One year blog anniversary

I finally made it to one year! I wouldn't trade this past years experience for anything.

Through blogging this past year I have come to understand so much more about gardening than I could from just reading about it.

Reading about gardening helps you to ‘know of’ generalities about gardening, such as,

terms like annual and perennial,

the difference between a bulb and a bareroot,

Fall is the best time for planting,

soil has more impact on plant health than just watering and fertilizing,

not all insects are pests.

Actually getting into the garden and working it shows how things interact and helps you to learn such things as

feeding the soil really is more beneficial than just feeding the plants,

mixing flowers with vegetables and herbs attracts beneficial insects to help you keep plants healthy,

growing a variety of shrubs, trees, grasses, and flowers helps support a greater variety of wildlife, and why that is important,

losing a portion of your crop to insect damage is so much healthier than trying to keep everything by destroying every insect you see and eventually ourselves,

being a part of nature by working with it rather than just watching it go on around you is healthier for your body, mind and soul.

Writing about gardening helps you focus your intellect in order to understand why we are dependent on a variety of wildlife just as they are dependent on us. And how much impact our little garden has on the world.

Gardening can’t help but make everyone a better environmentalist. It illustrates how using chemicals to keep a ‘greener’ lawn or grow ‘bigger’ tomatoes really does more harm than good, just like we have been told for years.

My fellow blogging gardeners have presented so many wonderful new tricks and ideas to help rookies like myself succeed. I realize after just one year of perennial gardening that I had been previously only working at gardening and now, after being able to create some beauty of my own, I realize that I can indeed begin to call myself a gardener, still a novice, but a gardener just the same.

This yearlong experience has made me hungrier than ever to learn more of this fascinating lifestyle. I thank each and every one of you for helping to make this possible. Hopefully, this blog will be viewed as a source of inspiration and knowledge so that I can do my part to help someone else.

Happy Birthday Utah Valley Gardens from a blogging neophyte who deeply appreciates being a part of this great and wondrous world of gardening and blogging.

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Gardening is a learning experience

I am grateful for finally having the space to garden as I always knew I could. And I am grateful for being healthy enough to get out there and do it.

I am grateful that gardening is such a popular activity. Its popularity has made possible the wide variety of plants and the nurseries that make them available.

I am grateful for the variety of media available to give me ideas, to spark my imagination and to answer my many questions either through websites, bulleting boards, blogs, podcasts, books, magazines, and to a lesser extent radio and television.

I want to take this opportunity to send my heartiest thank-you to each and every one of my wonderfully talented, generous, caring fellow gardeners who take the time to blog their experiences so beginners like me can learn.

And I have learned a lot this past Spring and Summer. About how plant colors interact with one another. How to put color combinations together to design a ‘cool’ setting or a ‘hot’ setting. About how some colors give the feeling of depth, and how texture can give the illusion of movement. I have also discovered that there are no hard and fast rules. That it is okay to experiment to find your own unique style.

I have begun to learn ‘nursery speak’, the hidden meanings behind words like creeping (invasive) or airy (long and thin).

About what plants won't grow in 'full sun' areas like I was told they would. Without casting too much discredit onto nurseries trying to sell their wares, I realize they look at ‘full sun’ from the view point of warning potential buyers to give the plant at least six hours of direct sun. My experience has now shown me that more than six hours of full sun can be detrimental to the plants health. I probably should have watered more for those particular plants, but I don’t know which plants need more water in the ‘full sun plus’ areas just by reading the warning that they need full sun. Communication is a wonderful thing, but only if all pertinent information is properly conveyed.

I have learned how valuable it is to have someone you can count on to actually water everything when you are on vacation.

I learned I need to start seeds indoors earlier than I did this year. As well as the fact that I can actually make it work.

Another thing I learned is that this can be a pretty expensive hobby if you let it get out of hand. The rewards are far greater though. Being outside in the sun, exercising your knees and back, and shoulders and legs, and neck, and oh, what a workout!

I have learned the true value of a great pair of pruning shears over the economy of a good pair. Likewise with every other garden tool available.

Other rewards come later after you see all of your planning and hard work come to fruition and even if only one person tells you it looks great, then it was worth it. That’s the moment when you take a break, stand back and don’t look at your work with a critical gardeners eye but look at it for the beauty it is and say “You know, it does look good”.

When dozens of birds, butterflies and bees come around to visit, that is when it will really hit me. That I have actually created an environment that is natural enough for wildlife to nourish themselves, find protection and feel comfortable enough to nest here. That is when I know I have achieved something really important and worthwhile.

I already have more than my fair share of birds coming around to all of the feeders I have filled every day for the past three years. I’m used to, daily, seeing a variety of Finches and Doves. I am regularly visited by Hummingbirds, Starlings, Flickers, Mallards, Chick-a-dees and the occasional Red-tailed Hawk. Now I am to the point that I am anxiously looking for the never before seen birds that migrate through here.

This year there were more bees than last year. Next year I hope there will be even more. This year there were only the white cabbage butterfly and once I saw a red butterfly, but next year, there will be more, I’m just sure of it.

I learned that maintaining a garden bed is a lot of work. I was already in tune with the rhythm of digging, amending, planting, feeding, and weeding with vegetables. But this year it was different. This time it is with perennials. I have already gone through three winters of caring for roses and fruit trees and one winter of caring for a few other perennials.

This winter I will be caring for so many more plants than I ever have before and attempting to learn the timing of when to mulch and which plants should be covered and which ones should not that I am really looking forward to how they come through.

Gardening has taught me to accept nature on its terms, and if you can do that and provide its very basic needs then you will be rewarded by the simple yet complex beauty that only nature can provide.

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Forever a learning experience

Haven't posted much lately, as anyone can see by the date of the previous post. But it hasn't been due to lack of interest.

There are several reasons really, the biggest being it has been so hot that I haven't had the desire to spend much time outdoors in the garden except to move the sprinklers around.

Another reason is that my other interests have taken time away (mainly because they take place indoors in the AC).

I have been reading a lot of wonderful gardening blogs and magazines regularly, learning and planning for next years plots.

In watching my plots take shape this year I have learned a lot. I have learned that cats love my Nepeta Walkers Low, especially one particular grey cat that has created a mini-exercise program for me every morning as I chase it out of the yard. These cats are 'neighborhood' cats and I don't know who their owners are (I know cats don't really have 'owners' so let's just call them 'home and food providers') but they sure love to hang out in my yard. They don’t hang out here just because of the catmint, I also have several bird feeders scattered around the front and backyards that attract them so I am on constant alert to their presence. I rely on the birds to tell me most of the time. When I don’t hear them chattering away I know their quiet is a signal that danger is lurking under the nearby shrubs.

Anyway, watching the flowers take shape and attempt to survive the dry Utah climate has provided me with lots of data to use in choosing more appropriate plants. I have a wide variety of plants in one bed that I had envisioned would be a tribute to drought tolerance and floral beauty. It seems that some of the plants are not as 'drought tolerant' as I was led to believe. Perhaps there are varying degrees of drought tolerance, but I suspect that assumption.

For instance, in this bed I have Achillea Coronation Gold and Achillea Angels Breath that bloom at different times of the year and each has survived beautifully with little moisture and with a showy display of flowers. Then there is Campanula Superba that bloomed beautifully and then quickly suffered under the same watering schedule.

My Chrysanthemum Alaska, Coreopsis Early Sunrise, Echinacea Magnus, Rudbeckia Goldstrum, Salvia East Friesland, and Sedum Autumn Joy have all survived wonderfully with little water while the Liatris Kobold, Heuchera Bressingham, Filipendula, and Arabis Snowcap have all but disappeared as they wilt from lack of water.

Some of these plants may still be 'saved' ny moving to another plot that doesn't get as much intense sunlight. I am guardedly optimistic.

Another thing I am learning, in this my inaugural year of flower gardening, is that the term 'full sun' is a bit of a misnomer. All of these plants I mentioned here are in a plot that gets true ‘full sun’ and by this I mean all-day-long-full-sun not just the six hours that is commonly accepted in the gardening world as 'full sun'. This has become a painful lesson to learn as I attempt to save these half fried plants. I have several other plots that receive ‘full sun’, the six hour variety, and then light shade to full shade the remainder of the day and these same plants are doing much better. So, when I read plant descriptions I scrutinize light requirements a lot more carefully these days.

Since my list of plants that can truly take the ‘full sun’ of that aforementioned plot has dwindled I will need to fill in those spots, that have been vacated by the dead and dying, with more of the same that did made it. This cuts down on the flowering variety that I was hoping to see in that plot but at least there shouldn’t be any more reminders of dying dreams there.

I have also been given a little insight into how to time blooming periods. Seeing it written in a plants description of when plants bloom has turned out to be slightly different than in real life. I wonder if this is the case in all plants. It has been, so far, in most of the plants that I have started this year. Perhaps it is because of the region of the country that I live in, I can only guess and take note as I lose more plants in trying to determine what can actually make it here. I have taken great care to choose only plants that are rated as surviving in my growing zone.

Which leads me to another factor that has mystified me. The ‘growing zone’. This term has, at the expense of plant lives, been further defined through experience. When I first looked at the USDA zone map, attempting to determine what plants will grow here, I was more than a little confused. I understand now that this map is only to be used as a ‘general’ guideline because there cannot possibly any well defined science involved. Adding to my dismay, I have not been able to locate a Utah USDA zone map where I can actually pinpoint my town. I have been forced to choose an area where I think I am located and just accept that I have chosen the correct growing zone. The map is far too non-specific for me to make an accurate determination of my zone, therefore I have had to buy plants with the knowledge that the zone 5 rating or the zone 6 rating may not be accurate. This has turned out to be a disappointment in some cases. Take for example several of the plants that I had placed in the plot that received the ‘all-day-full-sun’ and could not handle that much sun. Does this ‘lack of vigor’ in these plants mean that their zone 6 rating was inaccurate? Given that they received the same amount of water as those other plants that survived, I can only surmise that the rating is inaccurate for this part of Utah.

Now, I must endure winter knowing that the, possibly incorrect, zone identifiers may be a death notice for some of those plants that survived the heat and sun.

I have spoken to other gardeners in the area, some say we are in zone 6, some say zone 5, some tell me that they don’t even bother with that map and just leave it up to the nurseries to tell them what will grow here. But I don’t want to be limited to what the local nurseries sell. Maybe losing plants to the climate is going to have be my price for being renegade enough not to be limited by their offerings.

So, future plant purchases will continue to be made with the knowledge that I may lose the plant. While I am a beginning gardener, as far as flowers are concerned, these lessons can be expensive. Oh what we sacrifice for our hobby.

I have stated before that I have grown vegetables for years and I have learned that they are not quite as sensitive or contrary to weather extremes as flowers are.

The one major lesson I have taken from gardening is that everything you thought you learn each year will be adjusted and more finely tuned the next year. There are, of course, generalities that are fairly constant but you should never rely on these to be 100% accurate all the time.

As long as gardening remains a fun, healthy experience, I am certain I will not give up because of a few failures. I just wish that if the people I buy plants from are ‘pushing’ the definition of growing zones they would at least be ‘up front’ about it and acknowledge that fact so I can have a better idea where to place these plants.

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Unfinished projects, part one

Here’s an area that really needs work. I choose this area first because this is going to be the most labor intensive to get under control.

This picture, dated September 2006, was taken two years after we moved in. I did not have a clear plan for the space, other than knowing I did not want this tree and all of its suckers.

When we first moved in this plum tree was a ‘huge’ shrub and I had no idea what it was. I asked the neighbors but they didn't know either. The suckers had grown so tall and thick that the trunk wasn’t visible. For size reference, the fence posts are set ten feet apart and this thing covered the fence from one post to the other.

Within a month of moving in I cut everything down except the main tree, the trunks you see here. After clearing it back a bit I began finding tell-tale ‘fruit’ on the ground that looked like plums. They were a 'dusty' purple and not very well developed (see next photo). I attributed the smallish size of the fruit to the tree not being well-cared for. Perhaps this variety just produces fruit smaller than the standard plum.




I began tossing lawn clippings on the area thinking the decomposition of it would help loosen up the heavy clay soil.

Here is what it looked like in April of this year, before the suckers and bindweed have come up.



I’m still putting grass clippings on it, along with composted steer manure and digging it in. I had come up with a plan to replace the tree with a couple of tall and wide Viburnum. I ordered the Viburnum, one 'Aurora' (white) and a 'Red Wing' thinking they would be tall enough and wide enough to cover this section of fence by next Spring. At that time I would cut down the plum tree and all of its suckers.

Viburnum 'Aurora' before...









and after...









and what it would have looked like if it had survived my ineptitude.








Viburnum 'Red Wing' before...










and after...









and what it would have looked like. Ah well, they would have been beautiful.









I think the lesson here is that just because they are considered 'hardy' shrubs for my area, doesn't mean they don't need to be protected from the hot sun. I did expose them to the sun gradually, following the typical transplanting routine, i.e., a few hours of sun the first day and increasing sun exposure each day for a week before putting them into their permanent place. And I did water them a lot, although on reflection, maybe not often enough.

Another lesson is to pay a little extra to buy larger shrubs that would probably have had a better chance of getting established.

I will buy two more viburnum, the same ones again, and this time they will make it and my plan will have to be adjusted. Such is a gardeners lot.

In the mean time, there are two Lilac's maturing here until they get big enough to move somewhere a little more permanent.



And two squash 'Hybrid Gentry' crook-necked.





And one more plant, Spirea 'Little Princess'.



The open space in the above photo is as of today. I still need to figure out what will look good in front of two large Viburnum. This is the most difficult yet most fun part of gardening, is trying to decide what to plant.

Good garden design says I need to repeat what I already have planted, but there is so much more out there to plant that I just can't bring myself to be limited by what I already have. And I have to consider bloom times so I can have color during every season.

Maybe some Chrysanthemums, Geraniums, Bee Balm, Lilac....

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Reflecting on past spaces

I was sitting on the back deck yesterday afternoon looking out over the beds I have planted. They really have come a long way from when we first moved here.

I went to the computer and began looking at some pictures I had taken before the projects were started and it felt good to compare how the yard has changed.

Here are a couple of pictures of the backyard in April of 2005:

This one shows the new raised beds I had just built and filled with soil and compost.

The back fence needs some sort of vine and shrubs to 'pretty it up' a bit. That's an apple tree in front of the beds.


This one shows a concrete pad that had a dog house on it and the area to the right is the future site of a perennial flower bed.

A plum tree is against the fence to the right of the apple tree.


These next two pictures show the backyard in May of 2006:

That's a cherry tree to the left and a box elder hanging over my shed from the yard behind us. This tree is the home to hundreds of box elder bugs. Nasty flying red things that are just bothersome. They say these bugs don't eat anything in the garden and so far I guess that has been shown, but they are messy.


Nothing much has changed here. I did dig up the future perennial bed on the right next to the fence and am getting rid of the weeds and will add compost etc before planting it in Spring 2007.

I have decided to pile compost material on the concrete pad hoping to get some compost. I know it isn't an ideal location, being on concrete, but at least it's a start.


These final two pictures show the backyard in July of 2007:

The 'Heritage' raspberry bushes behind the cherry tree finally produced and they were plump and juicy.The plants are five years old this year and I was told they don't produce before this age.



Here the perennial bed has finally been planted and almost everything is surviving, much to my surprise. I do have a record of killing off plants. I'm thinking that just maybe I am beginning to get the hang of this gardening thing. I did just feed everything a couple of days ago, so that's a positive thing.

Looking at the grass I can see it is beginning to return to a semi-healthy state. In 2005 I attempted to feed it on what I thought was a regular schedule but by 2006 I could tell that I did not yet understand how or when to do it. So, I hired a lawn service in 2006 before I did irreparable damage. Now I understand that I am supposed to sprinkle the lawn with some sort of compost/top soil mixture and aerate it every year.

I did have it aerated last year and again this year. When they aerated it this year their machine would barely dig into the ground which led me to ask questions about why. It seems that I may not be watering it well enough and I suspect there are other problems that I have not yet been 'made aware of'. It seems there always is something additional that needs to be done or I need to add a little 'finesse' in doing it the way I am.

As far as watering goes, I keep hearing and reading that you should water about 20 minutes several times a week with an occasional 'deep watering' but that is if you have an installed irrigation system, which I don't. You can see the garden hose laid out across the lawn and this is my irrigation system. I followed the 'experts' advice attempting to get enough water on the backyard and my wife took care of the front yard. I noticed she watered a lot longer than I did but I didn't say anything until towards the end of the year. The result was that the front yard greened up a lot better than the backyard. So, I am convinced that I need to water a lot more.

Boy, this learning process is long and arduous. If only I had an expert that can look at it and tell me (complete with a proper schedule) what to do then I would have the confidence to do it myself. I guess learning is a reward in and of itself so I have to keep learning in order to keep being rewarded.

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