Update on 2016 projects

May is the month when my garden really wakes up, although everything is blooming later this year than in recent years. All three of my big project areas from last year have grown in so much: the rose garden, the back corner - which expanded into a larger meadow - and the sunny hillside. I'm really enjoying all of them, doing some weeding but not much other maintenance now. A garden is never done, but it's nice to be able to enjoy these areas as they are while I'm doing a lot of work on new projects.

The rose garden is now more than just roses! I have a small gap to fill in on the west fence where my fern leaf lavender plants did not survive the winter - darn, I loved them. I'm looking at replacing them with dwarf phlox, but haven't decided yet. Also yarrow did not survive in the north fence section, so I need to find a little more groundcover there.

These pictures are from January 2016, May 2016 and May 2017.

Rose garden, west fence, looking north

Rose garden, north fence, looking east

Rose garden, lower section looking east

My favorite part of the rose garden is the corner with bearded irises and peonies getting ready to bloom.

Corner of the rose garden

The sunny hillside has grown in so much! I've had to move some of kinnikinnick and penstemon around because the lupine and raspberries grew so quickly. The hot lips salvia survived the winter, barely - it's much smaller now but hopefully will grow quickly again. Yarrow again did not survive, maybe because they were specialty varieties and not the straight species.

Sunny hillside, looking south - January 2016, May 2016, May 2017

A closer look at the raspberries:

Raspberries, looking downhill (east)

I was a little worried about the meadow early in the spring and ended up weeded out a lot of shotweed. I've also been weeding out some grass and creeping buttercup, but now the native seeds are growing in. There are also non-native poppies because I let them go to seed last year along the bottom of the hillside; I'll deadhead so they don't take over. The shrubs under the arborvitae and across the middle are growing nicely too, as well as the trees (shore pines in the corner, crab apple and vine maple in the middle).

May 2016 and May 2017, looking south

May 2016 and May 2017, looking north

There is a forest of poppies all the way in the back corner too, I can't remember planting seeds there but must have. The invasive knotweed that was here is almost all gone, just a few pieces that I'm digging up as I find them. 

Mystery poppies

Planting a meadow and native bushes

Snow! - in early December

This is a catch up post, one last update from the year. Remember my solarization project? I'm not sure we had the best summer for it this year, 2015 would have been better as it was much hotter. Nonetheless, I proceeded with removing the plastic in mid-September then waited a few weeks to see what would grow, and used very selective application of Roundup on a few weeds that tried to grow. There weren't very many weeds, more in the back corner than the front section, but there was some grass trying to grow which is concerning.

At the end of September, I spread a very thin layer of mulch and planted a mix of native wildflowers and grasses in the front section. Carefully, so as to not disturb the soil underneath and stir up seeds that may not have been killed by solarization. I did the same in the back corner in early October, after I planted the shore pines (more about that below). Both areas had seeds sprouting almost immediately, which may be good or may be bad if they don't survive the winter.

Front section, after planting

Along the edges of the front section, I planted a few native bulbs:

• brodiaea coronaria
• camassia leichtlinii
• camassia quamash

I also planted a wildflower only seed mix in a small section of the middle, over the non-native bulbs that are already there. This area didn't have plastic on it this summer, but it had cardboard for a couple of months. I suspect that won't be enough to kill the grass and weeds, but I didn't want to do anything more that might kill the bulbs.

Then I went native plant shopping in early October and picked up a bunch of plants. I planted native bushes around the bottom edge of the front meadow and across the middle. I'm trying to soften the green wall of arborvitae, and connect with the flowering currant on the south end of the hillside.

• 2 vaccinium ovatum, evergreen huckleberry
• 2 oemleria cerasiformis, Indian plum or osoberry
• 1 holodiscus discolor, oceanspray
• 3 spiraea densiflora, subalpine spirea
• 3 symphoricarpos albus, snowberry
• 2 vaccinum parvifolium, red huckleberry
• 1 rhododendron occidentale, western azalea

Native bushes, early October

More native bushes, early October

Looking north from the middle, early October

In the back corner, I planted two pinus contora (shore pine). They are too close to some of the hazelnuts, but I'll move those once I figure out where I want them.

After planting the shore pines

And, on the bottom edge of the sunny hillside, where they will blend into the meadow:

• 3 festeca roemeri, Roemer's fescue
• 3 viola adunca, early-blue violet

I already had a few camassia and blue eyed grass at the bottom of the hillside too. I need more plants there, but that'll wait until spring.

Now the waiting game! I'm definitely worried about how many weeds will be in the meadow, since I can see shotweed growing now plus California poppies spread from the hillside above, but need to wait and see what happens in the spring. The only chore still to do in the winter is haul more mulch to put around the bushes. But the area has certainly changed a lot since last spring!

May 26 vs. December 30

Back corner, today

Looking north from the back corner, today

Progress in the back corner, plus prepping for a meadow

Back corner now

I haven't given an update on the back corner since March because my plan for the year was to simply work on eradicating the knotweed and I didn't expect to have much else to show.

Well, the knotweed is still a struggle but I think I'm making progress. I chopped and pulled it all spring and summer and started digging some of the roots out this month. I won't know until spring how much of it is left; there is more outside the fence in the alley, which I'm not sure is even on our property but if we don't control it there it'll spread back into our yard.

Everything other than the knotweed is under control though. In the spring, I planted six hazelnut bushes about four feet back from the fence, and out of the way of the main knotweed problem.

Four of the hazelnuts

Then I got ambitious and decided to work on the whole bottom section of the yard, which is this back corner and the rest of the flat area to the north (below the sunny hillside). This was all grass and weeds. I really dislike the arborvitae that are along the whole fence line, but they do screen out the alley and the houses below it, and they're so big that I'd feel bad about killing them now. So I'm planning how to put in other plants to soften the monotonous wall of green.

The whole area, solarization in progress

I've been looking at mainly native plants, a mix of trees, bushes, and a meadow. I did a lot of reading about solarization and decided to try that for two large sections where I want to plant the meadow. The theory is that clear plastic will kill all of the grass and weeds and will also heat the soil enough to kill the seeds. The hardest part about planting a native meadow is keeping all of the seeds that are already in the soil from outgrowing the new seeds. The plastic is supposed to be able to get hot enough to kill the seeds - but that depends on enough hot sunny days. You use clear plastic, not black, because the soil will get hotter under it.

I started the solarization in early June, just before a couple of 90 degree days, so that was looking good. And then the weather turner cooler and cloudy, which I really enjoyed but wasn't helping the solarization. Finally we got some hot weather in late July and August, so I'm hoping it was enough.

Looking north from the middle

Now I need to remove the plastic, kill any vegetation that is coming back to life - there is a little, a sign that it might not have been hot enough - spread a thin layer of very fine mulch, and then plant meadow seeds. I have a meadow seed mix from a local company so I'm ready to plant.

I already planted a  native crab apple (malus fusca), a vine maple (acer circinatum) and a thimbleberry (rubus parviflorus) in the spring. I've been keeping an eye out for plant sales that have some native plants, got a couple of evergreen huckleberry last week. The Washington Native Plant Society has their fall sale in early October and I think I'll be able to get the rest of the bushes that I want there.

Looking north from the back corner

For the back corner, I already planted the hazelnuts and crab apple and plan to plant shore pines, just have to decide if I can fit two or three. I want three but have to convince myself that there's actually room. They can be planted fairly close together especially since I don't want them to ever get too big but I do want them to eventually cover most of this corner. I will plant meadow seeds in the part of the corner that is covered by plastic, but knowing that it'll become shady as soon as the trees start to grow and then I'll transition to other plants.

The middle, which is currently covered in cardboard, has all of my non-native bulbs underneath and I really liked those this spring so I'm not digging them up. I'll try to plant native flower seeds over the top, but not sure if the cardboard will have killed enough of the grass and weeds to allow that to work. If not, I'll end up with grass and weeds again, but I can deal with that next summer.

Update: I didn't take pictures yet, but I did remove the plastic this week, sprayed Roundup on a few stubborn weeds that were growing under it - mainly near the edges - and now waiting to plant seeds.

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. 

Reclaiming space from the knotweed

Southeast corner now (facing south)

The southeast corner is the second of three areas that I'm focusing on this year (the first is the rose beds). When we bought our house, this corner - the furthest from the house - had a couple of old plum trees, a few shrubs, and some weedy but nicely trimmed grass. Obviously the previous owners had a landscaping crew chop everything down before putting the house up for sale, because it soon turned into a wild mess of noxious weeds.

The worst was Japanese (or possibly giant) knotweed, spread from the neighbor to the south. At one point, their entire back yard was filled with knotweed, which grew 12-14 feet tall each summer and loomed over our fence, shading the entire south side of our back yard. In our corner, the knotweed mixed with blackberry, English ivy, and plum shoots to become an impenetrable maze.

Then the neighboring house sold, the new owners cleaned up their yard, and one of our plum trees fell over in an ice storm. The remaining plum tree was in danger of falling and taking out the fence, so we had it cut down and then chopped out everything else that was growing around it. Last spring, I covered the whole area with cardboard and as much mulch as I had available, planted a wildflower mix as temporary cover - and then spent the summer chasing after knotweed, plum shoots and blackberries.

In the fall, I planted bulbs along the side of the lawn (in the foreground of the picture above): daffodils, bluebells, muscari and anemones. Then I replanted after the squirrels (or raccoons?) dug them up, and sprinkled stinky cat litter on top. That seemed to keep the animals out, and the bulbs are coming up nicely now, but I don't know what got eaten - the daffodils at least did not.

Daffodils!

As soon as it warms up, I will plant hazelnuts along the east and south fence lines, to meet the existing hazelnuts further up the south fence line. That'll eventually screen the back alley and the neighbor's parking spot. I'd also like to plant a larger tree, maybe a cherry or fig, but not until the knotweed is completely gone.

My main work this year will be maintenance - continuing to pull out the knotweed as it comes up, poison it only if I have to, and pull out any other noxious weeds that try to grow. I scattered more wildflower seed mix this weekend, but I don't care too much what grows there this year as long as it's easy to mow down.

An unexpected flood

Bulbs are hardy, right?

The sun came out this afternoon so I spent a few minutes wandering around my yard, focusing on the 'pay attention to' part of minding my garden. I want to see what's growing and what the conditions are in every season. I stayed out of all planted areas to avoid compacting the soil, or sinking to my ankles in mud. Walking on the grass is... soggy, but I didn't sink much.

There was a torrential downpour of rain this morning, and yesterday and earlier in the week. Not unusual for the rainy season, although it is not really 9 months out of the year despite popular perception. So I expected the yard to be wet.
The bottom (east side) of our lot gets the soggiest, especially along the fence where the gate opens. I knew I wouldn't be able to walk through the gate without big rubber boots. But I did not expect a lake in the other corner, right where I planted a bunch of daffodils, tulips and other bulbs in the fall. I'm sure they'll be fine, bulbs are hardy.. right?
Well, I have been drooling over Siberian irises in a catalog, so if the bulbs I planted don't do well, they may be next.

Maybe more a swamp than a lake