Monday, November 30, 2020

Not quite the heart of winter

The snow arrived and blanketed the state with its white crystals. Mother Earth has "changed her gown".  The garden seems serene, delicate, and forbidding in many ways. The Birch and Larch trees lend a delicate, haunting to the scene; whereas the mound of snow seems forbidding as it swallows up the plants near it.

In the distance, the clock tower stands over the forlorn garden near the welcome sign.



Sunday, September 13, 2020

Winter prep

 This past Friday I did some more winter prep in the garden. I cut down the dogwood bushes and weeded much of the rock drain. There is not a lot to do at this time. The leaves on the trees have not changed color yet. The trees may change in a couple of weeks. The daisies are still going strong in the flower department. Anyone can prepare their yard or garden for winter. UAF CES has publications for garden winter prep http://cespubs.uaf.edu/publications/?&s=*&pt=*&cat=7




Tuesday, September 1, 2020

Garden can be...

 

This gardening day was quite rainy. I had to bundle up with layers and a jacket. I continued trimming the irises down in preparation for winter. I could feel the warmth radiating from the mulch through my pant legs. I think the mulch helped keep me warm.
Later this week we will assess moving some more plants around after the rain has stopped.

A slug decided to inspect my work. πŸ˜€



A Garden Can B
Poet: Catherine Pulsifer
A garden can be a place of peace for me
Watching nature and flowers be
The gentle breeze that blows around
Can be such a gentle sound.


  1. A garden can be a place to work
    With weeds attacking in the lurk
    While we dig them out of dirt
    The weeds our flowers will not hurt.

    A garden can be a place of beauty
    Filled with flowers that are so groovy
    A tiny seed planted, and then it blooms
    The fragrance can soon consume.

    The garden a place for all to enjoy
    Even for the little girls and boys.
    It is a place to see nature in action
    Gardening can be such a passion


Friday, August 28, 2020

Divide and Conquer

On this glorious sunny day (after some serious rain), we divided irises and put the divisions in pots. We spent three and a half hours doing some serious work. The first iris we removed from the ground put up a fight. It took 15 minutes of digging and coaxing roots to separate. We used a long (transplanting) spade and a garden spade to pry those roots loose (in the picture you can see the long spade; the other one is a clamming shovel which helped to lift the plant.)

Once we got the plants out of the ground we trimmed the fronds and roots with scissors. We also used knives to break the root ball up. These irises were so root-bound the roots went in multiple directions; made it difficult to breakdown.  

Here are a few that were potted. We used three large bags of garden soil to create 32 iris pots with an additional ten irises that needed soil to be potted. These were from three of the root-bound irises. See how nicely the irises look after a trim. Only a few more irises to remove. There are a few irises we will not divide but instead, we will move them around the garden bed. 
Winter is coming and there are a few things we will be doing to get the bed ready for the change in season. This includes cutting dogwood bushes to the ground and removing dead plants. A gardener's work is never done. 
 
Are you wondering what we will do with those irises? Keep an eye out here or visit the GERGC website to learn more. https://www.facebook.com/greatereaglerivergardenclub




Tuesday, August 18, 2020

'Shrooms in the Garden

A good day to be in the garden after the rains; even during the rains. πŸ˜€The garden is looking great. There are some fireweed blooming and some turning to seed or berries. The daisies are doing beautifully in the rock drain area. Hopefully, we can gather seeds for the daisies and the fireweed. 


We still have problems with vetch. Many of the irises are showing signs they need to be divided or 
just shooting up babies all over the place. The plan is to divide the plants before frost

After all the rains we have mushrooms growing in the mulch, 

which are easy enough to remove. 


Thursday, July 9, 2020

Sunshine on a Cloudy Day

We returned to the garden after a two-week break (Independence Day, I hope yours was as nice as mine 😎).

It was a nice day to be in the garden (well, any day is nice when I am in the garden). πŸ˜‰ The weeds were manageable. Two of us were able to finish weeding and watering in an hour. We did spot some signs of pests. There was a foam-like substance on some of the leaves. This is spittle from insects (A). The spittlebug uses this spittle to hide from predators. The only way to remove these bugs are manually, by hand or with a spray of water. There is a spray one can use to prevent the bugs from infesting plants but it is not full-proof and can harm beneficial insects. 

Happy Gardening!

If you rub your fingers on the plant to remove the spittle, you can feel the insects inside the foam.



Tuesday, June 23, 2020

Brought to you by the letter G

The garden is looking lovely. I spotted some interesting insects while I was clearing vetch from a few of the irises (more on that in a sec). The past few days have been quite rainy, as a result we have many blooms in the irises, on the cotoneasters, and a fern that sprung up in one of the bushes. 


This is probably a Himmelman's Plume moth. This is an indication of caterpillars in the garden. I do not think we need to worry about this particular bug as it supposedly feeds on berry plants (see note 1). A few pests for irises we should be on the lookout for include mites, aphids, and iris borer caterpillars (which are 1.5 inches long with brown heads and pink bodies) (see note 2).  Using eggshell dust around the base of the plant should help ward off the caterpillars (see note 3). Prevention is key to ward off any pest. Always remove plant debris which would encourage many pests to lay eggs. 


So then 
neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase. 
1 Corinthians 3:7


Notes:
1. insectidentification.org (2019) 
2. Kelsey, A. (n.d.) Insect Pests that eat Irises. 
3. White, C. (2020) How to Get Rid of Iris Borers. Dengarden.com. 

Friday, June 19, 2020

Final frosting leads to garden maintenance

Nearly one month after we started the project clearing garden one we are entering into the maintenance phase. There are still projects we want to do but those can wait until the end of summer or at least the end of Iris bloom time

One thing about working in this garden is learning about plants. This garden not only has Irises but also a Larch, two Birch trees and Cotoneasters ("kΙ™-ˈtō-nΔ“-ˌa-stΙ™r"). Many of the plants in Alaska are in acidic soils. The irises, and other plants in this garden, do well in this type of soil. The Larch and Birch are so lovely with the "frosting" laid down and we can now see the rocks scattered throughout the garden

My partner spotted two guys across the street removing gravel from an area; she quickly ran over to ask if we could have the gravel for our garden. God, or the universe, was listening when we were talking about putting down rock near the drain area.

A few minutes later they are laying it down for us. We not only managed to save some money and time for us but also for these fellows. 

The bushes are coming in nicely and the mulch looks awesome. 

Before we laid the mulch down, we had to dig out some stumps. In the fall there may be a few more to remove. 

The final look for the newest rocks but may have to spread them out a little more to blend with the rest of the design. 



A picture commemorating the start of the maintenance phase of the garden.



Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Groundhog day

I feel like today was a groundhog day. Why is that, do you say? Well, we did lots of the same things we did on previous days. We removed weeds and landscape fabric; laid down mulch; and watered. It felt like the "wash, rinse, dry, repeat" mantra. πŸ˜„
The reappearance of vetch really vexed me. I got to the point I wanted to make up a song about vetch and how it is the gardener's bain. When I got home I looked up the word vetch and poems. I discovered Sir Walter Scott and Ralph Waldo Emerson included this hardy flower in two of their poems. One of Emerson's poems is called "Blight".😊

The vetch plant will be a constant battle since it has ingrained itself into the rock drain.

The day started out with clouds but cleared to lovely sunshine.

Here is the vetch and grass battleground. It has been turned over by my hoe; I need to remove the materials. We are hoping for some gravel or rocks to cover the dirt. 

My partner is digging under the rock for those pesky grass roots

 time to spread the frosting

spreading the frosting

The irises are starting to bloom. They are lovely.

The drain area is slow going. There is still a grass patch. 

but the daisies and wild geranium look marvelous. 

Thursday, June 11, 2020

Garden frosting

We started putting mulch (also known as "frosting") in some areas of the garden to help with moisture control. Twenty bags of 2 cubic foot mulch did not go very far in the garden but it is a start. We will get another 20 bags next week. We still have a lot of landscape fabric to clear and areas of weeds.  We cleared 7 bags of weeds and such. We also identified some more bushes for removal. 

This is the far side of the garden near the stop sign. Lots of grass, vetch, wildflowers, and such growing here. 

We managed to get some of the rubbish/debris cleared and lay the mulch. This area has some of the daisies, irises, and wild geraniums.

See the mulch (aka, frosting) around some of the plants. This will be significant for the irises and bushes to retain moisture. You can see the second area that has daisy and wild geraniums planted. 

My partners for the day. They even have on the new club aprons.

Friday, June 5, 2020

Tough love in the garden

The end of the third week overhauling Garden one (aka, the Iris Garden).
Today we moved three bushes to different locations to prevent overcrowding and improve garden airflow. We also trimmed some to encourage bushes to "bush out" rather than grow in height. Several of the irises were divided and moved to other locations in the garden for aesthetics. While the garden has come far in the three weeks we have worked on it, there is still much to be done. Next week we may even get to lay down the mulch we bought.

The bush in the center was trimmed.  

You can see where the plants were removed or moved around the garden. Wow, the moves have made an impact on the garden's appearance. Remember to water transplants well to establish root growth and settle the plant firmly in the spot.

On the far side of the garden, we put some irises and daisies along the drain zone. This fall we may add mums or nasturtium to make this a multi-season garden. 

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

Rain or sun - we shall work in the garden

Today was a good day for gardening. We started with the sun in the early morning. We began taking out weeds and grass near the patch I stopped working last week. Three bags of rubbish and debris. We even pulled up some of the landscape fabric. The fabric was dangerous due to the "staples" used to keep the fabric down on the ground. Landscape fabric is supposed to prevent weeds or grass from establishing in a garden; unfortunately, this garden was so neglected there was no preventing growth.

We were able to remove many of the bushes that were dying or damaged. We still have a few to remove from the garden. We are ordering mulch to cover the dirt. We may even put in some daisies. 
 See how lovely the garden is now that we have cleared much of the weeds?! You can even tell the bushes have been removed on the left. 

Thursday, May 28, 2020

A foot at a time in the garden

Today was slow going. In two hours I managed to clear a 5'x3' area. It was slow going since I had to battle grass and weeds. Some of the weeds are typical dandelions but we also encounter vetch. Vetch is in the legume family. The state decided to plant vetch along the roadways not taking into consideration the invasive abilities of this plant. Vetch can attract many types of wildlife to include deer and birds. wildlife may love the vetch (since it produces edible parts), gardeners do not. It can take over a garden lickety-split. So be careful what you sow and where.

The area I cleared. I even took the time to move a few wild geraniums. I think they will look fantastic near the rock. 

A different view of the cleared area. I hope the geraniums survive. This was hard work and my hand is a little stiff from all the grass pulling. Don't mind the terrible looking bushes. We plan on pulling the bushes that are struggling, and we will move some around the garden. 

If you look behind the cleared area, past the rock, you can see the next battle area.

Vetch

Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Shall we call Forgotten Garden one the Iris garden?


Another day of cleanup, this time three hours. One of the fun parts of cleanup is determining what is a weed and what is a flower. What to keep, what to remove. I know some people think a weed is anything you do not want in your garden. I do not subscribe to that though since there are many plants that can be native and/or transplanted to other gardens. It helps to have fellow gardeners to send pictures to or to email about a particular plant.
Something good that comes out of gardening is the calorie burn. Three hours of pulling weeds can burn up to 200 calories an hour. The downside is the muscle ache (LOL). Make sure to stretch those muscles and limber up before gardening.

bush with grass growing among the roots. Had several of these bushes. Took two hours to clear six bushes of the grass. 

horsetail, very invasive. Remove by cutting. If you try to pull it out the spores will scatter.

Yarrow, has beautiful flowers