Thursday, November 18, 2010

Moving a Garden

I have been so busy outside, working in the garden I didn't find any time sharing on the blog.

Seems the summer went faster by then I wanted and even I worked so much outside I never managed to get control of my weed situation and I didn't get as many plants moved into the new garden area, I am working on, as I wanted.
All of a sudden our rainy season has started, it is getting cool and it is dark early making it difficult to get things done outside.
This year the summer vegetable garden was not very successful, I never had that bad of an harvest since I started gardening and I have been gardening for a long time now. Almost all the summer vegetables barely made enough to feed us over the summer, I am thankful that we at least got enough to  have some for dinner but I wished I could have filled my freezer also. I never seen so few Zucchinis and cucumbers, there wasn't even enough to pass on to friends as usually. At least I finally got some Tomatoes and even managed to put up a few tubs of tomato-sauce in the freezer for winter.
I did have a few success stories though.
For the first time in my gardening life I got the Radicchio to head up. Yeah!
Usually I got it to grow a bit and then it just shot up and flowered. This year I have beautiful, big heads out there waiting for me. I harvested a variety of red, green and Savoy cabbage, which grew beautiful and have some more growing. I accidentally must have let a stalk celery seed out last year and it started growing in my path ways, but that celery which was a Heirloom Red Stalk Celery is growing beautifully and unlike the year I intentionally seeded it, it is not hollow this year. I also planted a few new varieties, two of those varieties also are growing nicely, while the other two are having hollow stems. I read that some varieties are more prone to hollow stems and so I probably will next year only grow the ones which didn't have this problem of hollow stems. I have some Brussels Sprout out there which look like they are making little sprouts in the leaf axles and the Cauliflower is starting to head up. So not all is bad. And now it got cooler I again have my endive, corn salad, lettuce and varieties of greens like Kale, Arugula, Broccoli Rape and Mustard Greens coming. It is only good that eating greens is highly recommended for your health, because we have been eating a lot of greens this year.

If you remember I am making a new garden area in the second lot we have next to the house, which will be our future garden in a few years when we built a smaller house there.
 The area I planted in spring is growing nicely, the Chinese Apricot tree grew so much and filled out I crossing my fingers for some Apricots next year. Just a few please!

I didn't get as much moved from my old garden into the second new garden area as I planned and I didn't get the low area ready to be planted but even so it is slowly looking like a garden. A few weeks ago, as the season started changing and the sun was going down so much earlier, our old coffee drinking spot in the garden started getting to shady in the afternoon and it was too cool to sit so I made a nice little spot in the new garden.
Flattened out an area just big enough for the bench and table, terraced the hill behind it with old concrete and rocks found in the garden and started filling it with plants.
 I got a a variety of bulbs, different varieties of Tulips, under other Lily Tulips, Parrot Tulip a few Darwin and a low growing species Tulip,  also some fragrant Narcissus varieties and winter crocus, fragrant day lilies, Oriental lilies and a neat looking yellow Peony.
I want this area to be a fragrant garden so I can sit there, having my afternoon coffee and be surrounded by good smells, So I have been digging up some of  my fragrant shrubs, the ones which aren't too big yet and easy to move and planted them.
Unfortunately many of my shrubs are too big and instead trying to chance it killing them by transplanting I tried over the summer to take cuttings and root them. I never rooted shrubs before and was pleasantly surprised that so many rooted out. So by next year, I might be able to transplant my fragrant shrubs if they are big enough to plant out.
I did manage to move my Fringe tree and a lemony flavored cypress which I just planted last year.
 I always wanted one of these small, fragrant trees, which are native to the Southern US, are hard to find out here and I wasn't going to leave it behind in my old garden. So even I didn't get everything in the ground as planned and will have to wait until next spring. It is shaping up nicely.
 By next year it should be a nice place to sit and enjoy my afternoon coffee.
And for gardeners, there is always another year, another season.