2012-06-28 Return to the Gardens

Post date: Jun 28, 2012 8:21:29 PM

Today is my first day back to see the gardens since I left in early June... and so I have a few things to tell you!

The first thing I noticed when I went to water and photograph the plants was how large they have grown! The gardens are looking a bit less spacious, and a bit more green. I even noticed that a few of the plants have bloomed, and there were definitely no flowers there when I left!

Blue Flax in bloom

Unfortunately, we did have a few small plants that I don’t think survived the transfer. One for sure is our Prairie Sagewort that was planted from seed. We do have a few that were received as mature plugs, so we haven’t lost the species entirely. As well, I still cannot seem to find our Wild Tobacco plant. We will see if it turns up as the plants grow larger, but at the moment I will assume that it did not survive.

As we learned after talking to a few people (including Dustin at our planting party), it was decided that we should plant some bean or pea plants in order to help fix nitrogen into the soil for the others. While I was away, Tracy planted numerous pea plants around the garden, which are now happily sprouting. We are hoping that they will be able to serve as a ground covering as well in order to maintain moisture in the soil, as we didn’t place them near taller plants nor did we provide anything for them to climb.

Once I had taken my pictures of the plants this morning, it was time to water them. Before I left, the rain barrels were not full enough to use. Today, I was able to do all the watering on the East balcony by only retrieving water from one barrel, and only about half a watering cans worth between both barrels on the West side. Although it isn’t perfect, this is a HUGE improvement for our gardens. This means we are being just that much more sustainable (we don’t have to use as much water from the faucets outside) and that we are using the water provided by nature, so as to intervene on the gardens just a little bit less.

There also seems to be a lot of weeds and different things growing in the gardens. When we transplanted plants, we reused the soil that had seeds already sewn into it that were not yet growing. We thought it would be a good idea, since we didn’t want to waste the seeds, and if they decided to grow then bonus! Although it looks like many of the ‘weeds’ seem to look alike, it’s hard to tell at this point if they are ‘weeds’ or simply the plants that needed different conditions to germinate and grow.

It really is amazing to come back after being away for 3 weeks and to see everything so alive and thriving. If you haven’t already had the chance to check out the gardens yourself, I encourage you to come soon! The sooner you come, the more impressed you will hopefully be by the end of the summer.