BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)

Subject: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 11 Dec 04 - 12:08 PM

We've run our various seasonal threads, and it's time again for those of us on the Northern side of the planet to stir ourselves to do a few tasks in the garden even though everything is bare and it's most likely cold outside.

Today is a rare exception in Fort Worth, Texas. It's an incredibly bright and clear day, and will warm into the 60s they say. We had our first hard freeze last week, so while some trees lost their leaves when the days got short, many of them didn't have a clue it was time till the cold last week. We have this interesting mix of totally bare trees mixed with very colorful trees just now going through "The Change." Made it difficult to put out some holiday lights when there were still leaves where you usually expect to find only the boney structure of the plant.

I have to go cut out the dead canna and lantana, and do some transplanting. I'll rake some of the neighbors' leaves that have landed in my yard, and I'll haul a bucket of water from the kitchen over to the bird bath since the hoses are all put away for the season and the faucets are capped.

Out in the veggie garden the peppers, eggplant, and few straggling tomatoes are all dead on their feet and will soon head back to the compost heap. We have this perennial broccoli that I've left out there just because I enjoy watching what it's up to. I don't know if it will produce any florets this year, but last spring it came up with a head the size of a basketball. We ate that broccoli for a lot of meals! Since it isn't in the way, I've just let the plant keep growing. Garlic is popping up, and onions in rows need to be thinned and transplanted. There's always something going on out there. I looked out a few minutes ago and a large blue heron was winging his way out of the creek over to the woods across the road.

I've put lights in a couple of small evergreen trees, and might put some lights in the pine out back. It can be seen from the road across the creek, but it has a rather surreal look from over there (it is all by itself with a backdrop of the neighbors' wooded yards).

What are some of the rest of you gardeners up to?

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: SINSULL
Date: 11 Dec 04 - 12:38 PM

Mine is covered in about three inches of slick ice. I risk my life everytime I get the mail.

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: Sorcha
Date: 11 Dec 04 - 12:53 PM

Like Sinsull, not a blessed thing when there is 6" of snow and the temp is below 0 F.....

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: dianavan
Date: 11 Dec 04 - 02:53 PM

Today is sunny and the sky is blue, blue, blue. Its above freezing so I'm thinking of getting out there to cut back the raspberries and prune the apple trees. Everything else is 'put away' for the winter. I've turned off the water to outside taps. I noticed that the rye is beginning to shoot up although I sowed very late. Inside, the Christmas cactus is putting on a show. I still have time to plant a few more bulbs. I'm still eating chard, kale, parsley and sorrel.

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: GUEST,John O'Lennaine
Date: 11 Dec 04 - 04:15 PM

On the southern side of the globe it's nearly Summer and although it's getting warm, it rains every day, so the grass never gets dry enough to mow. It's about a foot high now, so high that the dog has started defecating on the path.

Apart from that, it has been such a relief, since we live in a bushfire area (The Blue Mountains), and the rain we have had so far has virtually nullified the bushfire season. Everything is green, lush and full of new growth. All the mountain dams are full too, so the drought has been at least partially broken as well.

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: Bobert
Date: 11 Dec 04 - 08:40 PM

Well, here in Bobert's 5 acres of Wes Ginny almost heaven it has been a beutiful fall and unseasonably warm with tempd in the 50's (40's next week). We've only had two hard frosts which is unusaul for this time of year.

All or camillia's are in their cylindrical tents made from wire fence and white microfoam for the winter so we will have flowers in the spring. The heeling bed if full with a lyer of straw and leaf muclh over it for plants that will get perminent planting next spring. The basement is full of stuff, including about 100 azalea rootings, that are under flourescent lights and not yet ready to slug it out with their first winters...

So things are pretty much put to bed, no pun intended... After the hoilday season, it will be back to planning for spring...

BTW, out oak leak hydranga has the the deepest matoon leaves that anyone could imagine... I can see that when it gets older that I'll be doing some selective cuttings on it for Christmas decorating...

BTW, Part 2..... Those folks who asked for hyacinth beans should be getting them this week... I just did the envelopes this evenin' and will put in the mail on Monday...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: Janie
Date: 12 Dec 04 - 02:35 PM

I'm still hunting for time to do my fall clean-up and finish mulching the dahlias. We also have only had a couple of hard frosts, and a lot of stuff was sheltered enough to survive them. The "Sunny Border Blue" veronica is still blooming and sheltered rosebud or two is still hanging around. Larkspur and ammi majus that self-sowed are sprouting all over the place, as well as some annual phlox. I have some stuff coming up that I don't recognize as weed or sown seed. Think I will pull most of them out and leave a few to see what they turn into in the spring. I'm thinking some of them may be seeds that I planted 2 falls ago that didn't germinate then---but who knows? I don't keep up with a garden journal or plan like I always intend, and my gardens are extensive enough that I often forget what I did with seeds.

We haven't really had a mild fall, but we sure haven't got the killing frosts that we usually have by now.   

Pansies and violas are putting on a good show in the pots leading up the steps. All I planted in the fall veggie garden were kale, salad greens, leeks and garlic. They are all doing fine.

I traditionally finish my fall clean-up, plant spring bulbs, sow larkspur, and transplant seedlings to better locations over the long New Year's weekend, and plan to do the same this year.

Soon it will be time to set-up the grow lights and start seeds for early spring transplanting.

I have one camillia. It usually starts blooming in very early February, but has several fully opened blooms on it now. It is going to get nailed by the late winter weather.

Janie

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 12 Dec 04 - 11:12 PM

It was a lovely day out, and the last of the warm ones, so I should have transplanted my onions. They need it now. But it'll wait a little, because I spent the afternoon and evening baking. Supposed to be down into the 20s tonight.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 01:45 AM

I have a list of pruning as tall as my buddliea! I'm saving it until Christmas when I can do two birds with one pruning hook, and take the greenery chopped down to church, for decorating it. That way I don't have bags of rotting foliage in the garden until Feb!

I've got to prune my pyrocantha (after my next door neighbour butchered one side of it, without even asking, the bastard!) it's definately lopsided and is being held up with iron stakes at the moment.... don't want to cut it until the birds have had all the berries. He built a shed up against the fence and provided a perfect step into our garden from theirs - a boon to burglars. The pyrocantha was acting as razor wire over this roof... Then there is lopping 3ft off the pittisporum, which I was assured wouldn't grow past 5ft.. it's now 10 and growing. The aforementioned buddliea is 15ft and starting to overpower the whole garden, so that needs taking down to about 3ft, and then there is the trimming of the ivy and routing it round the places it's supposed to be, rather than the places it wants to be.

Then maybe the hollies will be found.... there were at least two surviving....

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: muppett
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 08:35 AM

I've been getting rid of the last of the weeds,spreading compo and forking it into the soil, carefully avoiding the daffodil, snowdrops and bluebells whose shoots are starting to pop up. been dead heading the popies and spreading the seeds. Also been planting a few late daffodil bulbs.

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 09:34 AM

Just a light dusting of snow over the dry leaves left on the flower beds for insulation and protection. I'm here in "sunny" southern New Hampshuh but, despite temperatures in the 30s, I'm still in denial about winter. If I don't wear a jacket, it's not winter yet. Had to wear gloves the other day, though. Sigh.

Got indoor gardening work to do, though -- cleaning and oiling tools, organizing the flower pots and tubs, etc. Resituating the cactus in front of the newly installed replacement window in the bedroom.

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: Pete Jennings
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 09:40 AM

Here in the UK, seem to have spent the last few weeks sweeping up the leaves from the big oak at the bottom of the garden. While we weren't re-filling the bird feeder, that is, those finches never stop eating. Now the leaves have gone we can see the canal basin about 100 yards away. One of the narrowboats is covered in fairy lights.

No real frosts yet, and it's about 44 degrees at the moment (2.36pm).

Off to Birmingham soon to see Steve Earle. That should warm things up a bit!

Off to get me pipe and cardie...

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: harpgirl
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 10:34 AM

I've got blueberry bushes waiting to be planted which I should have put in three weeks ago. I had a lawn service clean up the storm damage from September which I just couldn't find time to do and now it looks ready for landscaping.
It is supposed to go to 22 later this week. North Florida has been warm and rainy but it was colder this weekend and is nippy today.The temperature goes up and down in late November and early December and begins to stay low about mid December until late February.
I am going to be putting in anise bushes in my backyard. Anyone have any pointers?

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 11:23 AM

Culinary or botanical?

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: LynnT
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 04:58 PM

Hey Bobert, if you run out, send the folks who still want hyacinth beans to me -- got a double handful of dried pods on the dresser, and another double handful of Scarlet Runner Bean pods, those lovely maroon-spotted lavender beans I gave you and Janie at the Getaway; if anyone wants some, PM me.

I've got 2/3 of an acre and a 4-bedroom house in the suburbs outside Washington DC, that I bought out from under a former housemate this past July. Now I get to do all the things I wanted to do to this place before but he wouldn't spring for, both inside and out. This summer was the back yard's turn. I've learned enough about drystone construction to build 75 feet of curved 2- to 3-foot-tall walls and a staircase this summer to terrace the sides of my long narrow valley of a yard. I used broken concrete in some places, found stone in others, and finished this year's planned work about three weeks ago -- four large beds worth. I think I know every chunk of that rock by name. Once I filled the new raised beds with a mix of tasty stuff for soil, I planted about 20 shrubs and trees, with perennials from asters to yucca beneath (don't think I have anything that starts with Z) and a generous salting of spring bulbs. I still have six good-sized trees to plant (including two three-foot white pines I just got B&B on sale) and about 50 bulbs to get into the ground this weekend, and some general cleanup to do. And a friend who's moving has promised me a 7 Sons shrub and a young Kentucky Coffee Tree if I'll come dig them up Saturday. Not sure where they're going yet. But then I'm done outside for the year (hah!) and can start arranging for Spring plant swaps and laying detailed plans for next year's construction. I want to build three more abutting beds with lower walls out back next year, and widen my front driveway by three feet where I've taken out a huge pine tree, using pavers to match the patio, edged with a new bed that will get enough sun to support irises and sages and a pie-cherry tree.   I also want to build an arbor out of copper pipe this winter to go over the entry to my front patio. I need to learn to sweat copper first, but that's what long winter Saturdays are for, no?

It's supposed to get cold the next couple nights, then get warm again, and I hope the weather cooperates this weekend. I remember planting bulbs in shorts and a t-shirt on New Years' Day a couple years back -- and also shoveling three feet of snow on the same rough date last year...

LynnT

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 07:13 PM

Church decorating is this Saturday, so the pruning will be sooner than I thought!

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: dianavan
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 08:41 PM

per-Christmas pruning is a great idea. The city crews in Vancouver go up and down the lanes pruning all the evergreens just before Christmas. They leave the piles so that people can use the boughs for decoration. I no longer buy a tree but decorate with greenery throughout the house. I miss the tree but its just not the same without Santa. No grandchildren yet but I'm still hoping.

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: Guy Wolff
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 11:35 PM

Its so great that gardeners need something to keep them going till the shovels come out again .You know buying a new shovel or flower-pot..!! Everyday I get a carload of unattached (to thier gardens )gardeners thinking about what pot they will need for next year.. A friend just sent her head gardener up to place an order for her greenhouse and grounds while shes out of state . I like this kind of multi tasking . God bless you all !! It dose keep my family fed . Guy (the flower-pot maker)

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 14 Dec 04 - 05:11 PM

I have a squirrel in the yard busy rearranging the dirt in my flower pots--and I try to come along behind the little beggar and remove the pecans! They're cute--even have little tooth scratches and bite marks, from being carried along the power lines from three yards away.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 15 Dec 04 - 01:11 PM

The last of the leaves has (finally) fallen from my Garry Oak here in Victoria, BC. I must have raked up enough to fill a swimming pool. And I picked up a garbage can full of acorns. Why is the most prolific tree in my yard the least useful!

Also, dug up my horseradish. Pathetic -- two plants yielded six pencil-thin roots that only amounted to about half a cup of finished condiment. Should I apply horse muck?

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 15 Dec 04 - 04:52 PM

Consider where it is growing. Does it want more or less water? I've never grown it, so I'm just asking you the question that I always have to ask myself here--does it get planted nearer the faucet or out in the yard where rainfall is sufficient? The Vancouver's Island spin on this would probably be "is it getting enough drainage--of course there is enough water!"

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: GUEST,Allan S.
Date: 15 Dec 04 - 08:44 PM

Here in Connecticut the Temp is 20F However the first of the seed Catalouges has arived [Stokes] YES YES YES cAN SPRING BE FAR AHEAD.....

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: Gypsy
Date: 15 Dec 04 - 09:57 PM

ARRRRRrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggh!Just recieved the invoice for next years strawberry plants.......just as i was smugly congratulating meself for having pruned 80 rosebushes EARLY so i don't get soaked in January...Will turn a blind eye to the garden, until i absolutely HAVE to work for a living again in the spring. Would rather play music! O'course, if gardening were a hobby, would most likely be champing at the bit to get out there ;>)

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: Gervase
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 07:44 AM

Just taken the chainsaw to a straggling clump of elder that was threatening to lift one end of one of the outbuildings (that's blokes' gardening, see - lots of noise and a machine involved!). Now awaiting large amounts of shit from the farm up the road to put onto two of the veg patches to ready 'em up for the spring.
She who must be obeyed is busy making spreadsheets to tell us what gets planted where, and there are seed catalogues stacked by the upstairs bog, so it looks as though someone's going to be busy come March!

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 29 Dec 04 - 02:51 AM

We've had a spot of warm weather in between the cold fronts. I thinned and transplanted my onions last week, and today I dug a spot and put in a few garlic cloves.

We have a creek in our back yard, and heavy rains a couple of weeks ago washed all of the loose trash from upstream area parks and parking lots into the water. A lot of it snags in our shrubs along the bank. Yesterday I went out once, and today I was out again twice (the kids were with me on one of these trips) to pick up the plastic along the beach. It looked like a dump before, with all of the grocery bags flapping in the bushes, but now it looks like a regular creek. I also pick up all of the aluminum for recycling. Since there is a bridge at the bottom of our road (I'm two doors up from it) I have noticed that the bridge slows the water just enough that it drops it's load of stuff around here. There is usually a concentration of cans there after each rain. It only brings in a few bucks from recycling, but I figure by collecting it I am removing some trash and I'm putting gas in the truck to take it over to the recycling bin. The rest of the trash goes out to the curb with my regular house trash.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 29 Dec 04 - 11:47 AM

P.S. We find lots of clam shells out there in the creek, but so far haven't done any digging for the live clams. I don't know about eating them (even if the water weren't likely polluted) but I think these must be where fresh water pearls come from. Now wouldn't that be an interesting backyard by-product!

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 20 Jan 05 - 03:14 PM

For all of you who are ramping up the seeds and potting soil operation in preparation for spring, take a look at this site:

Kitchen Gardeners International

I've only skimmed through, but an interesting aspect of this organization is in-kind in lieu of dues membership. They accept and encourage the offer of writing skills, local organizational support, on-line skills, etc., instead of sending dollars.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: ard mhacha
Date: 21 Jan 05 - 08:40 AM

Still enjoying my Sprouts, the Winters are getting milder, very little frost, and some of the Annuals survived until after Christmas.
It would be a help if you would give your location, info from north-east Ireland.

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 21 Jan 05 - 10:21 AM

Texas. Zone 7b.

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: ard mhacha
Date: 21 Jan 05 - 01:01 PM

Now, that is a big help SRS.

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: Donuel
Date: 21 Jan 05 - 02:59 PM

I have a couple pots of purple Hyacinths inside under a magic mist. It scents the entire house with the natural fragrance of spring.

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 21 Jan 05 - 05:41 PM

Taking a closer look, I'm actually in zone 8a. This morning I looked at a different part of that map and it looked like I was on the border of the two zones, thus the mistake. It's probably six of one half dozen of the other anyway. The close-up page tells me that Dallas is 8a, and Fort Worth is only about 45 miles west, so it's probably the same.

Where are you, ard mhacha?

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 21 Jan 05 - 06:17 PM

I spent some time today watching the blue tits in the garden... when I went to prune the pittisporum tree, I discovered 2 things. 1) my step ladder isn't tall enough and 2) just at the bit I wanted to cut it down to, there's a blue tit nest... how can I cut the tree now?... I'd rather have a tall tree that's an odd shape, with happy tits in it....

Got the buddliea to prune next.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 21 Jan 05 - 06:22 PM

Well Liz, this begs the question, why were you naked in the garden today? Of course they'd be blue this time of year! :)

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 21 Jan 05 - 07:08 PM

Horseradish not doing anything? That is a new one. We spent years trying to kill the stuff. Even concrete on top, and it came up next year.

Bunnahabhain

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: mg
Date: 21 Jan 05 - 07:34 PM

Did my shanty Irish (I am one so I think it is OK to say that) gardening today, taught to me by my dear departed father..take all old vegetables in the house/refer etc., take to some bit of dirt and throw them in a pile. A few months later, harvest.

We have camellias and rhododendruns adn daisies blooming here like crazy. mg

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: Joybell
Date: 21 Jan 05 - 08:12 PM

Well our Spring plantings are well established now. Local trees, bushes and grasses. About 2000 over Spring. Mostly growing like mad in the heat of Summer, but it's getting very, very dry. It's flood or fire out here, nothing between. We are on grassland, though so fire is not such a worry, as long as we are here watching. It's usually people who panic and try to outrun fires at the last minute who burn.
Eucalypts we planted when we first came out here, 10 years ago, are blooming for the first time. The honeyeater population has exploded and the planted areas are full of butterflies. A few shy Jananese snipe are still hiding in the drying wetland. They'll be gone soon. We seldon see them but we hear their strange calls sometimes. The frogs are quiet now but I find little green and brown tree frogs, waiting out the dry season, under my plant-pots or near the bird baths. Most days we briefly glimpse golden and brown tiger snakes sunning themselves on paths or rocks. Occaisonally a copperhead. The long hot Summer only about halfway over. Cheers, Joy

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 21 Jan 05 - 10:47 PM

Date: 21 Jan 05 - 07:34 PM
[snip]
We have camellias and rhododendruns adn daisies blooming here like crazy. mg

Rhodies and daisies now? In January? This is unusual even for Washington. Did you have a warm spell also?

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: LilyFestre
Date: 22 Jan 05 - 12:44 PM

Today is a blustery winter day, lots of snow and exceedingly cold temperatures outside (well below 0 with the wind chill). There is a fire in the woodstove and the chef has prepared a lunch to warm the tummy and soul. I have been pouring over the seed catalogs dreaming of what I might actually get to grow this year! I picked up some sunflower seeds the other day and will plant one or two inside just to watch something grow. They are the miniature sunflowers.....yep...only 59 more days until the official first day of spring!!!

:) Michelle

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: Bobert
Date: 22 Jan 05 - 01:30 PM

Snowy and cold here in 6b...

Yer in 6a, Donuel...

Snow drops blommed last week before the cold jumped back onmus so we won't have them to look forward to in March... Oh well, that was about it... Another week of that warm air an' I figured the rhodos, azaleas and camillia's would have started to swell so I was glad to see the cold...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Winter in the Garden (keeping busy)
From: ard mhacha
Date: 22 Jan 05 - 01:49 PM

I am in County Armagh north-east Ireland, to-nights forecast if it proves true will give us our first severe frost of the winter minus 6 centigrade.
It has been a wet mild winter, there is a definitve change in our winters over the past 20 odd years, little frost, with strong winds and rain is now the order of the day.