Tuesday, May 22, 2012

This week in the garden

I think May is my favorite month, because in our neck of the woods, it is planting season. The last few days have been spent getting my hands dirty and putting in the vegetable garden. I still have quite a bit to plant, but so far, the tomatoes, cucumbers, honey dew, summer squashes, carrot, onions, lettuce and green beans are in. Hopefully, tomorrow I will get the corn, watermelon, cantaloupe, garlic and winter squashes planted. I am also adding a few new herbs to the herb garden.


The peonies are in full bloom, and despite my best attempts at building a frame to keep them upright, they are lying flat again. I really need to split the bush this fall, but I am scared to. This bush was the first thing that I planted in our yard after we bought our house. The root ball came from my great grandmother's front yard, a place filled with many happy childhood memories. Walking past the bush makes me smile without fail. Splitting the bush might kill it, it's always a risk, so I keep neglecting to do it. 

 

The snapdragons are also in full bloom, and attracting lots of butterflies and damselflies. The other evening as I chatted on the phone on the front porch, I watched our cat stalking the butterflies. I guess better butterflies than birds?

 Right now we are harvesting strawberries like crazy, and this year they are the sweetest that we have ever had. We also had some voluntary black seeded simpson lettuce (our favorite) come up from last year. There is nothing like fresh garden lettuce!

5 comments:

sass @ (In)fertility Unexplained said...

I love peonies :) The botanical gardens in Ann Arbor have a huge garden of peonies. It's beautiful.

Dr Nice said...

You can buy a bit of tomato fencing or stock fence at a feed and seed place to corral your peonies. And when the time comes to divide it dig up the entire roots cluster in a single piece, and set it in a large tub of water to soak for an hour or so, then carefully rinse, spray and work the soil off of it until it is relatively clean and you can clearly see the structure. Separate the cluster and them replant each new division. Put about a tablespoon of "E.B. Stone's Sure Start" in the bottom of each hole before setting the root cluster in, cover gently with loose soil and then give each one a good soak using about 10 drops of SuperThrive per gallon of water. As long as you don't do too much damage to the root clusters you should have great success. Any time in the fall after the above ground growth has expired is an okay time to do this.

Daryl said...

Love your garden! That's something that's on my to-do list if we ever have a house with a yard. Good luck with your appt. tomorrow--hope you get good news!

Anonymous said...

Happy ICLW

Your flowers look gorgeous!!!

Kristin said...

Wow, I am so impressed and so envious of your fabulous garden!

ICLW #65