Garden Diary - April 25

The grape hyacinths are lasting well and look fantastic. I'm quite sure they've multiplied since last year. A few other plants that didn't do well last year are looking considerably better - my poppy and the dragon arum. I guess they just needed their first year to get established, and now they're well underway.

I did a lot of work weeding and mulching in the back - now I can really see how much the strawberries have spread. I still need to find more spots for the onion sets that I purchased recently - they've been squeezed in between most of the plants in the front.

Garden Diary - April 18

We have germination! Several varieties of tomato, squash and basil. Still waiting on other seeds, but it's only been a week so far.

And I've forged ahead with lots of dividing and transplanting of perennials and re-mulching in an effort to head off the yellow menace from the bed under the window in the front. Or at least to have more variety when it sneaks it's way in again - it doesn't seem to be deterred by shade - just sends new creepers right underneath.

Mark mowed the lawn, so I sprinkled clover seed in everywhere - with luck the grass will get phased right out...

Several of last year's kale plants survived the winter, and new leaves are coming out. We're not sure if the fact that I cut the stems short mean it will flower, or just produce leaves. One thing's for sure - we're going to be eating kale sooner than we did last year!

Garden Diary - April 11

All of our earliest seeds have finally been started in flats and self-watering planters inside - I'm using my new heating mat which was a birthday gift from mom to get them to germinate quickly.

We built a new surround for self-watering planters on the front porch. Mark's attempt to cut down the rim in order to create a cloche to fit over top may have been ill-advised, but it will do.

And I had a mad burst of edging, weeding and transplanting - lots of perennials divided up and dispersed throughout the bed directly in front of the house in an attempt to hold back the invasive plant that grows there (which I still haven't identified). Within the bed I'm putting in other aggressive plants to battle it out (the striped grass from the back that my mother has warned me about, some lamb's ears, and the pink flowering plant from the small square perennial bed in the front lawn. Directly in front of the bed, where it keeps making incursions, I'm aiming for a mat of thyme and various succulents.

We've been looking into getting a load of triple mix delivered, so that we can fill the new vegetable beds. It seems like we need half a truckload, all of which will have to be shoveled into our tiny wheelbarrow and toted to the back...

Garden Diary - April 4

We've had record-breaking summer-like weather for the last few days. When I left the house Thursday morning there were only the crocuses in bloom, but when I returned Saturday evening, the hyacinths were fully out, the forsythia in front is all yellow, and one daffodil has bloomed. Spring is here!

Over the course of the weekend Mark built a new raised bed for the back, encompassing the area where we had the concrete sink/planter and the two beds to either side with the bamboo pole teepees.