Gardening May 2020 HG

May 2020

 

Saturday 2 May

 

Connie and I are picking up sticks in the park and I am mowing about 2 hours or so per day.

 

Pick salads every morning. My lettuce is as good as it ever was. The cinnamon is taller and easier to pick but the others are doing well. They need a weed. The English peas are ending with little results. Only a couple messes. The sugar snaps are few as well and I have enough to add a few to the daily salads.

 

Every year is different.

 

The orchid is in bloom finally. One plant, one stalk, one flower. Certainly not the display I had last year.

 

Mother’s Day is next Sunday and I used to have lots of roses at Belvidire to cut for the house. Roses here not so good. What am I doing wrong? The Peggy Martin continues and the whites in the white bed. The Chestnut rose throws blooms sparingly. The pink on the potager fence has begun.

 

The first bloom of the gardenia I cut yesterday for the table on the upper gallery where we have drinks. C likes the fragrance. She said she used to wear ‘jungle gardenia.’

 

Hogs have been digging in the rear north even up to the drive or maybe that section is armidillos. We are leaving the lights on but they still come----not every night.

 

Monday 4 May

 

An interesting day yesterday. I ran over a turtle in the hay field. I had run over a faun there a few years ago and a large snake in the rear pasture back when I was mowing that. Then Connie and Tattie saw another turtle and so did I, south of the allée. This one I managed not to kill. The Connie saw the snake again. She turned around and ran into one of the teddy bear cholla (Cylindropuntia bigelovii) that are potted on the patio. It stuck and she had a time getting it off with much screaming that I missed. As we went for our cow walk we ran into the snake again. Connie hates them so much and this one was now on the patio for a third time. Time to kill which I did with a hoe. Smashed the head but the body writhed for a minute or two afterward. I have looked for the type of snake. Not sure. No rattles. Maybe a pine snake. Later Fred Vollman identified it as a rat snake.

 

The crinums are blooming in several places. I cut 2 white glads in the potager and a cluster of the pink rose on the fence of the potager, name unknown. I have also cut 3 magnolia blooms from the highway.

 

Friday 8 May

Big rain, thunderstorm. I did go to Clegg’s yesterday and bought a few things. I bought and potted a basil to complement the 3 small ones I have from seed. I read in the latest Southern Living that Celebrity tomato, a hybrid, was a good one to have and despite the fate that Clegg’s had sold out of most summer vegetable plants, they had a few Celebrity. I bought 2 four-packs and have put them out. I also bought a gypsy pepper. We like them. No shishito plants or seeds. I did find some speckled limas since my saved seed produced little. These have Naylor’s name on them; Christmas is the one. I planted them along with the 2 plants that had come up. Better seed, better plants, better harvest----I hope. Connie likes butter beans. I have several things that have not come up well. Plan to do some more replanting.

 

I also bought a marigold plant to put in the patio hot bed which is looking really good now: lots of daylilies, cannas blooming, many geranium blooms.

 

I also bought 2 bags of Holly Tone camellia fertilizer to use next month in my plan to fertilize the new (and little) ones monthly this spring.

 

Still getting a lot of salad greens and sugar snap peas for the salads. The small tomatoes are beginning to ripen. I picked my first blueberries. Last dewberries earlier this week. We have bananas from NOLA. Should have had them a couple weeks ago as they are almost past eating. Can I call raising bananas in my New Orleans courtyard gardening at HG? I have extra plants from NOLA growing here but no bananas yet. They are slow to leaf out this spring as it has been cooler than normal, although no frosts. Even today as the cold front and rain go through we are wearing long sleeves.

 

Cutting glads and roses from the potager for the house.

 

Fred in NOLA found my snake name---rat snake, so non venomous. But he should have moved away from the back door if he wanted to keep living.

 

Deer or something knocked over the cage of the Quercus polymorpha, Mexican white oak so I weeded and mulched and used the bamboo from ILM to reinforce the cage as well as the one on the Quercus glauca, Japanese blue oak.

 

Wednesday 13 May

 

Working in the potager this week. Weeding the crabgrass which is hard. Several things have not come up well. Replanting some. Some mulching and staking the big red ripper peas.

 

Have overflowing gutters in the big rains. I did clean out a downspout on the SW corner. Nice copper but no way to clean except to remove the lower section which was bent with the mower. I did put in a flexible plastic piece to keep water away from the house.

 

I have been weeding here and there, the cemetery, a couple azalea beds, along the house wall. Cutting back limbs on the drive bed and the very overgrown grape vine south of the well house.

 

The hogs have dug up another bucket of bulbs in the NW corner. Replanting elsewhere, narcissus and lycoris. At least the hogs don’t like to eat them.

 

Getting to cut the white glads from the potager to enjoy on the upper gallery where we have drinks.

 

Did our weekly trash pickup on the highway and cut a magnolia bloom to take to NOLA this afternoon.

 

Doing the pasture walk last evening enjoyed the large bed of crinums in the front pasture. They are great with no care. I speculate that there was a house there at one time. Lots of narcissus there too. They looked best a few years ago blooming under the big pecan which has since fallen and left a lot of debris, which I need to clear and burn. Just another thing on my list.

 

Saturday 23 May

 

Back from a week in ILM. No rain here so I watered pots on the patio last night. But nice rain this afternoon.

 

Joe has clipped the pastures, front and back and they look good but he has cut the swath of crinums in the front field. Should I move them? But they do well where they are despite the yearly mowings.

 

These are the quintessential milk and wine lilies, Crinum x hubertii, one of the first to bloom according to Weisenger. He also noted that “mortal men cannot uproot it.” They are hard to dig. He was quoting from Book III of the Odyssey, “As he spoke he pulled the herb out of the ground and showed me what it was like. The root was black, while the flower was as white as milk; the gods call it Mols and mortal men cannot uproot it but the gods can do whatever they like.”

 

Lots more gardenia in bloom. The hot bed continues well. An alstromeria is in bloom amid the indigo. The yellow lantana in the drive bed is good.

 

Potager yielded much today, green beans (rattlesnake and Louisiana purple pod), salad greens, collards, lots of cherry tomatoes, and a huge basket of blueberries.

 

I planted the red amaryllis seed I harvested. If I take care maybe I can add several for a nice spring showing. They do well with little water so I might even take them to Wilmington. I pulled a lot of crabapple water sprouts there this past week and brought one back here but the leaves have all turned brown. Maybe it will redo in a pot and I can plant it out later. I am thinking they should do ok here as the climate is not so dissimilar to Wilmington. But others I have planted have not taken off though still alive. Maybe they need another location.

 

As I sit here at the computer in the rain I see the gutters overflowing. I must needs do that.

 

Thursday 28 May

 

The rain has ended. I have cleaned the annex gutters and have been weeding around the annex and have purchased Clorox to clean the walls. The many leaves in the gutter have gone to the blueberry patch to mulch and increase the acidity I have read.

 

I started mowing today. Grass is high and it has been about a month. No dust today but it will come soon. Cutting where the lycoris have been and some of the dafs. Some dafs still have a lot of green foliage.

 

Joe did not cut the crinums as I first thought. So they still look good. I spent yesterday with John Baxter trimming Bush Baby’s horn that were curving into her left eye and right forehead. Had to cut back weeds and thorns, etc. in the run so I could pen her. This morning I repaired some downed fence in the NW corner of the park where trees had fallen. There is a lot of hog damage there. I picked up more bulbs. At least they are not eating them.

 

I am also doing some pickup and cutting of privet, etc. I need to do some every day and weed in the potager.

 

I have used all my bamboo sticks to fortify my camellia cages and have started this month’s fertilizing of the new/small camellias, this time with Holly Tone.

 

The pink vitex is in bloom and the blue which I much prefer has started. Lots of magnolia blooms, gardenia, white glads. I cut them for the center table in the back hall. I have 3 shell ginger, Alpinia zerumbet, variegata, blooming. A native of Taiwan. They only bloom on second year growth so I don’t always have some. I cut one for the upper gallery. The Lily of the Nile, Agapanthus do not bloom again this year.

 

The hot bed is doing well with canna, glads, daylilies. I have more daylilies blooming. I particularly like R&R Orange Tree. It is tall which works well in the hot bed. The others are Hyperion, a yellow, and Black Eyed Stella, a yellow with a gold center. And Moses Fire, another orange.

 

 

 

The white bed has a white glad and the not-so-white daylilies have started. The white achillea is in bloom but there is not a lot. You would think it would spread more. There was more last year.

 

I am back to weeding and mulching in the potager. Always seem to need to weed even with my mulch—too thin I think. I work up a sweat there.