ssgardener -- your yard looks lovely -- you have made incredible strides with it!
Yardening Fall #3 2013
SSG, tell me more about the sheet mulching!
This is an experiment. Hope ypu can open the link (from my e-mail) and see these
amazing sculptures.
My daughter sent this to me....This will blow you away what you can do with plants....
http://myvirtualgarden2.blogspot.com/2013/09/mosaiculture-exhibition.html
Here goes---Gita
YES!!!!!!! It works!!!!
This message was edited Nov 14, 2013 11:04 PM
Back in 1993, I bought two 'Olga Mezzit's from one of the box stores and planted them at the landing at the bottom of the front porch steps. They were one of the first plants I ever bought, and amazingly (for me anyway) they are still alive. When I planted them, they were about 6 inches tall. After 20 years, they are now a substantial size - probably 12 feet high and about 6 feet wide. One is still in the original place, but the other was transplanted to another location 2 or 3 years ago. I really like the look of the small leaf rhodos.
Coleup, I'm a little worried about my snowbell tree. I planted it right away, and used the soil amendments and root stimulator stuff that the guy at Ace recommended. I've been watering it, but a lot of the leaves curled up and died - definitely doesn't look like it is just from following normal life cycle of a deciduous tree in fall. Hope it is just transplant shock and will be fine in spring. Keep fingers crossed.
Gita, pretty cool sculptures.
Gita wow fabulous fantastic!!!
Gorgeous! My favorite is the frog in the lily pond. :)
Catmint, That area by the fence was all weeds and vines -- morning glory, English ivy, Virginia creeper, etc. I covered the area with cardboard and dumped all kinds of organic materials on top, mostly wood mulch delivered from College Park and coffee grounds from Starbucks. I eventually ran out of cardboard, so in one section I just dumped several inches of mulch on top of the weeds, which I regret now. The area that was covered in cardboard first has very few weeds in comparison.
My big yardening project in the fall is using all the soil from the annual containers as mulch in the perennial beds. I use Al's 5:1:1 mix, which still has good structure at the end of the season and is great even as a soil amendment. I can't use oak leaves, because my house is on a hill and the leaves just end up at the bottom of the hill.
And I have a *lot* of potting soil to spread around. Last year, I used upturned plastic pots at the bottom of large containers to make the containers lighter and to use less potting mix, but I didn't like the results. I think my annual containers did better this year because they had so much more room for their roots at the bottom of the container.
Aspenhill, sending an all volunteer contingent of garden gnomes, devas and fairies to dance around your Snowbell tree.
Love the Lemers!!
ssg: I'm glad to hear your lasagna project was a success. I've been piling cardboard boxes up in our garage. When it is too cold to garden, I plan to spend a day breaking them down and then I'll spread them in some of the areas in the back of our yard that I want to prep for new plants. What I hadn't anticipated is that I'll need to pull all the package sealing tape of off the boxes, and remove any staples, so it won't be nearly as quick to get those boxes ready as I had hoped.
Happy, not going to tell you how I know this, but letting those boxes sit outside and get wet once or twice and sun dried will make packing tape much easier to remove!
Coleup's right about the tape- I've used boxes on paths in the veg garden. Tape lasts forever but it does come off the cardboard soon. I'd let them get wet, and not bother with staples; they are all bent and crimped so they will be mineral supplement.
Haha, Sally, mineral supplement!
I did pull out most of the tape before putting down the cardboard, but the ones that I missed came off very easily after a couple of months of rain.
Happy, there was quite a dramatic difference between the cardboard and non-cardboard sections. Do you remember pulling morning glory vines out of my garden? That entire section was not cardboarded first, and I was pulling out vines all summer. I had read online that the cardboard layer didn't make a difference when sheet mulching. Not true!
hi, SSG. Cardboard seems very useful! :-) I am eager to see how mine is doing in the spring in my mission to create more full-sun garden space.
wonderful garden weather, I'm looking for things I can do… really, excuses to stay outside all afternoon!!
Not sure how to store my Alocasia for winter- the leaves have all been cut to make castings. I guess I let the rootball dry out and store in basement?
SSG love the white fence, and great job on the plantings.
Gita, I've seen that link on FB are they just incredible. Also wanted to say seeds arrived safe and sound with a return package come to you next week. We let you know how they do.
Jan
Thank you all! So is the consensus that I should break the cardboard boxes down and leave them in a pile outside for a month or so, and only then try to pull off the tape, since it'll pull off easier then? And ignore the staples?
yes happy.
If you put them down with tape on, you will later be picking strips of tape out of the garden as they surface from under the mulch. Though I guess with enough mulch you won't.
Played with plants all afternoon. Tried to dig out a good sized holly, gave up, dug out four little hollies and moved them. Potted a homegrown redbud, always nice to have handy. And just generally piddled outside on a lovely day.
; ^)
Thanks Sally. I do definitely want to get the tape off first -- I don't want to be picking tape up -- that is for sure. There is too much "junk" that keeps surfacing in the dirt at my place as it is (toys, dog toys, bit of this and that)! But if letting the cardboard "ripen" outside will help that process, I'd be delighted!
Happy--
It isn't that hard to remove tape from cardboard boxes!!! Really!
Many days--now that I am in garden--I spend doing as much "pack down"
as I can. Stopping to assist customers as needed. Not much going on outside!
"Packdown" is going to Rceiving--finding a big, silver cart with garden stuff on it,
loaded to the top with boxes that came in on a truck--putting as many as I can
in a shopping cart (can't have the silver carts on the floor during "power hours")
and then opening up all the boxes and putting the merchandise in it's proper location.
This still takes me forever--as I an not yet sall that familiar where what goes.
The sticker on the box tells you what aisle--and which bay--but NOT where in the bay it goes.
So--it is hunt...hunt...hunt...
Lots and lots of cardboard boxes! Of course--I cut the tape open with my
"safety approved" razor knife--BUT--you could, just as easily, find the end of
that strip of tape and just rip it off. It WILL come clean off from the cardboard
easy enough. It is nothing like trying to remove a price tag sticker from plastic.
=Can't use "Goof Off"--as it messes with the plastic. "Goo Gone" is better...
Just FYI!
G.
Thanks.
well, finding the end and ripping the tape is a sticky annoying task. Letting the cardboard get wet makes it fall off the tape and the job is faster.
Yeah---But that is a two-step process.
Ripping it off as you lay it down is a "once and done" process...
Each to their own.......G.
Happy, good luck with the tape and staples! I spent some time taking it all off of my cardboard before I laid it down this summer. Definitely not my favorite job, but glad I had some time to do it.
Anyone know what this volunteer growing under my rose bush is?
Sure looks like a rose to me....
You think it may be a baby of my current bush?
That's what I'm thinking -- but I'm no expert. Can you compare the leaves?
My first thot was rose, too.
Came in for "inspiration" but have realized that if I warm up I won't want to go back out!
Sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much to do. Formulating a plan for some intence hours in a warmer tomorrow. What happened to that warm up to 66? Grrrr Brrrr.
They need to invent some kind of wearable heater for working in the yard on chilly days! Hope it warms up enough tomorrow, Coleup!
I also had wondered if the baby volunteer is offspring from the rose bush, but to me the leaves look different. But I have no experience with this kind of thing!!
Here's the mature rose bush and the volunteer under it.
If your rose is grafted (as nearly all hybrid teas and some bush roses are), then the baby may be a sprout from the rootstock rose.
thanks, Critter, that's very interesting! The mother bush is a floribunda. Now I'll be extremely curious to know what the baby ends up looking like! Here is a photo of the mother.
Ugh, why is it the weather doesn't cooperate when you actually have the time to do some yardening??
Catmint's rose bush is gorgeous, and very healthy! It would be very interesting to see if it flowers.
SSG, I know what you mean! Sometimes it seems like when I have time it's cold or rainy, and when I don't have time it's beautiful!
thanks, SSG--I hope it flowers, too. Guess we'll find out next spring? I'll try again with the photo.
I hope to get out and do some yardening today. Probably finish up organizing the stash of nursery pots and doing something with leaves. I still have a few of the bulbs to plant from our group buy too. I hate wearing bulky clothes when I'm working, and usually end up with just one layer no matter how cold it gets out there. Sure hope the weather is as nice as it is supposed to be today.
I hope it is too Aspen, 'cause I've got a fat list of "things to do"... at work. < =/
Oh well, if I can't work to make my own personal yard look good, then at least I can make the yard at work look better! =)
I am need of a volunteer.
Anybody want to meet me at the national arboretum for a full moon guided walk/hike. It is a pretty neat walk. We cover a fair amount ground, 2-3 miles over two hours, with half a dozen talking points. If you can make it let me know. Our job as a volunteer is to check people in, they pay for the walk, and be the tale of the group ensuring nobody strays from the pack.
Lmk.
When?
Lol. Oops. Yea that would be important.
Tomorrow night. 635 pm, it'll end around 9.
Working
}: ^(
Have fun!
This early sunset is pretty frustrating. It's so nice and warm out but just too dark to get anything done past 5.
I thought I'd be done after one full day, but I may need another full day to finish. Only 4 more left to plant!
Do you all clean and sterilize your pots before storing them for the winter? How do you do it? I'd like to avoid chlorine if at all possible.
ssgardener
I never use chlorine I use a 10% bleach solution soak for the pots after I've washed them out.
Hope you have a chance to finish your planting tomorrow.
Jan
sigh, no garden for me today, was a good girl and shopped and cooked and spent time with hubby and dog. I wish I could rake leaves in the dark.
I don't sanitize pots. Most I do is throw a bunch in a bucket of water and get them clean and stacked. If I were to sanitize, I would wash and then rinse in a bucket of dilute bleach.
How do you not use chlorine if you use bleach, meadowyck?