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New England Gardening

What happened in your garden this week, April 18th?

18 years ago

Hmmmm... let's see.... more spring cleaning of old beds, spreading of compost, still preparations I guess. Also I started pruning the roses, which will take the whole week I am afraid. I have some large ones which will require a lot of work. For some reason, my William Baffins did not do well during this mild winter and will need some serious work.

What happened in your garden this week?

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Belle Isis

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Comments (6)

jardinista
18 years ago
Hi all-- still happy with all the clearing out of old icky yews am enjoying the light and space. But do have peonies about 6" up,daffodils not even blooming yet,columbine leaves and lots of buds on my blueberries
triciae
18 years ago
SOMETHING ate my baby ajuga 'Chocolate Ruffles'!! I planted a dozen plants last fall from Bluestone & they were all looking great yesterday. THIS AFTERNOON, all but five are just gone...no hole...just GONE! I feel like I'm going crazy...
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YIPPEE! we took down a bunch of saplings that had begun to encroach on the lawn. They were beginning to detract from a handsome oak and cast more sun on the terrace area than we (well, I!) wanted. It's been rainy and overcast all weekend (just in time for the German iris show) and I will be interested to see what the elimination of the saplings will do for the terrace area IF we ever see the sun again. The double pink peonies are just beginning to open. I don't know the variety, just that they came from the yard of a very old home now part of Strawbery Banke. They smell wonderful and always emerge before (what I THINK are) "Festiva Maxima". I mowed the lawn, too. And rearranged the plants I hoped to "unload" at the swap on Saturday... but a dead car battery put the kibosh on that plan.... :/ I am not thrilled with the knowledge that they'll remain in pots until late summer/early fall, but that's how goes sometimes, huh?
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Comments (47)
Brenda, Hooray for the tiny tomatoes and peppers! They won't stay small for long. If your onions seem behind, try giving them a shot of nitrogen fertilizer. They are heavy feeders. You can give them dried blood/blood meal if you garden organically or any pelleted form of lawn fertilizer that contains nitrogen only. They also need a consistent amount of moisture even if no rain is falling. Otherwise they stall and just sit there and refuse to grow. You can plant garlic this year, but just not right now. In our climate we can start planting garlic in the September-October time frame for harvest next June or thereabouts. I am so glad your husband is hanging in there and making his way through all the surgeries. Hopefully he'll soon be strong enough for the third one. I am glad to hear he's making good dietary changes, and that you make it more fun and more meaningful for him by growing fresh produce yourself. Fresh is so much more nutritious because nutrients degrade as 'fresh' produce is shipped across the country, and even around the world, to reach store shelves. I also think there is something that just "feels right" about eating food you've grown yourself whenever you can. Dorothy, I know. It made me laugh out loud at first, but after a while I was tired of it. When we got married in September of that year so very long ago, it was 102 degrees. I think they thought they'd gotten on an airplane and flown to H-E-L-L. After we moved here, my brother and sister-in-law and their kids came to visit that August. They were here for 3 days and our high temps while they were here were 110-111-112. It was a drought summer, so that year the humidity was very low when they were visiting, but it still was miserably hot, even if it was a dry heat (grinning). They can't stand our heat 'cause they aren't used to it, but then I can't tolerate their cold weather either. We were there on Memorial Day weekend one year, and it was 26 degrees in the morning when we got up early to go trout fishing. Another year, it was 70 degrees and misty on the Fourth of July. I had typical Texas summer clothes with me, so all I remember about the Fourth of July was that I was freezing and that the fireworks show was cancelled because of the rainy, foggy, misty weather. Dawn
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ego45
18 years ago
Tricia, if 'Chocolate Ruffles' and 'Ch. Chips" are the same, you may say 'Thanks, God!'
Two 3" pots planted in a summer of 2004 become at least 10 sf dense mat that ate alive clump of 12-15 Kaufmanniana tulips.
Not a single leaf of tulips was able to go thru it.
And kaufmannianas are perennials here.
jackied164 z6 MA
18 years ago
I'm busy moving perennials. It has been pretty dry so I have been soaking the large clumps in their original location, soaking their new location and muddying them in. I feel silly out there watering in April. The 100 anenome "windflowers" that I planted last fall are really beautiful. I wonder if they will come back and if they only look so great because the winter was so mild.
arbo_retum
18 years ago
with this 2 wk jumpstart on the season, i am finally doing a long-wished-for project-dividing geraniums.this early is the only good time to do them i think. tons of samobar and mrs.a.t.johnson, and mrs.kendall clark, all my favorites.am trying them as edging plants in trouble spots. also getting at the little euphorbia chameleon seedlings that work their way into every crevice. their purple density is so useful. and hakonechloa. i think dividing now is ideal because the plants will likely not skip a beat, what with the long growing season ahead(and spring rains.) i used to be astonished when hostas that suffered extensive spring division- didn't even show it after a few wks. my oldest patches of hellebores, which are flowering poorly,compared with my newer patches, need dividing/re-invigorating but i've read to do that in fall.
we are also gearing up for a rigorous persistent campaign to eradicate large patches of the #1 Satanic weed- aegopodium- by a few weeks of consistent round-up'ing.
(keep us in your prayers,please!we'll need them)
triciae
18 years ago
George, yes...I was so upset I typed Chocolate Ruffles instead of C. Chips. I wanted the ajuga to do exactly what you've described...densly cover an area under a white pine. Maybe, after what you've described my poor five little remaining babies will have a chance of doing the job of their lost siblings. What would have just taken them right out of the ground like that? The soil is loose & dry and they were babies so I figure that's why there was no "hole"...the soil just filled in around where they were yanked from.

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