Garden Diary - June 1

This was a very productive week in the garden!

In the front, I have been working on mulching over and defining the edges of the new beds. Mark and I have toted multiple loads of dirt and sod to the back of the back yard in an effort to get all the remnants from the old hill leveled out. I've got about a quarter of it done - I'll need to get more mulch before I'm able to complete the rest. I'm making a pathway through the beds with stepping stones (courtesy of Nadia and Phil's extra patio stones). And I've put in two plants so far: the blueberry bush and maidenhair decorative grass which I bought last weekend.

I also bought some more plants this weekend, which I will hopefully get into the ground soon: a gold-coloured creeping sedum, woolly thyme, purple sage, golden oregano, purple-veined sorrel, a deep purple Sweet William, a burgundy-coloured daylilly, two strawberry plants, and seeds for a purple-coloured sedum. Since so many of the existing perennials in the front have green foliage, I'm aiming new plants with other colours of foliage. And I'm also aiming for drought resistance, and spreading groundcover.

I've untangled and created a trellis for the clematis that will allow it to grow up to the porch roof. The peonies are getting close to blooming, and I can see now that they will be a bright pink. I've also thinned out the forsythia, which was starting to look like a giant green blob now that its flowers are gone.

In the back, I've cut down a smallish tree (I'm not sure what kind it is, but I've found shoots of it all over the place, growing like weeds) - I actually had to get out a handsaw for it, as the trunk was almost an inch and a half in diameter. It was crowded up against the purpleleaf sandcherry, which has quite a pronounced forward lean, so hopefully this will help it straighten out. I've propped it up with a wrought-iron plant hanger, and tried to prune it to encourage more bushiness (I think it's been putting out branches that are too long in an effort to reach more sunshine).

I've untangled the clematis in the back, and tied it up more to the trellis. The lilies-of-the-valley are in full bloom now, and the rhubarb continues to grow. I haven't lost any plants yet from the ones I transplanted earlier this spring, even though there was a bit of a scare with a possible frost warning one evening. I have put some copper mesh wire around the bases of any of the plants that I think the slugs will want to eat; hopefully this will deter them.

Some of the seeds we planted have started to come up: beans (scarlet runner and purple pole beans), zucchini and squash. And the tomatoes have been moved to a sunnier location, after Herculean efforts by Mark - the large concrete tub they were planted in weighed a ton, and had a drain from the bottom that prevented it from being dragged across the lawn. But, with my genius idea to use round rocks from the front garden as ball bearings, we were able to roll it over to rest between the two bamboo teepee beds. I don't think it will ever move again - if the tomatoes don't like it, they'll just have to get dug up to move elsewhere.