Planting Up & Potting Out
Week 9 in the Garden
April 27, 2021
by Kate Forrest
“The love of gardening is a seed once sown that never dies.”
— Gertrude Jekyll
Hey, all! Welcome back to our garden blog. We enjoyed a lighter weekend in the garden since we were both recovering from getting our second Covid vaccines and neither of us had much punch. That being said, we got a slew of stuff planted out. Fingers crossed that our frosts last week were the end of these cold snaps since we’re nearing May.
We started off Saturday by topping up the terraced bed with one last layer of good soil. This was a mix of raised bed and garden soil. Then we planted out four astilbes (false goat’s beard); two old fashioned bleeding hearts; and four hostas. All were grown from bare roots. I must say that I’ve been happy with all of our efforts so far to grow plants from bare roots and it’s something I plan to do again next winter. We then mulched the terraced bed with cypress mulch.
Terraced bed.
We also did some work in the camellia bed off the side of our deck and planted out six hostas, two astilbes, and one Valentine’s Day bleeding heart. That was also mulched and we finally placed mulch around the boxwood we transplanted back in March.
We then applied granular Vole Scram to our back hillside just up from our terraced raised bed. Our neighbors kindly let us try theirs before having to commit to purchasing it ourselves. In the days since planting, we haven’t seen any new vole activity in the backyard. We need to reapply the treatment in fourteen days; thereafter, the company recommends a once-a-month application of the product. I’ll likely purchase it to reapply in two weeks, since it was easy to use and is comprised mostly of essential oils (I think)—it is very strong smelling—and it is approved for organic gardening.
My husband also set up our new composting system using two wood pallets and our perimeter backyard fence. We hope the result of this year’s endeavors will give us good quality compost. I’ll report back on how our new open-air system works throughout the summer.
Our final chores on Saturday included planting ornamental onions in the cottage garden corner of our lantana bed. I also thinned the poppies again, but I need to dedicate a couple hours to really removing the majority of the seedings in that whiskey barrel. I want to try transplanting some out, even though everyone says poppies don’t take well to transplanting. I’ve been told the same about sunflowers, yet we had great success transplanting those last summer, so I’m willing to try it with the poppies too.
CW Lights
Beech Arbor at Colonial Williamsburg.
Sunday evening we treated ourselves to the Colonial Williamsburg event “CW Lights.” It reminded me of Maymont’s Garden Glow (Richmond) and Christmas at Kew Gardens (London), which is described as a magical light trail. They lite up the Governor’s Palace and features around the gardens, including the Beech Arbor (pictured), the palace maze, and trees and paths. Musicians played throughout the gardens, which really gave it an extra special quality. Who doesn’t love a garden walk beneath a bright moon on a spring eve? It was a delightful evening and I do hope they make it into an annual event.
Today’s project: Potting up seedlings
I mentioned my seedling woes before and to be honest, I’m shocked at myself for letting the seedings in the reused seed starting tray slowly demise over the past five weeks. I should have acted as soon as I realized nothing was really growing. It germinated, then stalled out. I kept making excuses: too much water, not even water, not enough sun. But at the end of the day, I think it was that I reused a tray that was badly damaged and only meant for one-time use and that was a mistake. Most of the plugs were shredded at the bottom (which I learned today) and they weren’t full of enough growing medium and water couldn’t adequately reach the root systems.
I lost a good many of my seedlings because I didn’t transplant them sooner and my actions today may have been too little, too late. Time will tell. The phlox was the best of the bunch, so my hope is that it will take off. The salvias, feather grass, and coleus were all pretty sad looking, so I don’t have high hopes. I can sow more salvia and grass, but I used all my coleus seeds, so if these don’t grow, I’ll be buying those from a garden center.
(before) Seedlings in the reused tray.
(after) All the seedlings potted up.
I also potted up my one Bells of Ireland (got one seed to germinate out of eight—not great at all) and two jalapeños. I decided to experiment with the third jalapeño and planted it directly into one of the raised beds in the veggie garden.
I then cleared out more plants from the greenhouse to make space for the seedlings that I potted up today. I planted out two Moneyworts in the terraced bed, which I hope will cascade down over the retaining wall, and I planted a creeping jenny in a terracotta pot for my potted fern garden, which I’m keeping on the ground just off the northern side of our deck.
The clematis, pineapple sage, and Boston fern all came out of the greenhouse too and I did some major reorganizing and tidying in the greenhouse itself. It was a long but productive afternoon and I’m happy I finally acted on getting those seedlings out of that damaged tray.
What’s doing?
- Our first knockout rose flower has opened.
- Catmint is flowering.
- A handful of daffodils that I cut for a bouquet weeks ago have produced an unexpected second set of flowers and are blooming again. I’ve never had a daffodil do this—a lovely surprise.
- Christmas and Godzilla ferns have shoots.
- Two of our three bleeding hearts are flowering.
- Forget-me-nots are blooming at Colonial Williamsburg and they are having a second showing of tulips.
- We harvested and ate our first strawberry today.
That’s a wrap for this week. We’ll be back in the garden this weekend with more projects to tackle. Have a good week, all, and happy gardening!
~Kate