WiseAcre Gardens

 When I first saw the “vegetable garden” I thought it would make a perfect skating rink in winter. The previous owners had a good 12 years practicing chemical gardening. From the road their gardens always looked great. Seeing it one would wish it for themselves. That is until you got a close look. The soil had seemed to evaporate. The whole garden sat at least four inches below grade. It was in fact a rocky mess of thin mud with the subsoil only a couple inches down.

Over the last 10 years I’ve been building up the soil. Dug up sod, composted horse bedding and even foot deep layers of leaves have been piled and tilled in. In the photo you can see part of last years pile of sod left to ‘compost’ itself back to soil. (upper left)

 I may have gained 5 inches by now but the area remains a cold wet muddy mess usually well into May. Lucky for me this year everything dried out fast and I was able to get in and do some digging. After a couple of days the ‘project’ is starting to take shape. The rows run slightly downhill and will empty into a catch basin that’s not much more than a wide ditch with drain pipe covered with crushed stone. The ditch will be lined with landscape fabric and the stone will also be covered with a double layer. The pipe will eventually extend to a low spot to discharge all the runoff.

 Of course I say I’m doing this because of the poor drainage but really my wife needed a place to plant strawberries. I at least managed to get a row finished enough for her to plant. I haven’t measured it but it’s long enough to have planted 60 some plants in the fabric covered row with plenty of room for runners. If I had to guess I’d say the row was about 30 feet long. On the outside holding everything in place are 120 pots.  I figure next year they can be pulled and a new strawberry bed easily established. It might be an odd combination but this year’s plan is to plant peppers in the center of the strawberry bed.

  Who knows what the ‘front’ half of the garden is going to turn out like. I don’t but I am making steady progress. I at least got away with putting some curves into the garden.

 Join Green Thumb Sundays

 Chapel Street - Canton, NY

 I started this project last year and returned this spring to finish up the hardscape before planting time. One last thing that needed to be done was to create a dripline bed of crushed stone. With no gutters the water falling from the second story roof dug quite a line in the sod.

 I cut a new edge just beyond the dripline deep enough to run a line of blocks level with the concrete pad that extended from the house foundation.  The dripline bed will be filled with 1A crushed stone and average 3 inches deep.

 The Hosta, Lily of the Valley and violets already established along the concrete slab will have no problem coming up through the small stone.  In fact the old common orange day lilies planted in the dripline bed on the other side of the house are already well started. The beds were done in stone since mulch or soil would splatter against the house every time it rained.

 The edging created to deal with the rain running off the roof was the easy part. It was pretty clear what the area ‘needed’ and installing the edging and filling with crushed stone is a job anyone can do. The real challenge was the front of the house. I declined the opportunity of ripping out the old concrete steps and building new. That job went to a contractor who used manufactured block.

 As you can see the new steps were fairly massive yet didn’t quit fit in. Looking straight ahead the steps and planters seemed too narrow. The house front needed some balance and that’s where I started.  I put on a good show last summer hauling in some very large boulders on my little pick up truck. A good guess puts the largest just over one ton.

 With the boulders in place I’m now ready to plant. I don’t have a real plan although I do have ideas. We’ll see what I’ll end up with soon. Right now I can see Sedums, Coreopsis ‘Zagreb’, small hybrid Lilies, Black eyed Susans, Mini Garden Phlox, Coneflowers and Iris as the primary plants. But that can all change in a split second. Who knows what surprise awaits me at the nursery. (I always expect to be surprised - my memory is getting bad enough that I now have pleasant surprises every day) 

 An assortment of low growing Junipers will round out the planting in and around the block planters. I’ll be as surprised as everyone one else when finished. I never know exactly what I’m going to do until I’ve finished.  I wouldn’t be surprised if I plant a few more boulders. Afterall they need less care and seem less expensive than perennials these days.

 I like to say this is the type of job only an Idiot would do. Who else besides an idiot would attempt to move boulders weighing nearly a ton by hand. In the near future I will be posting ‘Boulder Moving for Dummies’ once I get some step by step photos for the instructions.

The next installment from Chapel Street will cover the planting. I’m going to try restraining myself a bit but  I’m pretty sure the homeowner is going to suffer a bit of sticker shock when all the plant materials are added up. It’s not that I don’t warn people. I do. But I guess it’s a fine line between Expensive and Dear Lord! We’ll see what you think when I finish.