Planting Time

I just took a couple of days to organize my vegetable seeds/plants and to decide what I'm planting and where. I've narrowed my first planting down to white and yellow onion sets, broccoli plants and carrots, lettuce and spinach seeds.

Also I have three kinds of onion seeds, more lettuce and spinach seeds and broccoli seeds. I plan to use the lettuce and spinach in a succession planting. I'll probably start the broccoli in seed flats and move them to the garden when I have room. I've been wanting to try to grow onions from seed - fall is the best time to do that, but I don't have a lot more room. I'll try to squeeze them in with the carrots if I don't have too many.

If nothing interferes with my plans, I should be planting everything this weekend.

Fall Gardening

Fall sneaked up on me this year. Back in August the newspaper ran an article about it that made me feel like I was behind in my planting. I could have planted some things, but it seemed really too hot for lettuce, spinach, etc. Onions wouldn't be planted until October, so I really had time to wait and see what the weather did. Strangely fall happened almost at the same time as October - which means I need to get planting.

I called a few feed stores last week, looking for onion sets and I found them. I only know of around five, but after a couple of years of buying potatoes and onions, there seem to be only two reliable ones: Dorchester Feed and Supply and Red Top Feed and Tackle Shop. There is more info on these stores here.

I had today off and planned to go to one of them to get onions and whatever else they might have. I thought I would check with my neighbor, Mr. Hiers - he was looking for collard greens and last year I gave him onion sets, because he couldn't find any. I told him I where I was going and volunteered to buy him what he needed.

I ended up buying Mr. Hiers two pounds of yellow onion sets and five 9-packs of collars greens. I bought a 9-pack of broccoli and a pound each of yellow and white onion sets for myself. I don't think I'll plant all of the onions, so I've offered some to a couple of friends who are getting serious into gardening. I've had mixed results with onions, so let's hope I fair better this year.

After I took Mr. Hiers what I bought him, I began preparing my garden. I pulled weeds and worked some compost into the beds and I sat down and started planning what and where to plant. I've got onion sets and onion seeds, broccoli plants and broccoli seeds and lettuce, spinach and carrot seeds. The broccoli plants and onion sets I have to plant this fall. If I plant the onion, carrot and broccoli seeds I should plant them this fall. I have two packs each of lettuce and spinach seeds, so I will plant one now and one later, so I will have salads all winter and spring.

I think I have room for most of this - I do have two many onion seeds, though - three different varieties. I'll at least try growing one kind just to get some experience at this. I'll let you know soon what I end up planting.

Pond Redo

It looks like I may redesign the pond this winter. I've been meaning to completely finish it - decide on a permanent design and lay the flagstone with mortar - but I've had things happen. There was a leak in the bog that was a major fix - now there is another leak, so I've quit circulating the pond through the bog. It's slowly drying out - I've watered a few of the plants - but I have to find a new home for most of them in the near future.

One of the reasons I've had problems with the bog is I didn't invest the money in this project that I should have. In hind sight, I wouldn't have spent the extra money to do it right. We didn't have the money to do it that way - we were relying on mostly donated materials and my own sweat equity. I probably bit off a little more than I could chew, and did what I could with what I had. The way I should have done it was to make the bog and the pond out of a single piece of pond liner, rather than the two that I used. I also used about the cheapest liner I could find for the bog - twice!

I'm redesigning the pond/bog to use the current pond liner for both the pond and bog. obviously the pond will be smaller with a very small area used for a bog. I will probably plant some of the other bog plants in the ground around the pond - I just have to make sure they get the extra moisture they need to thrive. Maybe I'll make a bog in the ground like I've seen lots of places around the internet. I'll put most of the carnivorous plants in that area or in pots - the one that's in a pot seems to be doing fine. I have a design in mind for all of this , but I won't know exactly what it will look like until I get in there and get digging.

Third Annual Fall Park Circle Plant Swap

Today was the 3rd Annual Fall Park Circle Plant Swap. I've been looking forward to this for...well. since the spring plant swap! I didn't do a lot of growing specifically for the swap, but I ended up having a number of things that I was able to take as is. There was a growing number of garden-related items being brought for people to take, so I had a number of things in that area - old tools, pots, books and magazines. I guess there wasn't much of a trend, because I think I was the only one to bring any of that stuff this time.

Getting rid of the books and unused tools was great for me - like a fall purging of junk. I had a few plants that I felt the same way about too. This morning I got rid of most of my water irises around the pond. It's real hard to contain them and by the fall, they are just trying to take over. I still have some in my waterfall filter, but all of them in the bog are gone - at least I think so.

I might have mentioned this before, but I was dividing and repotting succulents a few weeks ago - most of those went to the swap. I got some hibiscus from a neighbor in the spring, and have had it in a container of water since - minus what Robin wants to keep and what my neighbor Joan wants, I took the rest to the swap - about four pieces. I changed my mind about a few things I could have taken - if I don't want them, they can always go to the next swap. I also took the smaller Hymenocallis that I divided earlier this year - I still have twenty left.
I gathered up everything and got there a few minutes after 10am, when the set-up started - the actual swap wasn't until 11am. I wanted to get there a little early so I could socialize a little - I always do too much talking and not enough looking. When I got there, there were about 10 cars and hundreds of plants - I couldn't believe it. I unloaded my plants and stuff and started to look around, but ended up doing a good bit of socializing - catching up with friends and neighbors, helping other people with plant identification where I could. Eventually I got around to looking at plants.

Like the last few times, I wasn't excited about what I saw - there were some things we could use when we do our landscaping in the near future, but nothing that jumped out at me. I remember feeling this way at the last swap, but ended up being very happy with what we got at the end - I hoped today would be the same. When Robin showed up I was able share my ideas about which plants we might want to try to get. One good thing about not being overly excited about many of the plants, is that there is no disappointment when you don't get the plants you want.

I was interested in a couple of hostas and ajuga. Robin found a couple of ferns. There were a number of bromeliads that I considered, but I already neglect the ones I have - same goes for the night-blooming cereus. We got the ferns and the hostas and the ajuga - Amy Dabbs, who brought the ajuga, said I could have more if I ever needed it. After several rounds of grabbing plants, we started running out of plants we definitely wanted - I laughed a little bit when I saw Robin grab plants that I had brought, until I did the same thing a few minutes later! I was impressed by what we ended up with - a lot of what Robin grabbed, I didn't even see! We got a lot for the landscape: rug juniper, liriope, hosta, ajuga, society garlic. A couple of curiosities - pregnant onion, bed of nails. A couple of things that I'll repot and give away - dwarf papyrus, aloe, spider plant.

I was very pleased with our haul and I feel like we will get more use out of these that any other plant swap we've been to. Now it's time to get planting.

Butterwort

I repotted all of my carnivorous plants today. They had become overgrown in the 18-inch container I had all of them in. One of them, the butterwort, was getting overrun by the Sarracenia purpurea. Originally, I was only going to take out a few and repot, but I ended up repotting every plant, including the butterwort.

I bought the butterwort on a whim last year. I was at Lowes looking at clearance plants and there it was, for $0.48, I believe. When I got home, I took it out of its cube and sat it in a shady area of the bog and then eventually planted it with the rest of the carnivorous plants. I was saying in an earlier post about handling some so small and seemingly fragile - and a little sticky. This was no exception. That was the main reason I was going to leave it in there and not repot it. I lost a few rosettes in the transplant, but it's still pretty big. Who knows how many rosettes it has now. As you can see, it started out with only a couple. To give it room to grow, I put it in a seven-inch pot. I hope that's ok for the next year or so.