Cottage gardens Tuesday, Nov 27 2012 

Esperanza and gardening , acairfearann 11:07

Esperanza is still sometimes for some purposes called Esperanza Farm.  The relationship between the house and the farm is a complicated one, leading deep into women’s history, the rise of scientific agriculture, and economics.  I won’t get into it here.  Suffice it that the cottage, long sold and now a winery, produced sufficient vegetables, dairy products, meat, and cut flowers to support Esperanza, its dependencies, and sometimes enough to sell.  Obviously, it did not have to support the family through the winter; although it did add to households of the various caretakers, we know late season vegetables were part of the wages so to speak.  The dairy products were sold during the winter.

Here is a picture of the edge of the cottage garden taken in 1909: corn, pole/bush beans, lettuce, and gladioli are all visible.

 

Indoor gardening Wednesday, Nov 21 2012 

gardening and Modern Photos and Uncategorized , acairfearann 09:13

One could take the winter off….well no.  Anyway, houseplants in this house face some rather serious obstacles.  Most of the house is actually quite dark, a majority of the rooms can easily sink to 55 at night in the winter*, and the major issue that pretty much all the furniture Must Not get water on it.  Obstacles.  Nonetheless, to the running bemusement, if not horror of the other inhabitants, the houseplants are conquering territory.  They started in the kitchen, a warm, sunny nook, with one elderly and happy Christmas cactus in an upstairs room since sometime back in the 1960’s.  They now have a commanding advantage in: the kitchen, the dining room, the basement (three spots), and three rooms upstairs.  And horrors, just invaded the library.

Here are two invaders of the library.  I like Christmas cactus, I can’t kill them, they like temperatures in the low 60’s down into the 50’s, the bloom every single year without fuss, they don’t need pruning, and so forth.  Of course, the don’t want to bloom at Christmas, but hey.

A yellow one:

And a pink one

*The record is 38, but that was set with a loose storm window in that room; the usual winter low is 47.  Heavens knows what it was before the storm windows.

 

Complexity Monday, Nov 19 2012 

gardening acairfearann 18:29

Esperanza is nothing if not complex, both inside and outside.  The house’s architecture is baffling, the contents both diverse and vast, and the grounds quite full of plants and animals.

I was pondering this today, while contemplating the fact that I really ought to update the sadly out-of-date tree list I have.  It currently stands at about 150 distinct tree and shrub species, not broken into specific cultivars, on 18 acres.  It doesn’t include the pond or woods, mind you. This is a decidedly large number…  Of course, what I really need to do is start taking notes everytime something gets planted.  It is typical of my gardening, that on acquiring another azalea…I planted it, removed the tags, and now haven’t a clue as it what it is.  Aside from a small-leaved, evergreen azalea, of course. 

Next time maybe?

 

Fall bulb planting, 1873 Saturday, Nov 3 2012 

gardening acairfearann 11:06

Julie writing to Helen, fall 1873:

“That abominable little white rabbit has eaten up half the tulips. The wretch picks them out and sits down and nibbles them before our very eyes, ungrateful animal!  When the bed in which they are planted cost Fanny such hard work, she picked 300 stones out of it.”

Some things don’t change, still planting tulips, still picking stones, and still pondering how best to deal with rodents.  Though it rather sounds as if the white rabbit was a supposed pet….

 

Fall cleanup Friday, Oct 26 2012 

gardening acairfearann 12:15

Continues apace, I have a bucket of Morning Glory vines taken from the arbor, which hopefully should yield a nice amount of seed.  The statues are in, being an uncertain zinc alloy, we don’t think the freeze thaw cycle would be great, especially since water may be able to get in them.  All the bulbs are planted, including a number of white daffodils under the fence line, in amongst the blue crocus.

We are exploring the idea of not removing all the leaves from the north lawn. The grass is a type that should handle a light leaf cover, while the winter wind will probably blow most away. The gingko will have to be picked up though, its leaves mat and flatly refuse to decompose.  The problem is, of course, that the big perennial garden is downwind, and we don’t want major leaf drifts on it.

experiments!

 

Croci! Thursday, Oct 18 2012 

gardening and Projects acairfearann 19:22

Around about a thousand or so….Actually, I only got 500 in the ground today.  This is a continuation of the fence-line project, which is about 120 feet of fence at the top of the meadow planted out with daylilies.  Last fall I put in a 1000 crocus, but I soon determined that wasn’t enough.  So double it…  It appears that daylilies and crocus will happily coexist; but that the common violets, which hitched a ride with the daylilies, are greedy buggers.  Anywhere there was a mature clump of violets, I could count on there not being any crocus directly underneath.  And I do mean ‘clump’, violets form a solid ball of rhizomes about the size of a base-ball if they like the spot.  I am letting some violets continue, of course, for the butterflies; but I’ll be keeping a closer watch on them.  I am also planting the spine of the bed with white daffodils, of the poeticus and tazetta types.   We will see how they behave.  In the daylily/daffodil bank they have overtaken the lilies quite completely.*

Hopefully, it will eventually be a river of lavender with points of white and blue, and a rare flash of gold from a mixed crocus vernus collection.  Of course…one does wonder,  why?  There are only three people likely to see it in person. Our infrequent guests never appear in March!  But then, one doesn’t garden for that reason.

*Those however are the mystery daffodils: I dug several bushels of what I was sure were Poeticus type (judging by the very few flowers) from the woods, but were mostly clumps of over-crowded bulbs planted well over a century past….I ended up with a bank of pure gold trumpet daffodils, nary a Poeticus in sight.  They may be true King Alfreds, so no complaints.

 

Summer’s last flowers Monday, Oct 15 2012 

gardening and Modern Photos , acairfearann 15:01

There are, of course, plenty of asters, mums, and other hardy perennials still going.  But the first frost was a killing one, so dahlias, coleus, and a confused Easter lily (on its second round of flowers for the year) got cut for a bouquet.

 

What were we thinking? Wednesday, Oct 10 2012 

gardening acairfearann 10:10

Plant orders have a tendency to have a long lag time, often several months.  This can cause mild consternation at times, because what seemed perfectly obvious and well thought out in July may not be the gardener’s inclination in October.  (I know, one is supposed to have Master Plans, yeah right) 

I know we thought out the tulip order.  We spent several mornings on it.  What I can’t remember is why the plan ended up heavily weighted towards hot pink.  It is a logical design, but it is the starting point of a strong colour palette as opposed to a pastel palette which is a puzzle, since we don’t usually head in that direction. It should be very pretty; but it came as a surprise to recall it!

Maybe this year the tulips will last more than a season.  I dislike the trend towards breeding, growing, and treating tulips as annuals intensely.

 

Growing Grass Tuesday, Oct 9 2012 

gardening acairfearann 12:57

Fall is, as anyone who has had to transplant things, a very good growing season.  Spring and Fall are far kinder to plants than either Summer or Winter.  In the cooler, usually wetter, months of September and October, root systems can really take hold.  We cut the long grass of the west lawn, an experiment, down in late August.  This sacrificed the asters and goldenrod (which are nicely flowering in another patch that will be cut later).  In exchange the wild thyme, bunch grasses and sedges have rebounded.  What was a browned off, dusty patch is carpeted with tufted grasses, thyme, sorrel, and other plants such as wild sedum.  This is very important for the thyme, in order to avoid winter kill it needs to be short and growing with vigour.  If it gets to lanky, the loss of the entire plant is possible.

In theory the taller grasses should also benefit the insects, and thus the birds.  What is particularly interesting, however, is that the taller grass shows no sign of grub damage…unlike the areas that are kept as traditional lawn turf.  Whether the grubs don’t like the tall grass or the damage doesn’t show isn’t clear.  But I lean towards the former.  Our grub eater par-excellence, the skunk, is not digging in the long grass areas, which suggests the grubs aren’t there.  Another strike against the traditional lawn?

 

Drip, drip Thursday, Oct 4 2012 

gardening acairfearann 13:55

It has finally been raining steadily.  Actually, this is an excellent time of year for it, since it allows trees to really develop root systems.  It has also finally softened the ground up.  All summer the ground was hard, lacking in any give.  The soft soil is a good thing…I was not looking forward to trying to plant however many crocus and daffodil bulbs in bone hard soil.

On the other hand, I have a certain impatience for frost at this point.  The vegetable garden looks horrid.  The tomatoes succumbed completely a while back (with some help from yours truly yanking stakes for something else).  The beans are played out, the tomatillos are a disaster zone, the squash is gallant but ugly…and the thrice blasted caterpillars continue to infest the kale…   At least the chard, carrots, broccoli raab, peas, and parsnips all seem happy.  But I did finally break down and buy some lettuce today, guests coming.

 

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