Two plants waiting for their spot in the ground.
This week was the second of my local farmers’ market, and I found much to tempt me. You might think that having 70 plants on order would have satisfied the desire for flowers; you would be wrong. I managed to escape with only two Bee Balm plants; if I’d had more cash and an actually-developed plan regarding where the culinary herbs are going to go it would have been a lot worse. However, I was glad to find the Bee Balm, as it’s a plant I wanted to include in the garden and hadn’t found in the catalogue from which I ordered. And, I have that little spot around the corner that needs filling in; I think the Bee Balm will nicely bridge the gap between the (soon to be two varieties of) irises and the wee white azaleas.
In addition to the flowers, I bought dairy products from the new dairy vendor, J-Wen Farms. The cheese looked too good to pass up, and my choice was (what’s turned out to be) a nice sharp cheddar. I’ll definitely be trying their various goat milk selections in the future. I also bought milk for my partner, and we’ll see if he likes it. I’m happy to support a local option for pastured hormone-free not-ultra-pasteurized milk if the quality is there. All those things plus organic would be ideal, but cows that rotate into a fresh paddock every day all summer are close enough to the mark for me to give it a try.
I didn’t buy any produce as we’re still working our way through the last of our winter CSA greens, and I won’t be buying much next week since we’re going out of town for a week just two days after the market. No doubt there will be many more options when I return in the first week of May; asparagus is nice, but I’m more looking forward to the appearance of sugar snap peas.
Be careful of filling all of those little spots. I have two neighbors that like filling little spots and now that the plants they planted have filled in, the plants don’t have enough room to grow and they’re severely cramped together. They are elderly and I know they can’t get down on their hands/knees to do anything about it now. My neighbor next door says that her husband can’t stand any earth at all to show between plants so he’s always filling up the empty spots. They have 5 trees in their front yard (which isn’t really big at all) and not one of the species of trees have been allowed to have the space it needs to grow naturally and show up as a individual specimen. When I did our landscaping I didn’t like the bottom of our house showing (the concrete part) but after a few years everything looked beautiful and I can’t see the bottom of the house anymore. It looks like you’ve gotten some beautiful plants!
I empathize with your neighbors; it can be so hard to wait for the plants to grow! I try to stick pretty closely to the recommended planting spacing, shaving maybe an inch or two off but still trying not to overcrowd them. I expect that I’ll divide and move many in a few years, as I work on the balance between having them close enough to shade the roots and control the weeds but not so close as to lose air circulation and overcrowd them.
In our front foundation bed, the maple on the other side of the yard has a tendency to send out little shooter roots. I’m hoping that having the plantings slightly closer together will encourage a quicker development of a network of perennial roots that will allow them to hold their own with the tree (which does, after all, have an entire side of the front yard all to itself, but it’s 70+ years old and will take all the room it can get).
Speaking of maple trees, I can’t believe the green thumb I’ve got this year. I planted several lillies under and around our maple tree. It all started with a couple of shrubs I found and was looking for a place for them. The hubby told me where I could plant them (ha, that’s a joke), and one of the places was in two corners that were in corners under this maple tree. Anyhow, instead of taking a corner like the hubby said I could have (lol!), I took the whole general area and planted a number of things in the area – mostly lillies. After all, the whole area was a bad place to grow grass and a bad place to have to mow so I just took the whole area away from the rest of the yard and did something with it. I did try to plant one of the shrubs in a corner at this spot, but I had to add a lot of dirt just to cover the roots up because there was virtually no dirt because of the tree roots. Now that it’s planted there, I don’t think it’s going to be a good spot at all for it and will be moving it to a location of MY CHOICE.
I have been paying particular attention to what people have in their yards that I like. I’ve taken advantage of plant sales this year and purchased a few perennials. I do have some gardening books that I’ve been looking at and making sure I plant things according to their lighting requirements, etc. I have come to like the hydrangea shrubs so much I even found myself looking for a remote hydrangea shrubs that I could sneak a cutting from so I could start one that way. When it comes right down to it, I can’t do that without feeling guilty, so I broke down and bought one. Because you trim shrubs anyway when you plant them, I am going to take about four cuttings and start some more. In the course of trying to find a good price for a hydrangea shrub, I found out there is also a climbing hydrangea and purchased two because they were half price. I have a beautiful aluminum cyclone fence that my neighbors always want to cover up on their side of our fence. I feel the very same way so I have planted this vine to at least not have the fence show up so much. With that fence, it makes the yard look like a giant playpen, lol! It takes a while to get established, but once it does, it’s a beautiful vine. The vine grows to 50 feet so two should eventually do a good job in covering up some of the fence. I’ve seen pictures of people letting them grow over their home’s roofs, but that is not a good idea because they grab at stuff pretty deeply. Some of these vines are so strong they can take your roof off. My sister told me of an individual she knows who had a vine grow through the wall and into an enclosed porch. It would be neat to see a vine climb onto a tree though.
The best benefit of all in getting out in the yard this year is that doing this physical activity has greatly improved my physical stamina and I really did need that. You don’t realize how bad your physical stamina can get until you try to do an activity like gardening. I’m even getting a tan!