Pacific Northwest Gardening: You know you are a gardener when:, 3 by RickCorey_WA

RickCorey_WA wrote:
You know you're a gardener when you have to move a 2' x 40' raised bed, have nowhere to put any of those plants, but still won't let any die.


>> The potential gardeners bought, but haven't moved in yet. The prior owner on that side let me run a narrow raised bed along our shared sidewalk, so I offered to "share" that bed with the new people,

The new people finally moved in, and so far all she has done is to kill things, including two nice trees and a flowering azealea bush! Other than the raised bed I built, the only fertile soil they had was in a tiny sunken bed out front. She bought three huge, heavy ceramic pots and dropped them on TOP of her only soil, compressing it and occupying her only growing space with ceramic pots. Then she didn't even plant anything in the pots or around them!

The tree removers said "sure" when I asked if they would leave me their chips for mulch & composting. But she wouldn't even let them leave me the chips!

I had to move the bed I put in on her side of the sidewalk, and at first was really bummed because I had a row of perennial Lavatera about to bloom, and many other plants.

Now I'm almost glad, because I salvaged all the paving stones and the soil I had made for those beds. I made the soil from my clay and my compost and amendments I had bought, so it was MY soil!). Now I have deeper beds in better sun on my own property (where low juniper bushes used to be). And the chopped-up juniper branches gave me the biggest compost heap I've ever had, and recnetly when I dug down into it, it was discernibly warmer than its surroundings.

And all the plants I had room for are thriving. The ones that lost the game of Musical Chairs went into pots on the deck, where some are just surviving and some gave up. Apparanetly, when you move Lavatera several times in as many years, they learn to shoot their roots out as fast as they can, as far as they can and start new bushes in new locations. What used to be well-behaved bushes are now desperatly sending shoots into other beds, as if they paniced and are trying to spread faster than their gardener can chase them with his spade and wheelbarrow.

In the first photo, you can see the pink flowering Lavatera I had to move. (The white flowers in the foreground are flowering Daikon radishes in a different bed. They bloomed and then went to seed with never a radish-sized root.

The next 3 shots pan from left to right along the length of the bed that I had to move.