All posts by jane

App Envy and Prepping Beds

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One of my gardening friends, Mrs. R, just shared a new app with me she had purchased for her iPhone. It’s a gardening app, developed by NanoSoft, called iGarden. It only took a few flips through the features before I coveted it. The App is reviewed here on Doug Green’s Garden blog. I think he has some valid points on what could potentially be viewed as shortfalls of the software. However, seeing Mrs. R’s notes on what she had planted the evening before, attached to a photo (taken by her iPhone) of the garden bed with links to the countdown for each veggie made me absolutely giddy. Hopefully any glaring flaws of iGarden spotted by experienced gardeners will be reported to the developers so the app will be even better in it’s next release.

Enough of the geeky, tech ranting. It reached 75 degrees today which made it nearly unbearable to be in the office. After dinner with friends, I still had enough daylight and pleasant weather to wrangle my four-footed garden crew and head out into the back yard to play. The Better Half and I constructed two 4′ x 4′ raised, lasagna beds last fall. Over the winter the contents had settled. Tonight I topped off the bed with a mix of top soil and manure. If the weather holds, we’ll be planting our first round of vegetables this Saturday.

Mother Nature, are you being sneaky?

spring,

I checked in the front, South bed today and my daffodils are in bloom. What?! This warm weather is really stirring up the activity on the lot. When I checked my post for my daffodils last year, they had bloomed around the end of April. Are they early this year?…or maybe last year they were late? It’s going to be fun comparing my growing notes and garden photos from this year to the previous.

The peonies in the back bed have poked their shoots above the ground. I also spotted the tiny blades of the dwarf irises sticking out of the mulch in the fence bed. The foxglove, also in the gate bed, has some healthy new spring growth. If next weekend is going to be as nice, I’ll reset some plant tags and run a full inventory check.

The Other Shoe Drops

bulbs, spring

March 20th is the first day of spring. I exclaimed this while my Better Half and I were munching on breakfast yesterday morning. We both looked out the window into our backyard, looked at each other and started to laugh. It was snowing.

Last year at the beginning of March, all the snow melted away and temperatures reached into the upper fifties. This year during mid-March, temperatures warmed in the same way. The star of Bethlehem, tulips and daffodils broke through the ground. The crocus were blooming. In a fit of gardening withdrawal, the butterfly bushes were pruned! Then it snowed.

This is a good thing. I feel like I can let out the breath I’ve been holding ever since the weather turned spring-like these past two weeks. Although I do enjoy winter, this is it’s last gasp before leaving us and spring truly arrives. I can’t wait. Neither can the plants.

In addition to the above mentioned bulbs, there are other plants stirring on the lot. While poking around in the beds, I noticed the sedum, lilies, irises, jupiter’s beard, lamb’s ear, poppy, delphinium, bleeding heart and lenten rose all showing new sprouts. I feel like it’s Christmas morning.