occuring in spring turning gray like hair."

It is a native annual, and from what it seems, ours is a is an mid-late spring attractor ideal for butterflies.
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Re: Baby steps towards the future gardens of Beebe

Post by Vined Porch »

Lily,I think your Irises in this recent picture are actually Day Lilies ! Still a very beautiful plant,I love them as they are so easy and multiply quickly with a gorgeous array of colors and varieties,I hope you end up loving them as much as the Irises :-)

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Re: Baby steps towards the future gardens of Beebe

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Vined Porch wrote:Lily,I think your Irises in this recent picture are actually Day Lilies ! Still a very beautiful plant,I love them as they are so easy and multiply quickly with a gorgeous array of colors and varieties,I hope you end up loving them as much as the Irises :-)
They'd been ID'd as iris by another--I am barely learning as I go, there are so many plants to learn about here. We knew the patch out front should be iris because they were showing the flowers on the Street View image. There's a few other clumps in the porch beds that may be lilies--much shorter in leaf, as seen in the background of the FOH images I posted before.

I'd be more than fine with daylilies. That'd be a tall variant if so, so we'll see when we see. :) I'm still mad I lost the batch from last year thanks to the overkill on herbicide from our former landlady's boytoy landscraper. Of course, with my luck, they'll be some pink variant. I don't hate pink, but so far we've had mostly white and yellow (though the yellow is mostly weeds like the dandys) except for the short lived bloom of the bearded in the garage bed, the fleabane lav before it turned white, and the bleeding heart, which is a sort of hot pink--oh and there's pink on the one shrub the name of which is escaping me at the moment--azalea maybe? Those are a deeper pink if I recall right, maybe a light red. Some of the surprises are yellow of late, and maybe a magenta or wine-y sort of purple. They are still fairly tight, so not sure yet. I really miss the woodland low growers we had early on, lots of lovely purple. Only a few are still lingering.

Oh drat. I just remembered I forgot to look to see if those have seed pods or not. I thought of that when I realized I forgot to check to see if any of the fleabane is showing pods yet--might be too early still.

Today sort of ran away from me, and I didn't get anything finished in the yard that I'd hoped. We'll see how tomorrow goes. :whistle:
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Re: Baby steps towards the future gardens of Beebe

Post by Lily left the valley »

So this morning wound up eventful as I hurried through a few things trying to beat both the incoming storm as well as the dreaded 11am-2pm sun.

I'm actually fairly pleased with how it worked out despite the necessary hurry. I got the rain barrel at least set up under the hole in the gutter, although I'm not done with the rain chains yet, and likely won't be today before the storm anyhoo.

Compared to what it sells for on Amazon, when you buy from the town it seems like a bargain, but it is definitely a lower grade materials barrel except for the spigot and top system. Eventually, I can foresee replacing hardware in the few spots that have them (like securing the lid--the screws are very soft metal, too easily stripped to be taking it apart once a year for cleaning and storage, then back together. I'll likely put in bolts with nuts instead. The inside washer nut for the spigot was very thin, and that makes it hard to get a hold with the wrench, given the molding of the body. I also was not happy that although it has that great screen for the top, they have none for the overflow hose. I had yet to change the carbon filter on the litter box this year, so I took the opportunity to do that, and used the old one to cut a mosquito barrier to fit in the overflow hole. There may be little chance of any bugs flying or crawling up there, but I'd rather they not get into the bin in case they are a mosquito. The overflow hose was also that hard but thin molded plastic, and it had to be gently stretched with pliers to get it over the grooved edge of the connection on the barrel in order to use the hose clamp properly on the flat edge beyond the grooves. I almost got out the hair dryer because I was worried stretching would crack it. All said, it was totally worth the $25 the town charges residents. You can buy two per household. We decided since we don't (yet?) have a gutter on the south (back), we'd just see how this one did, and decide if another it worth it plus adding gutters. It's made by EnviroWorld.

I'm also a little worried about the weight as to wind, but once it has some water in it, I'm sure it'll be ok. I'm probably more concerned about wind because of the need to fill the area under where the barrel had to go. This was due to the lack of downspout and the slope just nearby. A lot had washed away by the time we moved in, and I did stem that some before using grass clippings and rocks as a short term measure since I knew we'd get a barrel eventually.

Because the storm is supposed to have gusty winds, because I don't know how my fill in will hold up, and because there's currently no water in the barrel, I tied it to the porch in the hopes that prevents a blow over before any rain can weigh it down. I also laid down cardboard to protect the newly turned over turf I took from a new bed I'm making from getting washed away. I braced the cardboard and it's additives below with a spare brick and two small but not tiny squared stones. I also threw some leftover stone we had on top of the cardboard to help stabilize the barrel for now. I'll re-evaluate the installation after the rains stop tomorrow. If all goes well, the wind line will be removed.
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I had to make room by moving some flowers, and two bushes needed to be moved anyhoo because they were not doing well where they were. So I roughshod made a bed on the west side of the porch and two things went there, the other close by on our side of the rock wall.
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You can see how the "Emerald n' Gold is just burnt, the poor thing. Despite the rain, it really liked the shaded area much better. This is a bit of a different orientation (northwest side instead of north), but I think with the home next door and the trees and other plants in the rock wall between us, it will recover. I'm still waiting to trim it where it got leggy, but now I'm even more worried than before because of how burnt it got in the first spot I mistakenly chose. Lesson learned--no more transplanting until I know where best to move it! :doh:

The rhododendron was already planted in a bad site overall. I read that unlike many blooming plants, rhododendron does not like full morning sun in winter and does best when planted in dappled shade on the north side of a building. Growing rhododendrons are happiest in a location protected from the wind and not under eves of a building. The former site was 4 wrongs out of a possible 6 rights. They only thing they got right was protected from wind and north side. So hopefully it does better there. We'll see. Oh, and one thing I forgot to mention is that it was crazy root bound. I didn't even have to dig much when I took it out before I realized I could just pluck it out by hand. I think I worked the planter shaped roots loose for a good 20 minutes before it seemed like the plant could breathe. There's another mostly dead plant that looks similar in shape as to what's above the overall grade in that area, and I bet it was the same thing--they didn't break it up when they planted it, so they did poorly.

We only have five feet from our property line to the porch. So I'm thinking of extending the south part of the west porch bed the full five feet, and shifting over the Emerald n' Gold. We have a lot of stones on the property, so I'm thinking of using some as a step path nearer to the porch side to give it more room to grow. I know it may not recover from the burning, but I'm trying to do a wait and see for now. It's not really a native, so if it goes...it was pretty, but no financial loss.

What you can also see in the one image is wood siding under the asbestos. There was a broken tile, and I sort of did they "hey, it's already broken" thing to see if my suspicions were correct, and they were. I am itching to get that stuff off, but it is going to have to wait until at least fall if not next year. I might be able to make room in the budget to do just the porch rail, supply wise, but I'm not holding my breath. It could easily turn into the yak shaving problem, since I already can see certain issues that need to be addressed with the porch overall. Also in that photo is the evidence of how much turf and dirt I removed--look at the paint lines. The dirt was well above that point. I still have to regrade all around the house.

One last bit is I keep finding rocks in the beds when digging. In the bed I started today, I wasn't surprised, but all of them have them. Part of me thinks they should come out, and other says "well, nothing has been wrapped around any yet, so maybe I'll just set some of the larger ones aside here for border or bottom of indoor plants or something.

Opinions on leaving rocks small enough to fit in your half closed first or tighter in the beds versus taking them out?
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