Mother Nature has seen fit to make this Winter last as long as possible.  My fingernails are wondering if I am mad at them since they don’t have any dirt, or mud, under them at the end of March.  While I can’t get to cleaning out my gardens or planting too much of anything, there are still things to do…

Make lists of all the plants I will have in my veggie and flower gardens (I’ll figure out how to fit it all in later).

Figure out where to put some rhubarb plants in our garden that we are getting from a friend.

Figure out where all the stuff is going in the Youth Garden.

Make it to Brucemore’s Cool-Season Plant Sale April 10-12.

If you haven’t been to Brucemore in Cedar Rapids, I highly recommend it.  They have a wonderful 19th century mansion that you can tour to give you an idea of life in the early days of the city.  Three different Cedar Rapids families have lived there.  You can wander around the grounds any time of the year.  They have events all of the time, both indoors and out.  And they have terrific gardens.  They also have a couple of greenhouses, one of which was was recently refurbished.  It was in pretty rough shape.

The Lord and Burnham Greenhouse was originally put on the property in 1915.  It originally had a small head house and 450 feet of glasshouse as well as detached cold frames in the rear.  They expanded the glasshouse in 1940 and doubled the size and moved the cold frames.  Those dimensions weren’t very conducive to the current state of interpretation or for growing, so the decision was made to return the greenhouse to it’s original dimensions.

The process was just completed last year.  For more information on the greenhouse, click here.

Brucemore’s Cool-Season Plant Sale will be held Wednesday, April 10th through Friday, April 12th from 5 to 7:30 each evening. It will be held in the Lord and Burnham Greenhouse so you can get a first-hand look at the way it was meant to be.

I have been informed by Brucemore’s Head Gardener Deb Engmark and Marketing and Program Director Tara Richards that a variety of cool-season plants will be available.  These will include pansies, cabbages, snapdragons, sweet peas and spinach.  Brucemore will also be selling early blooming perennials like Bleeding-hearts and Delphiniums.  This early planting will give them a strong root system for the upcoming year.  The Cool-Season Plant Sale prices range from $3.50 to $7.50 and all the proceeds will benefit garden and landscape rehabilitation projects at Brucemore.  If you have any questions or just want to listen in, the garden staff will be on hand to give expert advice on selecting, placing and caring for your garden’s new residents.

There will be Summer Plant Sale on May 11 from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. so make sure to put that on your calendar as well.  This sale will feature annuals, perennials, hanging baskets and herbs.

Not sure where Brucemore is?  It is at 2160 Linden Drive SE in Cedar Rapids.  You can drive past it on First Avenue  to get the full feel of how much space there is for you to enjoy when you enter the grounds!  For more info, call 319-362-7375 or check out their website.

Maybe I’ll see you there!

Dig it!

Posted under General, Spring

This isn’t garden related, but today is our baby’s birthday.  Barney turns 4!

He is a Maine Coon and even two years ago wouldn’t fit in the cat bed.. although he keeps trying!

Here he is keeping the others herded on the chair….

Maine Coons are generally large cats, although when younger, they can fit in some areas….

He doesn’t do this anymore… at least not while we are around.  I’m not sure he can fit anymore.

Maine Coons age a little slower than other cats and don’t mature until around 4, so Barney should be considered a mature adult now.  I still don’t think he has a legal ID in order to drink, though.

And, no, the following pictures are NOT after having a few too many…

Barney is the most relaxed cat I have ever seen.  Not much bothers him.

He enjoys a good pillow, too.

Even if the pillow is supposed to be at the front door keeping the cold out!

Happy Birthday, Fuzzy Butt!

Dig it!

Posted under General

The tomatoes have had it.  They are done. Kaput. Finished.

Okay... they aren't completely done in, but none of the red tomatoes are worth eating and I don't want to wait for the green ones to ripen. Especially since Louie, Number 2 "son", would eat them before we could.

So I yanked ‘em!

This needs something....

After I raked the soil around a bit, it looked pretty good.  And I had these bulbs of garlic just hanging around our basement…

…so I planted a bunch of them.

I used the hoe to make rows about two inches deep. I managed to get nine rows in our eight foot bed.  I took the cloves off of the garlic head and pressed them in with the flat root side down.

Pointy end up....

I placed them about five inches apart.  There are now 78 cloves of garlic planted in one of our raised beds. 

Yummy!

They will grow a little this fall and when it gets colder we will put straw on it and let it sit through the winter. When it gets warm in the spring and the plants green up again, we will take the straw off and let it go.  We cut off the flowers when they form and will dig up the new heads of delicious garlic when the leaves die back, which was in July this year.  I cleaned off the dirt and tied them together and hung them in our basement in the utility room.  They are the stiff-necked variety so I had to use twine to tie them together, but it still worked!  

We got them from one of Dwayne’s co-worker’s mom, so I don’t know exactly what variety they are, but they are delicious!  They have a nice bite to them and they are huge, so I don’t have to use quite so many in my cooking.  I usually double (at least) whatever a recipe calls for.  Still, we’ve already managed to go through half of what we grew. We didn’t count what we had this past year, so hopefully this next year we will have enough to get us through winter. 

Dig it!

Posted under Autumn, General

A couple of months ago when it was so hot and dry, I headed out to the garden to do some weeding.  While the dry weather kept the weeds from growing like, well, weeds, it also made the ground as hard as cement. It was certainly interesting.  Since I was working so hard in the heat and humidity, I made sure to take plenty of breaks to cool down and drink water.   On one of the breaks I grabbed my camera and took a bunch of pictures.  I really like the macro feature on the camera.  Now I just need to have the patience to line up the shot and get that really fantastic photo.  A tripod would help, too.  These are photos from before the derecho went through Garrison, Vinton and Urbana in July.

The black petunia. It is still pretty cool. A couple even have yellow stripes, which I didn't really care for (Go 'Clones!), but they weren't blooming when I had the camera.

I think I am going to frame some of these to put on a blue wall in our house. It should look pretty cool!

Here's what the previous one looks like when I show the whole flower.

The guillardia are especially nice this year. Apparently, if you ignore it, it grows. Huh.

One of my very pretty lilies. My "lily lady" Eleanor could tell me what this is off the top of her head, but I will have to hunt down the tag and notes.

One of the asters that is already blooming. I think this is the Stokes Aster. I really like this flower.

One of my $1-get-em-before-we-toss-em specials a couple of years ago. This is a fleabane.

This is an asiatic lily that I got a year or so ago.

One of my clematis. It is hanging with the grapevine that the japanese beetles are now munching on. Hopefully they don't like clematis.

A yucca flower. We planted these a couple of years ago but this is the first year they bloomed.

This looked good before the derecho blew through.

The monarda looked great. The Joe Pye Weed got knocked down in "The Big Wind".

Pope John Paul II clematis

I don't remember the name of this one, but I love the color.

Two of my four clematis are on the same structure.

The moonbean coreopsis did well this year.

A closeup of the Moonbeam coreopsis flower.

My yellow lilyThe stamen. This is the part of the flower that leaves behind the lovely yellow pollen on my clothes when I brush past. I think the bees do a better job of the actual pollinating.

Guairdilla, or Blanket Flower. We gave up on these a couple of years ago and this year they look terrific.

Dig it!

Posted under General

Getting away from my garden for just a second…..

ASPIRE Therapeutic Horseback Riding Program is a non-profit organization that offers unique therapy to persons with physical, cognitive and emotional disabilities.

Marilyn Moore is the Executive Director at ASPIRE and I don’t think she ever sleeps.  She is always running around to make sure that there is enough money for the program to serve as many people as possible.  And the program is always in need of volunteers.  The volunteers can help with the riding program or just help out at one of the fundraising activities that Marilyn and the crew put on.

Right now, the program is in need of grass hay.  They need about six to seven hundred bales of straight grass hay to get their beautiful horses through the winter.  If you can help or know of anyone who can, please contact Marilyn at Marilyn@aspiretrp.org or info@aspiretrp.org.  Or you can call her at 319-296-0964.  She will be happy to hear from you.  For more information on the program or how you , click here.

There are other therapeutic riding programs across the state. Some in Eastern Iowa include:

ThunderRode located just north of Decorah….

Miracles in Motion in Swisher.

Each of these terrific organizations can always use your help.  Just call them up and ask. 

Thanks!

Posted under General

As much as I hate to admit it, Fall is coming. That means the temperatures will get cooler, the plants will start to finish their growing season and birds and Monarchs will start heading to winter grounds.  Monarchs cannot tolerate our long winters, so they spend the winter in roosting spots.  West of the Rockies they head to small groves of trees along the California coast.  On our side the Rockies, they head south.  WAY south…. into the high mountain forests of Mexico.  That is up to three thousand miles of travel!  And here is something interesting… the butterflies that head south will head north again, but they won’t make the southern trip again.  Their great-grandchildren will.

Late summer and early fall Monarchs emerging from their chrysalis are different, both in biology and behavior, than those that emerged earlier in the summer.  They won’t mate or lay eggs until the following spring when they return. Their bodies are geared toward making that long trip.  They store fat in their abdomen which is critical to their survival since it fuels their flight and helps them survive until the next spring when they begin to head back north.  As this year’s butterflies head south they stop to fuel up on nectar so make sure you don’t cut off those flowers in your yard.  

You can also help out those intrepid travelers by planting a Monarch Waystation.  These are places that provide resources necessary for monarchs to sustain their migration.  And the rest of the year, it helps them find the food and host plants needed to produce successive generations.  A Monarch Waystation needs to be at least 100 square feet but can be split into several sites on one location.  And the Waystation can be as large as you want it to be.  It needs full sun, which means at least six hours of sunlight a day.  There should be both nectar producing plants and plants that will provide food and shelter for the egg and larval stage of the insect.  You can put annuals and perennials in the Waystation.  Some annuals include lantana, pentas and salvia while some of the perennials are fennel, garden phlox, mallow and sedum.  Some shrubs are also welcome, in the form of spirea and butterfly bush, although the butterfly bush is just marginally hardy in the northern part of the state and will benefit from winter protection.

If you want more information about creating your own Monarch Waystation, click here.

And for more information on monarchs and butterfly gardens, check out the MonarchWatch website.

Many scientists wonder how Monarchs manage to find their way back to the exact same trees their great-grandparents left from the previous year.  So far they haven’t figured out the answer.  Each year scientists track monarchs that have been tagged to see where they go.  You can follow along, too by checking out Journey North’s Monarch Butterfly Migration Tracking Project.  It appears that they follow the butterflies south, too.

If you want to get involved in helping to track the insects, there will be a Monarch tagging event on Monday, September 12 from 5 to 6:30 at the Waverly Public Library’s Butterfly Garden. 

Dig it!

Posted under Event, General

We needed to fill some holes in the front raised bed and we needed to get a couple of butterfly bushes for one of the back beds.  Oh, and while we’re at it, let’s get another trumpet vine, some sedum and some more columbine.

I found a white Bellflower (Persicifolia White Campanula) that will look terrific in our front bed.

The orange on the left is Orange Marmalade Crossandra, a tropical annual that really sets off the hardy geraniums. On the top right, the yellow is Lemon Symphony Osteospermum. They should look great with the other two along with the purple petunias I planted a couple of weeks ago.

The Columbine patch. We have white, very large light blue, red and orange, yellow, black, red and I suppose there is some other color combination in here, too. Our new ones are Lime Sorbet, Clementine Rid and Crimson Star.

Of course, when you buy the stuff you have to get it in the ground.  And in the heat of the weekend, keeping them in the pots is going to dry them out even faster.  So… Sunday and Monday afternoons were spent digging, fertilizing and watering the new stuff.

Black Knight Butterfly Bush

A red butterfly bush is keeping my rose bush, Sven, company.

So far, they seem to be doing alright.  And by the time the next round of obnoxiously hot and humid weather comes around, they should have better developed root systems.  And I’ll be way to tired of the heat to actually do any work outside in that obnoxious heat and humidity.  That’s why they invented air conditioning, right?

Dig it!

Posted under General

Almost every gardener I know always complains they have too much of this or that during the growing season.  If you are one of these fine people, and I am among them, there is something you can do about it.  No, it isn’t planting fewer plants.  Don’t even think that!

You can donate your extra produce.  And, no, I don’t mean to me, although I would probably take it.  Donate your extra produce to the Food Bank! 

I got an email from Mike Lind, the Director of External Relations at the Northeast Iowa Food Bank.  They have a program called Fresh Food for Families.  This is the third year of the program and it goes something like this:

Plant extra plants and then donate the produce the the Northeast Iowa Food Bank.  They will take your donations Monday through Friday and will even pick them up if they are over 100 pounds.  You can also drop your extra produce off at Rotts Market in Cedar Falls on Thursdays.  They are located at 2021 Main Street in Cedar Falls, north of University Avenue.  Make sure that you put your name and address with your donation if you would like a receipt.

Donations will stay local and Mike mentions that “1 in 6 are food insecure in Iowa, which mean not having an adequate amount of nutritious food.”

While this email pertains to the Cedar Valley area around Waterloo, you can contact your local food pantry and see if they want your excess produce.  Chances are they will love it.  The kids with the Vinton Youth Garden donated some of our excess produce last year to the Benton County Food Pantry.  The kids even got a tour of the facilities and learned that many of the people who utilize the food pantry don’t get enough fresh fruits and vegetables in their diets because it is too expensive for the Pantry to purchase the fresh stuff.  They rely on donations so that they can help even more families.

Contact your local food pantry or even a senior dining center to see if they can use your extra produce.

If you are interested in helping out the Northeast Iowa Food Bank, contact Sheri Huber-Otting at 319-235-0507 ext. 114 or shuber-otting@feedingamerica.org.

Dig it!

Posted under Event, General

I love roses.  I like the ones that smell like roses.  That means I have to wait until the roses are blooming at the nursery so that I can actually smell them.  I have found that the tag may say it has a “strong licorice scent” or “slight old rose fragrance” smell, but sometimes it just smells like a flower shop rose.  Nothing but waxy.  They may be beautiful, but I want to have my finger stuck by a thorn when I reach down to breathe in the rose fragrance. 

So last weekend I went to Peck’s in Cedar Rapids.  I stopped in to get two roses, Firefighter, which is a deep red with a beautiful rose scent and a yellow one with a nice smell.  Note to self… go before Mother’s Day weekend.  They were pretty picked over.  I managed to grab the last of the Firefighter roses they had on the greenhouse floor.  It was probably still there because the spent blooms had been cut off and there weren’t any buds showing. Yeah for me. 

I had one from last year that didn’t make it through the winter, but I loved the deep red blooms and the strong sweet rose smell, so I wanted to get another one.  This time, I’m putting it on the south side of the house where it has natural winter protection.

The yellow one I had to search for.  The one that was recommended to me was Julia Child, but the flowers didn’t have a strong enough scent for me.  It just wasn’t quite right.  However, as I bent to sniff one called Radiant Perfume, I was hooked.  And not because the thorns grabbed me, the smell was fantastic!  It made it into the wagon. 

Of course, there was more room on the south side of the house that could always use some colorful and scented filler.  Sooooo…. I made several mistakes. 

1) I went to Peck’s

2) I didn’t leave when I grabbed the two roses

3) I told myself, “I still have space in the wagon.”

4) followed by “There is plenty of room on the south side of the house”

5) I started smelling the other roses

So, I ended up with a dark pink beauty called Grand Dame with a gorgeous rose smell

The Grand Dame is on the right. She needed a drink.

and a very nicely scented Floribunda called Burgundy Ice.  The other three are Hybrid Teas and will be taller while the Burgundy Ice will be more mounded.  It is just loaded with blooms.

I have them located on the south side of the house where they will have protection from the winter winds.  I plan on covering them with mulch for the winter, but that will be about it.

Here is the Burgundy Iceberg with a Serviceberry on the right and a Mock Orange on the left. There is a miniature rose in front of the picture.

I will be optimistic and say that they will be back next year and we can enjoy them again!

Dig it!

Posted under General

The Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier had an article in Sunday’s paper about gardening in a bag.  This is something fairly new to me but it has been around for awhile. One article I found from Missouri State University was from a study in 2008.  Another article I found but apparently forgot to save had images from 2002.  This sounds like something I will be trying at the Vinton Youth Garden, at the very least.

You begin by getting a 40 pound bag of dirt. Well, actually, you start by figuring out where you want your 40 pound bag of dirt, then you buy it. And you can buy one or many depending on what you are planning to do with your space.  Put the bag where you want it to stay, cut some holes on one side for drainage and place that side toward the ground. On the top of the bag cut a large hole in it.

Plant your items and water.  You can mulch the bag beds with compost, grass clippings, or whatever you like.  It will help keep the bags moist longer. 

If you want to hide the bags you can mulch the bags with enough straw or hay to cover them.  Or you can use a whole lot of mulch.

If you want to plant tomatoes using this style, only use one bag per tomato plant. Otherwise, you can put several pepper plants in one bag, or any number of other plants.  I have one person asking about watermelons.  I don’t see why it wouldn’t work, but watermelons do want a more sandy soil, so you may want to mix in a little sand if you want to try watermelons in a bag.

At the end of the growing season, you just pull the plastic out of the garden and work the soil in with any amendments (more compost, nutrients) that you want.  That way if you started the bag garden because of really lousy soil, you are starting to fix that problem.  And next year maybe you can just put it in the ground

I found information on gardening by the bag from Missouri State University and Vegetable Gardener websites.

This gives you another option for gardening.  Whether you are trying to amend a bad piece of ground or just want to see how something will look in a particular spot but aren’t quite ready to commit to digging, this is the style for you.  I plan on giving it a try at the Vinton Youth Garden with some flowers the kids want to grow.  I’ll keep you posted.

Dig it!

Posted under General