Happy Earth Day!

The Earth is so beautiful. I love this time of year when everything is fresh and new. It is so fitting that the seasons coincide with the rebirth and renewal we celebrate at Easter. As a speaker at church said on Easter morning, all things testify of Christ!

 

 We had a lovely Saturday working in our little corner of the Earth.

We planted a few new trees, mowed the lawn, got the garden drip system running, and enjoyed the sunshine.

The yard is in full bloom! The weeping redbud is just gorgeous.

The lamium (dead nettle) ground cover has been blooming since February! This is a no-fail, no effort little performer!

The bleeding hearts have doubled in size in a week and are getting buds on them.

The bulbs are getting showy. This is a double yellow tulip.

We have three different varieties of daffodils.

Love the pops of color all over the place.

The flowering pears and spring snow crab apples are also blossoming.

Maddie celebrated Earth Day at school by picking up 100 pieces of garbage!

Earth Day

I saw a website this morning that said to hug a tree or play outside to celebrate Earth Day. If you can hug a tree while you plant it, we have plans for both!

We bought some trees last weekend that still need planting. This blue atlas cedar is going to take some man power, I'm afraid.

 We replaced our limber pine, and it was a more manageable size so I could help plant it last Saturday.

We also replaced a crabapple, and we bought a beautiful weeping redbud and a tri-color beech that we need to find perfect places for.

I will also be enjoying the blossoms bursting forth in the yard! Everything is beginning to show its colors.

Oh how I love Basket of Gold and Candytuft, spring blooming groundcovers. 

The ornamental pears are on the verge of blooming, along with the fruit trees (apple, apricot, and pear).

 

And playing outside will be a pleasure, since we put up our new playset over the weekend! The kids just can't get enough.

 

If you look hard you can also see we had our backyard graded with fill dirt last week, and topsoil spread over that. On queue this week is raking, curbing, and finally hydroseed! I will post all the picture of the process coming up soon.

Pruning Trees

It's that time of year! The sun comes out and teases us that spring is on it's way, even though the world is still white and cold. From my years working in the gardens, that combination whispers "Pruning!"

I am no pruning expert, but I do follow a few basics that guide me through most trees successfully.

1. Cut out any dead or diseased branches so the tree can heal over, also preventing further pest/disease problems.

2. Remove branches that are crossing or growing into the tree. I tend to be conservative on this so as not to cut out too much wood. If you can tell that a branch will only ever grow into the canopy and cause trouble, or that branches are already crossing and rubbing, exposing and weakening the bark, remove them.

3. Remove suckers (from the base of the tree) and water sprouts, which are young (you can tell new growth by the color difference) and tend to grow much faster than the other branches. This may be a difficult thing to identify, but some ornamental fruit trees--pears in particular--tend to have tons of water sprouts that take over the tree. They need to be nipped back to a lower, outer bud to keep the canopy open and re-direct growth.  

My young ornamental pear trees haven't water spouted too much, but they did have some crossing and erratic branches that needed guidance.  The idea is to direct all growth of the buds up and out, to keep the trunk open to light and air.

I don't know how well this illustrates, but the second picture is taken after I removed some crossing branches and nipped back a water spout on the left.

My trees are still very young and don't require much attention, but all trees should be examined at least once a year for problems. As mentioned before, pruning is typically done in the winter or early spring before buds swell, as soon as you can get to them with ladder and tools.

I have yet to attack my fruit trees, which are a whole different ball game, and with which I am still unfamiliar! All I know is that pear trees have to be shaped very differently than apple trees! For this information, and basically anything else I don't know, I like to turn to my state extension service website, which is through Utah State. Here are some great guides they put out with lots more detail and information:

Pruning the Orchard: http://extension.usu.edu/files/publications/publication/HG_363.pdf

Pruning Landscape Trees: http://extension.usu.edu/files/publications/publication/NR_FF_004.pdf 

Bloopers

Every gardeners goes through triumph and tragedy. It's part of the cycle of life... things can't go perfectly every time. It seems that this year I am having more than my fair share of difficulty, but I think I can blame it on not having consistent irrigation (a.k.a sprinklers!). It has been challenging to get out every day and make sure everything is getting enough water.

Here is a little list of my bloopers:

1. Crazy cucumber! It started on one side of the trellis and grew through! I picked a great big juicy cucumber the other day only to find it was really bitter. Why, when they look so perfect, do they taste so awful??!?!? I did a little research online to find that cucumbers are more prone to bitterness when they have uneven watering or cool weather. I have to admit I have watered them a few times after they have wilted in the afternoon sun. I need to be more careful!

2. Just when my beautiful hanging basket was beginning to recover from the very hungry caterpillar, a gigantic windstorm during the night spun it like a top until the hook popped out of the eave and sent the basket flying. Not only was it wind whipped, but now the root ball is all skiwampus in the container. I'm not sure I'll be able to resurrect it this time.

3. The saddest of all... my blue spruce is turning to dust. I'm not exactly sure what caused its demise but when it got so hot I probably should have watered it every other day instead of 2x a week. The root ball was disappointingly puny when we planted it, but it seemed fine until about the 1st of August. Apparently Home Depot will give your money back within a year, but you have to pull it out of the ground and take it to the service desk! Not even kidding! Who wants a dead, messy tree at the service desk?

The sprinklers system is almost finished and hopefully next year water will not be as much of an issue in my horticultural success!

THE Tree

We have had a huge maple tree sitting in our front yard for 4 months. Everyone from the neighbors to church members to my sister's father-in-law have been asking when we are going to get that thing planted. Everyone had an opinion as to how we should do it too. Thank heavens it finally happened!

Mike got about 4 feet down and 8 feet across with a shovel, but it was tough going. Our clay soil is super duper compacted! Our goal was 2x as wide and deep as the root ball, so we had about 4 more feet to go.

It sat like that for awhile and Maddie and Ella tried to refill it with clods.

Here's our saving grace! Our friend Jesse borrowed a back hoe from work and brought it over free of charge. What a good guy!

Maddie and her buddy Preston stood in the hole that was ready for the tree.

Hallelujah! A hole in one!

Isn't is beautiful? Looks like it could have grown there.

Arbor Day and FREE Trees!

Celebrate Arbor Day tomorrow, April 29th and plant a tree! Anyone is welcome to help with one of my 13 that still need planting! If you have a back hoe, all the better.

Photo credit

Or you could visit this amazing resource of knowledge and ideas: arborday.org. They give some great suggestions for celebrating:

• Plant a tree yourself. It is an act of optimism and kindness, a labor of love and a commitment to stewardship.
• Read a book about trees. Learn to identify trees in your yard and neighborhood.
• Enjoy the outdoors. Visit a local park or take a nature hike.
• Attend a class on tree and plant care.
• Organize or join a beautification project in your community or area.
  

Whatever you do, don't miss this: 10 FREE trees for buying a $10 membership to the Arbor Day Foundation!

Go to this memberships link and choose from 10 Flowering trees, 10 Colorado Blue Spruces, 10 Wild Bird garden trees, 10 Autumn Classics, and more! The trees will be very small (only 6 to 12 inches) but if you have space and time to let them mature for a few years they will grow big enough to transplant into your landscape.

This offer only goes until May 7th because they want to make sure you plant your trees in the most prime time (they offer it again in the fall). I just tried it myself and I'll let you know how it goes. You also get 33-56% discount on trees in their online nursery.

They even provide a great Tree Planting guide (in case you're an engineer and not a gardener, like my husband... see last post).

Happy Arbor Day!

A Day in the Yard

Saturday was a blustery and cold day for yard work, but we gave it a valiant effort. We got a load of compost dumped on the garden to use in back filling trees and working into planting areas. It is rich and dark... and guess where from? Mink manure! If you live in Lehi you are all too familiar with the mink farm smell that permeates the air through the summer... but it actually makes for good compost and doesn't even smell.

We started with the flower bed closest to the front door. It needed to be raised and graded to slope away from the house to drain properly, so we dumped a bunch of compost on and turned it in with a shovel. Hopefully it will improve the rocky, clay dominant, compacted soil just a little bit!

Mike dug a hole for our first and only tree to be planted thus far (Weeping Blue Atlas Cedar). He made me laugh... he has an engineer's brain for sure. He measured the pot and set out to dig an efficient hole exactly that size. When I realized what he was up to I had to explain that gardeners do things differently... the hole needs to be double the height and width of the root ball to allow for growth! He was bummed and wants to buy a pick axe.

I jumped the gun a little and planted some perennials (bleeding hearts and hosta) even though we don't have sprinklers in yet. I'll take a little hand-watering over barrenness.

Coming up soon I am going to tell you about some great shade plants that I hope to find for this North-facing bed!

Flowering Trees

'Tis the season for blossoms! I've gathered a few pictures from here and there and thought it would be fun to show you what you are seeing in bloom right now.

Malus: Crabapples

'Spring Snow'

(We just bought three of these for our yard and I'm so excited!)

'Floribunda'

Pyrus calleryanna 'Chanticleer': Flowering Pear

These are popular street trees and you can spot them everywhere you go.

They are tall and columnar, and they're about to burst forth in white glory!

(We also just bought three of these!)

Forsythia

I'm cheating a little on this one because it's a shrub, but it's yellow blooms are abundant right now so I wanted to mention it. This happy hill was spotted at BYU last week.


Prunus serrulata: Japanese Cherry, many varieties!




Wisteria
I've mentioned before this is one of my very favorites! As soon as I have something it can climb I will have one in my yard!


WillowThis is not a flowering tree but I just had to mention it because it's one of the first trees you'll see turning green and leafing out every spring. It's a sure sign the world is waking up and it makes me happy!

Just as a side note, if you are looking for trees this spring make sure you check your local Home Depot, and do it quick! They have some smoking deals on beautiful trees right now (really, like a fraction of the prices you would pay at a nursery). As you can see we couldn't pass them up!