Perennial Relocation Project

As I mentioned in my weekend to do list a few weeks ago, I had to move half a garden of perennials this spring. I didn't do this because it was fun or because it was good for my health, I did it because I had to.

When I moved into this house ten years ago, all the trees in the neighborhood were babies. Check out this photo that I dug out of the archives. This was nine years ago. Look at how tiny the trees are, you can see the neighbor's house! Back then, the entire garden was full sun.

Perennial garden 2002

Here is the same garden from last year. It's not the exact same angle, but you can see how much larger the trees were. You can't even see the house behind us anymore.

Perennial garden 2011

The trees are great for privacy, but now the right half of this garden is almost full shade. I knew this was happening, and I've procrastinated for a few years. Last year the full sun perennials were starting to struggle... so, alas, I could no longer put this project off. Last fall I decided that this had to be the year, and I had to get it done first thing in the spring.

Moving this many perennials is a ton of work! To make it easier on myself, I decided to tackle this project in phases...

• Phase 1: Create new full sun garden area
• Phase 2: Planning and planting new full sun garden area
• Phase 3: Planning and planting shady garden area

Phase 1: Create new full sun garden area

I planned ahead and chose a full sun location in the front yard last fall. I started this new garden area with the lasagna gardening method, and it worked fantastic! We had a very mild winter, so the grass didn't decompose as fully as I expected. But, it was dead and that made this perennial relocation project ten times easier!

New garden area made with lasagna gardening (Phase 1)

This spring, I ended up changing the size of the garden, and I put in black plastic edging. As a result, I had to remove some sod. That alone took almost as long as moving all the perennials. Next time I start a new garden with the lasagna method, I will determine the size of the garden and put the edging in before I start piling on the layers. That way, I won't have to dig up any grass.

Phase 2: Planning and planting new full sun garden area
The first thing I did this spring was make a list of all the plants I had to relocate. I took the time to look up the height, spacing and bloom times of each plant on the list. Once I had that done, I was able to come up with a plan for the new garden. I even made a crude drawing of the garden to help keep me on track as I was moving plants.

Drawing of garden plan (not drawn to scale)

I've never taken the time to plan out a garden area before. Wow, this really helped speed things up when it came to planting. I was able to plant everything cascading by height; the tall stuff in the middle, and the shortest in front. I interspersed plants with different bloom times, so this garden will be ever blooming from the early spring crocus to late fall chrysanthemums. I also feel confident that I spaced my plants far enough apart so I won't have major crowding issues. (My biggest problem is overcrowding, a bad habit I've been working to break for a few years.)

Here's the result...

Newly planted garden area (phase 2 perennial relocation complete)

It doesn't look that impressive now, but in a year or two... Let's just say I can't wait to see what this garden will looks like once it has matured.

Phase 3: Planning and planting shady garden area
As for my new shade garden area, well it's looking pretty empty right now. I haven't done anything with it since pulling out all the full sun perennials. Don't worry, I have big plans for that half of the garden (including an expansion!). But that's for a future blog post. Stay tuned!

Garden area used to be full sun, now shady

All and all, this perennial relocation project wasn't as bad as I expected. Taking the time to plan it out by starting the lasagna garden last fall, and drawing out my plan definitely saved me time and headaches.

Growing Vegetables Part Shade

Last year, I noticed that the neighbors trees have grown tall enough to shade half of my vegetable garden. What once was full sun, has now become part shade. I was very upset when I first realized this. I love the location of my vegetable garden, and have built it up over the years to become the perfect plot. I can't stand the thought of moving it to another spot in my yard.

Swiss chard growing in part shade

Fortunately, there are several types of vegetables that will grow and produce in part shade (3-6 hours of sun).

In fact, some of these prefer part shade and will suffer in full sun.

I've been experimenting with different types of vegetables in my newly part shade garden.

So far the results have been mixed, but most have worked out great.


Here's a list of vegetables that I've tried growing in part shade:

• 

  Radishes grown in part shade

  Lettuce
• Spinach
• Radish
• Rutabaga
• Peas
• Onion
• Garlic
• Leeks 
• Chives
• Parsley
• Squash  
• Cilantro
• Broccoli
• Brussels sprouts
• Cucumbers
• Kohlrabi
• Garlic chives
• Swiss chard
• Cauliflower

This year I'm also trying turnip and endive in the part shade half of the garden.

In my experience, broccoli and cauliflower don't do well in part shade. Last year I only harvested a small amount of broccoli, and no cauliflower. I moved these to the full sun half of the garden this year, we'll see if they do better there.

Last year, I had planted my squash in the part shade half of the garden before I realized it didn't get as much sun as it used to. I usually have a monster squash or two growing out of my compost bin every summer, and they only get about 3 hours of sun.

Squash growing in compost bin in part shade

These squash plants grow huge, but don't produce much. Last year, the squash I planted did pretty well in the part shade area. This year, I planted them right on the edge between the part shade and full sun halves. Once they start to grow over the arch, the vines will be in full sun. They should do well there.

Cucumber growing in part shade

Two years ago, my cucumbers were amazing in the part shade half of the garden.

Last year, they did not do as well in part shade.

So, this year I have planted them in an area that will get more sun, but still not full sun. Hopefully they will do better there.

Everything else in my list above did excellent in part shade. I'm going to continue experimenting with different types of vegetables and see how well they do in my new part shade vegetable garden.

I would love to get more ideas from you. What vegetables do you grow in part shade?

Lettuce growing in part shade

Spring Blooms

I've been meaning to do a post of my current blooms for a while now, but lost a bunch of pictures when my phone crashed. So, of course I lost the pictures of many of my early spring blooms.

Never fear, I've been busy this week taking more pictures of what's blooming and here they are...

Allium (flowering onion)

Clematis

Columbine

Creeping phlox

Creeping phlox and ajuga

Daffodil

Iris

Iris

Iris

Iris

Strawberries (please ignore the weeds)

I love this time of year, some of my favorite flowers are in bloom! What's bloomin' in your garden?

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First Harvest

I was going to post this last week, but my phone crashed and I lost all my pictures. Of course, that included all the pictures I took for this post (along with several other posts). I had to wait for my next harvest to retake them. Not the end of the world, but it put me behind schedule.

Anyway, last week I had my first substantial harvest. It made for a yummy salad, and I've been eating salads almost every day since!

First salad harvest (ehem, second)

I already mentioned my first official harvest of radishes in my latest greenhouse update. Well, now I have added lettuce, spinach, swiss chard, chives and garlic chives to the harvest. A great salad mix, heck I even threw in some dandelion leaves and greens from the radishes. Yep, I'm trying as much new stuff as I can this year.

Radishes

The radishes continue to produce like crazy, in fact, they are almost gone already.

Here is a big bunch of radishes that I harvested yesterday. 

I think I might try to get one more crop in this spring.

I've never done a second spring crop before, how exciting!

Spinach and lettuce bowls

Lettuce and spinach are the main ingredients in all my salads, and they look beautiful in the garden too.

I love that they don't need much room to grow so I can tuck them anywhere.

They don't mind being a bit crowded or mixed in with other vegetables, and they do great in containers.

All the extra lettuce and spinach seedlings went into these bowl planters for a nice decorative touch.

Speaking of decorative touch, swiss chard 'Ruby Red' makes a bold statement in the vegetable garden.

Swiss chard 'Ruby Red'

I grew swiss chard last year, but just a green variety. It didn't grow very well, and blended in so I completely forgot about it.

I planted 'Ruby Red' this year to add extra color to the garden, plus I wanted to taste them.

I've never had swiss chard before.

The flavor is similar to leaf lettuce, but a bit stronger. I love it and will definitely grow it again.

That's it for the harvest pictures. Now I would like to take a moment to acknowledge my salad spinner. Funny story...  When I put this on the wedding registry back when we got married, my husband (well, fiance) rolled his eyes and said "Will you really ever use that?" (this is a question we asked each other often while building our registry :-).

I was skeptical too, but decided to keep it on the list. Well, I'm glad I did because I use it constantly during harvest time. It makes cleaning and drying greens and other vegetables a snap! I highly recommend you get one if you don't have one.

Salad spinner

Now it's your turn, what have you been harvesting?

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This Weekends To Do List

I have a long list of things to do this weekend. Last weekend was rainy so I have a backlog, ugh. I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed, but motivated! Do you think we'll be able to get it all done (my husband will be helping with some of these tasks)?...

• Finish planting peppers, and other veggies in greenhouse
• Plant tomatoes by fence
• Plant beans side of house
• Pack up winter sowing containers 
• Fill bird feeders 
• Harvest and freeze chives 
• Finish laying the bullet edging
• Home Depot
• Start moving stuff to front garden  (perennial relocation project)
• Till annual and tropical gardens
• Start planting annuals
• Plant tropical bulbs
• Create new time-lapse video
• Post time-lapse videos on YouTube
• Write blog posts:
• first harvest 
• what's blooming
• Perennial relocation project

The two big projects this weekend are the perennial relocation project and finishing the bullet edging. What's the perennial relocation project? Well, this is something I never wanted to do, but it must be done.

Full sun perennial garden back in the day

You see, the first garden I ever planted at this house was in full sun. The trees in the neighborhood were all still babies back then. In the ten years since I planted this garden, they have grown to be huge shade trees. So, now half of the garden is mostly shade (the half to the right of the path/bench) Booo!

Neighbor's trees make for a shady garden

I knew this was coming for the past few years, and have procrastinated long enough. The full sun plants looked terrible last year, so it's time to move them to a new full sun garden in the front. Once I move everything out, I need to get new plants to fill in the bare spots. I'll keep you posted on the progress of this project in future blog posts.

New full sun garden bed waiting to be planted

As for the bullets - they are replacing some old black plastic edging that has been there since the house was built. The old edging was slowly heaving out of the ground, and we kept chopping parts of it up with the lawn mower. It looked terrible. The bullets will look much nicer, don't you think?

New bullet edging

Whew, it's going to be a busy weekend! Anyone want to come over and help (ha, ha!)?

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Greenhouse Update

May is here, and it's been a month since I posted about what's going on in my greenhouse. What a busy month it's been! I've been planting seedlings like crazy, and I've even had a few harvests. My first harvest was on April 29th! Before I had a greenhouse, I wouldn't have even started planting cold weather crops until mid to late April. Now I am harvesting them in April, WOW!

First harvest April 29th, radish

I planted most of the seedlings I can in the greenhouse. All I have left to plant under there are the beans. I have several seedlings waiting in their winter sowing containers that I can't plant until the greenhouse comes down.

Stuff is growing like crazy in the greenhouse too. This first picture of is of my radish bed shortly after I planted the seedlings in March.

Radish bed in March right after planting

Now, compare that to this picture that I took today of the same bed...

Radish bed full grown

WOW! I hope that all my other seedlings will grow as fast as these did.

The temperature fluctuated a lot during the past month. We had several frosty mornings, and even had some freezing nights. I was worried because I had already planted squash, and the peppers, tomatoes and other warm weather seedlings were outgrowing their winter sowing containers. I covered my warm weather vegetables just to be safe, but it hardly got below 40F in the greenhouse overnight on most nights. It did freeze in there one night when it got down into the 20s, but the extra covering saved my warm weather veggies.

Despite the cold nights, the temperature in the greenhouse spiked quickly as soon as the sun hit it in the morning, rising above 100F in a matter of hours. All these temperature changes made venting the greenhouse a bit of a chore, but not too bad. Venting the greenhouse has become much easier now that the temperatures have remained above freezing. I used to go out every night and close it up, then open it again first thing every morning. But now I can just leave it open all the time. 

Venting the greenhouse

We've had some heavy rainfalls and strong winds that have tested the greenhouse, but it has mostly been unaffected. The other night we had several inches of rain in a short time. I woke up the next morning and some water had pooled on top of one section of the greenhouse making it look a bit dilapidated. But it popped right back into shape once I dumped the water off.

We plan to take the greenhouse down at the end of May. I can't believe that in another month, the greenhouse will be down for the summer. Time is flying. By the looks of the weather forecast, we probably won't be getting anymore frost this spring, but you never know. I'm going to continue to keep an eye on it, if it still looks warm in a couple of weeks, we may take the greenhouse down early.

Even with all the work I've done over the past month, I still feel behind. Hopefully the weather will cooperate this weekend so I can get some things marked of my list.

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Attack of the Killer Flea Beetles

Last week I discovered that many of my vegetable seedlings were under attack. The enemy - flea beetles. Once the enemy was identified, I had to plan a swift counter attack.

Flea beetle infestation on pea seedling

Flea beetles look like tiny specks on a plant (they are the tiny black specks in the photo above, but may also be lighter colored). You won't notice the pest from a distance, you'll probably notice the leaves of the infested plant are turning brown, or have spots on them. Take a closer look and enemy will become clear, you will see them crawling around. If you're still unsure it's flea beetles, just disturb the plant or surrounding soil and you'll know it when you see them jumping around.


After discovering the infestation, the first thing I did was post a message asking for advice on my Facebook page. Several people answered my call for help with great tips on things to try.  I also spent some time doing research on the internet.

My findings? Well, it seems there's not much you can do to eliminate flea beetles, you just have to control them long enough for the plant outgrow the damage. Flea beetles can kill seedlings in a short time, at minimum they will stunt the growth of immature plants. Once the plants are large enough, the beetle isn't as much of a worry.

I found several options for controlling my flea beetle infestation. Of these suggested control methods, I chose the ones I thought would be easy to try, and of course organic. I'm not using pesticides on my vegetables.

I've done several things to try to combat the pests, here's what I've tried so far...

Leaf mulch to (hopefully) control flea beetles

• Soapy water spray (which I use for houseplant pest infestations) - It kills them on contact, but has no residual effect. I have been trying to spray twice a day.

• Coffee grounds and crushed mint leaves - I sprinkled them on and around the seedlings in one area first and it seems like there are less flea beetles around those seedlings than the others I didn't treat. I don't have a ton of mint yet and now I'm out, but I plan to reapply coffee grounds after heavy rains.

• Compost - I have a raised bed that I filled with compost before planting, and those seedlings are unaffected. Not sure if it's because the flea beetles haven't found them yet or because of the compost. I may have to try surrounding my other crops with compost.

• Mulch - When I first discovered the flea beetle infestation, it seemed like they covered every inch of the soil. I've read mixed reviews about using mulch to control them, but it seems to have worked well for now, at least to slow them down. I used straw and leaves around some of the seedlings, and hardwood mulch around others.  

Straw mulch used to (hopefully) control flea beetles

Now, a week later, I feel like my efforts are starting to pay off and I am gaining ground on the pests. The peas seem to be growing fast now that I've been controlling the flea beetles. But the cole crops have been much slower to recover. I think I may need to initiate battle plan B.

What's battle plan B?

• Row covers - Originally I was going to try row covers, but once I saw that the flea beetles were everywhere in the soil, I figured row covers would be pointless. But now I think that if I put row covers on and continue to spray under the covers to kill what's there, maybe the ones that jump away won't be able to re-infest the seedlings. I'll have to find a very fine mesh fabric to keep these tiny pests out.

• Garlic and hot pepper spray - I read that this is a natural repellent for flea beetles. I don't think it's meant to kill them, but it has a residual effect to keep them away.

• Ladybugs - I buy ladybugs every year and release them in my gardens, but usually not until June. I think I'll head to Bachman's and see if they're selling them this early. (Praying to the ladybug gods.)

In the ten years I've lived here, I've never had a problem with flea beetles. I read that flea beetle infestations are worse after a mild winter; well, we had the mildest winter I ever remember, so now I know why they are so bad this spring.

What do you think? Anyone have any additional advice for me?

Extend the Growing Season With a Cold Frame

Our growing season is short, why not extend it with a cold frame. Cold frames act like mini greenhouses, protecting plants from frost, freezing temperatures and stormy weather. During the day, the sun heats the ground under the cold frame. That heat is trapped inside the cold frame at night, keeping the plants warm.

Cold frame in use

With a cold frame, you can start growing annuals and vegetables several weeks before they can safely be planted outside. In the spring a cold frame works great for starting seeds, hardening off flats of seedlings, or planting seedlings early in the garden. You can also extend the growing season in the fall by planting second crops of cold weather vegetables in late summer, and harvesting them weeks after the other vegetables are gone.

Anyone can build a cold frame with little or no cost; they are easy to build from recycled materials. I made my cold frame out of two old windows I got for free, and scraps of lumber I had in the garage.

A cold frame is simply a box that is higher in the back than the front, with a clear top and open bottom. The top can be made with an old shower door, patio door, windows, clear plastic, or any other durable, transparent material. The base of the cold frame could also be made out of several types of recycled materials such as wood, cinder blocks, brick or straw bales. The size of the box will be determined by the size of the top. The bottom of the cold frame is open and it either sits on top of the ground, or can be buried into the soil a few inches. There are many different design plans available on the internet.

The best location to place a cold frame is facing south or west. Putting the cold frame up against a structure such as a house, garage or fence will offer more protection and keep the cold frame warmer at night. On extremely cold nights, the cold frame can be covered by a blanket to help keep the heat in.

Venting the cold frame

In my experience, the biggest challenge of using a cold frame is venting it. A cold frame must be vented to release excess heat and keep the seeds or plants from overheating. It's amazing how hot it gets in there on a sunny day, even if it's cold outside.

You can vent the cold frame manually by propping open the lid on sunny days, and closing it on cold nights. Otherwise an automatic vent controller could be purchased, which will open and close the lid at specific temperatures. It's a good idea to keep a minimum-maximum thermometer in the cold frame to monitor the temperature fluctuations.

Cold frame with windows removed

Once the weather warms up enough that the plants can survive outside, you can either remove the entire cold frame, or just the lid. I remove the windows from my cold frame and leave the base in the garden year round. The windows are easy to store in the garage until I need them again in the fall.

Cold frames are an easy and inexpensive way to extend your growing season. Every gardener should give cold frame gardening a try.