Wonderful, Beautiful, Productive Weekend

It's been a wonderful, beautiful, productive weekend at my house. One of the things I worked on was bumping up plants. Some of the seedlings (photo below) were a little small, but I wanted them to be in good shape for next Saturday. I'll be giving a talk for beginning gardeners at an event in Douglas County (see day-long veggies program here), and I wanted to bring some little plants to give to attendees.

My original plan was to bring sweet potato slips, but my sweet potatoes aren't cooperating. So far, I have only two sprouts poking up, and I am expecting more than two people to attend. The plants in this photo are  lettuces and dwarf French marigolds.

These were potted up with Faford mix and a little Osmocote. Not exactly organic, but this combination usually works.

Another part of the garden that we worked on this weekend is the bed right in front of the house. When the house was smashed by a tree last summer, the foundation shrubbery was smashed, too. At first, I had thought that I would replace the azaleas with gardenias, but then I thought that I could do something completely different.

We amended the first five foot stretch of compacted clay - lots of lime, compost, and "soil conditioner" - and moved a very large rosemary to that space.  I haven't worked out the whole rest of the bed, but we have a tree-form bay laurel (currently in a pot) that will go there, and if all goes well, I'll find a Provence Lavender to go in (the flower spikes are amazing!).

 Aside from a few evergreen herbs, most of the plants that will be planted in that space will be bee-friendly perennials. Then, when the shade hits that space in mid-winter, most of the plants will be safely underground.

The stretch that we managed to complete required some very hard work in breaking up the clay, so I am guessing that completing the rest of the bed take several weeks.

In yet more good news, the bulbs that were set under the pansies in the big flower pot are up! The daffodils haven't opened, but the three hyacinth bulbs are doing a great job of adding a little more color. The cheerful display brings me an inordinate amount of pleasure.

Hope everyone else's gardens are going well!