April Garden Activity 2016

The plants in my garden are really starting to grow quickly now. The tulips are looking so colourful in my rock garden, next to the house and in the Stackstone bed. The few in my triangle bed have been chomped on. I added some Bobbex the other day but not till after I noticed the damage. 

I think I need some new Bobbex as well. The old stuff might be off, it really smells terrible!

Tiny Creeping Phlox

 The little blue variety of creeping Phlox has really flourished in my rock garden. I think I will divide it and put some back into my stackstone bed as most of it there has died out. I had little luck with getting the pink blooming variety to grow very well.

Earth Day brought a super surprise this year! The tree swallows which normally don't show up till about May 4th, made their first appearance
on April 22, almost 2 weeks early!

First swallow has returned to check out the accommodations Earth Day April 22

 The next day another pair of swallows showed up and claimed the house behind the house. They are smoking at the top of the tree snag and working on decimating our flying insect population.  :)

Grape Hyacinth

 The little grape hyacinths are so cute and looking quite healthy.
The day lilies at the bottom of my rock garden bed are thriving.  The one closest to the steps has to be divided in the next few days. They both get so huge and usually get covered in a mass of yellow lilies. These two plus the one by the pond were originally here when we moved in almost 10 years ago.
The 2 in my triangle bed are about 5 years old and the orange one in my stack stone bed is about 2 years old and still quite small.

Large daylily perennial in rock garden

 The Persian Cornflowers and the tiny Forget Me Nots in the stack stone bed are all growing well.  The Forget Me Nots usually bloom quite early. and the Cornflowers some time after that.

The peony on the east side of the main steps is up and hopefully it will bloom this year. Because it was so recently moved it might not happen yet. The peony next to the house was the first one up and has lots of healthy stems. Hopefully it will bloom again this year. I was amazed that it did bloom last year because I had just transplanted it the year before. Goes to show that my "peony Curse" is over!!

Daffodils are  blooming.





 

Today I cleaned up the rest of my lower rock garden bed. Had to dig out the rogue white daisy babies trying to grow at the lower edge on that bed, They were badly infiltrated with quack grass which I removed. I replanted the little sedums at the front of that bed and I dug up a mass of bearded irises at the front corner. The irises were so crowded and needed to be separated. I put them in a pail of peat moss for now and I'm going to give three quarters of them away.  Most of them probably won't bloom till next year, though.  

I have to dig up/divide a whole bunch of perennials early next week to donate to the Stettler Beautification Committees Mother's Day Plant Swap.  (Thanks Marilyn S for taking them there for me. :) )

Happy Gardening!

Flower Bed Clean Up -April 2016

April 1 to 7- The tulips started popping their leaves out of the ground.
Today ( April 12 ) they are up about 6 inches already at the side of the house and one or two already have buds!!  (I don't want to say that too triumphantly; it might antagonize the weather deities and who knows what ugly weather might follow! )

My Hollyhocks have sprouted in that bed and are reminding me to do something about the 3 rogues growing at the front of that bed. Holly hocks don't like to be moved once they are growing. They have a deep main root and are hard to dig up, too, but not impossible.  I did have some success last year so it's worth a try.

Bearded irises and Hollyhocks (back)

April 3
I started my flower bed clean up. I'm quite certain that is the earliest time on record for me! Yay, to early spring!
I cleaned up the side of the house bed, clipped off the rest of the dead holly hock leaves and branches that I had missed in October.  Dug out some grass roots (Isn't that a 'given' in all of my flower beds!?) and added some compost (store bought bags), plus some rich dark soil from the pile over by the greenhouse that we had trucked in last year.
 I also started cleaning up the shady end of the stack stone bed and added some soil to a hole left there after I dug out a white daisy last fall.

Tulips and clematises

April 11- I cleaned up the top of the Rock Garden bed next to the deck. Lots of quack grass roots came out of there! I added some compost and some fresh soil as well. Filled in a hole that the dog had dug (Brandy!  Possibly with help from Jackson.)

Iron fencing to deter dog digging

Pasque flower (tame crocus)

April 12
The Pasque Flower in my Stack Stone bed started blooming yesterday (April 11),  but the big winner this year for "First to Bloom" are 2 little Jolly Jump Up wild pansies that survived under the winter snow to please me with their cute little purple faces so early this spring!

Jolly Jump Ups

Tulips, daffodils and roses

So pleased - My rose bushes have buds !  I had to start unwrapping the burlap around my Morden roses in the Stack stone bed as most of them had stated setting buds already! Today I removed the mulch around the bushes and spread the peat into the surrounding bed. First though, I dug up a laundry basket full of quack grass weeds. That battle has started full on!

That bed is still not all done, though. The west side still needs some attention (grass removal). So nice to see that my Lamb's Ears  and my persian Sunflowers survived as well. 

Cosmos seedlings April 12

 Greenhouse-
The squashes are growing quickly  and the tomato seedlings are too. I will have to transplant them all in a week or so into their own individual pots.

Dahlias- I had to snip back the dahlia shoots to encourage them to grow bushier. I have 2 big pots of Firebirds (orange and yellow) 1 small firebird, 2 red Thompson Dahlias and 1 Mystery Day (Purple and white)

Dahlias, 3 firebird, 2 red Thompson and 1 Mystery Day. 

Purple Russian heirloom tomatoes, Early Girls and Lemon Boys

The crocuses were gorgeous and at their best around April 14.

Today April 19/ 2016 the crocuses are still blooming on Picnic Hill but many of them are spent now.

+25C here today!

Spring Gardening March 12, 2016

Spring is here!  Time to start the new planting season. :)

Dividing the Dahlia tubers

Dahlia tubers

This year I planted my dahlia tubers on March 12. They had sprouted long this white eyes just like they always do when I check them in the rubber maid tub in the laundry room. That location is not the ideal as it is far too warm and encourages the dahlia tubers to sprout too soon. 

I spread newspaper on the floor in the laundry room,  cut most of the long shoots off and then divided the tubers. I cut off or pulled off any dried up parts. Next I planted the best tubers in fresh potting soil (Miracle Grow soil).  (I had washed most of the pots in the laundry room sink the previous day.)

I now have: 3 pots Firebird dahlias, 2 large, 1 small. (Two pots to plant out in the yard and one for on the deck.)

2 pots of red "Thompson" Dahlias, 1 large, 1 small

2 pots of Mystery Day purple and white Dahlias

1 pot unknown ( Most likely Firebirds; they had the most surviving tubers.)

Dahlia Tubers have been planted

March 17  I planted Tomato seeds, Squash seeds, English cucumber seeds and red peppers today. (Thanks go out to my Helpful Husband who washed dozens of 4  to 6 inch pots on the deck with the hose.)

Tomatoes: Early Girls

Lemon Boys

Tumblers

Patio Tomatoes

Purple Russians

Squashes: Spaghetti and Kabochas

Tomato seeds have sprouted March 23/ 2016

March 23rd The small pots of tomatoes and squashes have all germinated. 

 Dahlias were all sprouting and growing well.

The English cucumber seeds have not germinated, nor the Red Peppers or zucchinis.  Will have to buy some bedding plants, I guess.

March 24  all the pots were moved from the living room into the greenhouse.

Dahlias March 23/ 2016

April 1, 2016 

We ate a butternut squash on Easter weekend and I saved some of the seeds. I planted them in a pot today and put it in the greenhouse. 

I  planted some Blue poppy seeds today as well, (Meconopsis Baileyi) from Butchard gardens, Victoria BC, which were a gift from a friend.  It seems these seeds are pretty tricky to grow. Most poppy seeds need light to germinate (unlike most seeds) but this variety needs darkness and cool temperatures. They can take up to 25 days to germinate! Patience is required! They are currently in a pot in the dark crawl space under the stairs, the coolest place in the house, (which also contains our wine, coffee pods and our preserves. )

That same day I also planted Zinnia seeds and Morning Glories seeds from packages on April 1st. The zinnias are up already but no sign of any action from the Morning Glories yet. 

Early Spring for 2016!

Early Spring for 2016!

We had a very mild winter 2015-2016 with a modest amount of snow this year, second year in a row now.  How lucky can we get!  Eastern Canada and the eastern US had our prairie winter this time and we ended up with their winter weather. Go figure! (I suppose they will want to trade back once they realize what's happened. ;)

The Canada Geese showed up early, as they usually do. These photos are of March 5/ 2016, taken in a field just north of Stettler off HWY 56.

  The robins arrived in mid March even though there was still plenty  of snow on the ground and the weather had turned cold after a week of mild weather.

Eating our chokecherries March 23/16

Robin sat outside the breakfast nook for a long tim eating the leftover choke cherries.

Looking in the window at us. Maybe he's saying. "Thank you for breakfast! "  :) 

Not long after this, I saw a small flock of Robins about 7 or 8 of them all sitting together in one of the trees by the driveway. No photo though.

So looking forward to a terrific new growing season! 

                    

Pond Goldfish October 2015

Goldfish Pond Oct 2015 (Found this in my draft file.)

We cleaned out the pond this week (Oct.1st) and pulled almost 50 goldfish out this year!  We still had 6 small spare goldfish in the 20 gallon tank inside the house. Of course the year that I kept spares, nothing happened to the fish in the pond ( like in some previous years).

We drained our pond and netted the fish as the water dropped. There was a layer of leaves and slug in the bottom of the"deep end" of the pond and numerous little grey babies were trying to hibernate there. Since the pond is so shallow, they would have frozen solid eventually.  Not sure why, but we had a number of casualties this time, mostly the smallest babies. Maybe the water in the "rescue pails" was too cold.  We still have more than enough gold fish, though, to fill the pond again next spring and then some!

I believe that all the adults (14 large and medium sized) that we put into the pond this spring survived.
There are now 10 large to mediums in the 30 gallon tank (in the laundry room ), as well as 4 grey babies. There are 11 small/ medium goldfish in the 20 gallon tank and about 14 surviving grey babies.

We lost a few tiny ones which got stuck on the filter intake… :(
I cleaned that filter this morning and added another intake tube to make it longer so hopefully the rest of the little fish will be okay.

Ended up giving away 12 of my goldfish to someone who came to the house to look at my big 140 gallon tropical tank.

March 2016
All the goldfish survived the winter in the house. No casualties. We are experiencing a wonderful warm early spring, even earlier than what spring 2015 was, so hopeful we can put the goldfish back out in the pong in April.