Gardening Madness

This is so incredibly frustrating...

So the garden project this spring involved me digging up some 7.5 foot by 13 foot patch of my backyard lawn and filling it with garden soil to make it suitable for a perennial flower garden.  It was HARD work and took about a week because I did a little bit each day.  I finally finished it up, filled it with soil... put some edging around it, happily went to the local florist/greenhouse shop and bought some perennials.

They had a really good deal, I think... Perennials for $0.45 each!  I bought some rudbeckia, foxgloves, purple coneflowers, English lavender (munstead), blanket flowers (golden goblin), and liatris.  I have several more types of flowers coming in the mail and I also have several more to transplant from my portable indoor greenhouse.

I planted the flowers I bought at the nursery last Friday.  Then on Saturday morning I noticed there were some chomps on the leaves and stems.  I had no idea what it was!  There was no way it could have been a rabbit, no way it was a mole or a mouse (which we have plenty of in our yard)... It was a total mystery to me.  And I am a very beginner gardener.  I have lots to learn about the art of gardening and everything that comes with it, including pests and disease. 

Then Sunday morning came and there were even more chomps!  The flowers I so adored were being destroyed!  And I had no idea what the culprit was.  It was also strange that some of the flowers were "cut" right in half at the base of the stem.  I did some research and found a list of possible culprits... But I didn't actually "see" any in the garden, which was the weird thing so I had no way of knowing what to look for.

So Sunday night, at around midnight I went out to my garden with a flashlight to try to find out what it was...... and found it!  A crane fly larvae.  I showed it to my husband, read a little bit about them and went back outside.  I dug around  the base of each and every plant and found several at each and every plant.  It was incredibly disheartening.  I destroyed them of course... and I realize it's bad karma but it was all for the love of my flowers.  I couldn't just go to sleep and leave the flowers in the garden to die so I pulled each and every one of them back out (except for the lavender, which didn't looks like it was affected).  And transplanted them back into pots.  And this was all done at midnight with a flashlight.   I was tired, frustrated, angry.  But it just goes to show that nothing is ever easy.  There are always complications.  And I learn something new every day!

So now I have plan of attack.  I'm not going to use chemical means to eradicate them.  I'll just try to win at their game.  I read that surrounding the young plant with a toilet/paper towel roll when planting will prevent the cutworms from coming to the base of the plant and chomping it in half.  And I know I don't have cutworms in the garden, just crane fly larvae..  I'll try the tricks anyway.  Another thing I will do is surround the base of the plant with a couple of toothpicks so that if the worms get through my first barrier they won't be able to go all the way around the plant to chomp it in half.  And the third measure is that I will sprinkle coffee grounds around each plant.  I'm not sure if coffee grounds will affect the larvae but it's worth a try.

I'll let you all know how it goes and if it works.  I just hope the plants grow big and strong because once they do, the stems won't be subject to their malicious attacks.

These are the crane fly larvae from my garden and this is what they generally look like.

This is the damage they caused.  There are big chomps on the leaves, and you can see there's another purple coneflower plant behind the bigger one that was nearly completely destroyed.  It looks like it's started to grow back already.

These are the blanket flowers.  They have several stems coming out of each plant and several of the stems were "cut"...  Fortunately it looks like some new ones are growing back.

Each and every one of my plants had some chomp on it in one place or another but they were all saved.  I replanted a few with some barriers to keep the worms away.  I'll see in a couple of days if they work or not.  If so, I'll start replanting the rest.  I read that crane fly larvae stop feeding in May... so I'm hoping that I picked off a lot of them and that they stop eating soon so my plants have a chance for growth. 

Happy Spring!

Dreams & Gardens

I have a gardening project every year.

Two years ago, Robert and I made a raised bed garden in our backyard.

Last year, I added another raised bed garden.

We took apart a "shelf" system in our garage, because it wasn't practical and poorly designed and used that wood for both our gardens.  So all the wood is re-used!

One of the plants I planted was an eggplant and got ONE eggplant out of it.  I made eggplant parmesan!  I also planted pees, but I didn't do much with them except munch on them every time I walked by the garden.  Robert was very excited about planting corn, but the only thing we did with that was dried it up and used it for Halloween decorations.  The cucumbers and tomato plants, however, were a disaster last year!

We also planted sunflowers but those were for the birds :)

There were a lot of plants that we never really "used", which is unfortunate.. but this year will be different.  If I have to learn to pickle the tomatos to keep them from spoiling, I will do just that.  Maybe I can make home-made pasta sauce!  Or maybe I'll just give them out to the neighbors. 

In the same year, 2009, I extended the garden in my front yard.

Before:

and After:

It was a productive year when it came to gardening.  Though, unfortunately, it was a very cold spring last year and the plants didn't get a healthy start.  The garden wasn't as lush and full as I wanted it to be, but it takes a couple of years for new plants to establish themselves.  Gardening is teaching me to be patient.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention.  Those bricks you see above?  I saw an ad on craigslist, a few months before this whole endeavor, for FREE bricks.  Another young couple just wanted to get rid of them!  The catch was that we had to show up with a car and haul them off ourselves.  So we did just that.  They sat in our driveway until the day came when I was finally able to utilize them.  I love useful, free stuff!  These bricks probably saved me 30-50$!! 

Robert and I also planted an oak tree that we bought at Home Depot at the end of the season when it was on clearance for $15!  We planted it in late October.

I was a little scared when this oak tree didn't drop its leaves like the rest of the trees in November, but I just found out that that oak trees hold onto their leaves through the winter and lose them when new shoots knock them off in the spring.  I guess we'll see in the spring if it survived or not.  I really hope it will be all right.

In late November I planted spring bulbs - some pink tulips, black tulips, and some allium!  I'm really anxious to see if they, too, survived... or if the moles got to them!

I have so many new projects in mind for 2010.  So many ideas.  I cannot wait to get started.