Butterfly Junction

sanderson wrote:Bamboo?

AtlantaMarie wrote:Oh, no...  So sorry, Suz!!

sanderson wrote:You do have some cleanup and maybe rebuilding, but it looks like the infrastructure of the salad bar and rescue garden survived.  You have had some excitement in recent months but you have survived it!

CapeCoddess wrote:Oh Suz...I know the feeling.  I had that last March when my neighbors 50' pine fell across my SFG.  SMASH!  Nice thing was, he took care of it all and I was able to plant in a couple of boxes that weren't hit until he finished the cleanup and repairs. (of course I helped...how could I not.)

Little by slow....it'll all come together again.  And like you say, free firewood.
CC

Me wrote:I got one spaghetti squash. I will start them much earlier next year. Maybe plant the seeds in Feb. inside.

Tomatoes were okay, but I will choose different varieties next year and start them earlier inside. Again I'm thinking feb. 1.

countrynaturals wrote:These little zinnias bloomed all through the winter. No more guilt about not having nectar plants ready for the early butterflies (saw a Gulf Fritillary this morning). I don't know for sure what variety these guys are, but I'm off to collect seeds right now. I plan on filling a whole bed with these happy little campers.

countrynaturals wrote:Huge garden expansion in progress. I'm planting the Rescue Garden in a combination of containers and BTE. Went to my favorite nursery and scored HUGE! They had 11 asparagus plants that didn't sell last year so they potted them up in 1 gal. pots. They wanted them gone so they let me have them for $6 each! These are now 3rd year plants, already producing spears. I can't believe I could get that lucky, to have a 2 year head start on an asparagus bed. 



My next lucky break was strawberries. I have always bought them mail-order and got puny little twigs with a couple of half-dead leaves on them. I'd try to nurse them back to life and always figure on losing half (last year they all died). These babies were only $6.50 a dozen and they're HUGE -- already blooming! All 24 are happy today. I cut the bottoms out of the 1 gal. pots and put them around the bed as a chicken-barrier. I think I'll plant marigolds in them.



The tree trimmers came last week and left me a beautiful new pile of wood chips from our own trees. I still have plenty to use from last year, so this pile will be for 2018.


We have a huge pair of Century Plants (agave) which I hate, but the crazy thing bloomed last year and the skeleton of that blossom is pretty kewl so we had the trimmers take it down for us. We have a huge trunk from it -- don't know what we'll do with that -- and 2 pieces of the "blossom." They also cut down a rotten vine maple, right by the butterfly/greenhouse. Hubby got the brilliant idea to make the stump into the base of a plant table and put that blossom in the middle like an umbrella in a patio table. I probably won't get that until fall, with all his other projects ahead of, but I'm really excited about it. I will definitely be the only kid on the block with one of those. (The tabletop will be on top of the 3 stumps with the agave "tree" supported in the middle.)


Also, the trimmers showed me a whole bunch of "agave pups." They're baby agave plants that sell for $6 to $9. We have about a dozen of them. I don't like them anyway, so we will probably put an ad on Craigslist and see what we can get.

countrynaturals wrote:

CapeCoddess wrote:Nice on the free zinnias!  I like the look of them planted around that tree, too.

Keep us updated on the pineapple please?  I'm so curious.

I wish we had more inside space to grow pineapples inside in the winter, but these puppies are BIG and not very friendly.

countrynaturals wrote:Thank you, thank you.  I can't believe how excited I am about this project.  I forgot to mention that I'll be filling the rest of the box with leaves for the winter, so I can start out with a nice bed of leaf mold next spring when I plant the rest. Don't know if it will be OSFG or ANSFG, but it will definitely be SFG.

countrynaturals wrote:JACKPOT! 2 years ago Hubby built a huge extension on the chicken coop, for the rescues that couldn't be free-range like the others. That area is like an aviary, with trees and dirt. Last night I had to shoo the ladies back into the main coop. When I walked across the back, I almost bounced. That dirt/hay/leaves/poo/food/etc. had turned into the most perfect compost imaginable. AND THERE'S A TON OF IT! 

My biggest garden problem has been dirt. What we have here only grows rocks. I've spent hundreds of dollars on store-bought soil, with mediocre results. I used leaves and chips to stretch my purchases, but all that did was decompose and shrink until my beds are all down about 8". This year's compost bed, plus the mother-load I found in the chicken yard, will give me the richest soil imaginable for my spring planting. I * AM * A * HAPPY * CAMPER! So, who wants to come help me move all that compost? Hmm?

Here's a closeup:


Here's the long view, so you can see how much I have. (Eat your hearts out. )


Here's a sunflower plant, happily growing in this rich medium, behind a chair where the chickens haven't found it, yet. Looks like I'll have a flower by next week.

countrynaturals wrote:Yesterday we got a call from our grandson-in-law. He wanted to get rid of a bunch of large landscape rocks and a huge load of topsoil and dead grass from their front yard. He was going to pay to dump it. WHAT?!   Anyway, we had him bring it to the new place and dump it in front, where I'm going to mound it into a gentle curve and turn it into a pollinator garden. He was afraid he was imposing on us. I'm looking at about $800 worth of beautiful dirt WITH NO ROCKS!  I've already named the finished garden "Allan's Knoll." I can't wait to get it finished, but I'm already exhausted from the other projects involved in this deal, so I may still be looking at that pile of dirt in October.   

countrynaturals wrote:OMIGOSH!!!!!


The new house has a partial walk-out basement that the previous owners forgot to clean out. Most of it went into the dumpster, but at the very back, we found A COMPLETE GROW LIGHT SETUP! YEE HAH! I AM ALL SET FOR WINTER GROWING!   

countrynaturals wrote:

sanderson wrote: It's so manageable!

Yeah -- that's it -- just the vibe I was going for! Actually, I may throw caution to the wind and plant a few artichoke seeds. I lost my 2nd year bed to the fire and they take so long to establish, that I need a head start. I still have one little plant that survived in a 1-quart pot -- amazing!

countrynaturals wrote:2019 looks to be a "back to nature" year. We finally hiked the land behind our daughter's house, which will probably go to our granddaughter, eventually. Katie and I fell in love with it and got excited about clearing it out for hiking trails and "points of interest." That project will probably take the rest of our lives (mine at least) and definitely eat into our gardening time, so my posts may be more about "square foot brush clearing" than "square foor gardening" this year. I'll post some "before" pics, later.

donnainzone5 wrote:Beautiful!

Needless to say, I still think about Sienna.

countrynaturals wrote:Turns out the only plants the deer won't eat are bulbs, so that's what my island garden will have to be -- those, rocks, yard art, etc. We're having our second batch of daffodils right now. We had the little white ones in January. Now we have the big yellow ones.

sanderson wrote:
I'm afraid to ask what happened to Sienna.

sanderson wrote:I read all of today's posts here.  The snow photos are awesome!

I was going to try artichokes this year.  They sell them at HD and I was going to try them.  Maybe I can mist them in the morning?  They do great in the Paso Robles area and it gets hot there.

I would love to try a pineapple.