Mishalak

I need a gardening icon. Because there should and will be a lot of gardening entries if this plan works. Because I need to be able to look in my diary or calendar or something to see when I watered my plants. It is summer in Colorado this week with the air as dry as bread left out overnight. We had a few summer days already, but this week was the full on blast with temperatures peaking above 30 C (86 F) every day, often up to 32 or 33 C. The sun has been particularly shiny and the last hard rain on Friday the 15th has evaporated from any uncovered ground. Like the soil around my still cheery patches of dwarf blue grass. I have heaped absolutely ridiculous amounts of care and attention on these palm sized patches of deep green grass. All two dozen-ish of them after most of my plugs died last year. Weeding around them like they are prized petunias, noting new clones, fertilizing them, and giving them a clover-y friend. They may expand enough to have two patches just big enough for my feet by fall.

I watered them thoroughly and deeply yesterday since the top 2cm of the soil was as dry as a butter cookie. Not yet hard, but holding together firmly when I tried to see if there was any moisture under the surface.Maybe I'll put this act in my phone calendar so I don't end up writing about soil moisture every three days. The rain last night ended up being just enough to wet most surfaces after the long foreshadowing drops. Probably not even 5mm, but I did not have my rain gague out.

This is an experiment. I am trying to keep a very nice lilac bush from growing into my herb garden. I saw a recommendation to dig a trench, line it with barrier cloth, and then fill it with gravel. Roots encountering the barrier should grow down instead of across. It will take a couple years to evaluate this system, but it seems like it should work.

To be a bit more precise my trench is about 12cm/5in across and 20cm/8in deep. The barrier cloth is run longways in the trench and folded back on itself rather than cut down to fit the trench. The top is folded toward the plants to direct their roots down along the side. Bricks, being about 20cm/8in long cover the top almost completely except on curves. Knowing that UV light will break down the barrier cloth I put some leaves and sticks up against the bricks to keep some of the light off those edges.

When putting in the gravel I added in stages so that dirt could be added outside where I accidentally made the trench too wide. The extra bricks are to add places to step. The brick “knots” visible to the right in some pictures are also places to walk in the herb garden when weeding or picking plants.



The bricks are on top of the soil, rather than dug in, because this way there is room for leaves and sticks to form a mulch/compost layer about 6cm/2.5cm deep. Where the bricks needed to be angled or where it went through the fence the roll is topped with more gravel to protect the top of the roll.

Personally I think it looks better with curves rather than trying to make it perfectly straight. Also being practical that I cannot make bricks run in a straight line. All my garden paths look a bit “rustic”.

When I went for a walk today I scattered wildflower seeds on a recently turned up bit of ground. Penstemon, wild rose, dwarf rabbit brush, false goldenaster, Rocky Mountain beeplant, purple tansyaster, and smooth white aster. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. If I worked and lived in a perfect world with perfect ability to get stuff done I might have put the seeds into little balls of soil before scattering. Still, better planted than getting old in my large stock of seeds. Good luck to them. I am still on the look out for some spots to plant some desert scrub oak (Quercus turbinella) and red hesperaloe (Hesperaloe parviflora).

I have also noted a spot near the sign for my neighborhood that is mostly growing weeds. I think I will try planting some buffalo grass (Bouteloua dactyloides) there. My garden supply is relatively abundant and I can spare five or so pieces and a little weeding time. The rest of my starts will be going to my back yard to start a new prairie lawn since my front yard is nearly finished. I had different plans for a more formal garden, but I think I do not have enough enthusiasm to do laid out beds and everything needed for that. Instead I want to just get it under control, most of the weeds dead, and start planting grass at one edge. More of what I have already had success with instead of trying to do something totally different. Though I may start planting some cultivated plants with the grass instead of only letting wildflowers grow as I do in my front yard. Or perhaps the reverse. Create another pure wildflower display and break the theme of my front yard to being xeric instead of native to my region only.

14 pots. 6 large, 8 small. This should yield around 24 plants when put out in the garden. I am going to plant another 6 pots sometime in the next week.

My basil seed is on the old side so I over planted significantly. Three to five seeds per spot and three spots in each small pot and nine in each large pot. There will be (tasty) thinning as winter fades. The seeds were soaked for six hours befroe being planted in potting mix or seed sprouting mix. As always the variety of pots and mixes are to test if there are real differences between cheap and expensive potting mixes. All of them are in my south window right now.

If I do not see any results in a week I will try again with fresh seed.

After the rain there are leeks, of course. (Blame LittleGrayDucks) Also I planted more carrots, kale, and lettuce. Some of the beets are up as is the lettuce… Tonight or tomorrow I work on bed #4 which will be cabbage, dill, and more leeks. Continuing to fight with %$&@ bindweed.

And today’s rain has been pathetic. Barely enough to wet the surface of the soil. Seems like it will be another hard year.

I went and did it last night. In some ways I wanted more time to think and get comments to be sure I was doing the right thing, but it is getting close to spring here and so I ordered my two apple trees. Which ones? Tydeman's Late Orange which is an eating apple that seems like it will also be good for cider since it is similar to, but less disease prone, than Cox's Orange Pippin. As it keeps very well I think I made a good choice there. The other is Calville Blanc d'Hiver, sometimes just called Calville Blanc, an apple for cooking that also does well for cider. It also keeps fairly well, though not as well as the Tydeman's. Both flower at the same time and are hardy to USDA zone 5, which is Denver, though some say that Denver is warmer than its official 5b (-15 to -10 F) designation due to the urban heat island effect. Regardless I can expect the trees to grow to around 5 meters or about 16 feet with an equal spread. I can either plant two in my back yard or one in back and one in the side yard. I am leaning towards putting one in the side yard right now. Regardless I will need to do a lot of digging in the coming weeks and get a big load of manure to help improve my soil.