Spring 2022

Spring has finally arrived in Eagle River, Alaska. I spent the better part of two hours working in the Iris garden. I almost changed the name to "Fireweed alley" with all the plants that sprung up over the winter. 

Last year's flowers are long past spent and were removed to make way for a new batch. We will be planting newer flowers in June, after the threat of frost.

A worm made an appearance after I pulled some of the fireweed plants. 

This is good news for our garden bed.

After much toiling, I ended the day by placing one of our garden club signs. I also noted one of the birch trees is ailing. It may need to be removed if it doesn't perk up. 

Winter preparation for Iris Garden

 We have started our seasonal cleanup. Some of the irises were chopped down to the ground and the weeds removed. My partner had garden shears but I used scissors. We walked away with 7 yellow bags full of rubbish. 

The flowers are still going strong. We will trim these irises in a few days.

The rock area is looking good after removing the "eggs and butter" plants and the vetch. you can see the trimmed iris plants. More to follow.

Irises done; pods removed

This past week the team spent some time in the Iris Garden (FG #1) removing weeds and deadheading the irises. There were hundreds of pods to remove. It took about two hours to remove the flower pods. If the pods were not removed all the seeds would have been released into the ground. Normally, allowing seeds to self-sow is a good thing but in the case of this garden not so. Self-sowing would create a big problem with overcrowding in this very special bed. 

As you can see, there are already lots of little volunteer irises coming up. The volunteers will be removed over the next few weeks to prevent said overcrowding. Aren't the Fireweed flowers lovely?

Three bag as a result of removing those pods. The daises and geraniums are still looking great.

2021 bring on the Blooms

 The iris garden (FG#1) was in full bloom this year. So lovely. Lots of water was provided by mother nature and the Baptist church. A huge thank you to the church team for helping get these beauties a drink. This year has been a cool and wet year. The day I took these pictures was one of the rare sunny days we were blessed with. 

Even the ladybug larva visited

New Year, same Garden

 Whew, we made it through the "Year of Lemons".

It took me longer to get out to Garden 1/Iris Garden. I checked on it in late May, before we planted the welcome sign flowers. All that work last year really paid off. The grass and weed I pulled only constituted half a bag of rubbish. New plants that were not present last year had popped up (mostly what looked like false strawberry plants) near the rock-drain area. The MUNI gave us excess plants so we got permission to use them in this area. Daisy, Begonia, and Chamomile were added to the beds. The pictures were taken in mid-June; some of the irises are blooming.

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.

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

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. 😀

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.

12. 
    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

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

'Shrooms in the Garden

A good day to be in the garden after the rains; even during the rains. 😀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. 

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). 😉 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.

A) Gowans, M (2018) Bugs That Leave Foam on Plants. Retrieved from https://homeguides.sfgate.com/bugs-leave-foam-plants-75757.html#:~:text=Bugs%20That%20Leave%20Foam%20on%20Plants%201%20Spittlebugs.,with%20a%20water%20hose.%20...%204%20Considerations.%20

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) 

 https://www.insectidentification.org/insect-description.asp?identification=Himmelmans-Plume-Moth

2. Kelsey, A. (n.d.) Insect Pests that eat Irises. 

https://homeguides.sfgate.com/insect-pests-eat-irises-67364.html

3. White, C. (2020) How to Get Rid of Iris Borers. Dengarden.com. 

https://dengarden.com/gardening/How-to-Rid-Your-Garden-of-Iris-Borers

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 ("kə-ˈtō-nē-ˌa-stər"). 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.

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. 😄

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.