Why I Oughta...

I've posted quite a bit about Japanese gardening and Japanese-inspired gardening over the years on the blog and dedicated a whole post last year to talking about Japanese Maple trees .  Well, the impulse to buy one got the best of me and I came home with a new tree for the yard.  This is the second tree planted this year - the first was the bareroot Shagbark Hickory .  This post is about the second:  a Tamukeyama Japanese Maple tree that I bought at Home Depot.  Here's the tag from this tree: And here's the tree as it stood pre-planting: Here it is in context pre-planting: And, the price:  $69.98 with a Menards-matching 11% rebate bringing the total for this tree down to $62.28.   This tree is a dwarf tree - and stays small.  I was drawn to it being 'medium-sized' in nature and thought it could play a nice role in the layering by being in the 'in between' area behind the border plants and in front of the larger shrubs in the back.  It is weeping and lace-l

 In the order of operations for this Spring, I continue down my transplanting plan.  First were the Fanal Astilbes that I moved out to the edge of the bed.  Then, I divided and transplanted 15 hostas in a border .  Today, posting a photo showing three newly transplanted All Gold Japanese Forest Grasses.  I planted six of them back here in the Fall and they all came back this Spring.  With this new bed created (and extended), I took three that were in the back and moved them up to the front edge of the bed - that you can see in the photo below: If I come across more of these grasses this year, I'm thinking I can use a couple of them on either side of these three to create a nice grass border.  I planted them far enough back to account for a full-size adult grass to live within the bed.  Posting this in early May, but I did this work on April 24, 2021.

Yesterday, I posted a photo showing the new location of the dozen Fanal Astilbes that I transplanted out to the edge of their new bed and commented that that was the FIRST of a few posts showing the transplanting that I have been doing this Spring.   Today, the photo below shows the new location of 15 teardown hostas that I planted on the southside of the yard in the curved border of this new bed.  You can see the first three on the left taking the 'second row' spot and if you look closely, there are two more in the 'second row' under the Oak tree at the top of the photo: Here's an annotated version of that photo showing the 15 hostas: A few important notes: 1. These hostas are (I'm pretty sure) Lanifolia Hostas .  Based on this "What hosta do I have?" page , I found this Lancifolia page in the Hosta Library.  Things check out.  I inherited them when we moved in.  They're plain green with glossy leaves.  2.  They get to a nice size - if left alone

Now that we've set the final edges of our backyard beds using the notion of curvilinear design/layout , I'm able to begin to transplant some of the items that I have on hand to put them in their final spots - closer to the edges of these new final beds.  The first set that I took on were the dozen Fanal Astilbe plants that I planted last year.  I was happy to see that all twelve came back this Spring and below you can see the twelve holes where I transplanted them further out.  You can see in the photo below the pole of the bird feeder and some of the pink circles.  So, these are moving up about 24" but also not TOO CLOSE to the edge of the bed to be sure they have some room to spread out. This is the first of a bunch of transplants - including hostas, ferns and grasses that I'll be making in the next week or two ahead of mulch.  As a reminder (to myself) that I laid out an 'order of operations' with my beds this year - that starts with removing the Automowe

This marks the 53rd tree that I've planted on our property since we planted our first one on Earth Day 2017.  This was a tiny, bareroot tree that we picked up from the Environmental Club from Benet Academy.  They were giving away tiny trees for their Earth Day project.  There were a couple of Oak trees to choose from (Burr and Pin) and this Shagbark Hickory.  You can see the little tree in the photo below that measures close to 36" tall including all the roots.  That's about 24" below the ground and about 12" above ground.   The roots were wrapped in newspaper and then in plastic.  I removed the packaging, straightened out some of the roots and planted in in the bed - not far from the fence - in amongst the hydrangeas on the south side of the backyard.   Here is the Shagbark Hickory as it stands now: I'm not getting too attached to this little tree, but I'll give it some water and a little bit of food and see what happens. As for the full list of trees, h

Putting this post in the [garden diary] so I remember what I did in terms of feeding some of my existing shrubs and flowers in the beds.  First, I fed my Disneyland Roses for the first time this year - using this product from Jobe's below - called Knockout Rose food.  Mine aren't knock-out roses, but this is the only organic Rose food that the Home Depot was carrying when I was there.  I also fed all of my hydrangeas with Hollytone (no photo), but I used the entire bag.  I spread Hollytone around all seven of the Oakleaf Hydrangeas , the one teardown hydrangea and the two early ones ( Tuff Stuff and Everlasting Revolution ) in the backyard.  In the front yard, I hit the pair of Limelights , the four Vanilla Strawberry across the front porch and the one, lone Vanilla Strawberry Hydrangea on the other side of the driveway.  Since this stuff is for acid-loving plants, I also put some in/around the pair of Rhododendrons by our back stoop. I also planted some new items (that I'

 I titled this post April/May because I'm posting it in May, but I took this photo in April of 2021.  April 24th, to be precise.  Those are the beautiful, exciting tree buds of one of our espaliered Greenspire Linden trees that are ready to burst open.  I posted a photo of these very same buds that were setting last Fall .  I planted these trees back in our first Summer here (2017) and set up the wire system that year, too .   I posted a similar photo EXACTLY one year ago today (May 4, 2020) with the buds showing a similar green and pink hue .   Last Summer - in year four of training (2017, 2018, 2019, 2020), I made the decision about the final form and pruned off a bunch of the limbs to leave just a four-tiered horizontal cordon espalier.   Also, last year this tree was infested with Yellow Jackets that were feasting on an aphid infestation .  Before all the leaves fell, I applied in two rounds some insecticide on the limbs in the hopes that I killed off any of the remaining aphi