Three weekends ago I finally got around to returning the two dead Leyland Cypress trees to Lowe’s for a refund after they up and died on us within a one week period.  They literally went from looking fine to being completely brown within days.  So weird.  Well, this time I did a little more research before making my purchases and decided to add some large holly trees to our yard.  I was told to purchase Nellie Steven’s holly bushes, but when I got to the nursery up the street they had a great deal on Robin’s Hollies, so I bought them instead.  I’m such a sucker, right?  Anything for a sale price!  Even though the information posted read just like the Steven’s Hollies, they will probably die soon too.  Okay, I will get over my melancholy now and just pray for the best.

Back to where I started, three weeks ago I picked up two 6 foot Robin’s Hollies and they have been sitting in position in our yard ever since. 

Hello, my crooked little street buffering friend!

I brought them home late on a Sunday afternoon, just shy of the end of the Little Guy’s nap, so there was no time for planting.  In removing these beasts from the truck I managed to strain my lower back something fierce and continued to feel the pain until mid-week when I then found out we would possibly be having company for the weekend.  Change-O-Plans and I went into Operation Clean House to be ready just in case.  Well we had a nice visit and as soon as our company left, the rains began.  I say “rains” because I was beginning to think we were living in the tropics or something!?!  This past weekend was finally nice enough for yard work, but alas, I was already committed to a parade and festival on Saturday and Sunday School Sub the next day.  Let’s just say this is the first moment I have had to really deal with the two large Holly bushes/trees in our yard.   Now, I think I may just be procrastinating the inevitable…..plus our crazy neighbors are out there relentlessly blowing every bit of dirt off their driveway.  As soon as that blower goes off, I’m ON IT!

Kitsch Krafts

PS – Got ‘er Done!

Drink, drink, grow, drink and GROW!!!!

In between rounds of hole digging for the new trees I also somehow managed to put together the veggie patch and get some food started this past spring.   At this point, I have already pulled the dead and bolting stuff out of the veggie patch twice and just planted another round of lettuces and spinach.

I tried to give the tomatoes another week, but they just hung there looking more and more unattractive as their leaves curled up and started to die.  Plus, the fruit was staying green and not really getting any larger, so earlier this week I yanked them out of their cozy little beds and sent them packing.  We had an abundance of tomatoes this summer that we enjoyed immensely.  My only regret is not planting more so I could make sauce for the winter.  This is something I plan to remedy next spring with a garden expansion- hopefully! 

A couple of Best Boys ripening on the vine earlier this summer.

By the way, I planted three Supersonics and a Best Boy this year.  They grew in a very upright pattern and produced a LOT of fruit.  So much so, that one plant got really heavy and slid down the stake, breaking under the weight.  I employed my usual method of staking and pinching off the suckers as they came up, taking only one additional step of actually pruning away branches around the bottom of the plants, to allow for more airflow, and cutting back those that were really blocking the progress of their neighboring plant.  The process seemed to work very well and I believe if we commit an entire raised bed just to tomato plants we will have plenty of sauce for a fully stocked pantry by next September.  I had never grown these varieties before and was pleasantly surprised with the results.  Hopefully Lowe’s will run another 2 for a $1.00 deal on tomatoes next year as well.  Wow, I just realized that we enjoyed cream of the crop slicing tomatoes all summer for $2.00!  cool.

Right now, I am hoping our jalapenos and couple of bell pepper plants hold on long enough to finish what they have started, which is just a little too small to pick yet.

This shot makes me giggle because the pepper plants look so funny being the only large, upright things in this garden bed right now.  The lettuce is coming in nicely to the left, though!

The herbs I left in the ground are still going crazy and while the strawberries are continuing to grow, they are not doing anything more than staying green. In the cleared areas of the beds I sowed some more lettuces and spinach, which have already started to sprout. 

If all goes well we should have more leafy green stuff than we can stand to eat in just a couple more weeks.  With this last attempt at outdoor gardening completed I am now shifting my focus to an indoor herb garden and some herb decorating for the fall.

Last week I dug up a couple of basil plants, some clusters of chives and the lone parsley plant to bring indoors. 

I used a cool oval galvanized tub that I found on sale at Joann’s the week before. Now I am counting on the sunny kitchen windows to help keep these plants going, because I can’t wait to use fresh herbs during the dreary winter months. Also, for some fall decor I transplanted my extremely neglected mum plants from last fall into bigger pots, along with a couple of our overgrown sage plants from the garden.

Since all I had to use for transplanting were ugly black plastic nursery planters, I squished them into our large galvanized tub to make one big display for our front landing. 

The soft gray-green of the sage plants contrasts nicely with the darker green of the mum leaves.  I like the color of the sage plants so much that I am considering pulling the last couple from the garden to add to the pumpkin display we will place on the steps next month.  Plus, pulling them out of the garden will free up more room for spinach- yum!  Now, if only the mums out front would give us some blooms we will really be in the fall décor business!

Have any of you started decorating for this time of year?  Do you bring anything in from your garden to keep going during the winter?  Any tips to keeping things alive indoors?

Kitsch Krafts

My outdoor “To-Do” list is off the charts right now. I was hoping for a little more warm weather before having to trudge around the yard, cleaning up all the gardening and other messes.  I guess I should be happy that I won’t be baking in the sun while straightening out this space before winter sets in.  Not only did I put together a small veggie patch this past spring, but I also toiled away at planting 16, yep, 16 Leyland Cypress trees around the property.  We have a fairly wooded lot, especially for a neighborhood.  We have wooded sections on either side, out back along our fence line and out front in between the ends of our circle drive.  We love having this added privacy, especially since we live on the main road into the neighborhood.  These wooded areas consist mainly of large and small deciduous trees, mostly of the oak variety.  Interspersed among these trees are several regular long needle pines, cedars, and many mature Leyland Cypress trees.  We also have a couple of dogwood trees and crepe myrtles in key areas for color and bloom.  The rest of the yard pretty much has small, very neglected boxwoods, azaleas, iris plants and lilies.  The previous owners clearly had some initial landscaping completed and then proceeded to do nothing going forward.  While we loved the idea of having all this space and “stuff” to work with, we did not have a very good understanding of the time and/or budget commitment our yard would take up.  So, we have proceeded with caution on both fronts when it comes to changing and maintaining the grounds of our home. 

Late last summer and early this spring we had a sudden decent in the ranks of the Leyland Cypress trees.  Here are some pictures of our backyard from early this year.  You can see the trees we lost are almost completely brown when I took these shots and since the leaves are off the other trees you can also see the views we want to block.

View to the left.

View straight toward the middle.

View toward the right.

We lost four very large Leylands out back and a huge, story and a half sized tree from the front yard. This was really quite devastating to us because to truly replace what we lost would be in the several thousand dollar range and would require bringing in large equipment. Neither bringing in the heavy equipment to make the fix, or living without the privacy the bushy trees yielded, was an option for us. So, as soon as the sale papers arrived touting the 4 to 5 foot Leylands on sale for $16.99 I jumped at the opportunity to get some screening going ASAP!

View toward the side yard, before.

After walking the yard several times we decided 12 trees would do the trick to start. I actually began the monumental task of all this planting by adding two trees to our side yard to begin the buffer between us and the neighbors.

View toward side yard, after.

Closer view of the side yard trees through the fence.  They actually grew a good foot taller and wider just this summer.

We love these neighbors and they are good friends, but we don’t enjoy looking onto their deck and screened porch while sitting out on our deck in the evenings. Plus, the sounds from passing cars out front seem to be amplified as they come into the backyard in between our houses. We figured two fast growing, bushy evergreens would cut both the view and noise in half within the next couple of years.

Then I planted the other 10 along the back fence and in the empty spots from their fallen comrades. Before I even finished the planting, which took a couple of weeks of afternoon naptimes, we realized we needed at least 6 more to fill in all the gaps everywhere else. And, those last 6 took another couple of weeks to get into the ground because I was just flat, exhausted!

View of the left side after removing the large dead Leyland and planting three along the back fence.

A little bit closer shot of the plantings and part of the view we want to block.  That’s our left side backdoor neighbor’s garage, driveway and back of their house.  They also have a shed with a HUGE pile of yard waste behind it.  They don’t see it, but we do.

View of the middle section of the backyard, including the back of the left side neighbor’s shed and massive stick pile.  You can also see some of the dead new trees in this shot.

View of the right side after removing the dead tree from the front of the bed and planting two trees along the back of the fence.

Here is a close up of one of those newly planted trees on the way to tree heaven.

Now, with the weather changing we need to get out and do that last minute clean up before we start being pummeled by the falling leaves. And, before winter really sets in. We were also considering adding some other trees and bushes to our yard to help round out the landscaping, add more privacy and some interest. While doing our research on new and different varieties we have discovered that we should not have replaced the fallen Leylands with more Leylands. Apparently there is a disease in VA that is killing them all- great! We have also noticed that several already appear to be succumbing to that disease- Double Great!

This week I have added, “remove the dead and dying Leylands” to the “To-Do” list along with purchase and plant some new stuff. Luckily I still have my receipts from Lowe’s, and luckily they have that lovely 1 year warranty for plants. Thank God! Now, it’s on to Camelias, Stevens Hollies, Skip Laurels, Accubas, Wax Myrtles…anything that will grow in mostly shade and not keel over on us within 6 months. While I am not looking forward to all this hard yard work, I am excited to see some new things out back and hopefully lose the view of my neighbor’s discarded stick pile!

So, what are you guys focusing on in your yards right now? Planting or just removing the spent stuff?

Kitsch Krafts

Back in the middle of June I posted about the progress we had made with transforming our smallish garden plot into two larger raised beds.  To catch up you can click here.  Not only had I taken our old dilapidated railroad tie bed and turned it into two raised beds, but I also added a wider landing to the backdoor from the garage.

Shot from the left side of the backdoor, mid-June.

Shot of the landing, right outside of the backdoor, mid-June.

Shot of the right side of the backdoor, mid-June.

At the time that I was sharing this project things had just begun to take off in the garden.  I had planned to take some more pictures in mid-July to show off how things had progressed at that point.  Well, that time came and went and I took some pictures.  Unfortunately they were not of a stunning and vibrant garden.  It was more like what I would image Sanford & Son had out back between the piles of junk.  Did I just date myself?  Actually, I think I watched mainly syndicated episodes as a very, very young child.  ;o)

Here are the same plots in mid-July.  Left side of the backdoor.

Backdoor landing, mid-July.  I had already pulled down the sugar snap peas and they are part of the weed pile on the ground to the left of the landing.

The jungle to the right of the backdoor.

Anyway, I snapped these shots right before going on a clean-up rampage, weeding and pulling out spent crops.  The lettuce would not die out, but had gotten to the point of being more wilted than edible.  The spinach never did much of anything and our sugar snap peas literally dried up and died on the vine.  The worst issue was sharing garden space with Mr. Mole’s home. 

As you can see in the picture above (all the dark spots) he burrowed his way out of the beds each night and had a smorgasbord.  First he striped my bush beans from the bottom of the plants up.  What we got off of those plants was so good and we were very disappointed that he killed those plants before they even hit their prime.  Next Mr. Mole moved on to the carrot patch.  What was strange was that he would come out at night and eat the tops, but then leave the bottoms.  So, despite the damage to the tops, I pulled them up and used them shredded in several meals.  He left many of the larger carrot plants alone for a week or so more and they ended up being a pretty good size when I finally pulled them out.  He ate all the parsley, but left the sage.  I don’t know why, but he has not even touched the other planting bed at all.  Thank GOD!

You can see one last bush bean plant, way in the back to the right, hanging on the end of the little trellis for dear life.  The lettuce was flowing out of the front and back of the bed and the sunflowers were starting to get a bit too heavy at this point. 

But, the basil at the far left was ready for the first big harvest!

Just on the other side of the backdoor to the garage, the tomatoes, squash and cucumbers are thriving through the heat. 

The green peppers and jalapenos are still growing, but not producing like we had hoped.  We did finally get one nice big green pepper just this week and we have been pulling one or two jalapenos off every week.  Which, it turns out, is enough for our palates….at least mine and the Little Guy…The Mister likes things scorching hot!  The problem is that the squash went completely insane and took over the bed, drowning out  the peppers.  I even had to put in a piece of the metal fencing between the squash and the rest of the bed because it wasn’t just shading the peppers, it was growing up and over them.  I have since trained the squash over the metal fence along the front of the bed and out into the yard.  I would have pulled all of the metal fencing from that end of the bed if the cucumber vines had not completely covered it.  They even started growing into the peppers, using them to hold on to as they lurched up and over those plants too.  Cucumbers and squash are like Seymour from “Little Shop of Horrors”.  They just get bigger and bigger and want more and more.  They are a little bit scary to deal with!  Although they have turned into nuisance plants they have been giving us a steady stream of produce, so I am not totally unhappy with them.

The one planting that did disappoint, aesthetically anyway, were the sunflowers.  If I plant them again, I will definitely do so next to a sturdy fence or trellis.  I thought this variety did not get very tall, but I must have actually grabbed the wrong packet of seeds because pretty much all of them are in the 6-8 foot range and have 1.5-2 inch stalks.  They are HUGE and heavy and they keep falling over into the other plants, breaking things on their way down.  Plus, they have added shade where we really did not need any.  So, this one was a “lesson learned” sort of planting.  Again, next time I won’t count on stakes to help hold them, I will just put them by the fence for support. 

We are looking forward to all those seeds, though.  Not only did the stalks get big, but several have nearly foot wide heads on them, so we hope to collect the seeds for snacking.  I will let you guys know how that goes.

After cleaning up the garden I was left with a pretty significant empty space in the bed on the left side of the backdoor.  If it had not been for the extreme heat and Mr. Mole, I had planned to attempt some second round plantings.  I even considered transplanting the peppers so they could breath a little.  I was advised against the transplanting and sowing anything else from seed, simply because the heat would not allow for germination.  Since we discovered that our dog was the one eating the strawberries I decided to try placing the pots up on the bed in the empty spots.  And, because Mr. Mole had been so selective in what he ate, I figured it was worth a shot to see if he was even going to be interested in this new addition.  Also, one of the strawberry pots had tons of runners, so I thought they might take root and I could eventually cut them from the main pot and let them do their own thing. 

So far they are still alive, but languishing in the sun.  We have experienced some cooler nights, but now we don’t have much rain.  If it’s not one thing, it’s another!  So far the mole does not seem interested in the strawberries, and since only one of the pots is producing anything I am not really sure if he just hasn’t noticed them yet.  I just keep watering everything and pulling off the ripe stuff as it comes along.

The basil transplants from the end of June have done very well and we have made four batches of pesto to enjoy at least one night (and several lunches for me!) a week.  Between the pesto and the juicy, ripe tomatoes we have been in backyard veggie patch heaven.  Those are the main things I long for when digging, weeding and planting.  So, I guess I can say that even with the issues we have faced this summer the garden has been pretty successful.  Now, to talk The Mister into adding some more beds!  I think we could use some eggplants and zucchini!  Mmmm…..

So tell me, how does your garden grow?

Kitsch Krafts

Not only are our Crepe Myrtles in full effect, but the sunflowers I planted at the back of the garden beds are starting to open up.  I walked into our powder room last week and noticed two of the sunflowers have popped up just above the window sill. 

We have been watching the petals unfurl on the smaller one, while the bees pull pollen from the other.

Nature is pretty cool, right?

;o)

Kitsch Krafts

As you may recall, last year I mentioned that we planted a few veggies in an old planting bed behind our house and next to our back deck.  It wasn’t a pretty sight at all, with rotting railroad ties and dirt spilling out the unfinished end toward the deck.  You can jog your memory here and check out a super cute, rolly-polly fat baby helping me with the harvest while you are at it. 

Here are some shots from the deck pre-planting in 2010.  The bed stretched all the way to the pavers at the garage door stoop.  Just beyond the pavers you can see our Rubbermaid tool shed.  (Lovely, I know!)

This year I decided to get off my duff and make a slightly nicer raised bed to house our mini crops.  Of course, as soon as I started discussing my plans with The Mister, he suggested I add another planting bed on the other side of our garage door.  Initially I had been convinced that I could just plant other things in the sunny spots around the yard and harvest when ready.  He reminded me of the deer that live in the woods to one side of our property, coupled with the plethora of chubby squirrels would result in nada if I didn’t keep my edible plantings near the house.  He was right (don’t tell him I said that) because I have been losing strawberries to something that I’m guessing is a squirrel or rabbit just before they are ripe enough to pick.  What’s funny about this dilemma is that the Little Guy and I will spot the ripening fruit and decide to give it one more day to sweeten up and the next day it’s gone!  I am sure whichever animal is taking our goods is watching and listening to our every move when we are out back tending to our little veggie patch.

Ok, back to the details.  With calculating help from The Mister, I decided to build two boxes 4’ X 8’ with corner posts extending down about 6” into the ground.  Basically we went to Home Depot and bought 6 - 12” X 8’ boards and cut two of them in half to create the short sides of the planters.  Then we bought 2-  10 foot  4” X 4” posts to cut down for the corner pieces of the planters.  Don’t double check the math too closely on this one.  We messed up and ended up with more post wood than we needed.  It didn’t help that I changed my original length to 18” posts instead of 24” as recommended by a DIY site I glanced before going to the store.  All was well in the end because I used the leftover wood to help construct a new landing pad from our back garage door. 

I used our compound miter saw to cut the 4” X 4” posts down to 18” in length and to give them an angle on one end to help ease them into the ground.  Then I simply laid my pieces out in the yard, forming a large rectangle, and used 1.75” deck nails to screw the whole thing together.  Piece of cake.  The hardest part for me was just moving the longer sides of the lumber around because they were super heavy.  Then, once the frames were built I had to do a crazy shimmy, shimmy with them up on one end to get them in place.  I know the neighbors had a good time watching me almost kill myself while trying to do all of this on my own.  Once they were in place over the beds I had pre-dug, I just backfilled them and then added more soil to bring the level up to about two inches from the top of the side rails.

I finished the raised beds two weeks before Easter and placed the last few plants the week following Easter weekend.  Here are some shots of the progress at the beginning of June.

A similar view to the before shots from the deck above.  This new raised bed sits next to the deck and to the left of the garage door.  You can see our leggy spinach and some pretty nice lettuce already coming in.  I put sunflowers along half of the back and the other half of the back side is planted with green beans.

Above you can see the carrots coming up, along with some sage.  I put a “stepping” stone with my son’s handprint over the plumbing drain that could not be covered up.  Now there is a nice, useable opening to the coiled hose between the deck steps and the planting area.

Old bed plantings circa 2010.

New bed plantings for 2011.  As you can see the new beds are smaller.  I wanted to keep the dirt pulled away from the brick foundation and make a little more space on the ends for walking around the bed.  It’s still just big enough to be hard to reach the center, but with my height and long arms it’s still possible.

Just on the other side of the garage door is the totally new bed.  I moved the storage shed down the wall toward the driveway, creating a nice little pocket between the neighbor’s view and our garden, where we can hide our safety orange wheelbarrow (a $7.00 yard sale score, so the color mattered little.)  The concrete pavers from our old garage door stoop were recycled as a stable, raised base for the new storage shed location, and so far the inside has remained pretty dirt free.  Yeah!  I planted some yellow squash along the left side of the back, just in front of a line of sunflowers that spans the entire length of this bed.  On the very end of the bed I planted some cucumbers, with the idea that they would end up trailing out and around the edge of the bed, rather than across all the other plantings.  The small plants in front of the squash and to the right of the cukes are basil and cilantro.  I intended to transplant the seedlings to the other bed once the spinach and lettuce had their fun.

On the opposite end of this bed I have the tomatoes, green peppers and jalapenos.  Sprinkled around the bottom are marigolds and some thyme runs along the front edge.  The rickety looking metal fencing you see along portions of both beds are in place to keep the dog out.  For some reason she thinks she needs to lay in the cool dirt of my freshly tilled garden, so I have to do ugly things to keep her out.  I also learned that toddlers like to join their big sister dog in rolling in the dirt, so the fencing has served two purposes.

This shot shows the new back stoop, with a trellised pot of sugar snap peas and marigolds, plus two pots of strawberries (the ones that keep getting eaten!).  The overturned pot tray that doesn’t make any sense was left alone because our resident toad has been using it as a house.  Plus, he scares the be-jezzus out of me every time I go to move it.  It’s yours Mr. Toad, all yours!  (Yes, that is Miss Roxy poking her head out of the dog door.  She always hams it up when she sees a camera!)

One last share and I will wrap up this novel of a post.  As you could see in the before shots way up at the top, the garage door stoop consisted of concrete pavers set in a rotting wooden box of sand.  The pavers looked really bad and had been inching their way out of the wooden frame since we arrived at this home.  Plus, the wonderful workers at Verizon were kind enough to run (through a flower bed, mind you) the wires for our cable and FIOS all of about 5 inches into the dirt and across our backyard.  I was blow away in 2010 when I discovered them laying so close to the surface.  I knew to be careful when digging, but I was sure they would be further down.  Lucky for us, I did not slice through anything, but to save a headache in the future for us or other owners we decided to extend the back stoop into a spacious landing, and cover up those wires with something no one would likely be digging in to.  I used 4” X 4”’s again to create a simple frame at 4’ X 7’ and rather than screwing them to each other, I drilled holes and pounded 12” long bolts through and into the ground at the board ends.  This might not last for eternity, but it seems pretty stable for now.  Then I added a couple more bags of sand and about 5 bags of gravel to level this area off and create a mud free zone.  To make a little bit nicer path to the door I added large flagstone pieces, which also match the pathway from our driveway to the front steps.  See!  Some thought did go in to this!  Anywho, eventually I would like to create some kind of panel to hinge across the utilities.  You know, a door type thing that can be opened and closed in order to hide their ugliness.  In the mean time I decided to position a trellised pot with snap peas in front of this messy part of the wall.  Plus, the pots add visual interest by the back door.

It’s still a work in progress and I will share more photos the beginning of next month.  But, I just wanted to let you all see how things are coming along so far back there this year.  Pretty big change since we took over this little patch of Earth, eh?

Kitsch Krafts

This month has flow by and our backyard veggie patch is really starting to get crazy.  Although I have picked a couple of random ripe tomatoes to enjoy most are just now prime for the picking.  Also, early on we discovered that our old dog Roxy was eating the fruit right off the vine, so our early crop was lost to that little sneak.  I put up a 30 inch high decorative (if you can call those ugly push in the ground metal mini-fences pretty) fence to try to keep her out, but things still went missing.  Finally one morning I noticed mud all along my plants and one tomato, stake and all, bent backward at a weird angle.  Well after following the trail of mud I discovered that she had figured out how to go under the deck, open the lattice that surrounds the underside and slip through into the now fenced off garden in order to pilfer the goods.  Gotta give her some credit for this one, right?  It’s pretty impressive that she worked that all out on her own.  I have since rigged up some string to hold the lattice in place and “connect” the fence to the deck steps post.  It’s not pretty, but so far she is only able to poke her head through and reach a few tomatoes at a time and cannot wreak any more serious havoc…at least so far.  I fear one morning I may come out and find the strings untied- yikes!

After installing the barricade we are now seeing our plants start to burst with fruit.  So, yesterday the Little Guy and I went out to pick tomatoes for a caprese salad we will be enjoying later today and we had a really fun time.  He wanted to pick everything, though, so I ended up having to let him “hold the bucket”.  ;o)  While using one hand and a death grip to keep himself steady on the fence (he is not truly walking yet, just standing and “walking” with lot’s of help from mom and dad) he did manage to sample some basil.  Actually he sampled, spit out and then seeming to forget his distaste for the herb, sampled again.  During this whole time, Roxy kept coming up to sniff and poke him with her nose, all the while eyeing his bucketful of her forbidden treat.

Starring hard at a poking dog.  You can see my attempt at stabilizing the tomato plant that Roxy knocked over with some string to the fence.  The brick is to then help steady the rickety fence.  Like I stated above, it isn’t pretty.

Checking out his bounty after we moved down the bed to the yellow pear tomatoes.  Moments later the basil sampling ensued.

I don’t know what was going through his little head, but at this point he raised his bucket and started squealing at the plants.  I like to think he was thanking them for all the good grub. 

Now we just need to get some more recipes so we don't make ourselves sick on BLT's.  Please, let us know what you like to do with your fresh picked tomatoes.  We love a yummy new take on an old favorite too!

Hope your July was grand and that you are enjoying your summer!

Kitsch Krafts