A girl and her camera on a warm, sunny day

Mountain Bluet
The petals remind me of eye lashes, and the flower bud
looks as if it has a black lacy netting wrapped around it.

This, my friends, is what a corn stalk looks like at two inches tall.
I am positively thrilled that the majority of the Carl's Glass Gem corn seeds have sprouted.

Flats of seedlings resting atop the al fresco dining table.  

Allium bursting from its papery husk.

Another variety of allium nearly in full bloom.

Life is thriving in Wright Gardens.  Carrot, radish, spinach, and beets (red and golden) are growing rapidly.  In fact, another row of each will be planted tomorrow for a successive crop.

Several strawberry flowers dot the strawberry bed, and all three of the raspberry bushes have noticeable flower heads forming.  It never cease to amaze me how quickly plants grow.  I've been carefully watching the raspberry bushes for flower formation and suddenly, overnight, it seems, there they are.  The same is true for the poppies.  The plants have been growing with vigor but no sign of the fuzzy flower heads until Wednesday morning.  Nothing was visible Tuesday but Wednesday morning the flower heads were between six and seven inches tall!  It would be so neat to have a time lapse camera to capture the growth of flowers in the yard.

The tulips are fading but as they do the allium, iris, poppies, and yarrow are shaping up to be the next round of color.  Oh, and I found a third praying mantis egg in the strawberry bed earlier this week!  That makes three total (that I'm aware of) in the yard.

Yours in soil,

Lisa

Planting by the phases of the moon

This is an interesting concept.  I'm aware of the moon phases already, and always know when the full moon is, but I've never considered, or even heard of, planting according to its phases.

The basic concept is that above ground crops do best when planted during the waxing moon, and root crops do best when planted during the waning moon.

For more specifics on this planting concept, visit the Our Garden Gang website.

Much of what will be grown in Wright Gardens this year has been started indoors.  However, for remaining direct sow crops, I will attempt to plant them according to the appropriate moon phase.  Next year, I may plant the entire garden this way to see how the seedlings and plant growth compares to previous years.

The New Moon was 2 days ago, which means that the moon is currently in its waxing phase.  I'm certainly going to do more reading on this subject and will likely have book suggestions in a future post.

My green thumb came only as a result of the mistakes I made 

while learning to see things from the plant's point of view.

~H. Fred Dale

The greatest gift of the garden is the restoration of the five senses.

~Hanna Rion

On every stem, on every leaf... and at the root of everything that grew,

was a professional specialist in the shape of grub, caterpillar, aphids, or other expert,

whose business it was to devour that particular part.

~Oliver Wendell Holmes

Black raspberry trellis

The black raspberries finally have a suitable trellis to climb on.  Here's hoping that the canes take to their new support system and flourish.

After visiting the local botanic garden to check out their system for supporting berry canes, I tried to mimic their set-up.  Two U-Style fence posts were purchased along with hook & eye turnbuckle screws, galvanized cable, and galvanized cable thimbles.

In order to keep the fence posts straight, and in turn keep the support cables taut, the same hardware will be used to pull the fence posts in the opposite direction of the support cables.  Otherwise, I'm pretty pleased with the results.  The botanic garden employed a 5x5" square wood fence post, which is sturdier and more rigid than the steel fence posts that I used, but, heck, I wasn't up for drilling large holes in the posts to affix the hardware or digging holes to bury them.

New blooms!

This small 6" tall iris grows along the side of the garage,
evenly spaced between the 'Blue Spectacle' tulips.

Tulipa 'Blue Spectacle' (Double Late Tulip)

A garden is a grand teacher.

It teaches patience and careful watchfulness;

it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust.  

~Gertrude Jekyll

Gardens are not made by singing 'Oh, how beautiful,' and sitting in the shade.

~Rudyard Kipling

It's planting time again!

It's that time of year again and I'm delighted!  Time to get outside and clear the flower beds of leaves, and then spruce them up with a fresh and generous layer of mulch.  Last week was spent outside doing exactly that in the front yard first, and then the back yard.  Our front yard is dotted with color and is looking lush and beautiful.

While cleaning up the flower beds I found two praying mantis eggs!  I've never found their eggs before so to find two eggs made me exceptionally happy.  Hopefully, I didn't accidentally gather other eggs with a handful of leaves and add them to the compost pile.  I was taking my time and keeping any eye out for them.

Weeds were plucked from the garden bed and then the space was mapped out for what will grow in the garden this year.  Once everything had its own space, carrot, radish, and spinach seeds were sown.  Those seeds were sown on Sunday, April 28 and by Friday radish seedlings were visible.

Our garlic is growing wonderfully.  Many green shoots are visible above the blanket of straw that protects the cloves throughout the winter, and then helps to keep weeds at bay during the spring and summer.  It thrills me that the garlic harvest is just around the corner.  As of right now, all 77 cloves that were planted have sprouted.  Here's hoping they all continue to grow to harvest.

Yesterday afternoon Carl's Glass Gem corn seeds were planted in the back yard.  Once the corn is approximately six inches in height, a bean seed will be planted at the base of each corn stalk.  One week later, butternut squash seeds will be planted on either side of the corn block.  Fingers are crossed for a successful germination rate for those special corn seeds.

Netting was placed over the mounds of soil that the corn seeds were planted in to keep the naughty paws of wild critters away, but I may need to construct a fence around that area.

Flowers!

Tulipa 'Rem's Favorite' (Triumph Tulip)

Tulipa 'Ronaldo' (Triumph Tulip)

Tulipa 'Ronaldo' with Grape Hyacinth

Tulipa 'Sensual Touch' (Fringed Tulip)

Allium 'Gladiator' (Ornamental Onion)

Tulipa 'Annie Schilder' (Triumph Tulip)

Tulipa 'Sweetheart' (Fosteriana Tulip)

The tall plant to the right is Fritillaria imperialis 'Aureomarginata' (Guinea Hen Fritillary)

The flower bed along the side of the garage is looking lovely.
Blooming now are 'Blue Spectacle' tulips.

Tulipa 'Blue Spectacle' (Double Late Tulip)

Tulipa 'Blue Spectacle'

A new support system for the black raspberries using braided wire and turnbuckle screws.
What is needed to complete the system is some sort of nut & bolt to hold the wire
as tension is drawn to make them taut.  Once that's done, the raspberry canes will be draped
over the wires.

Fire pit with Eastern Redbud in background.

It's a beauty!  The support stakes were removed this year on Arbor Day.  

Eastern Redbud blooms. 

Don't forget to visit the Wright Garden Chronicles blog.  There are quite a few helpful gardening resources listed there.

Happy Gardening!