Call Of The Wild...Garden.

After a busy winter we are now plowing quite literally through the vegetable garden.

Daffodils are still arriving

As you enter the garden gate, under a old climbing rose I have a lovely brick area and gardening bench surrounded by an array of cut flowers and herbs. My vision was to have a french potager ( a fancy word for a kitchen garden) that we could enjoy throughout the seasons. Raised beds to come however.

Saturday Mark and El spent an hour or so digging the rest of the potatoes while I dug the gladiola bulbs with the chickens.

Growing up we had only a few spikes of the tropical flower in our back yard. I imagined they were a rare and special plant my parents probably had shipped from Hawaii. Because of our mostly clay soil they stayed contained and we all sat in awe of them each summer.

I now know that though they are lovely, in the right soil they are invasive little blighters. I have spent almost three hours on what I felt was the smallest patch of garden we own. And we're not talking large, hearty, the size of your fist bulbs but some sort of sick infestation right out of Alien. They create baby bulblets, as I like to call them, that no matter how hard you try they slip away and back into the dirt where they will wait...and plot against me.

I blame the the glads along with the nefarious insects we have in the vegetable garden for the failure of my precious Dahlias. I have pointed them out above to shame them and their families.

It has always been our goal to garden in an organic and gentle sort of way. At one point I created a neon yellow board sprayed with adhesive to attract the cucumber beetles. The objective being that they would be so overcome with joy and desire for this bright yellow board, they would fly to it and promptly become stuck and die a long horrible death. The book said it would work. It didn't. The beetles just laughed and munched away on the leaves. Mark laughed at me a little too.

But let's think of happier things....

On the other side of the coop we have something we haven't had in a while; an untapped piece of soil. Here I hope to plant a cut flower garden. I have always needed to bring the outdoors in ever since I was little and this will help fill the need. Mark hopes to till this week. Gladiolas are planned to be relocated there but I am devising a way to keep them from taking over.

What Dahlias I have left are maroon in color and the pink/yellow one in the right above pic. Now that the land is clear I will be filling it with new Dahlias!

Costco and other box stores sell packages of "mixed" bulbs but your would be lucky to get anything interesting. Out of over one dozen bulbs I only had one purple to show for it and the rest were maroon. I found a great place, local even, called Frey's Dahlias which I will be ordering from.  The site also has wonderful straight forward directions on planting, harvesting and care. Great if you are a first time Dahlia gardener.