What's happening in your garden?

[MJ1987]

I'm always excited to see the original Lilac in bloom, nearly 100 years after it was planted!

Excuse the salvage littering the yard :)

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And after a couple years of dying off....the flowering vinca is getting watered down every day by the new sprinklers (and a heck of a lot of rain) and starting to spread like wildfire! Love those little periwinkle flowers. Even the transplanted plugs are flowering like crazy

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Next, I've got to plant the oak leaf hydrangeas I picked up today and start to get some annuals into the planters.

[phil]

my lilacs are at the same stage, not quite full bloom but getting close.

all the clover I planed it sprouting. Its really tiny yet but we had a few rainy days so it helped to keep them moist.

the little purple flowers that spurt up from bulbs are propagating out of control , going into the lawn and all sorts of places.. I try to dig out all the bulbs but there are so many I can never get them all.

my neighbor gave me some bulbs to put away for winter and plant so I did but i think I actually planted them all upside down. i think it said eye up and I put them root up thinking they were like the eyes on potatoes. some I broke off and planted separately. then I planted half the clump together. i dont know what will come of it. some gardener I am ..

[Manalto]

the little purple flowers that spurt up from bulbs are propagating out of control , going into the lawn and all sorts of places.. I try to dig out all the bulbs but there are so many I can never get them all.

Is this the culprit?

[Lily left the valley]

We had our first vax shots on Friday, and didn't do much because we both had some minor side effects and didn't want to push it. (Sean had to work the day after, but he's already decided to take some time off after the second since the Moderna tends to have stronger side effects at the second dose.)

We did make a trip to the one local nursery Saturday to pick up the rosemary starter. It wasn't the one it was supposed to be (it was roasting instead of the barbeque), but since the rosemary we covered isn't yet showing signs of life we bought the variant they had for now. I may just get the one Sean wanted online, as it's available from multiple sources. I'm going to try to source it more locally if I can. We also picked up a few other starters: a sauce basil, mint, parsley, and a sweet yellow pepper. I'm a bit nervous about the mint, but am considering planting it in a buried bigger terracotta pot I have. We almost bought some catmint too (which was much more mature in pots), but I was trying to remember if we had seeds or not, so we held off.


We lifted all the winter covers with their oak leaf stuffings because the low 30s temp predicted later this week has since been changed to 40s, with a possible dip to mid 30s next Friday night. We'll see how that goes. The ornamental basil is once again surprising us in that it survived. We also have NO IDEA why we're seeing onions we long ago gave up on that happened to be under the baskets. Some of the shallower planted garlic is also still pushing out, and I'm unsure if I should leave it be or not.

We also put the cloche together, and stored the starters we bought under there. I'm a bit nervous about the pepper, but tonight will be warm. Tomorrow I plan to move the two tomatoes outside with these (very worried they need repotting), as well as some jugs of rain barrel water we still have leftover to act as more heat sinks that can radiate back out at night if it does get frosty. I haven't yet decided if we'll definitely be planting all the warm loving starters there yet, or just leaving them in their pots until after the predicted frost cut off. I've been watching predicted temps daily.

Unfortunately, the Ozark witch-hazel is already too big to fit under there, so I kept it near the garage for the heat sink, but it seems to be doing well so far. They're not as cold-hardy as the Americana, so I'd been keeping it in the garage by the big window until the rains the other day when it was warm when I brought it out so it could get more sun as well as some of the rain.


In that image above, you can also see a lot of burdock. That was where our original compost heap was, and not knowing any better back then, I had tossed the berry tips I'd cut off in the heap, and am still paying for that mistake since! Now I know to put any burdock berries in the baking bins.

Two of the blueberries are budding, but the third just...isn't or it's still too early to tell.

We also had some raspberry bush surprises that I'm waiting to see if I can trace the roots back to see if they just happened to come from dropped fruit or are connected to the mother but much farther away than I would expect. The mother plant is not doing much of anything, and I don't know if it's because it's just old, or I didn't prune it well.

The baby of doom that rooted through the low rock wall exploded in growth since last week's rains and warmer temps. I can't wait much longer before removing it, and putting the Ozark where it was. (The parent is the darker green plant you can see behind it--my heavy pruning last year apparently triggered it to send out panic roots. I'm just glad they're a shallow rooter even though I'm worried I might miss some under the rocks.)


That one cold snap we had with the snow and ice seems to have killed off many early shrub buds--hollies and lilac in particular. There are leaves aplenty on the lilac, so there may be hope yet, but the hollies' buds seem rather far gone. The transplant guides all said the lilac could be moved after bloom time, so now I don't know what to do if it doesn't make any new flower buds. It really needs to be moved so I can work on the walkway along the east side of the house along the driveway.

Many, many, many volunteer invasives this year. (One example is the autumn olive in the image above between baby of doom and the parent plant.) It's going to be a big headache for us. I'm sure many were just tiny last year and we missed them with the slacking off we did.

[Gothichome]

Lily, a good plan for the mint although in the long term containing it might be a lost cause, the containment will only slow it down i’m afraid. At our Calgary home I planted just one mint plug, was fine for a couple of years then it just took off growing every were. Our home backed onto a heavily used gravel alley, it grew out into the alley, it grew between the paver walkways, as well as taking over the garden, pulled and dug, many times to no avail it just kept coming up every were. In the end it was down to round up, even then it took a couple of years.
As far as your burdock, the old adage applies,” one year seed, seven years weed.” But you have discover that.

[Lily left the valley]

Lily, a good plan for the mint although in the long term containing it might be a lost cause, the containment will only slow it down i’m afraid. At our Calgary home I planted just one mint plug, was fine for a couple of years then it just took off growing every were. Our home backed onto a heavily used gravel alley, it grew out into the alley, it grew between the paver walkways, as well as taking over the garden, pulled and dug, many times to no avail it just kept coming up every were. In the end it was down to round up, even then it took a couple of years.
As far as your burdock, the old adage applies,” one year seed, seven years weed.” But you have discover that.

I'd been dithering over adding mint to the garden for years, and have actually been toying with the idea of just keeping it indoors in a bigger pot to lessen any worry. After giving this more thought, I'm leaning to the notion that it's ok to spend a few dollars on something that gives us fresh mint for a shorter term summer tea/cooking and adds a nice smell to the house even if it doesn't make it through the winter, rather than plant it as I had mentioned and face years of worry about when the wild spread will come. I've been watching a lot of presentations lately about how critters aid habitat diversity and spread. It's all too easy for me to see how a stray rooted bit could be dug up and stuck on a claw (we get grubbing skunks and they are not mint adverse), then take a trip before it disconnects well beyond where it was planted, and I'd not realize what was going on in this new redistribution cycle until it was too late! Finding yet more baby invasives in the yard yesterday definitely tipped the scales towards indoor only.

Yesterday was quite busy. I think I've mentioned the Scandinavian bakery we like to go to also has some carts and tables seasonally with plants. We picked up a "Sequoia" strawberry starter (labeled June bearing, but some sites say it's an ever berry so long as optimal weather holds). We are thinking of making a mini dirt/rock tiered tower for it and netting it since the critters tend to get to the two wild variants we have here and there well before they get big enough to pick. I put it in the cloche, along with the jugs of water for heat sinks.

I also had a good kind of surprise yesterday...as I was picking up more winter bits of twigs and such, I noticed some thick pieces of broken glass I didn't remember before. (And I may have found more before and just forgot and this is the rest of what was likely a bottle). Had I not spent the time poking around for the glass bits, I wouldn't have looked as closely to see it seems a new fern variant has volunteered. We usually have solid greens only (except I think one plant that has some browns with the greens may technically be a fern but isn't quite what folks think of when they think fern). Our usual greens:


This variant is distinctively ruddy brown. It might be too soon to ID, but I sent some pictures to an "Ask an Expert" site. Here's one of the closer shots. You can see a slightly older one has started to unfurl its frond and although the stipe color hasn't changed, the just unraveling frond is green. Just behind and to the left of that one is another unfurling that is still partially brown. From what little research I did (which unfortunately only showed a few examples still unfurled), it could well be a native northern maidenhair...but I'm no botanist, hence asking on the native site.


The dandelions are starting to open, and I'm a bit pleased we don't have so many this year and many have upright leaves, which means our soil is doing better since leaving them be as much as we can. I spotted either a pollinator fly or sweat bee in one, but didn't have my camera with me. After getting it to see if I could spot any more, I saw the most curious thing...what looked like a honeybee or other striped pollinator standing upright in a dandy. It wasn't standing...it was a spider lunch. I submitted two pictures to a spider ID site hoping for a positive ID. We have several bugs and spiders (like Japanese beetles) that have hopped over the pond, often on their own natives from back "home", that are invasive here and out compete natives. So if it's one of those spiders, I'll know to squish them next time.

[phil]

the little purple flowers that spurt up from bulbs are propagating out of control , going into the lawn and all sorts of places.. I try to dig out all the bulbs but there are so many I can never get them all.

Is this the culprit?

exactly !

is there some way to get rid of them? maybe if I put some net and mulch?

I tried covering them up, this weekend I yanked a lot of the flowers out but I dont really know if that does anything, to the flowers turn to seed and make bulbs or do they just keep making more bulbs and grow from that?

these things are surrounding other plants and they seem pretty invasive.

[Manalto]

I've always liked them so I haven't looked into how to get rid of them. Here's a starting point:

https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/orname ... ontrol.htm

[Lily left the valley]

Meant to post this yesterday, my one non native we introduced out of nostalgia for my maternal grandparents' garden is still doing well (and spreading) under the side stairs despite the neighborhood kitties still using the patch of bare dirt under there as an occasional litter box.


It looks as if we may get some lilac bloom afterall! Not all of the buds were killed off by the cold snap. Not sure when we'll have blooms, but eventually. *whew*

[Lily left the valley]

The winds kicked up a few days ago, and our cloche took a hoppin' across the yard--I'm glad I noticed it before it went over to our neighbors' yard. We couldn't find one of the stakes (which we may yet find later as we start sowing beds), but the good news is none of the plants inside were damaged when it lifted off and moved itself. We added some rocks to weigh down the tube frame to try to prevent that happening again. I meant to put the tomatoes in there today since the nights are not supposed to dip below 40s°F for at least a week, but ever since my 1st vax shot my insomnia has been insane and I'm either brain fogged from the lack of sleep or spend a ridiculous amount of time asleep (like today). So tomorrow they will go straight outside rather than the kitchen windowsill.

We have been doing yard clean up as time and weather has allowed in the last week, mostly pulling up volunteer saplings and plants of the varieties we do not want. We still have much to do in that department, but we are making progress. My hard work eradicating burdock along the one stretch I focused on last year along the driveway seems to be paying off--nothing but strawberries in that stretch, and only a few opportunist bits of grass or weeds that I'll take care of once the strawberries leaf out a bit more. They are in flower, and I meant to take a photo but forgot then I had a training tonight, and it was too dark after. There is still a lot of burdock along that strip, but seeing how well last year's efforts went in that one stretch makes me more determined to continue on and possibly finish that strip in full this year. The Violets we've also been encouraging along that strip are also doing splendidly, we just need to keep the remaining burdock at bay so their leaves don't get overshadowed. I've been treating the burdock leaves like a chop and drop compost to fill spaces between strawberries and violets, which has been working well so far.

The lilies of the valley under the porch have shot up even more stalks than my last picture, and one already has flowers turning from green to offwhite. A few non clover growers are trying to make a home there, but I'll take care of them later this week. (I think I mentioned I'm trying to encourage the clover as fill in around the lilies.)

More progress and plans in my garden thread in a bit.