Blue Hydrangea

I bought a blue hydrangea (Hydrangea Macrophylla, also called big leaf or French hydrangea) just after easter and I am planning to plant it outside in the hope it will do well, and hopefully survive the winter. A blue hydrangea is blue because the soil is acidic and if the soil is alkaline it will bloom pink.
When you transfer a plant like this outside, it is recommended you do so late May when chance of frost is over. Cut the plant back to about 4"-6" from the ground, to stimulate shorter and denser branch growth, to increase its chance to overwintering. When winter comes cover as much of the plant as possibly in mulch, leaves, cloth or anything else to protect it from the cold. This type of hydrangea blooms on old wood.
Some organic materials that will lower ph: coffee grounds, conifer needles, sawdust, peat moss, oak leaves, fruit and vegetable peels and grass clippings.
Pruning: (1) All dead stems should be removed from hydrangeas every year. (2) After the plants are at least 5 years old, about 1/3 of the older (living) stems can be removed down to the ground each summer. This will revitalize the plant. (3) In addition, if it becomes necessary to prune a plant to reduce its size, it may be cut back in June or July without harming the next year's bloom. But it will return almost immediately to it's former size. This is one reason why it's best to plant a hydrangea where it does not have to be pruned. Make sure not to cut off all buds, or your hydrangea will not bloom the next year.

veggies are in, Finally!

I made it to the Richmond nursery for some shopping. I was only going to buy a few veggie plants, but I came back with a bunch of flowers for the front yard as well. I couldnt help myself, that place is dangerous!
It was a typical stormy spring day today, so not the nicest day to be outside in, but pretty good for planting as it was wet. I put on my old winter coat and A's splash pants and rain boots and started. I weeded and planted our vegetable garden containers. Finally! I have been wanting to do so for weeks but something always seemed to pop up. Little by little we will get our yard organised!
So, in our veggie garden we now have, A1: garlic, green onions and carrots (mostly came back from last year) across the path (A2) we have curly leaf lettuce, spinach, arugula, bistro salad, and romain lettuce. Most of these are grown from seed from last years plants, Bonus! I repositioned some in the bed so they are more lined up, and I planted some more spinach seeds. In B1 we are growing 3 green and 3 red pepper plants. B2 has 3 bush bean plants and a jalapeno pepper plant. I have never tried bush beans and am curious to see what they will be like. C1 has cherry, beef steak and a fantastic tomatoe plant, as well as kentucky and scarlet runner green beans, and C2 has a Bonny Best and a Bushy early girl tomatoe plant, a cucumber plant, peas and green beans.
In the patch next to the rhubarb plant I planted 3 fantastic tomatoe plants.
I would like to plant potatoes, and maybe zuchnini or squash in the flower bed at the bottom of the veggie garden, but it would mean ripping a lot of plants out, and i havent decided yet if it will be worth the effors seen as though there is soooo much work to be done still.
The only thing I have done in the front yard so far is reposition the black eyed susan. I kept it in the same flower bed, but I moved it in between the blue mountain huet and the peonie (which by the way seems to be doing well for the first time since it was replanted next to the little tree). I bought a taller variety of black eyed susan and put it in the old spot of the other, in the hope it will look better than the other did. I will let you know how the other planting goes.

grass is always greener...

Hurray! The back lawn is starting to look less like a mud pit and more like there is something growing. Three days ago the first shoots started coming up. In a few weeks we will add some more grass seed.
Not a lot of progress in terms of the front lawn. We haent seen any growth yet. We have also not been watering it as dilligently as the back lawn. We will have to increase our lawn watering and get this show on the road before the real summer hits and it gets too hot.

Lawn Care

This weekend my husband and I ripped out the 'lawn' at the back of the house. Creeping violet had completely taken over what was left of an already crummy lawn, and since this is the year of big renovations, we decided to rip up the creepie crawlies and replace it with grass seed. We are expecting perfect weather for germination this week, now all we need to do is keep it watered. The same goes for the front yard, it hasnt rained in a couple of days and so I should make sure it will get some sprinkler action tomorrow.
Next project will be taming the rest of the yard. We are planning on getting a whole bunch of mulch, ripping out the plants we really dont want, and mulching over top. Then moving the mulch where ever we want to add plants. I think it could work, as long as we start early. Even if it is just for a couple of years to stay on top of the weeds and the invasive creeping plants we have in (and also outside of) our flowerbeds

Spring clean up

Luckily for us spring started early this year. We already had some snow drops two weeks ago and last week I saw our first spring corcuses. Because of the lovely weather, last weekend we did a little spring clean up. I racked most of the front yard and flowerbeds, and got most of the old leaves out and spread them out between our two compost bins. And a couple of gardening bags. Since the bare spots in our lawn from last year where still definetly there, we decided we should start the seed earlier this year in the hope that more of a root system would be established by the time the heat of summer started. A therefore went ahead and put down our first bag of grass seed. In a couple of weeks we will go ahead and put the next seeds down in hopes that we wont have to resort to all new sod. We are also thinking of starting this in the backyard, maybe even today. We will see what today brings first though. We have big plans for the garden this year. We want to make it into what we think it can and should be, now the wedding is over we should have more time on our hands, so stay tuned.

Purple Sensation

We have a few really cool flowers in our garden. One of them is a purple spiky flower. It grows on a long thin stem and the flower part looks like a bloomed out dandylion, but instead of seeds, the head is made up of bright purple flowers. They mostly grow from bulbs. I found out today that these flowers are called Allium 'Purple Sensation'. Last year Alan spread the seeds from the seed pods that resulted from local bees' busy work. This year we have many more Alliums than we did the first year. I read that Alliums grown from seed are a lighter colour than ones grown from bulbs. This could very well be true as some of the Allium have a lighter lilac colour compared to the others. Today I cut some along with some cat weed, and put them in a vase on the coffee table. I love having flowers in and around the house, and we are lucky we have enough flowers to do so! Isabelle luckily does not seem to be at all interested in the cat weed, so at least I dont have to worry about her knocking over the vase.
The Mountain Bluet has started to bloom as well, so I cut some of those along with some of the impatients. The impatiens are starting to produce their little seed pods, and they do not have very much longer to bloom. I'm going to have to cut them all back. Hopefully I'll have time to clean up our little 'secret garden' ally between us and the neighbour house a bit and get a good picture. It is filled with impatients and even though it is very wild, I think it looks beautiful.

Photo Session

As promised for a while now, I have some pictures here to show some of the work in progress















The before and after pics of cleaning around and moving of the compost bins.





















preperation of our vegetable garden boxes with compost in anticipation of the veggies.
















Alan's beautifully installed irrigation system, you can see the soaker hose at the top and the placeable loose hoses in the bottom two containers. You can also so the nice trellis he built for the beans and cucumbers

















The irrigation system in action, you can see the lettuce very well on the left, along with some spinach, the rest is still a little tough to see, I will take another picture when the garden is growing in more


this is one of the water barrels which will be used for the rain water irrigation. It is almost finished, and when it is I will also take a picture of this.

















And last but not least the future herb garden 'before'. I have yet to take an after picture, because even though it is planted, I still want to make a stone edge to finish it all of, so I am holding off on the after pic for now.
You can see a corner of our patio and a piece of the gravel path that isn't covered in out of control plant growth. I am slowly weeding the path, but it has been terrible weather for the last few days, so I haven't been out much. Perhaps this weekend.