Climbing hydrangea and rain barrel problem

Today I purchased two climbing hydrangeas for the back fence. We planted one already and will plant the other one tomorrow. Let's hope they take care of covering it.

We hooked up the rain barrel to the soaker hose without much luck. Seems the water pressure isn't high enough for the soaker hoses. Looks like we'll have to come up with a solution to that problem.

Also, we put up some doggie defense stakes and string to protect our young plants from Lucy's heavy foot. I think she likes the smell of the compost.

Purple arugula!

So, I found on the webs that the arugula has likely exhausted the phosphorus in the seedling soil. I added more fish fertilizer to it and the rest of the seedlings still in the trays. The arugula will probably lose the purple leaves, but should recover once planted in the compost-rich bed. I may have to transplant them into pots or the little bit larger seedling trays.

Insects and Asian Longhorned Beetle

My MUG at Home class yesterday reviewed plant disease and pests. Asian Longhorned Beetle was introduced in the US and has ravaged trees in cities such as Worcester, MA. Please report any sightings of this pest in your area here.

Rain Barrel and Perennial Bed 1

Today Paul set up the rain barrel while Sabrina and I made our first perennial bed. I edged it, but we'll need to redo some of the sides because they need to be taller.

Last night I tried out the drip irrigation system that I had installed in the first vegetable bed. It did not soak through to the middle like I had expected. I finished watering with the regular hose. I added about 1 cup of garden sulfur to the blueberry plants we planted last weekend with hopes to increase the acidity of the soil.

Paul planted two more raspberry plants yesterday and replanted one of the dinky originals I got at a box store. No more box store plants for me - promise!

First bed all filled

I finished filling our first and shortest raised bed this morning. I added brussel sprouts, mesclun, spinach, red chard and arugula. Also added some garden sulfur to the hydrangeas because they need extra acidity to turn blue. I noticed that the hydrangeas last year were not a very pretty color. I'll put some of it on the blueberries, too. The next project will be to plan and plant the perennial garden.

First plantings

We had to redo some of the soil in the raised beds; removing a bit of the loam and adding a bit more compost and some peat moss. Finished this on the low one, but still need to work on the mixture for the higher one.

Yesterday planted 48 radish seeds and 16 of the kohlrabi seedlings in the low bed. It was fairly difficult to extract the seedlings from the seeding tray without breaking them, so there were a number of plant fatalities in the process. Probably need to work on our technique. Fortunately there are probably far more seedlings than we really need.

I don't think we mentioned that about a week ago we relocated some winter creeper plants from the front of the house to the back fence. It kept wanting to climb the holly bushes in front of the porch, so we decided to let it climb the ugly chain link fence back by the T instead. We also moved one to the north side of the house by the other fence, so we'll see how it does there. If they die, no big loss. Then yesterday we dug up the remaining two and delivered them to Karen Miller for use in her front garden. Then we transplanted some hostas from the northeast rear beds to the front of the house where we'd removed the winter creeper.

Jen also worked on installing the soaker hose in the low bed. I put down grass seed on the re-graded berm I built against the rear of the house near the bulkhead doors where water always seemed to pool during rainstorms.

Today we went to Allandale Farm and picked up two new healthier-looking raspberry bushes (don't ever buy plants from Home Depot again -- lesson learned!) which we'll be adding to the south fence. Also got two strawberry plants and a few adjuncts that we needed.

Raised bed construction complete

Finished filling the raised beds with soil yesterday. Still have a good amount of soil left over, which we can use in other areas. Next we need to figure out our irrigation system for the beds. We've got some drip hose we'll be installing, and we're planning on feeding that from a (yet to be acquired) rain barrel.

Jen's been working on drawing up a planting schedule for the beds, figuring out how to cycle in new crops over the course of the season as others are harvested. Done properly we should still be planting in mid-September and harvesting in November. Clever stuff.

Also planted the second raspberry bush near the first one, along the south fence.

New soil for raised beds

On Tuesday we received new soil from Apple D'Or Tree and plan on finishing the set up for the beds and put in the soil tonight. The seedlings have been doing well outside during the day the past few days. On some of the seedlings are beginning to develop true leaves so we'll begin fertilizing them with fish fertilizer soon.

Intro to Landscape Design #1

First session last night of our Introduction to Landscape Design class with Brookline Adult & Community Education. Should be a good resource. Topics included pruning techniques, the structure of plants, and all the factors to consider when selecting plants for specific areas. The instructor will also assist us with identifying any unknown plants, which will be helpful since we don't know what all we've got in place.

More planning and planting

On April 2, 2010 we planted a jewel variety raspberry cane and laid out the raised beds. The beds are made of recycled milk cartons. I will try to contact someone to get some soil for the beds. Tomorrow we will take some soil samples to send in for testing.