Chistmas Gifts in the Garden
Mr Chiots and I don’t have children, but we have 3 nieces and a nephew (my sister’s children). You’ve probably seen photos of them if you’ve been reading this blog for a while (here are some more of their Christmas photos if you’d like to see them).
For Christmas they made me mosaic stepping stones for my garden. I’ve been waiting for the weather to be nice enough to put them out. Since it looks like the hard freezes are over, I put them in the garden yesterday. One of the stones has their names on it and the other is a small flower shaped stone. Both are jeweled with colorful pieces of glass.
These will be perfect to put in the garden to give me a place to step so I don’t compact the soil. I’m not traditionally a garden ornament kind of person, but I do love these.
Do you have any decorations/ornaments in your gardens?
Share this:
Happy Easter From Chiot’s Run
No need to spend hours coloring eggs when you have ones this lovely from the local farm. Here’s to a free-range pastured local holiday!
Happy Easter from Chiot’s Run!
Share this:
Lovely Hellebores
I’ve always wanted to have some hellebores or ‘Lenten Rose’ in my gardens. They’re fascinating plants, perennials that bloom at a time when usually only bulbs are blooming. Last year I finally bought one from my friend Scott from Working Gardens when I went to his plant sale last spring. I’ve been waiting for them to bloom. I was super excited 2 weeks ago when I noticed the blooming getting ready to come out.
Then last week they came out beautifully. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you’ll know that I’m a huge fan of green flowers, and this is one of my new favorites.
I’m always happy to find a plant that thrives in shady gardens. Since I have so much shade I like to find things besides hostas that I can include in my gardens, which is kind of funny since I have a friend that loves hostas of course has a super sunny garden and wishes he had more shade so he could grow more hostas. I can’t wait to get a few more hellebores for my gardens.
Do you have any newly acquired plants you really like?
or don’t like?
Share this:
A Day in the Garden
My mom has nice soil and a nice open sunny area in her back yard with a traditional rowed garden (here’s her garden last summer). She’s been generous enough to increase the garden each year to let me grow sun loving crops in exchange for some seeds, plants and work. On Wednesday I went to my mom’s house and we spent a day getting the garden ready for the season. She covers her garden with a tarp over the winter to protect the soil and to keep the weed seeds out. We uncovered the garden and went to work amending the soil a bit and planting a few early crops.
Traditionally here in Ohio you plant peas and potatoes on St Patrick’s day. It was too cold on that holiday and it’s been pretty wet this spring, so we’ve been waiting for the weather to break to start planting. We spent the entire day getting the garden ready and then planting 8 rows of peas and 4 rows of potatoes and some onions. We follow a more intensive planting system so we plant wider rows of plants instead of single rows with walkways in between. In the walkways we’re planning on adding stepping stones and lower growing plants to make even better use of the space, perhaps beets, chamomile, and other low growing herbs.
We planted peas and potatoes for the freezer and the pantry. I’m hoping for a good pea harvest so I can enjoy lots of peas in our winter stews and a pantry full of potatoes to eat on all winter. What varieties did we plant?
Wando peas: 68 days, produces good yields of 3 ½” long sweet peas. Pods have 6 to 8 dark green peas. A remarkable high quality variety that is resistant to warm weather and drought conditions. The Wando Pea will grow a crop during the driest, hottest summer months, at a time other varieties fail. High in Vitamin A, B, and C. Excellent freezing and canning variety. Vines are 26″ tall.
Kennebec Potatoes: a late maturing white potato variety. An excellent one for fries; chips; baking or hashbrowns.
Yukon Gold Potatoes: A favorite among gardeners, consumers and chefs. Delicious flesh is drier than most other yellow varieties, perfect for baking and mashing. Yellow flesh appears to be buttered. Bred and selected by AgCanada and the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food in 1966. Excellent yields and a great keeper. 80-90 days.
What are you planting right now?
Share this:
Oh Deer
There are people that think that deer are majestic beautiful creatures and stop their cars to watch them graze peacefully in the fields. Then there are gardeners who have lost entire crops of peas, blueberries, hostas and tulips to these giant rodents.
Here at Chiot’s Run my biggest garden pest is the white tailed deer. They gnaw off my fruit trees and blueberry bushes. My hydrangeas won’t bloom if I don’t wrap them because the deer find them super tasty. Last year they ate all my peas and every single tulip on the front hillside. Unfortunately we live in a gated community and all the land surrounding the community is owned by our property owners association. Hunting is not allowed on association property, so the deer have a safe haven and we have a herd of 10-12 that beds down about 100 yards behind our house. Of course they love it here because of all the beautiful delicious organic food grown in the gardens here at Chiot’s Run. If I were a deer or groundhog I’d live here too.
Until I can do something about them (like get hunting permission from the people that own the land outside of the association property), I chase them away. Although they’re no longer scared of me. I can go out and talk to them and they just stare at me, you’d think they’d at least thank me for the nice blueberry buds. These were about 40 yards away, I took this picture through my kitchen window. I’ll continue making little forts around everything trying to keep them out, my peas are under a conestoga wagon cover over the hoops in the raised bed their planted in. And I’ll have to live with daffodils instead of tulips and crocuses.
What’s the biggest pest in your garden?
