Welcome to My Garden

With the arrival of spring 2009 along with my new camera, I've learned that I have way more I want to share about my garden and landscape than most of my readers at Inside The White House would care to know. So here is a spot where I can write about my gardening efforts, and hopefully I'll have some insights to share too. In my childhood, people thought it was funny to recite the nursery rhyme question to me, so I guess this is my answer to "How does your garden grow?" I am in no way a professional. I have simply discovered a love for making my yard beautiful. It's a work in progress; I have the end results in my head, but time and financial restraints are delaying that finale. (It turns out kids take a lot of time too!) I'm coming to learn that I don't want to reach a gardening finale. I love the work and I love trying new plants and new techniques every year. I hope you enjoy this site and I would love your comments about your own garden. This blog will also serve as a journal of the plants in my gardens and the care they require. Feel free to skip over all the boring species' names and plant care. If you have questions, leave them for me or a fellow reader to offer help. Thanks for visiting my garden!

Some tips for navigating this blog: You can find areas of interest by following the category labels listed at the right. If you simply scroll through everything, it will be pretty random, but it will allow you to see what I'm currently up to. You can also use the search bar at the top to look for specific plants or structures to see how I've used them.

Spring 2009 Flowers

Corn

This is my first year growing corn. It is absolutely fantastic to me that in two months a small kernel grows into an eight-foot-tall plant producing corn on the cob whenever we want it. I roasted some in our fire pit. Yummy!

I have 12 plants in a 2'x4' section of this planter box, which has only 6" of soil depth. With the plants so close together, they have pollinated each other just fine. I haven't counted how many ears I've harvested, so I'll track that next year.

I don't know if I'm waiting too long to harvest, but this corn hasn't been particularly sweet.

In July, we had a few nights of windstorms. After the first night, several stalks were bent over to the ground. I grabbed my daughter's nylon jump rope, wrapped it once around the corn (not too tight or too loose), and secured the ends to my chain link fence. The wind didn't flatten the corn after that. The yellow line in the picture is the jump rope.

The problem I'm having now is aphids. I spray them off with the hose, but they seem to multiply anyway. I'll probably harvest the rest of the corn, pull out the stalks, and let them dry to use as a Fall decoration for my front porch.

Buggy Buddies

I introduced a groundcover called Moss Rose to a container in my yard two years ago. These flowers produce seeds like crazy, and they started popping up in one area last year, and this year they are all over the south and west sides of my yard. They are easy to pull out and I've discovered they don't require watering. So until I can plant all my beds, I'm letting moss rose fill in. They come in white, pinks, pastels, bright colors, yellows, oranges, etc. I am loving the splotches of color they randomly create.


On the yellow and orange flowers, I've found some cool bugs. Do you see the praying mantis on this picture? I love finding these guys everywhere. They blend in particularly well on the Moss Rose. (Click on the picture to see a bigger version. It's kind of hard to see details on these small photos.)









My favorite find was this green bee. I've only seen them in the morning hours before it gets really hot. That may be because these little flowers close up when it warms up.







These bees buzz like flies and fly like flies. They can't sit still for more than two seconds and then they dart around, not like the slower pattern of bees. But I unmistakably saw pollen on their back legs, and they have that long bee body.





I thought I had discovered a new insect. But alas, they are on the internet. The genus is Agapostemon--Metallic Green Bee. 13 species have been identified in the Americas, but none have been recorded in Provo, so maybe I'll pass that information along. I hope they stick around for a while. Green is my favorite color!

Scarlet Runner Beans

One of my favorite finds last year is the Scarlet Runner Bean--Phaseolus coccineus. They are an annual that produces scarlet red flowers with heart-shaped leaves that look beautiful to fill in a trellis. I grow them on our chain-link fence. They like to grow 12-20 feet tall, so I have to wind them around and all over my four-foot fence. These photos were taken a week ago, and the plants have filled in the fence considerably since then. In the late summer and fall, they grow long bean pods that are very tender and sweet to eat. If you let the pods dry, you can harvest the legume and use like any dry bean. I planted enough beans to freeze for the winter. My family loves them!

The seed packet warns against planting in the same spot as the previous year to avoid disease. Once established, they need to be watered when the top two-inches of soil are dry. I have buried a 1/4" soaker hose hooked to my automated drip irrigation system, and most of the plants have done fine. When I planted, I soaked the beans in water for about an hour before placing them in the ground, and I was able to transplant the 7"-tall seedlings to better space out the plants that had sprouted. (I don't like just thinning. I prefer spreading.)

Squash!

September 4 Addendum: These plants just keep filling in. They have covered the bare spot in the picture below and are creeping over the grass! I took this picture of my son yesterday as we were harvesting. He is three, and the plants are as tall as he is.


When I was buying baby plants at the nursery this year, I went a little nuts with the vegetables. Back at home, I had two squash plants that I had no room for in my vegetable garden, so I planted them in a bare spot that I had planned for native flowers. They took off! From left to right are a Yellow Crookneck Squash, Paypaya Squash, and Zucchini (I planted a seed leftover from last year). These three plants filled in the space and they look beautiful in my landscape. The huge leaves are lovely, and the big orange flowers and brightly colored fruits add a splash to the green. Next year I will plan them into the landscape better so I don't have a bare spot in front and so it doesn't dwarf my tree (sticking up in the background).

For the last four weeks I've harvested the fruits. I usually pick it every two or three days and have 8-12 squash between the three plants. I've frozen it, canned it, dried it, fried it, baked it, broiled it, added it raw to salads, and given it away. These plants just keep giving! I love it!

Let the Harvest Begin!

I spend a lot of time babying my garden. Maybe it just needs to be left alone sometimes. After spending five days away from home, we came back to find our corn is seven feet tall, our pumpkins are turning orange, and our beets are peeking out of the ground. It was so fun to spend a morning harvesting lots of different foods with my children. This is the first year they have been excited to eat squash, because they are the ones picking it off the stem. I feel so blessed to have a space where I can grow food to put directly on my table.

Stepables

I found a great line of groundcover plants that are marketed under the name Stepables. Click on their name to link to their website, which is very well done.

The picture on the top left is 'County Park' Pratia pedunculata. Ht: 3" Care: Part sun to sun, plenty of water, fast growth rate, tolerates heavy foot traffic, hardy above 0 degrees. This plant forms a tight root system, so I planted it on a slope to help hold the soil in place by my fire pit. You can see the two starter plants I put in a few weeks ago. It is a zone 7 and above plant (we are zone 5), but I'm hoping it will survive our winters since we don't often get below 0. I may cover it in the fall to protect it. The purple flowers bloom spring to fall, so it's a very pretty, little groundcover.


The picture on the top right is Creeping Wire Vine Muehlenbeckia axillaris. Ht: 2" Care: part shade to sun, will tolerate drought, wind, and poor soil and grows better under drier conditions, moderate growth rate, tolerates heavy foot traffic, hardy above -10 degrees F. This plant has dark green leaves on wiry stems and grows tiny transparent berries that have a black seed in the center. The foliage turns bronze in heat or cold. I planted this one in between a big blue spruce and a lilac bush in a corner of my garden that I often forget to water. I hope it thrives there because it's really an interesting plant.