Gardens - Green House Prep

Guest Author Girl-Child here, with another weekend update. While Mum was visiting our Sailor in Port Townsend, I got a few projects done around the homestead.

      It's just the right time to get veggies going (or so my green-thumbed madre assures me) and once her National Boards is through- she's itching to get back into the garden and play. To help prep for that, I decided to take a day to clean out the green house. Oh yes! The green house mentioned here is up and sturdy and full of life. Just... the wrong kind of life. *cue psycho shower scene music* Eek! Dandelions! Aphids! and Baby Black Widows! Oh my!

     If you remember last February, mum mentioned a bunch of new plants she wasn't quite ready for. Well, Washington proceeded to rain, and rain, and rain, until all of her lovely new plants either drowned, were eaten by chickens, bowled over by raccoons, or molded. The ones that survived, were stashed in the green house and promptly forgotten about. As you can see below, there's a lot of plants to wrangle and pots to sanitize before anything new can start living in here. 

 Gloving up, I grabbed an empty bucket and proceeded to delicately clip-n-catch the dandelion heads with some garden shears. After about ten minutes of this, I recalled my heritage and dashed inside to put on sunscreen.  Very important! Then I doused the bug infested greenery with distilled white vinegar and hot water before tearing them out by their roots (or as close to the roots as I could manage).

The pots were all plastic, aside from some organic/compostable ones (which were pretty thoroughly moldered and tossed into the compost heap), so I got the go ahead to save the soil. If you look in the far back of the above photo, there are some half-wine barrel type garden barrels on the right hand side. They all contain good soil now, ready for re-purposing. The pots were rinsed and arranged by size on a low table, to be sanitized at a later date before rejoining their fellows in the Garden Shed. Plastic labels and tags were washed and put in that white plastic three drawer tower in the Shed for the next batch of lovelies!

Much better! Now that there's room for seedlings, I re-set up Dad's veggie trays.

The carrots and sweet peas are first to show!

 The other project I was able to get to before papers swallowed my weekend, was the raised garden bed. The boy child hauled these bags of peat and compost from in front of the Garden Shed to here. We don't have a wheel barrel big enough, so we would have to mix 3 bag compost with one bag of peat by hand. We weren't certain what was the best way to go about it, so I opted to experiment a little with this handy dandy twirly ground aerater doohickey (yes, that is it's official name, or at least it is until I can ask mum).

It took a bit of work, but the compost and peat mixed perfectly. Mum still wants to add another row of boards around the edge (we're all tall folks here, leaning over will be easier), but that can be added later. For now, we've got a good soil base for any goodies Mum feels like planting! Only two more weeks to go!

Snapshot Saturday

Took a minor homework break to enjoy the sunshine (90 degrees, say what now?!) and the new blooms!

What you see above is the view from the master bedroom balcony. Mum found some gorgeous cling-art mimicking stained glass at Home Depot and it works perfectly to add a little privacy to what otherwise would be a straight shot view of the bathroom. When the sun hits it just right, it just glows.

We joke about mom retiring to the "cave" to work on her National Boards, but really it has a gorgeous view!

The bleeding hearts bloomed all at once, I didn't even know we had them! But mum assures me they were planted last season, she just wasn't certain the chickens had left them alone enough to bloom.

the Sailor was able to sneak home last weekend and with the weather so good, cleared some trees. The section to the left just needs the stumps removed before it begins its new life as an herb garden.

The photos are a little blurry, but on her way back from Port Townsend Mum stopped by this nursery- Far Reaches Farm - and picked up a few new chicken approved additions to the garden.

The white flowers are the first bloom of a Rhododendron who endured a hard-core pruning, cutting back 12 years of growth to basically the ground. It was mostly trunk with little green, now reversed!
In front of it are Iris bulbs and yet more alpine strawberries (they're everywhere!!)

Ganymede taste tested the new delphiniums and opted to leave them alone. Thank goodness.
Behind the delphiniums is a new project- bishop's weed! Yeah, that's got to go...

Last year, Peter Rabbit and his hungry cohorts decimated mum's "spilled milk" flower arrangement.
This year even the chickens are leaving the sweet allysum (Lobularia maritima) alone!
The lone purple stems are a new addition to the mystery plant pile- the label's washed off!
Irises on the far right, Peonies and Purple Vinca round out the rest of the bed.

Pieris Japonica- has been blooming for several weeks now and the chickens love to siesta beneath it.

Japanese Red Maple and a Rhododendron, this one blooms pink but the petals fade to white. 

And yet more alpine strawberries!

 Another rhododendron- but you can see a snippet of the dog kennel and the garden shed!

Another view of the Japanese Red Maple and Rhododendron- the structure to the left is the bbq hut. Beyond those trees is the river!

A better view of the green house and raised garden bed- and our deathstar! It's a rolly-compost ball :)

The ladies insisted on following me around as I did my little photoshoot-  the Easter Egger is Circe, the Cochin is Artemis, and the golden-laced Wyandotte is probably Tequila  but the 'Twits are hard to tell apart.

I leave you now with the view of my homework chair- I've got two six page essays to write and two presentations to prep for, but at least I can't complain about the view!