A very garden weekend

I think we have finally turned the corner with the weather in Milwaukee.  We had snow flurries in the air on Friday night, which we pretended didn't exist as we were driving home in it.  Saturday morning dawned beautifully and the day was sunny and warmer.  It was an especially beautiful morning as I had been looking forward to a woody plants grafting class.  I won't go into great detail about the whole process as it has so many fine points.  I enjoyed the instructor, Michael Yanny very much.  I have heard him speak at other events, so I knew that it would be a quality class.  It also came very highly praised by other friends who did it last spring.  We got individualized instruction with just four people in each session.  He checked our technique and work to guide us through.  Time will tell how successfully we joined two plants together.  I will be purchasing The Grafter's Handbook by R.J. Garner.  We all went home with six pots that we grafted ourselves.  I was partial to the antique apple varieties we had to choose from.  I also did a lilac, amur cork tree, and witch hazel.

 Plants have started popping after a spring rain (Wednesday/Thursday) and a bit of following sun.  I can see the rhubarb poking through.  The dwarf iris are now blooming along side the snow drops.  I covered over a few things in the vegetable garden with straw in November.  I pulled that off on Saturday afternoon and can see some Swiss chard, kale, radicchio, and I think the late planted baby cabbage plants made it as well.  

 

     

It was the official first day of line-dried clothes day today.  I have been putting out sheets and light weight t-shirts most of the winter, but today was an all out, fill up the lines wash day.  Everything dried on the lines without laying them around on chair backs, so that is what makes it the official first day.  I watched birds coming and going the past couple days which we haven't seen since last fall.  Turkey vultures circled the neighborhood while I stood watch over the grill. It was just such a fine day to be outdoors.

I didn't spend as much time outside as I would have liked today.  Between loads of laundry, I was busy making more cutting of coleus, geraniums, and ibosa vine.  I cleaned out some of the old stock plants to make way for more seeding.  The coleus from the last cutting was well rooted and was put into cell packs for spring planting.  I saved a few stock plants in larger pots, back up for failed cuttings and possible starters in the garden.  I seeded my Tidal Wave Petunias and Purple Tower Petunias as they have 8-10 week start time.  I also put in some Red Acre cabbage and Bonsai Pak Choi for early planting out later.  I already have the Brisk Green Pak Choi and the Baby cabbage ready to go.  I set the plants out with my onion seedlings for a few hours today for hardening off.  There is only two weeks until Easter which is my goal for planting them all.  Welcome back, Spring!

Spring Clean Up in the Garden

The garden after spring cleaning

With a pruner and pocket and rake in hand I made my way into the garden Sunday afternoon.  It was a beautiful day in Milwaukee!  It was warm (50's) and dry with a light breeze.  The first real day of spring weather.
I got out early enough this year to prune back some of my woody perennials.  The lavender and sage were both in need of some cleaning out and sheering back this year.  No new growth yet, so I gave them both a much needed pruning.  I also cleaned out some of the dead stems of the perennials in the rain garden as I raked through section by section.  I found lots of maple seeds and horse chestnuts had gotten in among the ground covers.  I would much rather rake out seeds than to pull out rooted seedlings one by one.
The ground is still frozen so the bulbs have not popped out yet with the exception of the snow drops.  I look forward to their bloom this year without all the debris to pick out around their tender stems.
The snow cover we got this winter seems to have done a good job of insulating some of the more tender plants.  I did some moving around last fall and these plants also seem to have come through well.  I hope it didn't protect the nasty bugs as well as the plants, but I bet they enjoyed the snow blanket also.
Get out there soon and clean out the garden beds before the thaw comes and the rains turn the soil to mud.  I know I am ready for spring!

Snowdrops

Planting Garlic

Some people have never planted garlic before.  Six years ago, I was one of them.  It is such and easy crop and uses garden space during the slower parts of the growing season when you have the space.
The first step is to buy good bulbs of garlic from the farmer's market.  Make sure they are not damaged and are nice and firm.  Size will depend on the type you are planting, but the bigger the better.  If your goal is to braid garlic, then you will need a soft neck variety (ask your farmer, he will know).  If you like a bigger bulb, then the hard neck varieties are probably more your speed.  I have hard neck garlic in the photo above.  You will never braid those stiff stems.  I have one bulb broken into the six individual cloves.  The cloves are what you plant.  So, in this case, one bulb should yield six more bulbs if all goes well.

A general rule of thumb for planting bulbs is to plant three times the depth of the bulb.  A one inch high bulb would be planted three inches deep.  My garlic will go in about 4" deep.  I dig a trench, add some compost, put in the clove of garlic (pointy end up), and cover with more compost.  Done!

I mark the ends of my garlic row so I don't start another early season crop there next spring.  I also put down some of my expanded metal squirrel-be-gone deterrents.  If you have ever planted fall bulbs just to have them come and dig them up, this is an effective barrier to keep them out.  I have had mystery bulbs come up in my yard from squirrels re-burying bulbs from the neighbor's yards.  This year I had a bonus canna.  Other years I have had tulips, hyacinths, and one other spring bulb that has multiplied and I still don't know the name of it.

As long as I had the shovel out, I dug a trench on the north side of one of my raised beds and tucked the Alpine strawberries in for winter.  Unless we get a warm stretch, my berry days are done.  I have not covered them in past years and they seem to overwinter just fine.  I choose the north side to reduce the freeze-thaw cycle that the south side of the beds tend to have.  I also chose to not put my garlic in the raised beds this year as last year's mild winter was confusing the garlic into growing so early.  It didn't matter what side it was on as the soil barely froze last winter.
Tomorrow I will get out to clean out the beds and get my snow drops and daffodils in for next spring's bloom.