Plant Spotlight: Mediterranean Pink Heather
I have a few Mediterranean Pink Heather plants on my front hillside rock garden. The thing I love most about these carefree plants are the fact that they’re the first thing to bloom every year. They are blooming profusely right now. I do love this plant, it’s really nice to see something colorful in the garden right now.
Plant Strengths: Sun loving drought tolerant plant; Scented blossom; Attracts wildlife to feed or nest; All round tough plant suitable for problem areas; Provides valuable winter interest; Evergreen foliage for all year round color and screening; Suitable for container growing; Suitable for exposed coastal planting; Attractive form or foliage for all year interest; Tolerates full sun and sandy, drought-prone soils; Tolerates cold exposed locations.
Is anything blooming in your gardens right now?
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Liberating More Lawn
“But each spring…a gardening instinct, sure as the sap rising in the trees, stirs within us. We look about and decide to tame another little bit of ground.” — Lewis Gantt
With the coming of spring I’m planning out my gardens and inevitably I don’t have space to grow everything I want to grow. So I keep eying different areas of my yard wondering what I could convert to growing space. I’m considering bringing the lawn in from the edges of the property in the front yard by 4-5 feet on each side, that would give me a good 500-600 sq ft of growing area on one side and 200-300 on the other. One side is bordered by an empty wooded lot, so I wouldn’t have to worry about neighbors, but the tree roots pose a bit of a problem.
The other side is behind a fence, I cleared the area of saplings last summer but never planted anything there. I’m thinking both of these spot are prime for tomatoes and other full-sun vegetables. I could also expand our front flowerbed in from the road some more and that would also add a few hundred square feet of growing space. In one of these areas I’d like to grow a lot of flowers like zinnias, cleome and globe amaranth for the bees and other beneficial insects. I also would like to put a 1-2 foot wide flowerbed by the rock wall that flanks our driveway, that would be lovely with a big row of lavender.
Whatever I decide it’s going to be a lot of back building work digging it all up (you remember our rocky soil), but it will be worth it in the end.
Are you thinking of liberating any of your lawn to expand your veggie beds this year?
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Tri-County Beekeepers’ Association Workshop
On Friday and Saturday Mr Chiots and I attending the Ohio State University Extension and Tri-County Beekeepers’ Association 31st Annual Beekeeping Workshop. We really learned a lot and had a great time, we even saw an old friend who’s getting into bees this year as well.
The workshop started on Friday evening with a tour of the beekeeping museum, which was very interesting. It was really neat to see the different kinds of hives and all of the old tools, I especially loved this old glass sided hive.
After the tour, we attending a honey tasting session. I think this was the highlight of the seminar for Mr Chiots! It was very interesting to taste all the different kinds of honey that come from different flowers and different countries.
There were light honey and dark honey as well as honey from clover, citrus, sage, tupelo, buckwheat and many more. Next time I am at a good grocery store I’m going to try a few different kinds of honey.
We each picked out a favorite; Mr Chiots really liked the dark buckwheat honey and I loved the Manuka honey from New Zealand.
The second day of the workshop was full of learning seminars for all kinds of beekeepers. Since we’re newbies, we attended all of the classes for new beekeepers. They were very informative and we learned some great things.
There were also some instructional workshops going on in between sessions. Mr Chiots and I learned how to wire up our frames for our hive, which we’ll be doing next warm day we get.
Overall it was a very informative seminar, I’m really looking forward to getting my bees in April.
Would you ever keep bees in your garden? Or are you scared of them? (take the poll)
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It’s Time
On Thursday I popped open the lid on my cold frame to check the temperature, this is what I saw.
An hour after I took this photo it was up to 75; this is just what I want to see on a 50 degree day. This means it’s time to plant my beet seeds and my lettuce seedlings in the cold frame, looks like I’ll be busy on the next warm dry day. This is all very exciting because I got my cold frame finished last fall a little too late to be of any use for my carrots. I’m interested to see how well it works for extending the season this spring and fall.
Mr Chiot’s and I attended a bee keeping seminar yesterday. We had a great time and learned a lot, I’ll be posting all about our adventures in learning about bees tomorrow.
Have you been able to do any garden chores in the garden this weekend? Are you already planting things?
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New In the Garden: Hoop Houses
For all of you who guessed a hoop house you’re right. Well, kind of, we added hoops to our raised beds (so not a proper hoop house, but 5 mini hoop houses).
We added these to help extend the growing season. I don’t have room to add a big walk-in greenhouse like Eliot Coleman in Four-Season Harvest
I’m planning on covering these with plastic here in the next couple days and this should help warm the soil so I can plant things even earlier. They should also help protect early tomatoes from frost. In the summer I plan on adding netting to these to keep the deer and rabbits out of my crops, so they will be very handy in all seasons!
How much did they cost? The tubing was $2.19 each and we used 4 per raised bed (our beds are 4×10). With the tubing and the clamps to attach them it cost about $10-$12 per raised bed, not bad if you ask me!
Do you do anything to extend the season? Anyone else using hoop houses or hoping to?
For details instructions on how we built our hoop houses see this post.
