Ralph bought me some ladybugs today. We made a large envelope/pouch out of thin painter’s plastic drop cloth, taping edges. We placed the lemon tree, along with one of my hoyas that was right next to it and I think got slightly infected with the mites, on the front porch. We covered both plants with the plastic, let loose some ladybugs and tied off the bottom.

My plan is to leave it out until tomorrow evening at the soonest. The porch gets some morning sun, but is shaded otherwise. The night temps will be in the high-40s, which will put the tree into a temporary dormancy. I’m hoping it’s a short enough dormancy that it doesn’t affect the fruit that is currently on there. I’m trying to tell myself that if all the fruit go bad, but the plant is healthy, that is the important thing. I just can’t help but feel bad that I’ll have to wait for more fruit. From what I’ve read online, it sometimes takes up to 9 months before the fruit will ripen.

Note to self: If I ever buy a similar plant, check it for scales before purchasing.

Today’s gardening efforts are kind of mixed. We went to the nursery so that Ralph could pick out the plants he wants in the bed he’s in charge of this year (it’s nice that he likes gardening enough to want a bed each season to plant himself). I picked up a few things but almost all of them need to wait until after next weekends low temps before they go in the ground. So, after weeding, I transplanted some lamium (Pink Pewter and Beacon’s Silver) to some shady spots. I’m happy they’ve survived the spot they have been in. Fortunately, they even grew, so I was able to make two plants out of it.

Some of my tulips have bloomed (yay!). I spent a good chunk of time trying to create the frame for the false weeping cherry. Ralph wants it to “mushroom out” like a miniature tree rather than have the typical weeping shape. This will require the frame to hold up the branches until they naturally grow out, rather than down. He was supposed to do this the last couple of years, but couldn’t decide the best way to prop up the branches. They are too heavy for the metal wires we bought (that are for this specific purpose. Should have gotten a thicker gauge). I don’t know if what I did will help. I do know it’s ugly and has to stay there for at least a year. boo!

I’ve noticed some nasturtium sprouting in between the broccoli, onions and cabbage. I think I see marigolds sprouting, but I can’t be sure that they are not some of the clover I planted as a cover crop. Sugar snap peas are growing well, but it looks like the seedlings got moved by watering because I planted them in a specific pattern for the trellis and now they are scattered.

I see at least one Sugar Baby watermelon popping up out of my second to last batch of indoor sowing. My lemon cucumbers and some zucchini seedlings look like they’re suffering a little. I’m very tempted to transplant them and find a way to cloche them.

I’ve been moving my dahlias outside during the day. They are all about 1.5″ out of the soil. I can’t seem to find any signs of my blackberry lilies. I’m hoping something didn’t get at the bulbs. Today, of course, would have been perfect to try my ladybug experiment, but we forgot to pick some up at the nursery.

A day of a few setbacks and some progress forward. I don’t feel accomplished, but I don’t feel like it was a waste of the day either. Will spend some time trying to find less-unsightly ways of training the cherry tree branches. Let’s hope tomorrow is more productive. I want to take pics to share with Angela.

By the time I got home, it was still nice out and I wanted to be in the garden. After watering what’s in the veggie beds, I watered out front and pulled only one type of weed. I have to save my dandelion weed pulling for either Wednesday or Saturdays so that I can bring the bag to the 7-11 by our house. There’s a gentleman there who rescues lizards and he has three that prefer dandelion greens. Since I don’t use chemicals on my yard because of the dogs, I’m one of the few places he can get them.

I also brought out my dahlia containers. They have all sprouted above the surface of the pots they are in. I hope leaving them out tonight won’t be too much of a shock for them. If the temperature suddenly drops, I will run out and get them.

Didn’t get to the seedlings I’m working on indoors last night, so I will do that in a little bit. Might also write down the garden chores I’d like to get accomplished this weekend.

There isn’t really a lot I can do at the moment. Still too early to plant out the seedlings I’ve started, I’ve watered and weeded until this Saturday and I’m out of room to start too much more inside. I am planning on starting one more batch of okra because the seedlings I have are looking iffy. If they come back, then I’ll just have more to share at the plant swap next month. I did start a few more tomatoes last night using my new “greenhouse” method of planting in iced mocha cups. I’ll try to remember to post a picture of this next time.

I’m giving the lemon tree a little break from my ministrations. I’m sure it appreciates having a lot less scales each time I work on it, but using so much rubbing alcohol on such a young tree doesn’t seem right. I suppose I can just use water, but I was under the impression that the alcohol kills off a lot of the honeydew residue easier than just water.

Also, while admiring some sugar snap pea seedlings, I saw a green “stick” standing about 5 inches out of the soil. Almost looks like asparagus, but I thought my asparagus all disappeared the year before last. Besides, this is in a totally different bed than they were planted in. Did I transfer it when working the soil in both beds and trying to even them out? I’m tempted to let it do it’s thing for a bit to see what happens with it.

I’ve been debating whether or not to start a garden blog because it would be yet another thing to keep up with. However, every year the garden bug gets me more and more, so this may just be an appropriate way to feed the urge. Since this is my first garden blog post, it’ll most likely be way too much information.

It’s still too cold most days to do much gardening-wise other than fuss over what seems to be coming up, leafing out or struggling too survive. We did feel that it was warm enough to put the gargoyles out. They never made it out last year due to the mess that the geothermal install made. Last year was primarily cleaning up and installing a new paver walkway.

I have high hopes this year for the gardens. I may finally be able to dedicate some solid effort into the front yard, giving it a good start at becoming the cottage garden I’ve been wanting. It looks like I’ll have to be dividing a lot of my lilies for next season. I want to spread the seeds from my hellebore when they are ripe. I’m trying my hand at propagating to finally start an honest effort to fill in the backyard’s brick bed edging. If I didn’t think it would take away from the dogs’ lawn, I’d consider ripping out the foot-high edging altogether.

I’m trying some new things in the veggie garden, slowly letting go of my issues about growing crops that only one of us likes. It feels like I grow the same things every year and I’d like to try different veggies to keep the beds interesting. This year, I’m trying okra, romanesco broccoli and cabbage. I tried growing okra last year by putting seeds directly into the bed. They never made a showing. I’ve tried broccoli raabe, but not the romanesco broccoli that looks like a fractal pattern. Cabbage was tried once because a half-head that was left in the crisper too long started sprouting 4 individual heads. I planted that in the garden but it was Penelope Envelope’s first year gardening and she ate them when they got to be the size of lemons. Now that she’s older, and there’s a simple wire fence around the veggies, I’m giving it another go.

I’m also trying dahlias again. My first attempt was because I wanted to have a plant for each member of our families in our garden. Dahlias are for my sister whose original name was supposed to be Adalia. However the priest in the Philippines would not baptize her because she had the name of a flower (or something along those lines from what I’ve been told). I tried them my first year gardening in this house and I got one beautiful bloom. I had it in a less-than-ideal location and didn’t know I had to dig up dahlias each fall, so the tubers rotted. Now that I know better, I’m trying two varieties and keeping them in pots in ideal locations. That way I know I’m digging up dahlias and not any of my lilies.

Yeah, what grows, will grow this year.t I’m not all too happy with my garden at the moment so I don’t think I’ll be putting as much into it as I normally do. Plus, Penelope Envelope keeps eating all my lemon cucumber seedlings. This just won’t be my year for gardening.

To take its place, Ralph and I have been searching for art (our anniversary tradition). Of course the stuff I really want is way out of our price range or hard to find. We have been finding possible treasures, but we’re still deciding on what we like and want to get.

My niece wants to come visit for a week. I think I’d like her to, but I’m nervous about trying to keep a 16-year-old entertained. I’m especially worried about how bored she might be while we’re at work. I know of things I’d like to do when I get home or on weekends (take her to the Chocolate Bar, an all-ages concert, museum, maybe Tahoe, etc.) but I have no clue what things I can do/suggest while she’s home by herself. I dunno, I guess our floors need refinishing…

For some reason, I think I may be in trouble gardening-wise this year. In an effort to make our front patio sitting area more level, we moved some of the dirt into my raised veggie beds (because I have a really bad habit of taking from it to pot stuff). Since it was kind of an impromptu thing, I didn’t clear out all of the rocks that I should have and now I’m worried I just introduced weeds into my beds.

Two of my artichoke plants are doing well, as well as the horseradish. All of the bulbs I’ve planted seem to be doing well as long as we don’t get more strong winds that blow the petals off of the flowers. Totally ruined my plan of having one planter of just black and white tulips.

Composting isn’t going as smoothly as it did last year. Too much nitrogen no matter how much carbon material I add. My laziness in the fall has caused what I think are 20 zucchini seedlings to grow. Instead of putting all of the spent zucchini into the compost, I just turned some over into the soil…thinking it would compost straight into the dirt. If I’m lucky, there will also be some crook neck and patty pans in there, because 20 zucchini plants is way too many. I could just pull them all up and plant the seedlings I’ve started, but I kind of like that these grew on their own and that I have back-ups in case we get another frost before the end of May.

Had to put fencing around the veggie beds because Penelope Envelope decided she likes nibbling on cabbage. I don’t like the way it looks (fencing around my veggie beds) but it should prevent her from boxing with any of my eggplants like she did last year. Besides, we got the green plastic net fencing so I’m hoping that the sugar snap peas will use that for support

–How cute. My niece just called me to ask how to cook chicken adobo. She’s so darling. I love her. Wish I could see her more–

instead of the tomato cages I normally use.

My next big garden project will be what to do about my cheapy greenhouse. I joke around that it’s not spring yet until it falls over in a windstorm, causing damage to any seedlings I’ve started or at least causing them to fall out of their labeled containers. That’s the worst part, having unknown seeds to plant because I like to arrange the plants in my beds according to what grows well together.

I’ll keep you posted. :\