The Back Flowerbed

 ETA: I think I wrote this post sometime around June, but recently discovered that it never actually got posted.  Since I talk about this flower bed a lot and consider it a work in progress...I'm posting it now.

 

I've been alluding for some time to an ongoing project near our back fence, so I thought I'd better explain myself.  The "back 40" is the strip of land (steep slope) on the opposite side of this fence.  When we bought this house I had grand plans to put a gate in this fence and steps in the hillside - I even planted a bunch of flowers down the sides of these imaginary steps.  Then the city mowed them all over, exercising their right (obligation?) to mow the "right-of-way" opposite a fence with no gate.  And the real estate market went bad, and I got busy, and frankly it was just so far from the house...okay, enough excuses.  We've been letting the weeds take over the back 40 and the whole fence line ever since.  In the grand tradition of Shaela's house projects, I neglected to take a before picture before diving in.  To give you some idea how bad it had gotten, here's a closer shot of the section behind the shed where I encountered a rose bush and stopped clipping.

Somewhere in that clump is not only a massive multiflora rose, but also a medium-sized holly bush.  But when you look at it, you can't even tell they're there.

So I've devoted several hours this spring to chopping down volunteer trees and ripping out at least three different kinds of ivy, one of which seems to give me a very mild rash.  The cups you see in the picture at the top are little perennial seedlings, some of which I've already planted but many of which are still tipping over every time the wind gusts above 5mph.  ("Do you think they thought those were just trash?" N asked about the cups after some guests left one night.)  There are balloon flowers, pony tail grass, mallow, and soapwort, as well as a few daylilies I planted from seed last spring, a couple tough-as-nails flowering shrubs rescued from my former neighbor's flower bed, and two blueberry bushes.  (And, of course, potatoes in the recycling tote.)  It still takes some imagination, but I think it's going to be spectacular once it's planted and growing.

Dead Rosemary

My poor rosemary plant

I planted the rosemary pictured above from seed in the spring of 2010, and carefully nurtured it through its first winter on my kitchen window.  Growing herbs from seed is something I have been discouraged from doing and indeed find very difficult - only the really easy ones like basil and dill ever work out for me.  I had counted this rosemary a success after we spent most of last winter making delicious rosemary potatoes with it.  I was planning to plant it in the ground in September and let it winter outside this year.

But it seems that for every baby I bring into this world I must say goodbye to at least 3 potted plants.  I left this little one outside during our awful heat wave back in July and forgot to water it, and now even I have to admit that it is dead.  This is victim number two, killed simultaneously to a much-harassed blueberry bush that never did.

Raspberries!

 In 2009 I ordered 6 raspberry bushes and a blueberry bush from Gurney's during an end-of-season sale.  Five of the raspberry bushes died that first summer, despite hours of careful soil preparation and drainage adjustment.  The blueberry bush is still limping along.  This year, the sixth raspberry bush finally produced something besides long, fruitless canes.  (Meanwhile, the three shoots I got from Freecycle last year are also producing!)  Oh well, I suppose they were worth the wait.  R certainly thinks so.  As a bonus, the "old" raspberry bush and the "new" raspberry bushes seem to reach peak production at different times!  Now the only trouble is trying to help R understand the difference between a red raspberry and a really red raspberry. 

Sulfur-ing the Blueberries

Last spring I planted a blueberry bush in what is now part of my new garden bed. I planted six raspberry bushes at the same time and lost five of them over the summer months. When this little blueberry lost all its leaves last fall I wondered if maybe it had died, but it did come back. There are even a few bunches of cute little bell-shaped flowers on it, though I am supposed to pick them off again this year to allow the bush to grow more before its first fruit-bearing season.

I put sulfur around the bush this week to try to acidify the soil, that's what the whitish stuff on the ground is. Our soil is naturally acidic, but the internet tells me that the pale green and pinkish color to my leaves probably means the soil ph is too high for the roots to absorb enough iron. I have a similar problem around my one surviving rhododendron (the other died shortly after we moved in) so I sulfur'd that as well.

I hope this helps. R really, really loves blueberries and I am pretty fond of them myself!

Oh, and for anyone who has not tried fresh-picked raspberries, give them a shot next time you have a chance - they are so much better than the ones you buy in the store.