Print Page - Gardening 2024

Planting plants and weeding, one would think. :hihi: Probably should call it garden management.

I get a text this morning from the head of the office at 7:30. She misses not seeing me, longest she ever went. Yeah I do spend a lot of time up there. I was giving them a chance to do their year end stuff before I ran up there and took up office space next week. Lots of printing and laminating to do. But, really, 7:30? I not an employee, it's winter and if it was summer, I would have been busy working by then.

We ended up spending $6300 of the $9000 and something of the budget for last year. Little over our average. We did good. We're down $1900 for this year. It's okay, we took care of a bunch of stuff last year. A big chunk will go to construction. New this year will be fruit trees and bushes. And the renovation gardens: Chocolate, Moon and Bee beds. And Phebe is growing mushrooms. I'm going to do spring tours but probably not the fall ones. May do some more stuff but I'll think about that later. I'm fully staffed at the moment so I can concentrate on my beds and mowing. I really miss mowing.

I'm really thinking this will be my last year as overall lead. It's going on 5 years. Trouble is, this is Joe's last year as president and they will be looking to me to take that roll if I'm not demo garden lead. Oh hell no to that. Or take over education. Kind of interested in that. It really needs a visionary but I'm not into setting up all those functions.

The onions have grown back into the lights. They are getting the fan and light fertilizer in their water. The rosemary continues to shoot up a sprout here and there. Still all in the same half flat. Marsha has already reseeded at her house. She'll make the determination tomorrow if we'll let what I have continue to try to come up or trash them. Depends on how many lights we have available for what we are seeding up on Saturday.

I still have kale, swiss chard, new england aster and marigolds going in my yard. Marigolds are suppose to be good for keeping animals away, yet I saw a squirrel nab one of them, run off and eat it! The cats are hanging in the house so the squirrels have taken over the yard. We have a very old oak tree and acorns are in abundance along with the squirrels. It's okay, I like squirrels.

Marsha's rosemary is popping right up, of course! She figured it out. I seeded at a quarter inch deep like the package said. She only did barely cover. She figures it's going to take longer for mine to come up. This morning I looked and I do have 3 new little seedlings. We're going to leave them a little longer to see if they come up. Difference between seeding outdoors and under grow lights.

I'll just turn the onions sideways under the lights and free up more space for what we seed up tomorrow. I can raise the lights for the onions and they will be happy campers. I also have the option of moving the onions to my work table under the spotlights but I run the risk of cat attack. :hihi:

Better bring my rosemary plant in the house. Winter starts next Friday. Temps drop into the 20's for the highs. I have more of the rosemary seedlings popping up. We're going to have way more of those than we need.

We had a seed party yesterday. I brought home two flats of plants that will go out in the gardens. Only the beginning of those. We have 2108 seeds of those to get up and into the greenhouse. We have overseeded those so we get the number of plants we need. We're pretty successful so we're going to have extras. There's only so much room in that greenhouse. The extras here aren't on the for sale list so at some point the extras have to die, excuse me, complete their life cycle early. :hihi: Kill them or they come home to my garage. It's how I got 900 plants waiting to go to the parks in my garage last year. :hihi: Turns out the parks don't really have a budget for annual plants. Am I the only one sending them plants?

My lights are at 12 flats. I can go as high as 17 and the table has room for 3. I have fungus gnats all ready. Little fuckers love coffee! Won't treat for them until the seeds get up and out of the ground. Too late by that point. They live here by then.

Shit. In our meeting Saturday, they were talking about free places to meet. Someone mentioned the Ambulance District's new building. I've seen it. Totally barron of landscape. It calls to me everytime I drive by. It's not very far from the gardens either. I'm thinking, we are not meeting there because you know what's going to happen. No way Beka can look at that and not want to draw up a garden plan. No way we can walk on property and not want to plant something and keep going from there. I kept silent about that as a possible location.

But then Leslie called this morning. They need a meeting place close to the gardens. I had to tell her. :hihi: There is not a shady spot on that massive piece of property. Formerly farmland in the flood plain. I'm not saying nothing. Anybody talks to me about it, I'm going to laugh hysterically before I ask what's my budget. I have 40 trainees that need a project.

Met the group of 40 trainees. What am I going to do with all these people? Chatted them up for a little bit. I won't start working with the class until April. My friend DJ is taking the classes.

The ground heaved under the gate to the tool shed and it won't close. Threw Eli's christmas tree on the deer barricade. Man do we have a lot of mole tunnels. We're going to have to address that this year.

I wrote up Beka's nomination for Master Gardener of the year on the state level. I don't know if they will give the award to one of our people again. We got it the last two times and we pissed them off when we said we wouldn't do the conference. I mentioned in steering committee I was nominating her, thinking somebody else might want to nominate someone, because we can only send up one person from our group. Nobody said anything except that it was my thing. Oh really, you want to down play it with two of the winners sitting right here at the table. I didn't hear anybody mentioning my name when there was all the excitement somebody from our group won. Then one of them offered to proof read, meaning, rewrite what I write up. :hihi: Under appreciated and taken for granted should be on my name tag.

I think I'll start skipping a few steering committees like the next one. I turned in the donations I got for the garden. Marsha is determined to redirect the money to the general account and not let it go to the garden budget. They'll talk about it at the next meeting. Doesn't matter to me what they do with it right now, eventually it will come into my budget. In the meantime, I'm not offering up any of the Menard's rebate money to Marsha. She wants to put her garden budget on hold and possible return if we don't make enough money from the plant sale, I'm okay with that. We've been dumping a lot into that garden and it can be some of the other gardens turn.

The greenhouse opens on Friday. Get it warmed up and ready to start receiving plants on Saturday. I've got greenhouse duty starting Sunday running through the end of April. And all those calls, "you"re close enough, can you run over there and check on something?" It's okay, it's nice in the greenhouse.

Last week for the onions at home. Not sure what I'll be growing after that. Room for 17 flats. Takes a minute to get back into growing. Forgot everything from last year when I switched gears to the garden. It will come back.

Maureen has some seeds for me that should have been started in December. Different kinds of milkweed. I'm eventually going to do a milkweed display. Need to look up what else goes with that. The milkweed is for the caterpillars and the butterflies need something to eat. I'll probably seed those up and put them in the frig for a while but I may just keep them with me all summer and plant them in the fall. Maybe not, they do better in the ground. I don't know, it's been foggy here and that seems to have creeped into me. I slept till noon and if I wasn't feeling guilty about that, I'd be back on the couch dosing off and on all afternoon.

My friend who is taking the Master Gardener classes called in a panic. She doesn't think she's going to be able to pass all the tests. She did fine on the first test but is freaking out over the second test. Okay, stop that. :hihi: It's an open book test, call somebody else in class or since it's online just shrink it down and look it up. Can't tell if she's looking to drop the class or just has test anxiety. She thought the shrink it down and look it up was a pretty good idea. :D Only 14 more classes to go.

60 people, 6 hours. We got a lot of seeding and transplanting done. I have 2/3 of the pantry cool season crops home with me to grow up.

I got Showy Milkweed seeds and Rose (Swamp) Milkweeds from Maureen. They need cold stratification and it's too late to do that outdoors so they are in paper towels in the refrigerator for a month. Donna is also giving me Butterfly Milkweed. I'm working on a display of Milkweed. I'm not going to use Common Milkweed as it's too tall and takes over. There's three others I'm looking for but I'm probably going to have to buy them at $6 a piece. And then I have to figure out what I want to put in there for mama butterfly to eat while she's laying her eggs.

I already have seedlings up and the covers off of them. The cold season crops they tried in the greenhouse, not under grow lights have come up too. Those are planned in the containers we sell them in so they don't have to be transplanted.

Ever heard of Bee Bricks?
(https://static.designboom.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/bee-brick-green-blue-designboom-0303.jpg)

Something they are doing in England for solitary bees, a home to the cavity nesters. Some towns even require they be used in new construction. Interesting concept. They're kind of expensive. It's cute but if you don't plant the flowers they need for food and are spraying to kill bugs, this won't help. It's a conversation starter but not something I think they should require. There's plenty of cracks out there.

65 today and 72 tomorrow, then possible snow on Monday. I wanted to take a few of my seedlings out for some fresh air today but once they go outside, I don't let them back in the house because they might have bugs. I don't think this means spring is here. It was just a nice period in the middle of winter.

We did get a donation of a Blueberry bush yesterday. And one of the people is going to a town where they have a bunch of antique stores so she will look for the cast iron porch pillars we're hunting for. Our team on the bed renovations is waking up. A couple of people are asking who is going to England, they want those bricks. :hihi:

She didn't find any porch pillars. And the blueberry bush the girl was going to donate is the large variety and we need a container variety. Back to start.

The oak leaf lettuce is not coming up. It's planted too deep or the seed is old but we had this same problem last year so I'm going with planted too deep. Very few germinating problems so far. The greenhouse is getting too hot though. Well into the 90's during the day and that's with the windows down.

I did mention to Beka today I was thinking this would be my last year as overall lead. Asked her about taking the job. She didn't think she could be mean enough. :hihi: She is a sweetheart but she doesn't like controversy. You know, into every life a little controversy works its way in. But she has the right stuff to deal with it. She's never mean. You don't see me being mean. I come here and bitch a fit and get it out of my system then go deal with it. It's one of her strengths, she doesn't get pissed off, ever, but as she says one of her weaknesses. She'll give up before she allows herself to get pissed off. Not to worry, Marsha and I are still around, we don't let that shit go.

So what will I do if I'm not overall lead? I put in over 1100 hours last year. I'll still have my personal beds. All of the former overall leads have got up and walked away, never to be seen in the gardens again. :hihi: Dave dropped by the other day. Not sure why but it was during a time when we wouldn't have been there. He was overall lead when I started. He hasn't been around for years. I asked him what he was doing now. I was hoping to get some ideas. He said nothing. That doesn't help me. :hihi:

I had lunch with Marsha yesterday. She got her hair back! Long enough if she let me throw some gel in that, I could punk her out. :hihi: It's been about a year getting through the cancer's worst part. She's changed for the better. Not a complete change. She's still looking for your faults. But she's starting to throw people's strengths in there. We all have faults, it's recognizing the strengths, build on those that move things forward.

I got to play with my new drill driver, removing the screws from the boards we got out of the park's wood pile. Some of them are bent so bad or the heads striped, they aren't coming out with a drill. I looked over Kevin's work on the bricks. That's a hot mess. Hope he can fix that up. If not, it's not a place we walk and at least they are in. I know, lower your expectations, didn't pay for that. :hihi:

I look around the place, we have a mole problem, but my vision has run out. I see things that could be done but nothing I want to commit to. It's time to let someone with a vision take over. I didn't tell Marsha. She's in plant sale stress. No need to add to it. But I hear her talking about getting ready to turn over the fruit arboretum. It's wrapping up and her vision is coming to an end. She wants overall demo garden lead but says she can't do that and the plant sale too. Lady, you can do whatever you set your mind to but I'll think you're crazy if you take both those jobs. :hihi:

Anyway, snow coming tomorrow and a few days of cold return. It's been so warm, we've had stuff coming up. Not a really bad cold snap so I'm not expecting any damage.

Shit! Trimming mom's bush and a twig got around my eye wear. Hit me right in the corner of the eye. Feels like there is something in there. I guess if it's not better tomorrow I'll call the eye doctor. That's the first eye scheduled for surgery too.

The deans from the universities are coming in May and want to tour the gardens. Not sure if that's just something to do while they are at our office or if somebody will get a research idea or something similar to do with our little garden. If they do, what's in it for us? I'm not really interested in doing for them for the honor. :hihi: I'm just not that impressed.

I think my eye is healing. Very patriotic red, white and blue. Mostly swollen with a lot of fluid. Annoying but it doesn't hurt. Not near as bad as the last time this happen.

We got about 3 inches of wet snow. Nice blanket of insulation for a drop in temperature tomorrow. Then we shoot back up into the 50-60's next week. Way too warm for this time of year for too long. The bush I was trimming yesterday was budding out. My allergies say there is pollen in the air. Ordered up my allergy meds I take during the growing season.

Monarch Butterflies Wintering in Mexico Drop to Second-Lowest Level Ever Recorded
https://organicconsumers.org/monarch-butterflies-wintering-in-mexico-drop-to-second-lowest-level-ever-recorded/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=engagingnetworks&utm_campaign=OB+839+Saturday&utm_content=OB+839+Saturday (https://organicconsumers.org/monarch-butterflies-wintering-in-mexico-drop-to-second-lowest-level-ever-recorded/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=engagingnetworks&utm_campaign=OB+839+Saturday&utm_content=OB+839+Saturday)

Big day for transplanting and seeding. A good amount of help but we were still there for 8 hours. Tomorrow we go in and finish up what didn't get done.

Marsha told her team the cancer has returned. She thought she only had to do 4 more treatments but it's 6. Instead of every three weeks it's now every 28 days. She doesn't think she will be as tired this time because she's not taking one of the meds. Okay, where are we going to go to see the lights when she's free and clear? I think night lights are a perfect way to celebrate. :D

Gave up on the rosemary and oak leaf lettuce. Seeded up milkweed, swamp and showy. I'm in trouble if all those come up. The extra Lobelia got transplanted up. Could have got a lot more flats out of that but I paired them up and got it down to 3 flats. They stay home with me until I can plant them in May.

Cool season crops are getting harden off and heading out to the garden. The weather has continued to be above normal. We have a bunch of plant plugs coming in later in the week that have to get planted up and will fill up the greenhouse.

Marsha brought up she would like to give up plant sale and be the greenhouse lead. So while she was saying that, I brought up this would probably be my last year as garden lead. We tossed around a few names for both jobs. Nobody can do what Marsh does but people can do what I do. :D Nothing is settled but I got the subject out there.

Plugs appear to be coming in early, tomorrow. The green house is pretty full and we're not sure where we are going to put everything. I can't help but there are people stepping up to cover me.

The whole showy milkweed flat has come up! They are the stars of the milkweed group. The flowers are in the shape of stars. I sowed a handful of these so no telling how many plants I'll get but production is looking good.

One plant in the swamp milkweed flat has come up but I can see, believe it or not :hihi:, that others are getting ready to push through the soil. I have two flats of these.

I didn't seed up the common milkweed, my fav, but people don't like them. They are in the fridge but not in wet paper towels. I think I'll soak them overnight and try seeding them. The parks should want them and I've got the drain basin. Brian has been slowly mowing it down.

Native plants sleep, creep and then leap. Each stage takes a year. The first year they are putting down roots and look like they are doing nothing, the second year they start to grow but the third year they jump to a mature plant. So you have to baby them that first year and they don't like to be rehomed. Where you put them is where they need to stay.

OMG, I heard the woodpecker out there and was able to see it. Good enough to see the markings. Don't know what kind it was but I saw it well enough. :D

And here we go. :hihi: Marsha doesn't like my choice for my replacement and she is taking every opportunity to point out the person's flaws. She can't come up with a good choice though. She's scanning for one but yeah, there's not a good choice outside of herself and she's got too much on her plate to begin with. My choice though is having some personal problems that may prevent her from taking it and believe me she is no match for Marsha. She just doesn't have bitch in her. :hihi:

Doesn't look like we are cooling down. I'm going with an early spring and if we do have a cold snap, the ground won't freeze. I can't get out there until I get through the cataract stuff so I'm working on my milkweed display. I'm working on setting up garden tours but doing about half of what I did last year. I have one press release set up up but not the information needed on our website yet. I have to have it together before that is published. All this pollen coming out I have a bad case of the spacies.

And suddenly it's spring. :D Bushes are greening up, trees are pollenating and bulbs are blooming. I've got over 100 showy milkweed transplanted. Will probably get another flat out of the seedlings. I need to transplant the swamp milkweed but I'm out of lights so they will have to wait until the showy settle in and can be kicked out to the garage and driveway. Cool season plant sale this weekend. We're on hold for greenhouse transplanting until the sale as we are out of room.

163 on the showy milkweed. Plant sale is getting one flat of the swamp milkweed. Not only am I out of lights, I'm running low on the pots to transplant them up in. I'll probably get that many out of the flat I'm keeping. Common milkweed is having a tougher time germinating but I didn't do cold moist stratification, just cold so they may take a little longer.

I'm losing half the purple coneflower. They were milk jug seeded. I didn't have any luck with those transplants last year either. There's something with the milk jugs, like their roots aren't surviving the transplant. The transplants out of the seeding trays are doing well and I sowed them. Meaning some of the plants were growing with each other just like the milk jugs. Maybe they used the seeding soil mix. I hate that stuff. It's too heavy and gets too wet.

Got 124 out of the first flat of swamp milkweed. I'm waiting to transplant the second flat for later in the week when I can start kicking flats out to the garage. Everybody seems to be taking the transplants well. I need to prep the area where I'm doing the milkweed display but not going to risk another eye problem until after the surgery. :hihi:

Cool season plant sale went well. For the moment the greenhouse isn't full. We'll fill it back up Wednesday. We're having trouble getting evening watering crews. I also took Sunday night but I'm not building a crew. They are getting the hose. :D We can over water in the morning and they may not need so much at night. Keeps me there working in the gardens all day which I like, nobody is around and I can get some stuff done.

First full day of spring. Don't feel like we had much of a winter. Was listening to an expert on climate change. She said our springs will be more stormy with flooding and droughts in the summer months. More reason to plant native plants but is it?
Yes our native plants can tolerate that but it's not their normal growing conditions. How long can they thrive under conditions they are only tolerating? Native plants are only a help, not the solution.

I noticed some of the pots I had cool season seeds in got the shit pounded out of them by hail. There's a few things coming up. I got some plants at the cool season plant sale so I'll have fresh salad.

Marsha called, someone donated some heat mats and she grabbed some for me. I hate heat mats. :hihi: I've told her that several times but I guess she forgot. And I guess I'll be using heat mats. It's just the plants in them require more attention and electricity.

Total of 177 on the swamp milkweed. 88 have gone to the plant sale. My plant room is full with flats on the table and on the floor. I'll start moving some of them out this weekend to be harden off. I need all my lights by the 30th for the warm season veggies.

I'm not sure what we did but we got all the pansies through with no aphids! We had onions by them, peppermint oil spread around and new fans that blow more air at fan level. Not sure if any of that did it but lets do it next year if it means I don't have to give pansies baths.

Quarterly leads meeting. I didn't have much to talk about till the end when I announced this would probably be my last year as overall lead. Crickets in the room when I asked if anybody was interested in the job. And then somebody asked if the next overall lead could be somebody besides one of us. :hihi: It should be one of our senior leads, you know, somebody, who knows what the hell we do!

Anyway, I'm still in charge for now. Regular work sessions begin on Wednesday. I need to get back to work. I'm out of shape and overweight. I noticed our donated wheelbarrow showed up. It's blue with padded handles and on the smaller side, perfect for me. :D

I'm getting a donation of spider milkweed and whorled. Phebe has the vine milkweed in her yard and will get me seeds this fall. Maybe I can combine that with the common milkweed in a more wild section of the garden for a second display. For now I'll be showing 5 types.

I know I say it every year but I was in such good shape at the end of the season last year. :hihi: Drugged my ass around my own yard. No joy in doing that yard work. Good news though, everything is coming up. I need to kick my ass in gear. Had my sunglasses on my head and poked myself in the eye. Not bad but are you fucking kidding me!

The plants had their second day outside. I was going to be gone so they were in the shade and protected from the wind. Did some of them good. Some of them really need a good dose of sun.

Just too beautiful out today. I planted up all my spring stuff. May regret it as we may get hail again tomorrow. First grass mowing and I threw out some nitrogen for the grass.

Started removing all the Soapwort at the garden to make way for the milkweed display. Mowed down the the Liriope. Wore the eye protection! :hihi: So far I've found 2 takers on the Soapwort. I'm not real fond of it. It needs deadheading to look nice and some trimming back on some of the branches. It tends to act like a vine across the ground. You can make a cleaner out of it. Not a native but an old world plant in Europe.

Weather alerts have been going off all night and the worst is still coming. Plants I couldn't get in the garage are under boxes outside, including the moose. :D Hopefully the greenhouse doesn't get hit.

Marsha has been really cranky and of course she calls me. :hihi: I didn't answer the first call. I got the brunt of it on Saturday and it was too early in the morning for it to be a good call. But I took the second call. Apparently she found 2 six packs of pansies in my flat in the greenhouse. I was suppose to know those were to be out of there by the last sale. No big deal, my flat wasn't full, I've been messing with my eyes and they don't have bugs. But she harps on I should know better. Actually I didn't know. And then everything I said after that she had to argue with. We're taking a road trip tomorrow. She's picking me up but we are taking two cars so I think I'll ride with the other folks. :hihi: But I can tell you, already I need some peace and quiet at the garden. I'm hiding from my staff.

I got in the back seat. :hihi: We toured the greenhouses another group has. They have a really nice setup. It takes one person a half hour to water the greenhouse with a hose. Marsha heard the hose answer several times. Not sure she'll let us do it but she wasn't arguing against it. They grow very little from seed and order just about everything from plugs. They only sell perennials that people dig up from their yards. They aren't into natives and could careless about attracting bugs and pollinators.

On the way home, we stopped by the wildflower nursery. I got two additional species of milkweed, tall green and purple. Didn't find Sullivant's. Getting excited about putting in my milkweed display but our temps have dropped and we might get a little snow in the morning. I got Showy Goldenrod for the Bee Bar and New Jersey Tea for the Moon garden. I could have shopped a lot longer but it was freezing so I got a sweat shirt instead. :hihi:

The wildflower nursery is a pretty cool place. They were growing and selling natives long before it was a thing. Their catalog is the native plant bible in our state. I picked up a bunch of last year's catalogs to hand out to our students. They tell you where the plants grow best, rate them on their looks in formal gardens, tell you what bugs like them. You can buy all the plants for a certain kind of garden from them like a shade garden. First time I have been there. They do pop up stores at events around town. They have a dirt driveway through the woods to get to the nursery. :hihi: Plants were cheap enough. Then again they set the price for plants for the whole state. Everyone knows a native will cost you six bucks. I picked up a couple of pots with babies in them which only cost $3.50. Figure early enough in the season I can grow them up before planting.

We've had a little bit of luck. Gary is tearing down a composite deck and bringing us the composite we need for Marsha's area. That will save us a lot. Hopefully it will be enough to finish it off.

Finished transplanting the marigolds, all 450 of them. It's nice sitting in the plant room moving little plants into bigger pots. These will go in the miniature garden. Last transplanting and seeding party is Saturday. Not the end of it because we still have all the tomatoes to do in the greenhouse.

Tim dropped me off two stumps I use as legs on my bench. They are a lot taller then what I had. Will have to get use to them, kind of like getting use to the taller toilets. :hihi:

Marsha didn't accept any of the composite. Said it was trash but she did promise him the trade, my milkweed plants. Wait we didn't get anything and you offered up the swamp which I don't have a lot of. She was suppose to offer up the showy. Somehow this all has a very deju feeling to it, like something like this happen last year with him. The trade didn't happen but they gave him the wrong product anyway.

Demo garden plants are getting the boot from the greenhouse to make room for the sale plants. Took out my four flats and kept 5 at home with me that could have come in. The garage is filling up fast. They go out in the morning and come back in at night. Marsha gave me shit for doing the 5 flats at home. She wanted the group to do them Saturday. Believe me there is plenty for them to do on Saturday. And was not what she said when I told her at the start of the week I was doing them at home. And then she started another little thing about the tomatoes and yeah I'm not sticking around for this, bye. :hihi: Three weeks before plant sale and she's feeling the pressure.

I haven't told her yet I'm not coming to steering committee next Friday. I could give a flying fuck about how people record their hours. We have nazies in charge of it now. Everybody is bitching about it and Marsha has taken it on. Not throwing my tits in there. They already don't like me because I don't take them seriously. It will go a lot smoother without me there.

Last transplant party today. Just the tomatoes and peppers left to transplant and they need a little more growing time.

I cleaned out the soapwort in the bed I'm using for the milkweed. I need to move a few bulb plants, throw down some leaf mulch and I'm ready to plant. I ordered some butterflies on sticks to use to mark the plants since they are so small. Purple coneflower and zinas and that should be it for the year. Don't get much easier than that. I hope they all grow. :D

Marsha's been annoyed with me, lord only knows why. Yesterday she threw out some leftover plants she knew I wanted. Today I asked another person what happen to them. Marsha fessed up later when she got there. Okay no big deal, they were going to the parks. Bees like that plant for making their nests. And I left it at that. Get a call from Marsha later wanting to know if I want another group of leftover plants, sure. Has realized it was her and not me so she's going to make up for it. We go through this cycle every year. And because we go through this cycle every year, I know where she dumps the plants and I'll just go retrieve them. :hihi: I even have a place at my house where I hide the plants Marsha has dumped and I've rescued.

Dumping plants isn't about not letting people have them. It's about making room in the greenhouse and recovering our resources, ie the containers and the soil. I collect containers to put plants in for the parks and they give them back to me to plant up for next year. The soil comes from the used soil the seeds were started in. Everything stays at my house. They take anything we send their way. Fun and games, right?

Got to work on the milkweed bed. It's ready for its plants I'm hoping I can do next week.

Those missing plants aren't any where. I suspect she gave them to somebody. At least they didn't die. Dusty Miller, not a great looking plant but the bees take the fuzz off of it for their nests. It won't sell out at the plant sale.

Looks like we are going to stay above average. We have several days of on and off rain this week. I'm going to look at the 10 day forecast after that and if it's good, I'm going to start planting. I can always cover with frost cloth all though my 'can take that full sun all day long' plants won't like it. I've swung back to wanting to use only natives. I do have all my beds cleaned up and ready for planting. The annual weeds are still around back flowering for the early pollinators. I won't pull them until the flowers are done.

70 feels hot to me. :hihi: Started mowing at the garden. I feel like a slug. The thought of hefting one of the trimmers around the garden feels like it may be too much. That was my favorite thing last year. Following my rule of just keep going, don't stop. Hope that gets me back up to speed pretty quick. We have the morning tomorrow before the rain comes in. I got in my monarch markers, really cute.

Rough count, I have around 600 plants for the parks. Last year we sent 900. I'm missing marigolds and zinnias for them. The milkweed is a jewel but they need annual plants. I may go pick up some more seed packets for them. And dumpster dive for stuff to grow them in. :hihi:

We might have lost one of our exhaust fans. I walked in the greenhouse yesterday and it was 90. Reset the one fan down to 80 but I couldn't get the other one to kick on.

Today was all about getting the gardens ready. We are over ran by henbit and deadnettle. Good annual weed for your early pollinators. We try to leave those up as long as we can. Surprisingly, my knees don't hurt. Once down on the ground I'm not getting up until my bucket is full and I have a pile of weeds by me. Might have helped that my knees were in cold mud. I wore eye protection! And a cap on my head so I wouldn't be tempted to put my glasses on my head. Cloudy and a little rainy so the bees weren't out!

I got my butterfly weed today. Only 3 more plants to round up and I'll have all the plants for the milkweed display.

Extension is sponsoring a two week period in June for the community to decorate their yards. I've got Grateful Dead bears, pink flamingos and Phebe has the ducks. Ken, our resident artist already has some ideas. I hope he can out do what I've got! :hihi: Oh, I have monarchs on sticks.

Left before the final diagnosis on the fan. Gave some university people a tour of the gardens and tried to recruit them to take one of our open positions. I am shameless. :hihi:

Maureen showed up late and went into meltdown. She was waiting to get to the garden to lose it. Her husband wasn't up by the time she was ready to leave and she was afraid he was dead in his bed. He woke up so she didn't have to go in and see. He could go any day or hang on a few more years. As I've said or meant to say, it's good we have gardening to take our minds off things. Never occured to me that I would be there for so many people dealing with death.

On a happier note, the parks picked up their milkweed today. She came in a short bed, pick up. I filled that up. :hihi: She left with 9 flats. I threw in a few of her annual flats. Well over $1000 worth of plants if they had to buy them. That milkweed is gold and I can tell you one of the easiest plants to grow. I thought she was going to dance out of here. :D Showed her my groundsel and she would like me to grow some of that for them next year for their shade area. I'll give it a shot along with more milkweed.

I went to pick up a Sullivant milkweed for my display but they aren't in yet. Picked up a Whorled one instead because you can't go plant shopping and not buy a plant! :hihi: Did get all their plant labels ready to go. I so want to jump on my display and get it in the ground. Hopefully next week but I'll be waiting on two plants.

:hihi: "She lied to my face." So glad I couldn't make steering committee today and let Marsha take it. She didn't quit but they took away the other girl's absolute power over the recording of volunteer hours. She already hates me and now she hates Marsha. I'm hoping she was just trying to save face and goes home and quits. It's nice she's not directly pissed off at me but still says I'm a problem. I am, I don't give a shit about that.

Marsha is not coming tomorrow. I'm hopefully taking a team of volunteers around to weed. Marsha starts telling me where we can weed in her area. There's some history. She says I never get to her garden when I do that. She has 7 team members and the gardens I take them to only has a lead. She wants a weed team, call for one. I'm calling mine for the benefit of the whole garden and where I have to lend a helping hand. :hihi: And I have the trainee team working the 3 bed renovations. Fortunately Beka leads that but we'll all be working the same side of the building. Weeding and planting, one would think that's what I'm doing all the time.

Not sure what is up with the bees. 3 or 4 people got stung today and they were chasing folks. Reported them to the bee keeper. Thought it might be some in ground bees but the one we took out of Melanie's hair was a honeybee. We weren't even close to the hives. Tim says they just requeened yesterday. Not sure what that means about the bees activity. They do that when the hive gets aggressive and it calms them down. Maybe it takes a few days or they put a bitch on the throne. :hihi:

We did get the tree trunk installed and holes drilled in it for nesting bees. While we were there we had a bee checking it out. :D Leslie found my Sullivant's milkweed on her way in so I'm just waiting on the one Beka is digging up from her yard. I'll do the initial install without it since it isn't up yet. We installed the chocolate vine. The ones I am rooting up look good but somebody bought us one so were using it.

Only had 3 trainees show up to weed, at least two of them got stung, the third new last year. I kind of lost track how many people were getting stung. :hihi: But all of them were on my projects. I'm not making a very good first impression. :hihi:

I'm sitting at the greenhouse with a flat of plants. The bee hives are all the way across property. This bee will not stop buzzing me. I go to the car and roll up the window. He kept diving the window! And the windshield and the other side of the car. I finally moved the car, asshole bee. After a while I ran back over to the greenhouse and grabbed my flat and ran away. :hihi:

Two weeks before plant sale and the plants are ready to go out the door. I'm putting a half a gallon of water in the coleus flats and they are soaking it right up. It's so hot in the greenhouse I'm meeting my evening waters after the sun starts to go down. It is my last day of a full greenhouse. We'll sell some next weekend and the big sale is the following weekend. All tomatoes are to report to the greenhouse tomorrow to be transplanted. Too bad I'm babysitting and can't get there till 6. I'm hoping they are done long before that.

Forgot about the tic. Some where between home and the greenhouse Carman got a brown bump on her eyelid. From the other side of the table I tell her it looks like a tic. No she looked it up on the internet and it some kind of growth. Doesn't make sense to me but I offer to pull it off with the tweezers. No that's not the right thing to do. DJ goes over and takes a close up look. "It has legs." :hihi: What I said, I've got eyes now, I can see that all the way over here.

Why do I always end up with the poisonous plants? Picked out Ballerina Purple Trumpet seeds for one of my beds. Who knew? Not ordering any more cheap seeds from China. They did give me about 50 seeds and the packet says 15.

Marsha better never accuse me of over watering again. Don't ask why but she decided to do another flat of the purple shamrock. They are for me to put in my garden but I already have a bag of them and I'm direct sowing. Anyway I look at them and say they are awful wet. She starts bitching that they didn't get watered in the greenhouse and were really dry. I carry them to my car thinking they are really heavy and why are there 3 flats doubled up under these. Closer look and I can see the soil is basically floating in the water. It's like a soup. :hihi: The whole way home, every corner I turned, some of it spilled out. Tomorrow they go out on the driveway in full sun and hopefully they dry up before the bulbs rot.

Somehow Marsha has twisted what I said, Joe shouldn't be president and the other Kevin should be in charge of membership. What I said was I don't think Joe will serve another term as president. And that I didn't know if Kevin would be good in that job but I would tell him she wanted to talk to him. My real opinion, better Joe than anybody else and oh hell no on the other Kevin. :hihi:

The weather is headed for summer. We have heat and humidity. I haven't had the AC on in April since I was pregnant. We cool down the next few days but still above average. We've had rain but we are still in a drought.

I'm down 4 pounds but I am dragging. Having a harder time coming back this year, probably because of the heat.

Request for weeding help is not working. Probably didn't help that Joe announced we were being attacked by the bees. :hihi: They continued to buzz us today but not sting. Only got half of the bird garden done today. High winds and storms expected tomorrow. We cool off after that. Bees stay in the hive below 50 so maybe we can weed over by the hives. I'm hoping if we cut down all the annual weeds they won't be so protective of the area.

I will not bee detoured! :hihi: The bee keeper let us use the netted hoods. I felt invincible and worked right up by the bee hives. We only got buzzed a couple of time. Might bee respect for the uniform or the bees have calmed down. Daylily garden is mostly done. All that mulch I put on it last year didn't get washed away in spring floods and the weeds just came right out. Only have about 12 plants to go.

We have big storms coming in this afternoon. Beka and I put off our nursery crawl to get home and get our plants in.

Last Sunday in the greenhouse, public sale next weekend. I was going to install the milkweed display today but we are getting frost tonight. They are harden off so they would be okay but why stress them out. So instead I spent 5 hours washing pots and flats, stressed my back out. :hihi:

The beekeeper took the hives away for a while to calm them down. I didn't hear of the bees bothering anybody this week but the beekeeper knows his bees. I wonder where he takes them?

I'm in a rush to get all the garden stuff out of my garage. It's taking up valuable real estate. :hihi:

Marsha gets chemo tomorrow. We're hoping she feels well enough for the public sale. She didn't last year so we muddle through without her. Saturday's sale for our group earned us $7500. Around what we normally do. Warm winter so Donna has a bunch of perennials. At $5 a gallon size, it's a deal.

Public plant sale this weekend and I'm sick with a cold. Not sure if I'm going. Don't want to give it to Marsha plus I'm sick. They plan to destroy all the leftover plants after the sale to get back their soil and pots to re use. In the past we have tried to find them homes. Has a lot of people in an uproar. Marsha's call and I'm staying out of it. Part of being in charge, deal with your staff when most of them disagree with what you're doing. Donna told me she would give me back the milkweed I donated to them that doesn't sell but they are going to bare root them. That will probably kill them but it gets my message across that I am not growing stuff for you next year only to have you kill it if it doesn't sell. I'll grow their stuff for them but I'll keep my stuff and give it away.

She brought it up so I gave it one more shot. She feels it saves us money to destroy the leftover plants and keep the soil and the container for reuse. That's true. Saves taxpayers money to destroy pets that haven't got adopted fast enough too. Depends on which side of the fence you fall on how you see it.

I got a lot done today. All the flats and containers got bleach watered and are ready to be returned to the greenhouse. I transplanted everything I had left. Most my lights are off for the season. I'm going to skip the sale tomorrow and do some gardening at home. I don't want to be around when they destroy the plants.

I stopped in and brought more plants. Wore my mask. Looked like we got pretty well cleaned out and there were lots of people there. Marsha caved and is bringing me some annual plants leftover after the sale.

No hope for the perennials because Donna doesn't want to care for them in pots over the summer. Something happen to the butterfly weed and it looks like it got sunburned or frost. It's making a come back but doesn't look good enough to sell. And she's got some swamp milkweed. Donna can take her time about destroying her plants so I'm wondering if she won't try to slip me some of the butterfly and swamp. She should give me all the swamp back because I gave them to her to sell.

I didn't get that many annuals from Marsha and now that I'm considering all I have to plant, I'm okay with that. :hihi: My goal is to try to get everybody plants I'm holding to them by Saturday. Lows are above 50 for the next 10 days so we can start putting in our summer plants.

We have about 10 days before the two kinds of cicadas emerge. Rare occurrence. These bugs are big, freaky looking and loud! They live about 3 to 4 weeks. My cats consider them play toys and appetizers, yucky! And because every bug has a purpose: "Cicadas are not dangerous and can provide some environmental benefits including: Cicadas are a valuable food source for birds and other predators. Cicadas can aerate lawns and improve water filtration into the ground. Cicadas add nutrients to the soil as they decompose."

Shit I could have done something with all that coleus. Give me a minute to get some inspiration and I'll get the energy. I went to look for them in the compost pile but they weren't there and I couldn't find where they disposed of them. They must be on to us raiding the compost pile. :hihi:

Woke up at 4. It's planting day right after I see the eye doctor. I ran a trunk load of clean flats and containers back to the greenhouse at 6:30. :hihi: First up is the stone bed where I put the elephant ear, canna and lobelia. I'll hit all the containers after that. Don't have much of a variety to fill them up so they will be mostly one kind of plant in each pot. Marsha calls it decorating the gardens. I call it landscaping.

Happy May Day, everybody dance. I only got rid of six flats of plants and can home with two new ones. Pretty good turn out for planting today. If it would cool off I'd be done and I wish someone would kill the humidity. Way too early for this kind of weather. Good news is we have several days of off and on again rain. Good for germinating seeds and watering what we plant.

Phebe harvested her first set of mushrooms. Cooked up some for us to try. Anything she cooks is good. I bought her the last rhubarb plant they had at the co op. That will be a new plant for us too.

Six hour nursery crawl. We got 17 plants off our list and only have 7 left to find. We did substitute in an Edelweiss. I didn't even know they sold those. It looks like it could grow on the moon. We gave up when the temps hit 90. I did manage to get some zinnias and agastache planted in the milkweed display before they picked me up. And I did send Beka home with all the new plants. :hihi:

I'm only sending the parks 260 plants and 2 burlap bags of canna bulbs this time. I did send them 510 plants in the first load so I guess I shouldn't feel so bad we didn't have a lot of zinnias and marigolds. They did like the milkweed.

Woohoo, the three themed beds are planted! Not finished but planted. :hihi: They are really starting to look good. Mostly clean up work left but I'm happy with them. They will be beautiful when they grow up. The cocoa mulch smell is really noticeable.

I went back up tonight to work the back of the greenhouse. It's ready to plant and some amendments. Hopefully hit that tomorrow. Talked to Beka. She didn't wear sunscreen and is fried. :hihi: Told her what I would be doing and what we could finish up and she really wants to come tomorrow. Told her I'd be there around 8 and that took the wind out of her sail. :hihi: I'm out of there by 10 if we don't have cloud cover. I want to be done planting everywhere by Tuesday.

I went and got him right before nap time but he just passed out at 5. 4 hours after nap time and he got sick once. The dad is real sick. I imagine no work for him tomorrow and the baby is spending the night with me. I was going to get up to the garden at 7 and put in a few more plants. I think I'm under 50 plants to put in. I should make Tuesday if these people haven't got me sick too.

I ended up putting a row of profusion red zinnias in front of the liriope. The canna bulbs are behind them where I think I may put orange tithonia in the middle. Profusion red is described as "it laughs at heat, humidity, and drought -- as well as deer!" Going to put them to the test. :hihi:

Here Today... Gone To Hell!

Off Topic => The Jungle => Topic started by: cineater on January 04, 2024, 02:27:14 PM