Thursday morning garden

I indulged in a bit of gardening this morning. Well, I watered a bit.



Not sure if anything really needed watering except the containers, but I have full rain barrels so what the heck.



The Camassia are just about done. This has been a very reliable bulb for me, although it took a couple years to really get going. Considering that it's edible (at least to humans; though not very tasty), I am surprised the possums and raccoons have not tried to dig it up for themselves the way they do everything else whether it is edible or not (except the daffodils).







Those are all different flowers on the same plant, btw. And my favorite Pacific coast iris hybrid is blooming too--very prolifically. I know someone somewhere told me they thought this flower was awful. Was it one of you? Maybe it was someone in my family. Obviously, I do not care.





The colors make a totally unplanned but harmonious match with Stipa arundinacea and Phormium 'Black Adder', although I don't have a picture to show that.



Also blooming: Cow parsnip (Heracleum lanatum), a vigorous re-sower I grow for the foliage as much as the flowers. Here, however, the foliage is all my beloved tree fern.



Cestrum elegans, the best cestrum for part sun of the three I have trialed in my garden (others were C. auranticum, and C. nocturnum). This one flowers almost year round. Scentless, unfortunately.



And the native perennial bunch grasses are all blooming, such as they are. The birdbath needs to be moved. Sigh. And I just got it standing straight up again.

April garden

I usually have flowers in April from annuals I planted the previous fall, but not this year. It's very sad. On the other hand, I spend a lot of time complaining generally about insufficient flowers. I have this idea that moving to a bigger, sunnier lot in the suburbs will ease my frustration. Probably not anytime real soon.

This is one of the first plants I bought six years ago when I started the garden. Some commercial variety of Tiarella cordifolia, I presume. J'adore. Once upon a time, I had several clumps of it. Now just two or three. So I'll have to divide it this year and propagate some more.



I got the birdbath right, for now. Right, as in "standing straight up". I don't see as many birds using it nowadays. I think that's because shrubs have grown over head and it is not quite so exposed. So either they don't see it, or they do not feel safe using it. Move the birdbath or cut the shrubs?



We had some rain on Monday, but we are moving in to the long dry season. When the moss DISAPPEARS.



I moved some things around. The Beschoreneria in the upper-middle of the picture is in a pot. They don't need any water so I dropped it in a hole under the buckeye. I took the monardella and freesia out of the pot with the Phormium 'Black Adder' and I'm just going to let that green succulent fill in around it. I forget the name. Sedum something.



The gray leaves talk to the artichoke planted nearby. And the artichoke talks to another Phormium 'Black Adder' nearby it.



Maybe probably too nearby.



And then there's another Beschorneria and two cordyline. I take this picture constantly. Sorry. It's a small garden. I have taken many different pictures over the years, but there are some I seem to take over and over.



Camassia is the springiest thing flowering right now. I have three clumps of various ages and sizes.







Up above the garden Ceanothus 'Ray Hartman' is still going strong.



And neighbors.



I think I mentioned the buckeye didn't flower, right? Oh well. Maybe next year.



I don't know if you remember, but awhile ago I let a passionflower engulf the princess plant. That was a fun experiment, but I'm happier with out the passionflower. It was all leaves anyway. Now I have a place to hang glass ornaments, which I would like to buy many more of. I should investigate something besides twine to hang them with.



Not all twine-like supports are bad. I guess it depends on the size of the ornament.

Last blog post of May, 2010

First thing I did today was pick a bunch of raspberries.



(Note: It was 10 o'clock when I did the first thing that I did today. I fell asleep around 8:45 pm last night, woke up at 1 am, went back to sleep some time later, and got up around 10 to pick raspberries.)

Then I turned the compost pile which I haven't done in months. I pitchforked off the top third of material and put it in a large plastic pot that I keep for just this purpose. The goal is to move the top third of the pile to the bottom, use the bottom third in the vegetable garden, and put the middle third on top where it then becomes the top half.

I always need to break down the top third a little with my hand pruners. Most things soften up after sitting in the compost bin for several months, but have you noticed that some things seem to get much harder? Rootballs often become very dense. And branches cut from my neighbors Ligustrum lucidum turn into teak or something. Weird.

Anyway, after I break down the top third and put that stuff on the bottom, I like to top it off with a layer of shredded newspaper because I feel like the slimy top third still has a lot of nitrogen in it and I like to do that nitrogen-carbon layering thing to help the pile cook faster. It works! Then I put the middle third on top and it's the new top half because I removed the bottom third and used it.

Whenever I do this (once or twice a year, max), I find the whole thing breaks down really fast. In two weeks, the compost pile will be half as large as it is today, and I can use most of it in the garden without having to turn the pile. Whatever doesn't get used will become the bottom third the next time I turn the pile in 8-12 months. The best part is now I can start adding waste to the compost bin again. It had been overflowing.

Anyhoo, that's my compost ritual. Not that anyone asked.

Vegetable gardening is off to a late start this year with the late rains and cold air from the El Nino. I don't think it can rain anymore (Rain in June? Surely not), so it will have to warm up. It only rains in California when it's cold, whether there's an El Nino or not. I've got Magda squash ripening already. I'll start harvesting in a few days.



Tomatoes have been planted out--Stupice and Early Cherry, the only two I grow. Scarlet runner beans have sprouted and started to climb the braided twine rope I hang from the deck. I started cucumber seeds the other day and they've already germinated. In a week or two I'll have ripe blueberries. In the meantime I have raspberries.

My first two Gravenstein apples are still making good progress.



Gravenstein needs pollen from another apple tree to set fruit. I have fruit so that means my neighbor's apple tree two doors down, whatever kind it is, did the trick. I'm not sure if that plan will always work, but for now we're good. I'm watching these apples like a hawk to make sure some bug larva doesn't get ideas.

After all that, I puttered. Last year's Verbena bonariensis came back and sent up HUGE flower stems. Can you see the one in the back--the faint lavender smear? Way over 6' tall.



I'm sitting on the stairs for this picture, but still...that flower is *way* up there. See the bee?



The lemon bush is getting to the point where we have lemons all the time now.



Long time readers will know I've always had a lemon bush, but I don't know if I ever fully detailed all the trouble I had getting a lemon to be happy in my garden. This bush is my third or fourth try. First I had to learn that citrus don't like wind. They really don't like wind. Then I had to learn how they don't like to be in too large a pot when the plant is too small. (Honestly, I'm still confused about that.) Then I found that they like to be planted in the spring, not the fall. A lot of other things prefer a fall start, but not citrus apparently.

Wind knocked over my wacky tower of pots, smashing a couple of them. I'm doing it again with smaller pots this time. Seems more stable. Strawberries do really well if I remember to water them, but the birds and mice will eat them. A Flickr friend suggested that I try yellow strawberries which apparently the birds at least do not recognize.



I've got lots of fennel and dill for butterflies, but I haven't seen any eggs or caterpillars yet. I'm ready whenever they are.

Passiflora 'Ebay' has been keeping the hummingbirds busy.



Passionflower is also supposed to host butterfly larvae, but I've never seen that.

For bees, we've got poppies, Cerinthe, some perennials...





Birds and insects should not feel shy.



It's almost summer.



Let's do this thing.

May garden

My favorite shrub for May/June has started to bloom, Carpenteria californica.



I have two of them side by side. They function as a sort of gate between two sections of the garden.



I enjoy the tall grasses until the flower stems start to break. I find the broken stems... distracting.



Almost all the grasses are California native perennials I grew from seed. I used Festuca californica, Festuca rubra, Nassella pulchra, Nassella cernua, and Melica californica. If I were starting over, I would probably just use Festuca californica and Nassella cernua, with maybe one or two Melica. Anyway, I'm mostly happy with the way it's worked out.



I'm very happy with this corner. I like it even more when the red dahlia comes up next to the cordyline, and flowers.



I cut down the crimson-flowering fava because they were shading out some things I wanted to grow. The cages are all ready for the tomatoes I'll plant in two or three weeks. Usually, I've already planted them by now, but they're not ready. My tomatoes took an incredibly long time to germinate this year. Oh, well.



I cleaned the witch's ball. Amazing how dirty it gets just hanging in the rain.



The tall tree fuchsias are getting more popular here all the time. Fuchsia 'Miep Aalhuizen' grows vigorously all winter and flowers profusely through San Francisco's foggy summers.



Most of the cloud forest asters bloom in winter, but Bartlettina sordida flowers in spring. Usually it's done by now, but we had a long, "cold" winter.



The leaves are huge and fabulous.



Well, the plant is huge. The bottom of the deck is 11' up; Bartlettina would grow right into it if I didn't prune.



I'm excited I might get two apples this fall. Wish me luck!