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Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2011 10:45 pm (GMT 0)

a big weed ( photo / image / picture from Kay’s Garden )







I found this growing in my flower bed earlier this spring. I had amended the soil with some compost from my work. Our shop is on an old dairy farm, and we pulverize the mounds of manure to use in planting etc.

It was a very nice healthy plant, no bugs, nothing wrong at all, with the exception of being illegal…

It was hard for me to destroy such a pretty plant. Oh well, had to be done.

It grows wild all over in Nebraska. We just don’t pick it, or grow it in our gardens, if we are smart that is…

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The daffodils are beginning their growth. They have only just begun to emerge from their winter sleep. Soon they will be highlighting the each garden like little pieces if the sun shining from the soil.

But they are not alone. The Tulips are also in on the game. Negrita and Shirley are pushing up from soil of the front sidewalk garden.

The signs of spring coming are beginning to show here, how about where you are?

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After being cooped up all winter my daughters and I hightailed it to the backyard and spent the day outdoors digging in the dirt. We accomplished many of the chores I mentioned on Friday (wait they weren’t chores because I enjoyed doing them!). One of those tasks was a rearrangement of the vegetable garden. I wanted to move four small raised beds out of the center and install a retaining wall stone raised bed. The obvious advantage to stone for raised beds is that it won’t rot like my old wooden beds have done. In fact I noticed that the small raised beds I put together last year have some significant rotting along the bottom (see my last picture in this post). They might make it through this year but definitely not another garden season. Because they are wooden they feed the soil as they break down but in the long run they are more expensive to keep replacing than the stone beds.

Here’s a closer shot of the circular stone bed. It’s about four feet across. The ground slopes downward to the left which made leveling the circle a challenge. It’s not set like a retaining wall should be with layers of gravel underneath but it doesn’t need to be. It just needs to hold the dirt inside.

Three of the beds that once occupied the area are now in a U shape. Mostly because I thought it looked neat but also because they are easy beds to reach across. These may end up being our greens and beans beds.

The fourth small bed was moved over an existing 4′x6′ bed which turned it into a tiered raised bed system. The left side will get more shade which might be conducive to growing greens a little longer into the summer.

You can see how much those boards that were new last year have rotted in one season. It all depends on the moisture. Dry years will help the boards last longer but it’s been very wet lately. That’s not a bad thing, unless you are an unpressure treated raised bed!

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Cedar Glade St Johnswort is a blaze of multicolored leaves from October  through December in my garden.

 A study in yellows, golds and burgundies  greets me as I walk the garden.

Hypericum frondosum is a fantastic plant that is as happy in a cultivated  garden or woodland  as it is in the forested understory  near a cedar glade.  It’s an easy to grow native of the Southeastern US, including Texas and Louisiana.  It flowers best in full sun with decent moisture, but tolerates dry shade very well.  I mulch it with fallen leaves, but, occasionally it dies back.  Not to worry, it blooms on new growth.  

It came to my garden as the cultivar  ‘Sunburst’; a shorter, more compact looking shrub then  the species.    The mother plant is long gone and all the seedlings have grown to  resemble H frondosum with its  lankier growth habit.

 I love them. I  love their lanky growth; their exfoliating bark; their blue green summer foliage; their hyper colored fall foliage; their golden sunburst flowers; and,  that bees and other pollinators  flock to them when in bloom.  It’s a short lived and free seeding plant and that ain’t bad! I’ve massed them in the garden and still have had enough to share with friends.

Click to enlarge this one!

 I think they are stunning plants in the fall, handsome in the summer and striking in the winter.

At a  friend’s house

Every fall when I see their  brilliant color I wonder why more American gardeners haven’t planted them.  I think they  make a wonderful substitute for the invasive and  ubiquitous  Euonomous alata.   They really are fine looking, four season  semi woodie shrubs that gives you a lot of bang for the gardening buck.

I love the excellent  blue-green foliage and bright sunny yellow flowers.

How could you not consider this beauty for your garden!

The facts about Hypericum frondosum

• Plant type                 shrub      Native Southeast, Mid-Atlantic states, Louisiana and Texas
• Light                        full-sun-to-part-shade
• Height                      2 ft.6 in. to 4 ft.
• Spread                      about 3 ft.
• Habit                        upright
• Soil pH                     slightly-acidic-to-neutral-pH6.5-7
• Soil moisture            dry, tolerates wet soil in winter
• Bloom time               early June at Clay and Limestone
• Flower color             yellow
• Bloom size                2 in. to 2 in.
• Foliage color             a luscious blue-green
• Foliage size               4 in. to 4 in.
• Faunal Associations  Hairstreak caterpillar and bees  

 Welcome to Clay and Limestone’s Wildflower Wednesday celebration. WW is about sharing and celebrating wildflowers from all over this great big, beautiful world. Join us on the fourth Wednesday of each month. Please add your url to Mr Linky and leave a comment. xxoogail

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One lawn care business owner replied “I will tell you from experience, if you do not want to go back to fix anything after the job is complete, you need to get rid of the sod first. You don’t want anything in the way of successfully performing the job. Take out the sod then lay your barrier and lay in the mulch. Charge the customer for all work done including sod removal.

A second business owner said “There are a lot of determining factors here.

• Is this going to be a raised bed?
• Will there be plantings in it?
• How thick will you be applying the mulch?

I would never apply a mulch or soil directly over turf, if you do you may be asking for problems.

Here are some problems you can encounter;

• Poor drainage for the bed

By leaving the layer of turf under the bed you are adding a barrier for water to pool/collect. Therefore drowning the plantings in the bed and decomposing the mulch too quickly.

• Organic matter stealing nitrogen

Turf is organic matter and when it breaks down it actually steals nitrogen from the soil to do so. Leaving the turf may stunt the growth of any plantings you install in the bed.

• High maintenance for the bed

Leaving the turf under the bed is asking for hours of weed/grass pulling over the growing season, which is counterproductive in my book.

In closing, do it right in the beginning. Remove the turf before installing planting/mulch beds and you’ll save your self headaches in the future. Plus it makes you look better as a contractor to clients. You’ll leave them in a peace of mind knowing that the job was done correctly.

If it is a large area that needs to be removed and you don’t have the equipment to do the job, sub out the sod removal and then finish the job.”

A third lawn care business owner said “spray the area you want removed with round up first. Then wait two weeks for a good kill. Scalp the area that is to become the mulch bed to the ground or rent a sod cutter and cut it out. Leaving the roots in the soil actually aids in the aeration of the soil so water, nutrients, and air moves more readily to the root zone. Weed block is a very short term answer for suppression of weeds.

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We need to remember that eons ago, no one raked leaves. Before people stepped in. leaves fell to the forest floor where they mixed with the twigs and were stirred up by small animals. They provided natural mulch in the winter and then broke down, enriching the soil and fertilizing the trees the rest of the year. We need to take a cue from nature and use leaves in our yards as much as possible.

Different parts of your landscape have different needs. You can use leaves all over your yard, but there are some inappropriate places to put them as well.

If you are trying to grow grass on your lawn, allowing the leaves to remain where they fall is not practical. The weight of the wet leaves can suffocate grass and moisture will build up under the leaves and cause a host of fungal diseases. If you have a mulching lawn mower, use it to cut the grass and chop the leaves at the same time. But, if you end up with more than one-fourth to three-eights inch on your lawn, it’s time to go to Plan B.

Put the bagger on your lawn mower and collect the chopped leaves and grass clippings. Then, place them around your shrubs for winterizing mulch. In the past, I didn’t like to recommend using leaves as mulch because they tended to compress and mat down, but when they’re chopped, they tend to loft up slightly. This allows air circulation and prevents them from compacting as quickly into an imperious layer that limits water and air from reaching plant roots. Chopped leaves will also biodegrade more rapidly.

If you mulch your shrubs and still have leaves left, put a four inch layer over your garden and spade it under. This will provide nutrients for next growing season. You can do the same in flowerbeds.

For areas of ground cover, don’t try to remove all leaves. Allowing some to work down into the soil will add nutrients to the soil in these beds as well. Now, don’t allow the entire tree to shed all its leaves on one bed of ground cover. The plants may suffocate and dies. For these areas, I like to use an electric or gas powered vacuum-type leaf remover and take most of the leaves from the bed without having to continually stomp through it or damage plants with a rake.

If you still have some leaves left, add them to your compost pile. Don’t forget to turn it. If you have children, you might want to leave one big pile of leaves in the yard until it really gets cold. Leaf piles, as you may remember, are great for jumping in, throwing around and just generally having a lot of fun with.

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The goal of most lawn mavens is to show a thick, lush cover of green foreground, welcoming any and all to a home where one cares greatly about his appearance. I could make a long, long list of guys and gals to whom this means something magical and serves a vital role in their well-being. Sure, some are a bit “out there” and darn near obsessive with it all. It happens!

In the end, a lush lawn is, by any criterion, gorgeous to look at and improves such things as air quality and the maintenance of dust control for a home. What we often overlook in the maintenance end of any lawn is a certain “tired” nature a lawn can acquire after a period of years. It is for this reason the entire notion of “overseeding” takes place. An informed sprinkling of grass seed over an existing lawn is never something to overlook. It is one chore which may be the easiest of all toward maintaining a healthy lawn. It also allows the introduction of new species of seed to augment or to ameliorate existing conditions, leading to an improved stand of grass lawn. Whether we are looking for an improved substance to walk on or one which may be, say, more disease resistant, overseeding allows this function.

Typically, overseeding commences with a real low mowing of the existing lawn – at a severely low setting. Seed is then sprinkled over the entire lawn, with some manual raking with a grass rake to follow. This “bedding” of the seeds allows contact with soil and some protection from elements while the germination period transpires. It also allows a couple of weeks between mowings, which we would do without a catcher.

Naturally, watering the new seeds is required on a very regular basis, either by one’s own devices or by rain. But attention to this detail is fairly vital. In the end, what one finds is a far lusher stand of lawn than before, with an improved top, lush as when it was initially installed, if not more so. A gradual shifting from here can tale place, in terms of the grass chosen. Bear in mind many types of grass combine exceptionally well.

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