Today was Pentacost, a holiday in the Christian church marking the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to the apostles. While we were out in the garden, Mom G told me in Germany the peony is referred to as the Pfingstrose or the “Pentecost Rose” since the plants tend to bloom on Pentecost. My first peony bush of three began opening about three days ago and is now full of very pale pink, baby powder-scented blooms.

Also this past weekend, my family drove here to help my Better Half and I construct a pergola for our backyard. We began work around 10am on Saturday and worked until around 9pm. We were up again at 8am and worked until about 7pm today. It was a lot of hard work and everyone ended the days hot, tired and dirty, but I think we did a great job and I am completely geeked about this new focal point in the garden.

Things I did to help prepare for the project:

• agonized over cedar vs. treated lumber
• called the city to check if I needed a building permit
• asked how far the structure had to be from the property lines
• marked the 10’x10′ footprint with stakes and twine to decide on location
• looked up the frost line for the area
• called MISS DIG to have the utility lines marked
• ordered all lumber and hardware and had it delivered before my help arrived
• bought tons of food and beverages for my workers
• purchased new blades for the jigsaw and sandpaper for the sander
• printed out multiple copies of the blueprints/plans
• patience, patience, patience

Things I learned (aka. should have done):

• hot, sunny weather calls for sunscreen
• read, reread, and read once more the plans and make sure they are thoroughly understood
• makes notes of errors in the plan
• templates for arches can be redrawn in Illustrator, scaled up to size and printed ahead of time
• a tweak in one part of the plans often leads to additional tweaks
• check over the lumber order on delivery to make sure it is correct
• make sure the new blades actually fit the jigsaw and are long enough for the project
• even more patience

I’ve been attending a free gardening series held in area during the spring and fall. Yesterday was the first class of the 2010 spring series. It was a presentation on soil by Kathy Rohm. Being a fledgling gardener, I did not know so many things could be said about dirt. The presenter did a fantastic job. Here is some info she shared with us on soil texture and structure.

• Soil Texture: the size of the particles in the soil
• Soil Structure: the way the particles are held together

Sand has large, irregularly shaped particles. Because of this, sand has a very loose structure and drains easily, often taking any soil nutrients with the water. It does not hold moisture well.

Silt has smaller particles than sand, but they are also irregularly shaped. It is between sand in clay when dealing with structure.

Clay has very fine, flat particles. It packs very tightly together, holding onto the nutrients better than sand, but not allowing room for air in the soil.

Ideally, most plants prefer the texture found in a sandy loam, which is a mixture of sand, silt and clay. Loam will retain moisture and nutrients so the plants have time to access both. It has a structure which makes it crumbly, allowing air to exist in the soil and plants to spread their roots without being stopped by any barrier.

Kathy suggested a fun test to help determine what type of soil structure you have in your garden. Fill a quart jar 2/3 full of water. Add soil (dried on a newspaper and ground as fine as possible) until the jar is almost full. Screw on the jar lid and shake vigorously.

In 20 seconds, the heaviest particles will settle to the bottom of the jar. This is the amount of sand in the sample. In about another two minutes, the silt layer will have settled. The remaining layer, the clay, can take several weeks to settle. The settled layers can give a fairly accurate estimate of the soil texture in the garden.

Now, where is my Better Half’s canning jars?

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.