If anyone is looking for a winter gardening project...
ZachS. z5 Platteville, Colorado
4 years ago
last modified: 4 years ago
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dbarron
4 years agoRelated Discussions
Winter Garden Projects
Comments (7)traipsed down to the allotment to take the compost and was immediately nailed by guilt. No snow but grey drizzle with sad wilted piles of dead leafage. Gulp, not able to hide behind snow. I must tackle the horrible dead perennials and (worse) the old tomato vines hanging sadly on their canes. I often persuade myself to leave the old foliage for seedheads and then there are the cliched photos of hoarfrost on silvered skeleton outlines which appear annually around this time of year (as if I am EVER going to be lurking around the allotment at dawn to see the bloody frost). Also, there are a whole bunch of dilemmas facing me which I am doing an ostrich act on and ignoring. The greenhouse has loads of sweetpeas (for my garden), loads of foxgloves and hardy geraniums (for the woodland) and I am trying really hard not to sow loads of onions and peppers (for the allotment) because I KNOW it is all going to cock and there will be tantrums and swearing. On the other hand, I still have a stash of Christmas reading...... Ah no, there were a few years when I was practically immune to the weather and when I was a jobbing gardener for other people, I got on with it, but these days, I confess to being a bit of a sniveller - can cope with cold but a spot of rain and I am back inside....See MoreThis Winter's project(s)
Comments (12)Thanks for the comments, I'm grinding away on the front yard changes as well now. Taking a break and then it's back out there. One thing at least that is nice about our mild Winters is that when it doesn't rain, we can work the soil. Ken, you are and were right, the grass was eventually all going. It was mildly amusing to mow the lawn for 40 seconds last year once a week. Now I can water for a few years and then leave the maintenance to nature. The deer nibbled off two leaves from a Japanese maple and quickly exitted stage left once I came out to film them. I haven't seen them since - maybe because I'm at about 400 feet elevation, they just don't seem to be around much. Richard, it's Pseudotsuga menziesii 'Fletcherii' - a gem of a dwarf discovered in 1923. :) Edwin, I did indeed, and made many corrections - thank you! I also DO have your nursery list favorited for future access as I make changes and look for confirmations/errors in plants amongst my collection. Are you 100% with every name you list there being accurate? Thanks, as always. Alex, 'Catharine's Golden Heart' will be much more pronounced gold this year with more sunlight. It's previous spot was about 5-6 hours of direct sun, now it's more like 8-10 hours. Bob's golden seedlings, at least those wothout 'Lemon' in their name, don't seem to burn much/at all even with full sun and warm days. Speaking of warm days, I water the pots about once a week during hot stretches, twice a month for the rest. They are doing surprisingly well and since some are very very large, they can stay in their locations, dependant on variety for many years. Some plant ID's. Yes, Abies NORDMANNIANA 'Starker's Dwarf'(caps for emphasis, Iseli is still selling it as Abies koreana) Also from the last photo, the taller fir at the top, Abies forrestii var. forrestii. A Conifer Kingdom product. The fir I noted above for Richard, actually a cultivar of doug fir. The golden spruce is one of Bob's seedlings, I'll need to check the name. It's pouring right now. :( From the second photo, the golden plant towards the bottom is Pseudotsuga menziesii 'El Dorado', a new, VERY choice golden doug fir from Conifer Kingdom. It can burn in full sun, that spot gets about 4 hours and it's brilliantly gold. The large oriental spruce is Picea orientalis 'Skylands'. :) I'll update with more photos as I finish up the front in the next few weeks. -Will...See MoreMy Winter Gardening Project (pics)
Comments (21)Treeskate, I use a microwave terra cotta press that I bought several years ago. Lee Valley microwave press Its trial and error to time the pressing right -- generally 30-60 seconds will do it. Its easy to overdo it. Sometimes I will do 15 seconds at a time and check. Then I store them in flat plastic storage containers with silica gel packs. (Start saving them when you see them with many products). I keep it all in a closet until ready to tackle the project. I'm so glad you asked about the pressing. I am excited to see that Lee Valley sells the replacement pads for the press. I need some and I couldn't find them anywhere. I didn't even know what they were made of til I just went to that link to find the press. I've been using felt (when I burnt my original pads this year) but it isn't quite as good. There is a plastic version of a microwave press too. I'm sure the old-fashioned book method is just as good, but I only used it for a few ferns that were too big for the microwave press. I also used some leftover 13" square tiles (with papertowels). Terrene, your bouquet sounds lovely but now you're getting into an area that requires skill and creativity!!! The solo foliage is soooo much easier. I think just foliage is also a more contemporary aesthetic. I would like the bouquet, but I don't think my recipients would so much. When I first got the press and started collecting flowers for it, I found them much harder to work with. Many flowers have to be "re-built" petal by petal if they have thick centers. Flowers also strained my limited creativity. Simple foliage is a no-brainer. Right up my alley! Also as far as UV protection, I checked the glue I use and it does say it is UV resistant. Unfortunately, I did not use it as a top coat over the foliage. I think I will try an experiment with coated and non-coated and put them in a sunny room and see what happens. There is also such a thing as UV resistant glass, but I didn't pursue that. ALso, when gluing the foliage on card stock, they don't always lay flat when glued, depending on the leaf substance. I put a piece of waxed paper over them and then put them in a really big book (American Hort Society Encyclopedia of Gardening) for at least a couple of hours. Then they are secure for further handling and framing....See MoreLooking for multi winter crop cover for my garden bed
Comments (2)As to a winter non-cover cover crop, how about arugala. Mine is sprouting now and it grew through all the winter And comes up wild this time of year You can eat it too You and your worms.... Masanobu Fukuoka ( invented seed balls and wrote "The One Straw Revolution) used Daikon intermixed in his winter wheat and barley as a green manure. The daikon was to break the soil up. That is why I mentioned it. I was talking to a Turkish Gardener and she uses Fava beans as a winter grower to put nitrogen into the soil. She turns them into the soil when the flowers are flowering but before beans form.The flowers are great for attracting bees in early spring. Wow vermiculture. Are you doing this inside or outside. I googled the beasties and came up with this article about the Asiatic "Alabama " Jumper becoming invassive. It is escaping and getting into the wild where it is eating the Duff layer of the soil. Duff is about all we have under the trees in places out here in the hill country.These critters seem to be escape artist. I hope they don't like dry hot texas. I apologize for being so off topic. I don't really know anything about this so please don't think I am condemning. It is more verbal curiosity and asking if you knew anything about this? I don't know nothing. I am just googling and wondering out loud.. Here is a link that might be useful: Controling spread of Alabama Jumper...See MoreZachS. z5 Platteville, Colorado
4 years agodbarron
4 years agoSkybird - z5, Denver, Colorado
4 years agolast modified: 4 years agoZachS. z5 Platteville, Colorado
4 years agolast modified: 4 years agoSkybird - z5, Denver, Colorado
4 years agolast modified: 4 years agodandy_line (Z3b N Cent Mn)
4 years agolast modified: 4 years agoZachS. z5 Platteville, Colorado
4 years agoZachS. z5 Platteville, Colorado
4 years agodandy_line (Z3b N Cent Mn)
4 years agoDuffy Meadows
3 years agoZachS. z5 Platteville, Colorado
3 years agoJay 6a Chicago
3 years ago
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