Mulch more

 

Yeah my 20 bags of mulch are still sitting in my driveway.

The spiders moved in and I went nope.

Good news is that the grass is now super long and laying flat so if i cover it then next spring it should smother much faster. I'm still going to try and put some newspaper on it but I don't have enugh for it to be much more then a passing hope.

oh well.

Adventure in Mulch

I have purchased mulch. This is really over simplifying it. 

I planted about 126 bulbs this past fall. I threw leafs over them thinking that all would be well and that I had no need for mulch. As time went on I re-thought this because it looks like just bare dirt and if there is nothing covering it then the weeds will take over.

By weeds I specifically mean ragweed. one of my garden beds was full if it last year and I don't know why. So I made the impulse decision to put down some mulch.

The mulch was in nice neat little bags. 1.5 cubic feet each. They were also wet from the rain and said rain was also frozen. I got 4 to start with because I thought that would be all I needed. Yeah, No. That was not all I needed. It barely finished off the small front bed.

Now after I had done one bed I called my dad for his opinion on the mulch. Because I have heirloom bulbs and 100 other bulbs of mixed whatever. He said two inches should be enough to stop things from growing through it but that one inch should still be ok. I'm just going to have to keep an eye on it and push the mulch away as needed from the bulbs.

There are some super tiny bulbs that I think might be Glory-of-the-snow. They are bright blue star-like flowers and they are in the front bed and a little in the grass on the other side of the sidewalk. I dug up so many of the little bulbs that before I put out the mulch I have been checking the surface of the bed to see if I missed putting any back. I have found about 10-15. They are in pots inside and I'll be planting them back outside when it's a bit warmer.

So! Today I went out to a local place that is a bit pricey.

The guy very kindly helped me out and the price wasn't too bad. This place was 7 minuets from home and totally worth it for that alone. They apparently will also do deliveries in the summer. The bags were, to me, much much larger. They were just 2 cubic feet. Don't know why they looked larger.

Well... it only took 6 bags for the front. I don't know how this math worked because there is so much more mulch that I kept re-checking the labels to make sure it wasn't 3cubic feet or something. I don't know how this happened but I an not going to complain.

I think I might be able to get most of one side of my lawn covered. I need to remember to put down newspaper to help smother the grass.

This will leave me with one bag to put around my 4 hostas so that the weeds won't compete with them. Then next year I can split them and have more hostas. All the hostas.

While putting down the mulch I did find that the red echinacea survived and there are a few seedlings near it. Then I found some normal pink echinacea seedlings hiding under my Japanese split leaf maple. Thats going to be a fun adventure to transplant.

I also picked up some green twister echinacea. There were two in a pack and I got two. The first pack had an extra little plant in it and the second had two large plants that I was able to split. All seven are in pots in my florida room so they can get their roots established. This will also make it easier for me to have them survive when I plant them.

Next will be organizing the seeds. Then once it is warm and the bulbs have bloomed it will be drawing up a plan of were to put things. Because I don't remember were I put the peony. I really need to uncover it more because if it's more then 1-2 inches deep it won't put out flowers. Also I got plant markers which might not help.

As a reminder, all posts show up on my Patreon two weeks earlier for $1+ supporters. Then two weeks later they will show up here on the blog. More support means more posts! And more experiments!

Dollar Tree seeds part 1

Hello! Yes this is about the wonderfully cheep Dollar Tree seeds that you can get 4 packets of for $1!

No this is not an ad and no I get nothing for telling you about them. I just happen to kill plants very easily and hey, cheep seeds that grow well even with my neglect? All over it.

I got three of their echinatia/purple cone flower grow kits. They each have a few seeds, a little pot and a puck of what I assume is coconut growing medium. I put the pucks in a separate bucket and added water to make them... grow. Basically I added enough water to cover them and then I waited until all the water was gone before breaking them up and adding more water to see if they would grow more. They did.

There is plenty of stuff in them that I was able to use it for some little seedling starting trays that I also got at the store. These are tiny and much more maneuverable then the huge ones at the big box stores. I might go back and get a few more.

In these I put cyanne peppers, dill, cilantro, thyme, and a whole bunch of lavender because why not? I had more seeds then seedling starting trays so I now also have two little pots and one poorly filled pot with a mix of everything but the cyanne pepper. That one i made fit.

This is not how to do this btw.

I also got two boxes on zinnia seed mix. I have never grown these before so... When it's warm out I post more about planting them.

I also got... a crap ton of seeds.

You want a carpet of snapdragons? This is how to do it. At lest, this is how I'm going to do it. I have a pot to put one pocket in and then I will make an area or two over grown with them. I hope.

I also have packets of marigolds, bachelors buttons, and a generic 'flower mix'. I'm going to try and make a flower boarder between me and the church.

More updates as the weather warms up!

As a reminder, all posts show up on my Patreon two weeks earlier for $1+ supporters. Then two weeks later they will show up here on the blog. More support means more posts! And more experiments!

Gardening oops… so many seeds

Cross posted from my tumblr.

I have so many seeds. My poppies and sunflowers while not doing as good as i would have liked… they all produced seeds. Considering I am actually going to plant them properly this year I should have more.

This is not counting the almost twenty sunflower varieties I got in the mean time. They were on sale and I was and still am angry at rare/seeds for their bullshit.

The poppies need a place with water runoff and sunlight. My dad helped me sort-of fix the street draining into my garage problem but it’s still there because I haven’t actually put in the cement driveway footer thing that is needed. Because there is no street curb.

I also have a lot of red flax.

Flax I found out can either be grown for fiber OR seeds but not both at the same time for the same plant. So I will have some off to the side to get more seeds while the rest will be in their own little section so I can try to harvest flax fiber.

I do not weave or spine and this will be packed with miricalgrow so I don’t know what the quality is going to be. Science? wtfbbqidk.

This got really long so have a cut. (formerly a cut)

this is not counting all the nausternum seeds that I also got. And saved. I am sad that they didn’t eat my lawn like I had hoped but they were a nice pop of color.

The chamomile was too polite and was smooshed by the grass. I’ll be sticking it in a pot this year.

I think I accidently murdered the red bee balm when i tried to clear up the mildew on it. not replacing it because it was ugly and no bugs looked at it.

I was snap dragons and more of the colimbin that was growing when I moved in.

I think I have an ecinatia plant i need to move from under my japanise maple, no idea how the seeds got there. I have more seeds to try.

So many cosmo seeds. So Many. They need to be steaked up.i wonder if i can get branches to make something witchy looking? if not it’ll be upside down tomato basket things.

I think I need to try getting a willow to grow. Then I can just harvest it for wattel and wood. I might have to go hunting after the next wind storm for bigger branches. shame I don’t have a truck or trailor.

have I mentioned that I don’t think I have enugh yard for all the flowers? I need to do something to the grass and I need some kind of boarder because of one stupid old ass.

Oh and I still have to burn out the yew stumps that are in the front flower bed… that is also full of bulbs. Mostly full of bulbs.

And someplace there is a peony that I don’t know if it survived or not. And I should try growing the luffa indoors this time because it grew way too slowly outside.

And I forgot about all the onion seeds and the carrot seeds and left over tomato seeds.

Not to mention that I plan on growing german butterball potatos this year because there are none in the stores by me. How do I potato? a tube thing and lots of dirt right? I have pleanty of people to give them to if I can grow them.

Did i mention that ther is arsenic and that I have a letter from NYS saying it’s safe for me to grow what ever and do what ever with my garden? yeah, that.

Cross posted from my tumblr.

Heppy New Year 2020

Happy New Years everyone!

New things and re-attempting older things!

First new/old thing is I'm getting the blog posts going again. Things have calmed down at work and I can actually write again. So what does this mean?

It means that all posts show up on my Patreon two weeks earlier for $1+ supporters. Then two weeks later they will show up here on the blog. More support means more posts! And more experiments!

I also go by Phyr Studios, which is what my Patreon is called. So not only gardening and house stuff but art will be showing up there. My original writing. And all sorts of other things.

Once I have more posts written it'll be a little easier to get posting consistently again.

Also I don't know what FB changed with Instagram or if it was google messing with Blogger but my photos posted on instagram are not showing up here for very long. I turned that off for now because it was just making a lot of empty posts not only on blogger but also on twitter.

Photos will be showing up on Patreon and Instagram as I can post them. More then likely they will be going up on the same days. The rare acceptation would be project/blog specific ($1+) or Patreon firsts ($?+). This will depend on how well I can use the Patreon app or if I will end up having to upload things from my computer.

I have Tumblrs. I have so. Many. I will occasionally cross post or share other peoples cool things or things I want to remember there. My main Tumblr is a cluster of god-knows-what and late night opinions without thinking or spell check. I might cross post some of the original posts.

My Crazy Artist Tumblr one is far more predictable.

I know some don't like or can't use Patreon so there is a Ko-fi link if you want to help support me that way.

The Kit thing is a way for me to link to my amazon associate stuff. Which is cool if you want to buy things that I bought with the links but I really just use it to keep a spot for anything that I mention here.

The Patreon
https://www.patreon.com/Phyr

The Blog
https://www.crzyartist.com/

The instagram
https://www.instagram.com/crzyartist

The Twitter
https://twitter.com/crzyartist

The other Twitter
https://twitter.com/phyr

The Tumbler
https://crzyartist.tumblr.com/

The Ko-fi
Ko-fi.com/A8314CTJ

The Kit
https://kit.co/Phyr