Tuesday, November 9, 2010

A List of Autumn Garden Chores

Today in only a few hours I achieved a few cleaning up garden chores. This included spreading an acidic soil mix to all the plants that benefit their blooming from acidic soil. This includes Rhododendrons, Hollies, and Blue Berries.

Thanks to a recent shipment of wood I'm left with loads of tiny scrap pieces which I've been spreading to be a reasonable mulch in certain places.

I turned over all the tomato plants and harvested the few green ones that were left. As per instructions in a video I saw I've cut up the plants and left them where they grew as a green mulch.

I transplanted the Bug Bane, which I wasn't able to photograph this year. Apparently it's been getting to much sun and not enough water where it is and the poor thing fried right up. Hopefully it will be happier next to the air conditioner where the water drips out. It tends to be really wet there but it's sort of at the top of a slope too. While it's not what I'd call well drained hopefully it will grow just fine. To my surprise one of the native Rhododendrons is growing fine next to it and doesn't seem to have any signs of root rot. Maybe the water isn't penetrating that deep into the soil.

I'm also working on establishing bluets, Houstonia caerulea. This is such a pain though. It's not that the plants are dying from bad soil conditions, it's just they have the root structure of a clump of moss and squirrels love flipping them upside down. I'm glad I bought 75 of the things. Everyday I have to go out and check on the patches where they're planted and replant them. I add more soil around them and leaf litter hoping they go untouched the next day. For the most part this is working but I still find about two of them have been tampered with. Usually the same plants though.