When in doubt, go to the garden.
Jun. 2nd, 2020 12:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
olorielI might whine about how the mother-in-law demanded help in booking tickets for a concert at the local theatre in two weeks time. (The theatre has opened yesterday in compliance with regional opening laws, allowing an audience of 100 (rather than 600) people for any single event. But still?)
I might whine about how Jörg feels that his need for a beach vacation in France in July is more important than... IDK. Not travelling abroad while the pandemic is far from over? Don't ask me.
But I don't want to whine all the time, so instead, I will subject you to another garden picspam. Gardening tends to be grounding and therapeutic for me, and while looking at my gardening pictures may not be as useful for you, I will probably enjoy rambling about them, so here we go.
This was two weeks ago, as evidenced by the fact that Julian is wearing a sweater (the Ice Saints, as usual, were on point; for an "irregular weather anomaly", they're pretty reliable), and also because he still has so much hair on his head. Last week, both boys decided that their hair was getting too long, so that was the end of their adorable lockdown floof.
The garden wall has grown. Note the 45° angle where the driveway meets the road. These stones don't come at 45°C angles. Jörg flexed all of the stones into the right shape.
It's a very good wall, but it doesn't suit our house very well. But quarry stones would have been a lot more expensive, and they also need a lot more stabilising behind, which would have left virtually no space for the garden. :/
Autumn bypassed winter and spring this year and went right into summer (albeit a summer with a couple of cold patches), with understandable confusion. A few weeks ago, the lilac and elderberry were already blooming while the wood behind the house was still leafless and barren, not because it was too cold but because it was too dry. The tulips were pretty much immediately replaced by poppies and cornflowers. It's a strange year in nature, too.
I will never understand why the most commonly grown variety of broad beans are the boring white-flowered ones when you can have these gorgeous crimson flowers instead. -- I may have slightly overdone it when sowing lettuce, but in my defense, usually the slugs destroy half of it (at the very least). Couldn't know that this spring would be too dry for slugs, could I?
Unlike lettuce, I was a bit mean when sowing sweetcorn for the wannabe milpa. Then I decided to be more generous but of course the older plants had a head-start of several weeks. Am now trying to boost the aftercomers by means of an impromptu greenhouse, or, in the common tongue, pickle jars. (I used them a lot before I had an actual greenhouse, so I still have a generous store of them in a dusty box...)
Bby artichoke, lovingly nicknamed Audrey III. Artichoke leaves have such a lovely texture, I can't even. They look spiky but they're just firm and leathery and very satisfying to stroke. I promise I'll stop if it ever starts calling for blood.
Peas. Again, why did we (as in garderners) stop growing lovely colourful peas and go for the boring white-blossom-green-pod varities? These are ordinary edible peas, not decorative sweetpeas. Who needs sweetpeas when you can just have actual sweet peas with pretty flowers.
Okay, enough rambling about sweetpeas, let's go to the lower driveway. Here you can see the effects of the dry spring we've had; the reeds in the reed bed are suffering. (Well, also our reed bed is oversized because the water authority insisted that our house is big enough for ten people, so the reed bed had to be big enough to deal with the effluent of ten people as well. Instead, we are five, so the reeds are starving a bit.) The meadow beyond looks like it normally does in July, which is great because now I can be allergic to beech pollen and grass pollen at the same time. Haha.
Walnut tree is not suffering from the drought, though, but from the touch of the Ice Saints. You can see pretty much exactly where the tree was protected by insulating topography, and where the buds were killed by the frosty air in mid-May. Normally, the walnut tree wouldn't even have started putting out buds before late May, but after weeks of summer temperatures, I suppose it thought that it was already June. -- Apricot tree was protected by the slate wall, and hasn't lost either leaves or fruit.
Inside the greenhouse. Some eggplants and tomato (and one pepper if you look closely). Not pictured: Cucumbers and baby melon plant.
I have lots of "surprise" tomatoes this year that just grew out of old compost. We'll find out what kind of tomatoes they are... eventually.
Fairy garden is starting to look a little more fairy-ish, but still fairly tame. I started replacing the rotting woven fence at the lower end, but have run out of long sticks for the time being. (Upper end shows just how rotted the fence was after three years).
We made a bug hotel (a very quick, cheap & easy one) earlier in the year. Not because bugs and insects in this place need them - there's a whole damn wood, lots of meadows, and heaps of old stones around - but because it's Educational (TM).
(Bumblebee butt warning)
A bumblebee colony decided to move into an opening in the wall instead. *shrug emoji* There also appear to be wasps nesting in the workshop roof fairly close to the kids' sandbox, which is rather more problematic.
The perennial hill is at its most beautiful at this time of the year, but I probably should have photographed it under different lighting conditions.
And that concludes this month's tour of the garden! Tune in next month (?), when the lettuce will have gone to seed, the peas will have contracted mildew, and the brambles will, as usually, strive for world domination...
I might whine about how Jörg feels that his need for a beach vacation in France in July is more important than... IDK. Not travelling abroad while the pandemic is far from over? Don't ask me.
But I don't want to whine all the time, so instead, I will subject you to another garden picspam. Gardening tends to be grounding and therapeutic for me, and while looking at my gardening pictures may not be as useful for you, I will probably enjoy rambling about them, so here we go.
This was two weeks ago, as evidenced by the fact that Julian is wearing a sweater (the Ice Saints, as usual, were on point; for an "irregular weather anomaly", they're pretty reliable), and also because he still has so much hair on his head. Last week, both boys decided that their hair was getting too long, so that was the end of their adorable lockdown floof.
The garden wall has grown. Note the 45° angle where the driveway meets the road. These stones don't come at 45°C angles. Jörg flexed all of the stones into the right shape.
It's a very good wall, but it doesn't suit our house very well. But quarry stones would have been a lot more expensive, and they also need a lot more stabilising behind, which would have left virtually no space for the garden. :/
Autumn bypassed winter and spring this year and went right into summer (albeit a summer with a couple of cold patches), with understandable confusion. A few weeks ago, the lilac and elderberry were already blooming while the wood behind the house was still leafless and barren, not because it was too cold but because it was too dry. The tulips were pretty much immediately replaced by poppies and cornflowers. It's a strange year in nature, too.
I will never understand why the most commonly grown variety of broad beans are the boring white-flowered ones when you can have these gorgeous crimson flowers instead. -- I may have slightly overdone it when sowing lettuce, but in my defense, usually the slugs destroy half of it (at the very least). Couldn't know that this spring would be too dry for slugs, could I?
Unlike lettuce, I was a bit mean when sowing sweetcorn for the wannabe milpa. Then I decided to be more generous but of course the older plants had a head-start of several weeks. Am now trying to boost the aftercomers by means of an impromptu greenhouse, or, in the common tongue, pickle jars. (I used them a lot before I had an actual greenhouse, so I still have a generous store of them in a dusty box...)
Bby artichoke, lovingly nicknamed Audrey III. Artichoke leaves have such a lovely texture, I can't even. They look spiky but they're just firm and leathery and very satisfying to stroke. I promise I'll stop if it ever starts calling for blood.
Peas. Again, why did we (as in garderners) stop growing lovely colourful peas and go for the boring white-blossom-green-pod varities? These are ordinary edible peas, not decorative sweetpeas. Who needs sweetpeas when you can just have actual sweet peas with pretty flowers.
Okay, enough rambling about sweetpeas, let's go to the lower driveway. Here you can see the effects of the dry spring we've had; the reeds in the reed bed are suffering. (Well, also our reed bed is oversized because the water authority insisted that our house is big enough for ten people, so the reed bed had to be big enough to deal with the effluent of ten people as well. Instead, we are five, so the reeds are starving a bit.) The meadow beyond looks like it normally does in July, which is great because now I can be allergic to beech pollen and grass pollen at the same time. Haha.
Walnut tree is not suffering from the drought, though, but from the touch of the Ice Saints. You can see pretty much exactly where the tree was protected by insulating topography, and where the buds were killed by the frosty air in mid-May. Normally, the walnut tree wouldn't even have started putting out buds before late May, but after weeks of summer temperatures, I suppose it thought that it was already June. -- Apricot tree was protected by the slate wall, and hasn't lost either leaves or fruit.
Inside the greenhouse. Some eggplants and tomato (and one pepper if you look closely). Not pictured: Cucumbers and baby melon plant.
I have lots of "surprise" tomatoes this year that just grew out of old compost. We'll find out what kind of tomatoes they are... eventually.
Fairy garden is starting to look a little more fairy-ish, but still fairly tame. I started replacing the rotting woven fence at the lower end, but have run out of long sticks for the time being. (Upper end shows just how rotted the fence was after three years).
We made a bug hotel (a very quick, cheap & easy one) earlier in the year. Not because bugs and insects in this place need them - there's a whole damn wood, lots of meadows, and heaps of old stones around - but because it's Educational (TM).
(Bumblebee butt warning)A bumblebee colony decided to move into an opening in the wall instead. *shrug emoji* There also appear to be wasps nesting in the workshop roof fairly close to the kids' sandbox, which is rather more problematic.
The perennial hill is at its most beautiful at this time of the year, but I probably should have photographed it under different lighting conditions.
And that concludes this month's tour of the garden! Tune in next month (?), when the lettuce will have gone to seed, the peas will have contracted mildew, and the brambles will, as usually, strive for world domination...
no subject
Date: 2020-06-02 12:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-03 06:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-02 07:58 pm (UTC)Thanks to the mild winter, slugs are an absolute pest in our garden this year. I'll have to collect a bucket one of these days and go feed the ducks and the chickens with them. We have WONDERFUL neighbours.
Maybe I'll get an artichoke after all... some of the stuff I tried to grow from seeds didn't take, so I'll poke around the garden center tomorrow.
no subject
Date: 2020-06-03 06:48 am (UTC)Oh yes, ducks are great at slug control, and you no longer have to feel guilty about killing slugs if it feeds other animals (or at least that's how I feel).
A friend gardening near Bonn is also suffering from a slug invasion. It's really strange because I can count the number of slugs I've encountered in the garden this year on both hands (and they were all tiny things in the lettuce leaves). Maybe winter was "just right" here. (And, of course, the framed beds are meant to be slug unfriendly - but that didn't impress the slugs in years past...)
This is the first artichoke that I managed to grow and get through winter! I actually had three plants last fall, so I decided to be brave and winter one of them in the house, one in the (unheated) greenhouse, and one outside. They all survived, but the outside one is the only one having ambitions to flower this year. But it would probably have died in a normal winter here. So it's always a bit of a risk.
no subject
Date: 2020-06-03 09:47 pm (UTC)Anyway, now I have some surprise artichokes that don't appear anywhere in my garden plans. Are they easy to remove from say, a raised bed for hibernation in pots? Or is it better to just let them die? Or... I have a spot where they could possibly stay for longer, too...
no subject
Date: 2020-06-04 04:33 pm (UTC)You know what, let's ask the professionals:
Im mitteleuropäischen Klima ist die Artischoke nicht leicht anzubauen. Sie stellt hohe Ansprüche an Temperatur und Boden. Der Standort soll sonnig und windgeschützt sein. Artischocken lieben Feuchtigkeit, ertragen aber keine Staunässe. Als Tiefwurzler mögen sie einen tiefgründigen, lockeren und nährstoffreichen Boden. Sie bevorzugen Regionen mit einem langen, temperierten Frühling. Am richtigen Standort entwickelt sich eine ausdauernde, distelartige Pflanze, die bis zu zwei Meter hoch werden kann. Die Pflanze ist mehrjährig.
Im schweizerischen Mittelland überwintern Artischocken in milden Wintern auch schon mal draußen auf dem Beet, leicht geschützt durch einige Tannenäste. Im zweiten Jahr beginnen die Artischocken zu blühen und Samen zu bilden. [...] Bei Arche Noah in Österreich, das kontinentaleres Klima als in der Schweiz und Deutschland vorzuweisen hat, hat es sich bewährt, die Wurzelstöcke Ende Oktober/Anfang November auszugraben und zurückzuschneiden. Die Pflanze überwintert dann im Topf im unbeheizten Folientunnel. Der Neuaustrieb geht so jedoch meist schon im Februar los; diese Neuaustriebe sind im Gegensatz zum Wurzelstock extrem frostempfindlich; wenn die Triebe erfrieren, geht immer auch der Stock zugrunde. Daher werden die Töpfe rechtzeitig zu Beginn des Neuaustriebs an einen frostsicheren Ort gebracht. [...] So erhält man bis zum Auspflanzen nach den Eisheiligen kräftige Jungpflanzen, die schon im ersten Jahr wieder Blütenknospen bilden. ~ Lexikon der alten Gemüsesorten
Ich denke mal, den Schritt mit dem Folientunnel kann man auch auslassen und direkt zum frostsicheren Keller übergehen. Aber das Ausgraben des Wurzelstocks einer zwei Meter hohen Pflanze (selbst wenn sie zurückgeschnitten ist) stelle ich mir ziemlich abenteuerlich vor. Selbst bei einem Hochbeet mit lockerem Boden ist das sicher nicht ohne. Ich hab die Pflanzen, die ich drinnen überwintern will, von Anfang an im (großen) Topf und lasse sie auch im Sommer darin wachsen. Aber ich hab auch keinen tiefgründigen Boden. Bei uns kommt ganz schnell Lehm und Mergel. Die eine Artischocke im Beet wächst (bisher) trotzdem ganz gut.
Ich würde schon versuchen, sie zu überwintern - schließlich müsste man sonst nächstes Jahr wieder OBI dafür bezahlen, dass sie die Pflanzen irgendwie durch den Winter gekriegt haben. Also, das Laub darf natürlich absterben (wobei die große Pflanze bei uns draußen dieses Jahr im vollen Laub überwintert hat), aber eben nicht die ganze Pflanze.
no subject
Date: 2020-06-04 09:43 pm (UTC)Tiefgründig? Keine Ahnung. Mein Boden ist sandig, locker, total überdüngt und humusarm. (Für die Bohnenstangen waren wir über 60cm tief und nur Sand.) Relativ geschütztes Mikroklima. Keine Ahnung was eine Artischoke davon halten würde. Ich könnte ja eine in einen Topf tun und die andere in den Boden. Und dann mal gucken.
Hmm...
(Und, oh! Das Lexikon hab ich auch! Hätte ich auch gleich selber mal nachgucken können, ich Depp!)
Danke schön!!!
no subject
Date: 2020-06-02 10:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-03 06:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-03 01:22 am (UTC)(I love Julian's wellies!)
no subject
Date: 2020-06-03 07:06 am (UTC)(Heh. At the beginning of the year, he had the idea of mixing his own blue wellies with Felix' old yellow wellies. Ever since, he's been walking around with two different feet. One day as I took them to judo practice (this was before March) he proudly walked along the sidewalk in these wellies, and an elderly lady looked at his feet and gave me an absolutely scandalised and horrified look - "Unnatural mother, can't you SEE that your child is wearing boots in two different colours?!" - and I couldn't resist beaming at her and wishing her a good day in my absolutely most enthusiastic voice...)