Why I Oughta...

Don't tell the Parrillos that you shouldn't compost citrus peels.  Our kitchen compost stands out against the remaining winter snow of the season.  With all the deciduous leaves in the storage bin, the weekly dose of coffee grounds are a welcome balancer that increase the greens (nitrogen) and hopefully get the mix a little bit closer to where it needs to be.   The vibrant colors from the top of the bins always contrast with the drab surroundings before Spring arrives in the far back of our garden.

Part of my DIY Spring clean-up is doing some small, controlled burns in place with the left-behind leaf litter in the beds.  I rake up some small piles that have defined edges (so the burn can't run everywhere) and use my little weed-burning torch to set the piles on fire.  They burn up the leaves, leave behind some ash and eventually exhaust themselves when they run out of material.   Here's one of the small piles I am burning under the Hornbeam trees in back:

 More Spring is emerging in the backyard, in particular the Kitchen Curved bed.  The colony (or drift) of Summer Beauty Alliums that have been planted in our garden since the very first year are emerging from the leaf litter and showing green tips in their usual clusters.  Below are a few photos showing these early-season foliage stars in between the Thujas and a little cluster of boxwoods in the Kitchen Curved bed.  These are planted a bit further back from the Amsonia that is mid-bed.   The leaf litter is going to be cleaned-up in the next few weeks - between a combination of efforts (I hope):  some by me, some by professionals.  

One of my 2026 to-do items is to 'expand the beds in Fall'.  I say 'Fall' because of how I utilize what I call the "lazy method" of smothering out the turf with cardboard.  That means that in addition to materials like cardboard and municipal biosolids, I need time.  Time for the grass to die.  Time for the cardboard to breakdown.  And time for the biosolids to MELLOW OUT.   Last year, I missed the Fall window to do some bed extensions, so I started to do them this Spring.  The first one was a few weeks ago with the Island Bed taking on new edges .  I used cardboard, municipal biosolids and composted manure to create a blend that I'll plant up (and mulch) later this Spring.  In the sideyard, I want to do the same thing:  expand the beds along the foundation to be more proud of the house.  Last year, I planted out the Dahlias in late May/early June.  I like to have about six weeks of time between laying down these bed exten...

The signs of Spring are everywhere right now.  Including the green and purple-tipped foliage of Allium bulbs that have broken through the leaf litter layer that is currently *still* covering our garden beds. Below is a look that these crown-like tips bursting proud of their mulch layer.     Leave the leaves, indeed.  Probably too many this year.  But, the time to clean-up is fast arriving and these leaves will be a distant memory soon.  Hopefully...they'll stick around, but as tiny fragments of organic material.  Not these giant leaf-shaped forms of Oak leaves.  

Yesterday, I posted the first "Getting to Know" posts about the set of plugs that I bought from Garden Club this year: Lisianthus Celeb 2 Metallic Blue .  Next up is another blue bloom: Didiscus Lacy Blue .  This one is a direct recommendation from Erin the Impatient Gardener.  She mentioned that she grows these.  So...that's why I added to my cart.  So, what are they? Here is the listing from Floret : There is nothing like this super-productive, dome-shaped beauty. Each graceful disk is made of hundreds of tiny, forget-me-not-blue flowers, and the branching stems are smothered in buds. ‘Lacy Blue’ will flower for months, is slightly scented, and is the perfect size for bouquet work. Well...that sounds perfect, no?  They get 2-3 tall and need just 9" of spacing. Here is a photo from Farmer Bailey showing these growing in tunnels: Source via Farmer Bailey The Farmer Bailey growing guide mentions that they want some afternoon shade, so I think that mea...

Yesterday, I posted my Garden Club plug order and talked about how all six varieties are new (to me).   Lisianthus Celeb 2 Metallic Blue is the first one up.  I bought eight plugs and this is my first Lisianthus.  If you follow any flower farmer on Instagram, you can't go a week without hearing about Lisianthus.  They're rose-like and from what I've come to understand have good 'vase life'.  These "Celeb 2" Metallic blue are described by Garden Club as: The 'Celeb' series features large to extremely large, fully double, fringed flowers. This series dominates the Japanese Lisianthus market, and many of the cut flowers we see imported from Japan are Celeb types. Those Japanese gardeners.  They're so prolific .  Anything BLUE is of immediate interest to me, so the name made these an easy-add.  The photos show a more purple color, but we'll see what happens when/if they bloom: Source via Garden Club Ball Seed says : Huge blooms with strong, w...

This past weekend, I published the 25 items on my 2026 yard and garden to-do task list and included a number of cut-flower-related items.  Growing dahlias.  Supporting dahlias.  Growing more accent plants in the vertical garden.  All were on there.  But, so was another one - number 8: 8. Experiment with other cut flowers.  Plant them in the ground (in the garden beds) and add some variety to my arrangements. New varieties.  That means new (to me).   I'm a foliage gardener.  But, I have had so much fun becoming a flower gardener, too.  I've learned so much about dahlias the past few seasons and have found some flowering perennials that I can use in some cut flower arrangements, too.   But, this year, I wanted to try some new flowers that I can use in my arrangements.  Why?  Because, if you look at them, they're VERY dahlia-heavy .  That's not a bad thing.  But, if you're not changing and learning, you'r...

Yesterday I posted my annual to-do list of 25 items I'm aiming to tackle this growing season .  I'm starting off with an early win by taking-on Priority item #2 on the list one-day-in.  I've talked about how I've adopted what I call the 'lazy bed extension method' of using three factors:  1.  Cardboard to smother the existing turf grass. 2.  A mix of (municipal) biosolids, leaf litter and composted manure + topsoil. 3.  Time. That 3rd factor (time) is why I'm going at this garden upgrade in March.   Here's what I wrote for #2: 2. Priority Project 2:  Expand and fix the edges of the front yard island bed .  But, use a ‘fewer curves’ approach to making a curvilinear shape . Last year, I planted Coleus (which was great) and Supertunias (which weren’t), so strike the right balance between colorful annuals (maybe mirror what I put in the front porch bed) along with some coleus for foliage. I also included further down the list at #12 a "Fall ...

'Tis the season for setting my goals for the yard and garden this year.  As I've done for the past few years, I've put together my annual "To Do List" as a way of keeping myself on track.  Thanks to this here garden diary and posts like this one ( early, early look post ) and this one ( last year's final tally ) and this [ 2026 to-do ] tag help make putting together this list much easier.   Like anything in life, in order to be successful in the garden (or...I should say...in order for ME to be successful...), I need a goal.  A target.  Otherwise, I'll be aimless.  Will I get some things done?  Yes.  But, are they the most impactful, most critical, most enjoyable parts?  Maybe?  But, when I sit down and think about what I want to accomplish both short term (this season) and as part of a longer-term approach, I find that I can reference this list as the season goes on to ensure that I'm spending my time and resources effectively....

I've recently posted about a number of [priority projects] for 2026 and (at the same time), I've been drafting my full 2026 to-do list.  That's typically 25 items that help keep me focused in the yard and garden.  One of the items near the top of that list is going to be:  finish up the pizza oven enclosure. Last week, I burned the first small fire in the oven for the season and talked about getting motivated to finish it.  A big part of that finishing is applying the exterior brick.  However, I need the temperatures to improve and stabilize before I can get busy.  Here's what the specifications sheet reads in terms of application temperatures: 50 degrees for 72 hours after application of the mortar.  According to *some* models , we should be hitting that 50-degree average right around early April.   Last Fall, I applied just a handful of bricks to the rear part of the structure - figuring I'd LEARN how to apply the bricks on the part of th...

We're moving on to my #3 Priority project for 2026.   First one was to stop fighting nature (nature finds a way) with Oakleaf Hydrangeas . Second was to re-cut the edges of the front yard island bed .   Today, I'm posting the details of #3:  finishing a project that I started two years ago:  A Garden edit.   I wrote about this earlier this year and talked about how I relocated a colony of All Gold Hakonechloa Japanese Forest Grasses from around the tree swing tree and moved them to the other side of the yard.  I moved them right before I began excavation for the backyard pizza oven.  Now that the oven foundation is built out, I had the bed extended around it last year, creating a long empty border.   My plan has been to fill that border with a series of Hakonechloa Macra (straight variety) grasses .  Both from the Oak tree 'backwards' and 'forward'.   Here below is the area that needs to be populated: And here, b...

I noticed some green peeking through the mulch up front, along the driveway in the Island Bed.  It seemed out of place and I immediately thought it might be a weed of some sort.  I've started to notice the Wild Onions starting to fire up  in the backyard and worried that somehow they had migrated up into the Island bed.   Then...I looked closer.  I saw this:  And, I saw a few more scattered around the same area: And, then I saw all five of them scattered along the driveway.  Two rows of two with one in front: And, I realized that these aren't weeds.  But, they're not wild onions.  But, they *are* onions. Last Summer, I planted five Medusa Alliums up there after buying them from Northwind Perennial Farm up in Wisconsin.   These didn't do exceptionally well last year and faded pretty early.  But, as a gardener, I'm learning that sometimes that happens in year one - when you plant a new perennial.  They don't thrive in ...

It wouldn't be mid/late March without an unexpected snowfall in the garden around here.  One of the best ways to see the structure of the pair of Greenspire Linden trees that have been trained into an espalier is when a light snow falls on the limbs.  Below is a look at the tree and the branches that now stretch out and touch each other in the middle. Compare this shot above to this post almost a year ago .   I pruned back the tips on the trees MUCH harder this year it seems. Here is a post from January of 2022 - four years ago - that REALLY shows how much these trees have grown in that time.  The trunks, in particular, have thicken'ed up as has the top branch.  The lower limbs have grown out, but are still the thin(est) of the group. The Boxwoods also continue to grow in size, despite being in deep shade.  

A mix of Drumstick and Christophii allium foliage has appeared in some spots around the garden.  Note to self:  get back to planting Fall bulbs this year.  Something I haven't done in a few years.  The thinner, whisp-ier foliage are from Drumstick Allium that seem to grow each year.  Especially IB2DWs.  I've written about how I like they way they look in the garden, so I should remind myself of this post when I fill up my Fall bulb cart later this year.  

Last year, I planted my second Climbing Hydrangea in the backyard.  The f irst one didn't make it (was planted back by the firepit), but I liked the idea of the flowering vine, so I tried again.  I bought it at the Morton Arboretum plant sale and planted it in front of a clump of River Birch that was in declining (pretty sure it has died).   Because this one is planted in what I'll call a "watering zone", it has a higher-chance of succeeding because I'll pay more attention to it naturally.   But, that doesn't mean the (dang) rabbits aren't going to destroy this climbing vine.  However...it appears that we have a tiny sign of Spring emerging from the crown of this plant.  See below for a peek at the tiny-ist green vine emerging from the soil: Another day, another sign of Spring.  I need to GET GOING on my to-do list.  Eeek.

The pizza oven bed that I created last year is full of heavy, hard-to-drain clay soil.  While, it may not be a perfect solve, I still laid down a patch of firewood ash (hardwoods only) on top of the mulch after I cleaned up the screened door fireplace for the season.   I've done this in the past like here in January 2024 and typically spread the ash around to different spots in our garden or just dump the bucket into the compost bin in the far back of the yard.   Here, below, is the ash on the pizza oven bed: I need to lay down some organic material on this bed in the next few weeks ahead of planting dahlias here to give them a better shot at success.   The other thing I've done that involves ash is doing some small in-place burns with my mini torch.  I'll get out there and do some of these around the beds, too.  

Last week, I posted my first [Priority Project] for 2026 that focused on replacing the Oakleaf Hydrangeas that are being destroyed each year by the (dang) rabbits.  These [Priority Posts] help me begin to formulate my annual yard-and-garden to-do list.  I've found (over the years) that I NEED to prioritize some key projects and keep a running list of goals so I have focus and accountability.  Otherwise...I tend to wander and get distracted. Today is a look at Priority Project #2: Expand and fix the edges of the front yard island bed.   Starting earlier this year, I posted an exploration of how I could expand the front yard island bed and then , after thinking (or... because of WRITING ABOUT IT ), I changed my mind and reconsidered some aspects including the orientation and number of curves .  I initially was thinking about attacking the project by GROWING the bed from the sidewalk-backwards towards the house.  I say 'attack' because I know myself and...

Earlier this week, I posted some photos and research on the dahlia tubers that are being sold at the big box hardware store near me .  I listed some of the stars (to me) and talked about what was appealing to me.  There was one more that I didn't talk about, but I ended up bringing home.  Actually...two more because this is a package of seven tubers in what they call the "Cherry Pie Blend".  They have the same listing over at TulipWorld that you can see here .  Below is the front of the package that shows a photo of the two different varieties, but....doesn't LIST THEM by name: The package, does however, provide some good information.  First...the hieght.  Says...40".  That's right in my target height range.   And the photo shows two different varieties.  One with light centers and dark undertones.  And the other with dark centers.  Very complimentary of each other, so I can see why they put these together in this 'blend'....

Spring clean-up is upon us in the garden.  And, it appears that I'm a bit later than last year in doing some of the early spots like the Hellebores.  Below is a close-up shot of what some of our Hellebores look like right now after removing some of the leaf litter that protected their crowns over Winter.  A really nice peek at the flower buds and new foliage that signals Springtime is here. Here, below, is a wider shot showing four colonies of Hellebores.  Three across the front with one tucked in by the picnic table (green) legs.   Here, below, is how they started with their previous season's foliage that needed clipping-off and the leaf litter pulled back.  This photo shows how much I 'left' the leaves.  (We had a super early Snow that hit and I pretty much stopped Fall clean-up earlier than I normally do last Fall, resulting in more leaf litter than I normally leave behind.) ' Here's a look at the area after cleaning up most of the dead foliage...