Taking back the flower beds

This spring Adam and I decided to take back our flower beds.  Free our beautiful flowers from evil quack grass.  Here is what our first target looked like last summer:
 

Yes, there are daylilies, Asiatic lilies and even a pretty rock wall.  Somewhere.  I promise.

Now I don’t fault any of the previous owners.  At one point this house was owned by some amazingly green thumbed folks.  Not everyone wants to put in the effort it takes to keep up all of the flower beds and the veggie garden.  (Especially not if you have three young kids and your previous house was destroyed in a tornado not too long ago!)

That being said, these flower beds needed some TLC.  We (Adam) started digging and found five or six huge root bundles like this:  (see the rocks?!)

Just to show you just how aggressive the quack grass is, look at it below, growing through the daylily root!

Here they are all cleaned up:

Now, I didn’t take any pictures of the Asiatic lilies that we dug up, (I don’t know why) but there were at least 6 huge bulbs, 5-10 average sized bulbs and 50+ baby bulbs.  That’s not including the many casualties of this battle.  The shovel sometimes does bad things.

Once everything was out of the ground, Adam moved the rocks back and ran the tiller through several times.  We divided up the daylilies and started planting.  The original bed by the garage ended up with 7 or 8 clumps of daylilies and 6 or 7 patches of Asiatic lilies: 

Well, that didn’t even make a dent in what we had pulled out, so we turned to the front flower bed.  At one time there must have been something planted here, but whatever it was, it didn’t make it.  There were three green bushes (so descriptive, huh?) and two barberry (?) bushes that were looking rather sad.

We pulled out all of the old, decomposed mulch and planted eight clumps of  daylilies and four patches of Asiatic lilies in here:

There were still some daylilies left, so they went into the end of this flower to the side of the porch:
 

Later in the spring we added landscaping fabric and mulch.  (I’ll post some of those pictures later.)

So now after months of growth, here is the flower garden, refreshed, revitalized and mostly free of quack grass:

Our Little Garden

Truth be told, I don’t know that you would call our garden little.  Most of you will continue reading and think I’m crazy to call it little, maybe I am!  But if you read all of the way down, maybe you’ll believe me.

So here it is:

When we bough the house last year, there was already a very large, established garden. 

We tilled up about half of it and had a pretty decent crop. The only problem with this garden is that it was smack dab in the center of our backyard.  It just wasn’t ideal. Especially because we were planning to move the playground back here.  But last year we didn’t have time to really plan things out.

So this spring we laid out a new garden closer to the edge of our yard, out of the way.  Adam spent a good majority of the spring tilling and re-tilling the new garden to get rid of all the existing grass.  He continues to till in-between the rows every few weeks to keep the grass/weeds at bay.

I have to admit that the only thing I did in the garden was transplant these strawberries (only half of the original patch, we’ll move the rest this fall).

Adam has travailed over the rest of the garden.  He’s getting sweaty and dirty now.  I’ll get sweaty and dirty in the fall when I am canning and freezing everything.  Or maybe I’ll just cry.  I just look at my kitchen and begin to get anxious about the pots and pots of hot water I’m going to have to carry back and forth across my kitchen! 

But for now, here is a tour of the garden…

Potatoes…

7 tomato plants, cherries and huge slicing tomatoes…

Peas, one row planted, another row to go in this week…

Lettuce, WAY too much for two people…

Broccoli, I think we’re adding another row of this too, maybe…

Brussel sprouts…

Beans, two rows in, one more to go (we lost our first plantings of these due to a later than expected frost)…

Carrots…

Cilantro, planted to make salsa, but it is about done and the tomatoes have just started, will be replanting later...

Onions, just beyond the green onion stage right now…

Green peppers and jalapeños, not doing so great…

8 tomato plants, romas for canning (whole, sauce, salsa, spaghetti sauce)…

Zucchini…

Pickling cucumbers…

Mini pumpkins…

White mini pumpkins…I think..unless the ones above are white…

Cucumbers, 2 of these…

6 rows of sweet corn, two or three varieties…

Indian corn, mini and regular (can you tell which is which??)…

The pumpkin patch, not really sure which is which, but I know that we have some gourds planted in there too…

So we think we’re kinda big time with our garden.  But then I just turn around and see this…
 

We work hard on our little plot.  But it still is very, very little compared to this.  A little awe-inspiring, isn’t it?

Apple Blossoms

These are long gone by now, but they are some of my favorite pictures from this spring:

The Great Tulip Fall of 2010

Oh my tulips.  I had such great plans for you.  You started out so lovely:

Look how full and beautiful you are!

So why did you have to fall?

I could have tolerated one, two or even fifty out of the two hundred of you.  That would have left me with plenty of tulips.  But no, you had to make a mass-suicide pact.  Couldn’t one of you been too chicken to follow through?! 

I don’t know what I did to make you mad.  But I promise, this fall I’ll dig you all up and make a better home for you.  Maybe you’ll want to stick around. 

Spring Color

This year, I waited not-so-patiently for our tulips.  When we saw our house for the first time last year, the hundreds of tulips were in full bloom.

I wasn’t expecting a couple bushed along our driveway to do this:

These little purple flowers…

…were all over our front lawn.  They were pretty, but I am pretty sure they are weeds, so the means they’re choking out my grass.  Hmm…

And then the tulips!  Here they are starting to show color…

Yellow dominated this year.  Some were almost two feet tall.

Look at that luscious yellow!

I wish I could show you the vases of tulips that I filled my house with.  I wish  that I could show you two tulip patches in full bloom.  But something awful happened.  I’ll save that tragedy for another post.

Rolling Along

Last weekend we borrowed this really big roller from a friend.  The plan was for Adam to hook it up to the the lawn mower and drive all over the lawn, hopefully flattening it out a little.  I was going to attack the old, ripped fabric in the flower beds. 

It all started out fine.  Then I started to see a lot of roots.  I decided that I really didn’t know what I was doing and I would like to have living shrubs this year.  So we switched jobs.

I think I spent twice as much time on the first half than the last half.  I was trying to go nice and slow, get some real good compaction.   Then hubby trots up and asks if he needs to attach some headlights, since at that rate I’d be going all night.

We didn’t really do the “rolling” thing in the ‘burbs growing up.  In fact I remember the lawn guys coming to turn our lawn into swiss cheese in order to aerate it.  So I guess I didn’t really know what to expect, but I didn’t think that most of the weight of the roller would be from water!

Truth be told, I can’t take credit for the fact that this “adventure” is documented.  While I was busy “rolling,” Adam walks out with the camera and says, “I thought you’d want to blog about it.”

Thoughtful and studly.  I am a lucky girl.  :)