As I work about in the garden, I notice little things that we should address. There are weeds! Noooo! Gross as they are, now is the time to start with one of the The Three “P’s” in organic gardening – Prevention. Bear in mind that weeds are prolific seed-scatterers! Like the little Oxalis. You know, the ones with the four-leafed-clover-like leaves and yellow flowers. Each of those little seed pods has hundreds of seeds waiting to expolde into your pristine beds! Don’t let it happen! Pull them, roots and all, and toss them right into the compost. Likewise, all the little grasses, Pine tree seedlings, etc. The effort expended now will save you greater expenditures of energy when it is 95 degrees and high humidity! Once the area is mostly cleared, it is highly advisable to put some sort of mulch down in the open areas around the vegetables, fruit and herbs. Leaves, bark, even a thin layer of grass clippings – weed-seed free, of course – are all great to lay atop the soil to preserve moisture, keep the seedling weeds at bay, and to eventually break down into additonal soil.

   Strawberries are coming into their peak, and we should be diligent about harvesting every day, so as not to waste the abundance of Nature, and as a way to prevent adding to the slug and snail population! They often find our little red joys before we do, or they get to them while they are green. Little, mucous-y pigs! It helps to get to the fruit before they do, and if they have already feasted, remove the chewed berry and toss it into the compost! Removal keeps the scent from wafting around to the others in the area and drawing them to the beds. It is also helpful to put out your finished citrus halves, left upside down. The slimy little creepers head under them as a hut from the sun and in the morning you can go get the rinds and…recycle them. Stomp, scrape, whatever, but dispose of them any way that seems therapeutic to you! You can also try ringing the berry plants with clean, crunched-up eggshells as a protective deterrent. It doesn’t stop them all, but it helps.

Keep pinching Tomato suckers. Pick off worms and caterpillars from the Dill, the Tomatoes, the Parseley, et al. If you notice little white flying things coming from your Basil or other larger -leafed plants, get yourself a spray bottle of Insecticidal Soap and spritz the undersides of the leaves. In 14 days, hit them again and you will kill the hatchlings and gain a modicum of control over them for the time being.

Remember, it is a great idea to find open spots in the Garden to seed a few Radishes, Arugula and other quick crops. Radishes are ready in about 21 days, plenty of time to get them up and out before the larger veggies take over. Radishes can be seeded all through the season, every week or two. Just do not get too exhuberant! Only put out what you think you will eat in a week or two!

Vining Vegetables  and Fruit can be managed by pinching. I know it is a hard concept, and a harder thing to make yourself do, but it has a truly practical outcome: larger, more consistent fruit. Fewer but better is the idea here. So, once a cucumber has set three to four small fruits, pinch the vine off after the last one, about an inch past the fruit. Likewise, this is the method for Winter Squash, Grapes and Melons. Not so for Peas or String Beans! They need their vines to continue producing.

Planning, Prevention and Perseverance are the Virtues we need to be good Stewards of the Garden, and bring a slice of Heaven to Earth.

Contact me directly if you think I might be of service to you in your Heaven!

Well, one does not have to be prescient to have predicted that the warmer weather was soon to be here, but it showed up on the heels of my last post! Highs in the nineties, and windy! Oh well, we had great run, didn’t we? I hope you did get out there and enjoy the expanded version of Spring here in North Carolina. I sure did! As a  Gardener it is my privilege to have my main office outdoors, where I daily see, feel and smell the wonders of nature, and, as noted previously, I have been really enjoying all the fine weather, gorgeous flowers and sweet secents wafting through each day. Now it is time to say goodbye to the softer Season, and get ready for the warm Season. We need to be more disciplined and mindful of watering, get our mulches down, pick bouquets before the rainstorms knock off the petals, and pluck as many berries as we can before we lose them to ants, slugs and bunnies! Cages or other structures need to be set up around our tomatoes. Climbing veggies need tying up as they stretch and grow.  As the weather warms, we also need to be aware of the new crops of little bugs that set up shop and proceed to diminish the beauty of our young Gardens: Spider mites, slugs and snails, caterpillars. Let’s use the least toxic methods first – Insecticidal soaps for the Spider mites (remember to spray the undersides of the leaves, where they live), small saucers of cheap beer for the slimy ones, or half-grapefruit rinds left out for them to gather beneath, that you casually dump into the compost. The furry predators of our Pumpkin patch can be kept at bay with dog hair, stinky sprays or, my new favorite, Plantskyyd natural repellent! It is made of natural porducts, does not have a lingering scent, and only needs to be applied four times a year!

    Water your Garden deeply, my friends. Eat well of that which you grow, and sleep peacefully knowing that you are bringing a small piece of Heaven to earth!

As we were laying sod today, having been told to expect rain, I realized how good we currently have it. The weather in North Carolina, for the most part, is changeable and tends to run in wet/dry cycles. This year, however, we have been given a reprieve, it seems. The winter was not snowy, nor icy, nor dreary. For the most part, it was a “California” winter: warm, wet, and generally pleasant. Then it has just kept getting better. March and April have been pretty darned impressive, what with the rains and the warmth, and the blue skies. I have been taking pictures like crazy this year, simply because all our plants and flowers and trees have been at their best and lasting so long! I am often accustomed to watching the Irises wither in the mid-April heatwave we often get. Same thing with the Wood Hyacinths- a haze of blue begins to cover the forest floor, and before too many days, a warm wind blows though and curtails their big show. This year the Irises started in March and are still going! I actually saw some purple Iris blooming in December! For that matter, the Daffodils were also blooming in December – crazy! And to top it off we did not get a late-season freeze as we sometimes do. I always keep in mind that in late April 2005 there was a night or two in the low 20′s, and we had had a warm winter like the one we just did: the Crepe Myrltes had all shot up, the Wisteria were in their Glory, even the Dogwoods were caught by surprise! I made it a rule after that never to advise planting until at least then, just in case! But this year has been the exception to all the rules, and no, I would not attribute it to Global Climate Change. The Carolinas exist in a transitional climate zone, and this is not unusual weather for around here. What I love about the Natives is their uncanny ability to forget their own weather! If I have heard it once, I have now heard it dozens of times “it never gets this hot here!”, or “it never usually gets this cold here”, or ” I can’t remember a time when it has been so dry!”. Well, I sort of watch the weather for a living, and  have to chuckle when folks say that, since I can usually recall when it was whatever they say it never is! I have been here since January 2003, and came to visit during the once-in-twenty-five-year ice storm of ’02. Since then I have seen it drought out a few times, been through a few Tropical storms, and been lashed by three small hurricanes. I have seen it snow several feet, had weeks of below-freezing temperatures, and wished to God that summer would end. I think I have witnessed a fairly even distribution of Carolinian weather, and have come to expect the cyclical nature of it. Truth is, if you look back at climate records for this area, and consider it has been consistently inhabited and watched for several centuries, you can see for yourself that the climate here has always had its ups and downs, and that there is no obvious shift towards one direction or another. There was a deep freeze that swept through the whole south – all the way to Miami and New Orleans – in 1903- and killed palm trees and camellias that had been planted hundreds of years prior. Likewise, there were longer and more severe droughts here in the 1920′s, and the record heat numbers are still in the past, for the most part. Cities create their own microclimates, and records taken there do not reflect the surrounding, more rural parts of the countryside. So while Raleigh may have certain numbers that seem to show some change, it is more likely that they are peculiar to the city environment and not illustrative of the climate in, say, Oxford. Just a thought.

      The real purpose of the post is to invite you to stop and consider our good fortune and great weather! Stop and smell the flowers that everywhere are putting on the best show in years, and remember that it will all be gone soon enough! Summer is just around the corner, and no one can say whether or not it will be brutal or beautiful, so join me in looking around and seeing all that Nature and its God are offering for our appreciation!

     Happy Spring, and keep checking in for new posts and pictures. Mark

Behold! The power of the Peony!

This has been a mild winter and beautiful spring, and the pictures can tell the story:

A gorgeous April afternoon

Miss Bartzella

 

 

As well as…

Looks like a fried egg, but smells like honey

With the shorter days and the changeable weather, it is taking us a little longer in calendar days to get finished with the reincarnation job. But we did get the back wall garden planted on New Year’s Eve. Our  patron settled on a weeping Cherry for the right corner, and I matched it with a weeping Redbud on the left. The Daphne odora, evergreen ferns, Japanese sedgegrasses, Sky Pencil hollies, and the Mahonias got put in in the afternoon, and it rained that night. I couldn’t have ordered it better!

     We got all the drainage in and working, stared cutting the brick patio for the lower beds, and re-layed brick in formerly planted areas near the house today, as well as began the 2″x8″ topper for the RR tie wall. However, tonight we are told to expect our coldest night yet this season, a low of 25F! Tomorrow’s high is prophecied to be only 35F! Time for the flannel undies and three layers of sweatshirts!

    We shall have to really move it to finish by thurs! Friday I am flying out to California on a mission to help with the yards I had put in some years ago. More to come…

I recently completed a set of shelves and cabinets for my friend Joanne. On either side of her fireplace, there were backset areas that cried out to be filled, and lo! they were.

  Lower cabinets up to 40″ with moulding-trimmed doors and open shelves up above. I connected the ensemble with a sort of crown moulding all across the top, and added a center ‘keystone’ to give it symmetry and focus.

I also finshed out the large pass-through from her kitchen to the dining area. Originally there was a homemade, tiled counter, but it had warped from not being properly affixed to the framing. Then it was a matter of trimming out around the opening with the same casing we have been using, and voila! Neat, attractive  and finished looking!

I have been engaged to ‘reincarnate’ a small backyard! I say reincarnate because the original ‘soul’ of the yard will still be there, but it will come back in a new, updated and personalized form. New retaining wall/sitwall, leveling up the bricks, more and new plantings, with more color and texture. There will also be several glazed pots added with spiral topiaries in some, roses in others, and flowing, flowering gardens in others.

The start of our work to redesign the yard!

Photos of all the changes and resulting garden will follow soon!