In bloom this week: Mar. 29, 2016

Asian pear

Where did March go?! In like a lion with a storm on the first and out like a lamb, sunshine all week. I need to remember to take pictures earlier in the day, the sun is too bright when I go out in the late afternoon.

The classic spring bulbs are still here, I have more planted this year and different varieties so I'm enjoying a longer bloom time.

Late daffodil

Tulips

Sunny daffodil

Vinca minor, or periwinkle, spreads quickly but so far I'm happy with a few areas where I transplanted it last year.

Periwinkle

All four of my blueberries are blooming, but hard to get pictures of them. I grow a lot of fruit but these are my favorites!

Blueberry

Another blueberry

One lonely strawberry is blooming before all the rest.

Early strawberry

I planted a few kinnikinnick last week, just in time for the flowers.

Kinnikinnick

Indoors, one of my amaryllis plants is finishing blooming, it had three sections and this is the last. The other amaryllis doesn't seem to want to bloom this year, but I don't do anything to force them to bloom.

Amaryllis

Coming soon.... I found pictures of lilac blooms from this week last year, so we are a little behind - but I think still an earlier than usual spring.

Lilac - maybe next week?

The apples and kiwi blossoms are still not quite here either, although I almost like the buds better than the blooms. I'll change my mind next week.

Apple

Hardy kiwi

And one more preview - coming in April!

Early rose

A little progress in the back corner

Southeast corner

This back corner is on my list of areas to focus on this year, but as you can see I haven't done a lot since last month. There actually won't be much to show all summer because I'm only planning maintenance work: keep chopping out Japanese/giant knotweed, blackberries, ivy and shoots from the old plum trees as they all try to grow. The knotweed started to come up this month, so I'm cutting it every week, sometimes can pull some of the roots up which I think will help kill it.

I found a comparison picture from 2012, we had just removed the remains of the tree on the left, which fell over in an ice storm. The remaining tree had to be taken down later. You can't see the knotweed because it hadn't sprouted up for the year, but it covered the whole back of this area - and was worse in the neighbor's yard. 2012 was a much colder year, we actually had snow fall on the day this picture was taken.

March 17, 2012

I did cut out one of the spurge laurel (daphne laureola) this month, still have to cut the larger one that's against the far (south) fence. I wasn't sure what these were but now have identified them and they are listed as a noxious weed in this county, so I don't want to contribute to spreading them. It's also poisonous. There are so many other nice bushes I can grow here!

I thought this might be comfrey until it bloomed, looks like it is evergreen bugloss (pentaglottis sempervirens), which can also be invasive but not classified as a noxious weed here.  I like the big leaves and little blue flowers so I'm letting it grow. 

Evergreen bugloss

The bulbs I planted in the fall have are dong nicely, luckily the squirrels don't seem to have eaten too many. Daffodils are almost done, tulips are in full bloom, grape hyacinth are just blooming, and anemone have buds.I'm a little worried about the bluebells, I've found some of them but not as many as there should be and no sign of blooms yet.

Grape hyacinth

I ordered native hazelnuts to plant along the fence line, just waiting for them to ship (from Raintree Nursery).
In the fall, I want to finally replace the old plum trees that grew here. I've been looking at native plants and I'm leaning towards a crab apple tree. Also considering Indian plum, mock orange and vine maple, which could all grow under or near the crab apple and should mix well with hazelnuts. 

In bloom this week, Mar. 22, 2016

Asian pear

Spring is here and it seems like everything in my yard is in bloom. The Asian pear blossoms came out a few days ago, I love to look at them but they are very smelly! The smell startles me every time I walk by.

Asian pear

Our neighbor's plum tree that hangs over the fence (and yes we pick the plums) is just starting to bloom.

Plum, probably Italian prune variety

All of my spring bulbs are still going strong, although the early bloomers are starting to fade.

Grape Hyacinth

Sunny daffodil

Tulips

A later tulip

Daffodil, anemone and fading hyacinths

One more daffodil

And I have to keep trying to get a good picture of my favorite spring bush!

Flowering currant

When will the apples and hardy kiwi bloom? Check back next week to see!

Apple, not quite there yet

Female hardy kiwi

Progress on the hillside

February 21 and March 18, 2016

This area of the yard sure has changed in three weeks! I dug up all the weeds and grass around the blueberries and pulled out the groundcover fabric that was giving the grass roots something to grab onto. Last year, I had planted a lavender and a creeping phlox in the middle of the blueberries. Those were too close together so I split the creeping phlox into three pieces and moved it lower. I also planted three rock roses, three yarrow, and a mix of crocosmia corms. I've never grown crocomsia but love how they look.

The section down the hill had been covered in cardboard for about two months and I was amazed at how easy it was to dig out the grass. Cutting out the old groundcover fabric was the hardest part!

Raspberries will go down the middle, I'm just waiting for them to arrive. I transplanted a few groundcover strawberries on the south side and just added three aquilegia (columbine) today. Yes, impulse buys at the nursery - but I'm ok with that as long as they were on my list of plants that I'm interested in. I'm also growing aquilegia from seed so may have more to plant in here.

Looking up the hill, northwest

Next, I'm planning to get a few stepping stones and experiment with how to put them on the north side of the raspberries. The hill is steep and it'll be nice to have some steps to keep from sliding downhill when I'm picking raspberries.

The berm across the bottom is composed of cardboard, upside down grass clumps from all of the digging I did, a thick layer of miscellaneous plant bits from around the yard, and a layer of mulch. I scattered wildflower seeds on top of the mulch, to have a (hopefully) pretty temporary solution while everything decomposes and settles.

The middle section above that, between the raspberry row and the blueberries, is cardboard, upside down grass and bark mulch. I ran out of everything else to pile on it but wanted to use up the rest of the grass clumps.

There is, unfortunately, groundcover cloth somewhere under this, so I'll probably need to dig it out in the fall or next spring. I just didn't want to let all of the organic matter from the grass that I dug out of the other areas go to waste!

Temporary berm at bottom of hill

I put cardboard in place to kill off more grass, and I plan extend it all the way up to the grape trellis as soon as I can get more cardboard. The recycle box in Ikea's parking lot was sadly lacking boxes this week. I'm doing it this way rather than just piling on mulch because of the groundcover cloth that has to be dug out.

Once the grass is gone, I'm looking at a mixture of groundcover plants and perennials to cover the rest of the hillside, with a lot of bright colors: coreopsis, echinacea, yarrow, kinnickinnick, native thrift, and native grasses if I can find any that can handle the hot dry conditions. Don't be fooled by the nice black dirt in some of these pictures, there's a lot of clay and rocks underneath!

Blueberries with new companions

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - March 2016

Anemone

Spring is here! The sun actually came out this afternoon so some of my photos are a little washed out.

All of my spring bulbs are blooming, daffodils, anemones, hyacinth and even early tulips. I particularly like the little anemones, which have survived right next to the gas line replacement in the front corner of our front yard.

Tulips, anemone and daffodil with bonus bee

Some of my hyacinth have been knocked over, but not this one lone pink version. 

My one pink hyacinth

My flowering currant bushes seem brighter every day; this is my favorite spring bush and I love that the blooms go on and on. It's been a full month since the very first bloom came out. See last week's close up pictures.

Daffodils through the flowering currant

A few zinnias have survived along the sidewalk, they lived through the winter and are now blooming before they would normally have been coming up at all. At least, I think they're zinnias - they've been coming up from seed from the former next door neighbor for about 10 years.

Not an annual this year

Sometimes the plants that appear on their own are pretty too. I'm pretty sure this is purple dead nettle, which is coming up in the shadier areas of my yard. I prefer it to the more invasive weeds, so I'm leaving it be and enjoying the little blooms.

Purple dead nettle?

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day is hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens. Check out all of the other gorgeous blooms!

Seed starting: it's alive!

Rescued daffodils and hyacinth

The gas lines in our street are being replaced and my bulbs along the front fence have suffered a little damage, so a few blooms had to come inside.

Seed starting is an anxious business, I probably don't have the temperament for it. The poppy seeds, which had sat in my fridge for years and I planted a few only because I had room, sprouted within a week. I had to trim a few out with scissors. Now some of the blue columbine has leaves and the red (out of the picture) is just starting to sprout. No sign of the lavender yet, it is supposed to be hard to grow from seed.

Sprouting!

The top picture is the set of starts that was pre-chilled in the fridge for three weeks. The bottom set had the seeds in the fridge, but not in the dirt. They seem to be 4-5 days behind, so there was some benefit to the fridge time - but maybe not enough to make up for all the space it takes.

I have more seeds arriving this week, some interesting varieties of catmint, calamint and veronica to go in the rose garden. I'll try starting some indoors and direct sow seeds too. Seeds are cheap so if they don't work well, I'll just buy plants later. The hard part is resisting buying a lot of plants now!

Amaryllis and spider plants

Although I don't normally start seeds indoors, I do have a collection of house plants. These are baby amaryllis plants that came off of a bulb that I've had in the kitchen for many years. Also, my spider plants are busy multiplying. 

In bloom this week: Mar. 7, 2016

Hazelnut

A lot of excitement in the garden this week! First, there are finally female flowers on my hazelnuts. I've been enjoying the catkins all winter, and saw the little red flowers on a twisted hazel down the street but couldn't find them on my trees. They must come later on the type I have, which I think is cornus cornuta californica. I really love these, for some reason never knew to look for them in all the years we've had these hazelnut trees.
See the Oregon grape in the background, blooms haven't unfurled much in the last month, but it is a nice bright yellow.

Hazelnut blooms

Then, I found the first tulip is in bloom! I just planted these last fall and the package said they were early but I didn't expect this early.

Early tulip

And my very favorite spring bush, flowering currant, is finally in full bloom after teasing for weeks. I trimmed a few branches to keep a path clear down the hillside and brought them in to brighten up the house. It's supposed to rain all week, we need some bright blooms!

Flowering currant

Flowering currant to brighten the house

Progress in the rose garden, part 2

Peony

Now that I've pinned down the three areas that I want to focus on this year, I suppose I should plan on regular updates. Perhaps monthly for each area?

Since I last posted pictures of the rose garden, I've pruned the roses and planted a few groundcover plants:

• 3x Stachys byzantina 'Silky Fleece' - a very short Lamb's Ear 
• 3x Erodium x 'Bishop's Form' - Heron's Bill, which I actually thought was Crane's Bill, it's very similar
• 1x Phlox subulata 'Crimson Beauty' - pink creeping Phlox 
• 2x Phlox subulata 'Emerald Blue' - blue creeping Phlox 
• 3x Ranunculus asiaticus 'Mache' - mixed ranunculus, but these three are all red 

Clockwise from upper left: Creeping phlox, Heron's Bill, Ranunculus, Lamb's Ear

I'll need more plants, just trying a few of each to get a better sense of how they'll look (and how many I will need!). I  think just these few plants make the rose garden look nicer already though. The peonies that I planted in the fall are coming up too, I'm excited to see how much they will grow this year.

West fence on the left, north fence on the right; the colored flags in the middle mark the peonies

I dug out a section of grass above the juniper, where I had tulips planted years ago but then the grass took it back - and found some baby tulips coming up, which I transplanted to the front fence.

Then dug out another section of grass, from below the juniper down to meet the edge of the retaining wall. Seen from below, there's now a straight line from the side retaining wall to the juniper. That should be all the heavy digging in this area, just the fun digging of more planting to come. 

A lot of digging

The bottom section of the roses is an experiment in doing nothing, I'm letting geranium come up from seed here. I can't tell yet if it's the same geranium that I have growing in the garden bed below the retaining wall (seen on the left side of the photo below), which is probably 'Rozanne', or if it's a more wild pink flowered version. I've seen both in this area in past years and pulled them out along with other weeds. I've just done a little weeding to keep out the bittercress and dandelions and now will see how the geraniums look by summer. 

Lower section, looking up (west)

There is a fabric layer buried somewhere under all the mulch, which I don't want to pull out this year but I also don't want to plant anything permanent on top of it. I pulled a strip of it out last year along the side retaining wall to plant gladiolus bulbs and a few transplanted pieces of vinca and creeping phlox. I also planted gladiolus and transplanted vinca behind the roses, against the rock and concrete wall (almost visible on the right side of the photo above). I'm having second thoughts about the vinca now because it can spread a lot, but it didn't grow much last year so I'll wait and see.