Spontaneity in the garden

I've always loved the casual, untamed look of an old-fashioned cottage garden, so I tend to let my plants kind of do what they want (OK, I let them do what they want because I'm too lazy to prune and deadhead, but I prefer to think of myself as having a "style" instead of just being a slacker). Every year, my garden brings surprises, this year moreso than usual. Let's take a look at some of the unintentional beauty bursting out of my beds:

Red poppy:

I planted some mixed poppy seeds last year, which germinated well. In my usual lazy fashion, I let them go to seed, so this spring I had poppies popping up all over the place. I meant to move them around a little so they'd be positioned more artfully, but of course that happened. But when the blooms are this beautiful, who needs artful arrangement?

Calendulas:

More benefits of not deadheading: I had tons of calendulas sprout up this spring. I did move those around, because they sprouted in my veggie beds. Last year I had calendulas in the corners of three beds. Now I have them in the corners and along the borders of almost all my beds. They're so bright and cheery, and they even last through the winter here. I guess I'll have to figure out what to do with all the seedlings next year, as I'm running out of room for them.

Peony:

A couple years ago, I forked over way too much money for a tree peony. We had one when I lived in California, and it was gorgeous. So of course I had to have one. Well... the graft lasted the one season and never came back. *Sigh* But the peony that made up the rootstock grew just fine. At first I was annoyed that my gorgeous, blood-red, double tree peony was gone, leaving this simple, single bloom in its place. But this year, I admired the elegant cups formed by the buds, and when they opened, I fell in love with the blush of pink in the petals and the purply things in the center, so the former-tree-peony is staying.

Foxgloves:

Sometime last winter, I acquired a pot of some unidentified plant. For some reason, I thought it was comfrey. Lo and behold, I trudged out to the vegetable garden, where I'd parked the mystery pot, and found these gorgeous foxgloves growing out of it! I plan to let them seed all over the place, so I'll never be without foxgloves again.

Potato blossoms:

These made the list for two reasons: 1) They are not the fancy Russian fingerling potatoes I ordered and lovingly planted. Those are doing great too, but these sprouted from where I'd dumped some homemade compost last fall. I guess the potatoes I tossed out didn't fully decompose, and here's the proof. Usually when I grow potatoes from something other than treated seed potatoes, they die of blight, so we'll see if these are still around in August. But for now, they're gorgeous--and thriving in part sun behind the compost bin. Go figure. 2) These have the prettiest flowers of any potato I've seen. I don't think anyone thinks of potatoes as ornamental, but these almost qualify.

So what's the point of all this rambling, besides my ego-driven need to show off some pretty pictures? Well, just this: For years I've beaten myself up for not keeping up with garden maintenance, not taking the time to design my beds properly, not planning, etc. I'm not going to do that anymore. These pictures prove that unintentional beauty is every bit as wonderful as the kind that requires a landscape architect. So if you can't afford a pro, and you're too lazy or busy to go to the trouble yourself, don't sweat it! Get yourself some inexpensive seeds, start a few things, and let Mother Nature take it from there. Your yard may not be featured on the next garden club tour, but it will be bursting with beautiful surprises all the same.

Old mess becomes new compost heap

You know how there's an area in almost every garden that's a big ol' mess? You avert your eyes as you walk past, because you don't want to see it, but you don't want to deal with it either? Well, I have a lot of those in my yard, but I now have two fewer than I did a couple days ago. Big Mess #1 was an area about 7' x 4', which contained a huge dead rhododendron, a volunteer poplar seedling, a bunch of bindweed, and my mother's collection of old nursery pots. I've had my eye on the space for a couple years as a place for a Nelly Moser clematis and some other pretty flowers, but I just didn't want to deal with the mess. Take a look at this pic to see why:


Saturday, however, I decided I'd had enough. With a little help from Husband, who yanked up the rhodie skeleton and poplar seedling, I had the area cleared in about a half hour. Then it was time to employ my favorite lazy gardening technique, sheet mulching (see my previous posts on that topic for more info on that technique). Down went a thick layer of newspaper, followed by two big bags of leaves left over from last fall. Here's a pic of the project in progress:


Since I plan to convert this area to a planting bed next spring, I need to improve the soil. I have also filled all three of my compost bins, so I was on the lookout for a place to start another compost heap. Hey, I thought... let's solve both of those problems! The site of the former Big Mess #1 is now home to my newest compost heap! And just in time, too, because today Son and I decided to tackle Big Mess #2, the huge strip of horsetail growing along the west side of our property. All that horsetail, along with some other weeds, is now rotting away in its new home:


So what's the point of this story (besides a little public bragging about how much work I did this weekend)?

• Sometimes those big garden jobs that we put off really aren't that big. It took me a whopping 30 minutes to clear out that mess. Why did I wait so long?
  
• You don't have to spend a lot of money or do a lot of digging to get a new area ready for planting, especially if you're willing to wait awhile for nature to do the work.
  
• Make composting as easy as you can. Why haul the debris to the pile, then haul the finished compost to where you need it? Either pile up your debris near where it originally grew, or build your pile where you're going to need compost in a few months.
  

Happy gardening!

Lasagna Gardening, a/k/a sheet mulching

I am a lazy gardener. There. I said it. I hate tilling, hoeing, weeding, and watering. I'd much rather plant seeds and plants, propagate, harvest, and sit on a bench in the sun admiring the results of my not-so-hard labor. Yet the clay forms an impenetrable slab, the weeds grow, and the summer sun dries my poor plants out every day. What's a lazy gardener to do?

Well, a couple of years ago I picked up a book by Ruth Stout called How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back. It's a wonderful book, in which the author describes how she was able to have a huge garden with minimal work by sheet mulching or sheet composting, piling organic matter around her plants rather than digging in finished organic ingredients. That year I snatched up bags of leaves and other yard debris from unsuspecting neighbors and layered it over a part of my vegetable garden in the fall. Come spring, I didn't have to weed or till! Not bad.

Earlier this year, I found a newer book that describes similar techniques in lots more detail: Lasagna Gardening, by Patricia Lanza. It's a great book for beginning gardeners. Lanza spends about a chapter describing lasagna gardening in loving detail, but then she spends the rest of the book actually telling you how to grow stuff. She covers edibles -- vegetables, herbs, and berries -- and flowers, with lots of practical tips and helpful drawings. A few years later she published Lasagna Gardening for Small Spaces, which is even better because of the wonderful recipes she includes.

I have become a lasagna gardening convert. I've layered newspaper and leaves on my tomato patch and front yard flower garden, and I'm planning to make more garden lasagna as soon as the weather warms up a bit this year. I have better soil and fewer weeds -- even the horsetail struggled to come up last year through my 8" layers of mulch.

To purchase any of the books mentioned in this post, just click a link below: