Garden Journal No. 6

Garden bliss, everyone!!

Yikes, realizing I haven’t posted a Garden Journal since February, my goodness!

Time to catch y’all up to speed on what’s been happening in the garden, because there has been a lot of exciting action this spring!

Let me start by sharing that we’ve had, what I feel, has been an unseasonably cool and wet spring for our area. I owe all of the garden’s success this season to the weather! Because of the longer stretch of cooler temps, everything seemed to take a little longer to bud-out this spring. Last year, my butter-yellow Julia Child’s roses were bloomed out mid-March, whereas this year, they didn’t start flushing until mid-April. Even around the tree farm, the trees bloomed a bit later than usual.

We did have a late freeze over St. Patrick’s Day weekend, which, sadly, did a number on our frail little seeds we’d planted. I really thought we were in the clear when we planted! We’d had a sneaky freeze, one I truly thought was the last one, and then St. Patrick’s Day weekend rolled around and it was just cold enough to zap some of our plants. Everyone was surprised by that dip in temperatures, I had nothing prepared, and honestly it was so last minute, covering plants simply wasn’t going to happen that evening. Plus, my husband and I had an extremely rare date night out and I wasn’t in my best garden crisis management mode.

So, some of the garden was lost to the 24-hour cold snap, but it was so early, the seeds were just little fledglings, we simply planted new seeds and they’ve happily been growing away ever since!

Fast-forward to mid-April, and things really began to thrive! Everything took off, green and color galore. To me, it’s been an Eden. Dorothy’s technicolor Oz. I can’t believe how well the garden has done this year! From the lettuce to the tomatoes we started from seeds, my various cutting flowers (sunflowers, zinnias, marigolds), potatoes and onions, herbs, even Dahlias! Yes, Dahlias!! Dahlias I epically failed at last season, they’re growing and blooming.

My roses have been extremely happy this spring; so big and fluffy and fragrant. Some of my roses got extremely leggy. I pruned them last winter, and that definitely helped them take off, delivering an abundance of blooms, but I didn’t prune them short enough. Now I know! My Peggy Martin’s have flourished, covering our porch in bright pink and strong canes. I think they get more haircuts than I do, but consistent pruning has really seemed to help them grow well. So much joy in pulling into our drive to see the PM’s in all their glory!

In April, we had some exciting garden visitors: baby bunnies! We have lots of wild rabbits around our garden, whom we lovingly call Peter, Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Benjamin (we have no idea if they’re ever the same rabbit, just a big Beatrix Potter family and the kids love to wonder which rabbit is which). One evening, I spied a rabbit in one of the garden beds by the oregano and tomatoes. I left her alone and the next morning, noticed where she was had a bunch of disturbed dirt. A quick Google led me to discover mother rabbits will bury their babies in a little hole of Earth while they grow and come back and forth to them. Sure enough, she had hid her babies in the oregano!

The children were delighted, perhaps a bit too excited. Hallie (3), our “little mama,” was in immediate mothering mode and it took everything in me to stop her from carrying the baby bunnies into our house where she could tend to them. Jack (18 months) figured out they were alive and kept saying “bunny, bunny!” trying to mess with them. Hayes (5) was in protector mode, wanting to make sure we didn’t disturb them and asking lots of questions about predators. Speaking of predators, unfortunately their largest one happened to be a local resident: our dog. We did have a few instances of the dog chasing the baby bunnies off under the barn, and more than once I caught the dog out there when he wasn’t supposed to be, at which point I’d run over, terrified I’d discover a baby bunny massacre that I’d have to explain to my children. I think Mrs. Mother Rabbit finally realized the dog was a problem and she moved her babies, or they hopped off. The dog ripped out all the oregano in search of the furry critters, but enjoying the bunnies was a sweet spring treat!

This May, we’ve just enjoyed the garden in all it’s glory. I know the heat is coming, although not as confident as to when, as more and more rain continues to be a constant in our forecast. I got the garden some accessories in the form of trellises, I think she has more accessories than I do now, ha! Some teepee trellises for peas we planted, and two arched garden trellises to allow raspberry vines, tomatoes and cucumbers to climb. This is something I have never tried in years past and I’m excited to see what comes of it.

We haven’t started harvesting anything yet, except lettuce, herbs and flowers, for cutting. Onions are probably ready, though, and plenty of green tomatoes coming to life. It won’t be long before the kitchen has an abundance of garden bounty! Four of my beds, the ones that sit in full sun, are struggling and I’m not totally sure why. Everything planted in them is full-sun and heat tolerant, they are the four new beds we did and I put quality soil in them. I was actually more concerned the original four beds wouldn’t do much, as the soil seemed a bit ‘meh,’ going into planting, but that’s where everything is thriving!

On an emotional note, the garden’s success has been incredibly rewarding for me this season. I just love it so much, I don’t know what else to say! To see it be successful, I mean, really successful, compared to years past, is a good feeling. The little things that I kept in my mind while pruning, planting, planning, seemed to make a difference this year. The little things that felt natural to do, were the right things to do. I felt more confident with the garden this year, although just ever so slightly, I’m such a newbie at this! As I said earlier, I truly attribute the garden’s success to the rain and cooler temperatures we’ve had. I’ve decided that to plants, rain water is like drinking Mountain Valley Spring Water, the bougiest bottled water you can buy, and hose water is like drinking Dasani.

Let’s be real, this is no luxury, magazine-worthy garden by any means!! This is our simple backyard plot. But gosh it feels good to see things grow! Even if a heat wave comes in a week and everything dies, this spring has been a rewarding one for me, as a gardener. I love to piddle, I love to water, I love to simply be in the garden, I just love it. Gardening with Charla recently posted something about how people tell her all the time that they believe they don’t have any gardening skills, and she wondered ‘how may good gardeners almost never started because they believed that.’

I always say that you can’t learn if you don’t try. We don’t simply wake up one day being a master gardener. You have to embrace the learning, the “being bad” at something, which I just shared my own thoughts on here. You don’t need a big yard to be a gardener, you can start with some small kitchen herbs in pots or a few porch containers. But if it’s something you’re thinking about doing, don’t give into hesitation or doubt. Try your hand at growing something, anything. It’s truly life-giving and rewarding.

10/10 recommend.

Here are a few of my garden favorites and accessories.