Up From The RootsMadlantern's Blog

Lettuce row not so good, but the taters that were in the compost seem happy

Well, you win some; you lose some. And for me this spring, that’s definitely true.;-)

To put it simply, my try at a raised lettuce row failed miserably. I’m pretty sure that I planted directly into the ground too early. We had several freezes and many hard rains since the last week in February (when I planted), and even the feeble sprouts that did appear have now bitten the dust entirely. My next attempt at lettuce this year will be to start the seeds in the greenhouse and transplant them into the ground.

Forget-me-not seedlings (under cage) and young tomato plants

Next spring, if I feel perky, perhaps I’ll rig a portable row cover (since I’ll have plenty of plastic left when I recover the greenhouse this spring) and probably some extra boards.

On a brighter note, the forget-me-not seeds that I planted went gangbusters. I have approximately 30 of them; large and full. I think they will do well back under the apple and maple trees and along the back wall of the house. Maybe even as filler under the roses. I’ve had roses and forget-me-not together before and they seemed to be happy enough.

So I guess it’s true… you can’t succeed with all things, but you’ll never know if you don’t try. What have you tried? Did you fail or did you succeed?

Back yard from patio, behind the small hill

I am torn. My favorite gardens are the ones that contain flowers, shrubs, fruits and vegetables of all kinds, mixed and matched together with absolutely no grass at all. In fact, I tend to really relate to the “food, not lawns” campaign. However, I do like to have a little bit of lawn to run around on barefoot in summer. And the kids like to have a place to play and a soft place to land when they fall down.

The varieties of lawn grass that can be grown in western Oregon have a tendency to be very fine and velvety soft. Unfortunately, they also require frequent deep watering, or they’ll wither and die. They have to be mowed once every week or two during the growing season and sap the soil of nutrients that other plants require to thrive. (Hence why digging up a patch of lawn and planting directly into it doesn’t often yield healthy plants, unless you really fertilize and work the soil. You can see evidence of it’s added negative influence in the failure of my lettuce row, despite a liberal application of compost and fertilizer).

New fence dividing shady and sunny areas

So, since the kids need a place to play, and I’d like a place to lay about and walk barefoot in the summer, what do I do with the grass?

I still haven’t made up my mind entirely, but I think that I have decided I’ll remove about half of it, leaving some nice turf in the front yard for looks (and watching thunderstorms and shooting stars) and then a goodly chunk in the backyard for playing and lounging about. As you can see in the picture to the right, I’ve removed all grass from the area under the maple tree (which was sickly anyway because of deep shade in the summer and leaf compost in the winter). Gladiolas and dahlias will come up just behind that little fence, and hopefully the rose (a cream colored climber) will eventually cover the archway over the grass path.

Despite all my lofty plans, I will probably change my mind 1,000 times before I actually have the amount of lawn that I’m happy with. I dunno… how much lawn would you say is just enough?

Peas, Bleeding Hearts and Iris

This year we had a very early warm streak, so despite my better judgment, I planted my peas during the last week of February. And, lo, it did freeze not more than a week later. Luckily the sprouts hadn’t emerged from the ground yet.

Generally, after about a week and a half I have two-inch tall pea plants, and this year, at the same duration of time since planting… I still had nothing. Uh oh. I was a little worried that I’d really jumped the gun and that they wouldn’t emerge at all, but after about two and a half weeks, they finally began popping up!

The next challenge was the fact that they’re situated on the west side of a fence and on the east side of the house. This means that they get a very narrow window of direct sunlight (right now, about 10:00 am – 1:00 pm) and so are kind of slower growing than I’m used to. I figure that this will be a good thing later on in the summer as they’ll be more protected from the hottest parts of the afternoon. I guess I’ll see how that theory works out.

On Sunday, I finally put in the nails and twine. This was pretty easy, since the fence was right there and the walkway has a wooden border. For the two back rows, I recycled some old bamboo skewers and tied twine to them and the upper nails and the front strings. This particular twine is pretty frail, but I think it will do.

Right now my quest is to find some relatively animal-and-kid-safe deterrent for the slugs that like to hide in the shade of the iris at the south end of the bed. I’ve heard that beer in half-orange peels can be a good trap. Anyone tried that or have other good techniques that work?