Greendini Garden Guru Blog: Did I say hot weather? I was wrong.

It actually got very windy last night and blew a little rain around, not much but it stayed cloudy and breezy this morning so far. Partly cloudy drifting puffy clouds, just enough to keep the son peeking here and there. Fantastic weather! In my older age I have discovered I prefer the more stately and predictable seasons you find in the northwest. Yes it is cloudy and colder and rainier there but I prefer that at this point than weeks of 80-90+ hot no wind weather.

I had some time to get out and enjoy the garden and the landscaping around the complex this morning. It's nothing fantastic but it's where i live.

The yellow Dutch Iris is blooming, another but will likely open tomorrow and I tried to get a good shot of the aphid covered new growth of the rose. With the spring and new growth, aphids are out and about. You know the drill.

South bed vs. north bed peas. I almost didn't water today but decided it was going to be a no show for rain, didn't water yesterday much and the rain last night barely touched the ground so watering happened before I got the Neem and sprayed the tomato again.

I'm loving how the lettuces are coming in, and the carrots are coming along nicely. I hope. Depending on how big the lettuce gets I may be thinning more of those again.

I did pull the tiny pea behind the potato though. Just was too hard seeing it struggling and there's other things I can put in around them once the plants are big enough. Might keep it empty as well. I spent a good twenty minutes or so roughing up the soil (again forgetting I had some marigold seeds in the front) and picking out small pebble, rock chips and large bits of wood/compost.

Pea no more.

I didn't get a picture of the potatoes or tomato plant oddly enough. I was too busy just puttering and weeding.The soil needs so much help for better production. Not going to invest in containers quite yet when there's still soil that can be worked.

The Red Shoulder hawk just went by calling out, the crows are putting up a fuss so I think t here's a territory issue up in the tree. They both prey on each other's nests sadly, what the hawk has in ferocity and speed the crows double in size and numbers.

Balance of nature.

I am down to the last bit of Neem oil after spraying this morning, not sure if I want to get more or not but I can guarantee I didn't get all the mites but sprayed the heck out of that plant where I saw damage and then some. Hands were getting tired of spraying by the time I finished so if I do get more, I'm going to have to get a sprayer and concentrate.

I saw the greatest picture from my house hunt last night! Tulips as a border in a ladies yard that made me absolutely grin and grab screen shots of it!

Yes it's a shot from Google maps but still, I love the nice tidy row of tulips! It looks like she was particular about the color range as there are no lavenders or purples or fancy ones. Just straight up light orange, dark orange and yellow.

The yellow looking ones are actually a light orange and at first I thought they were planted in the cinderblock and it took me a couple minutes to be able to focus on them and discover that it is a short hoop style border fence, the cinder block and the tulips planted on the other side of that. Since she's on a corner with no sidewalk to speak of and despite it being a 10 mph street she has likely had to take precautions of people running them over or parking too close to her yard. Oh yes.. and she is across from the large pond for the park where there were ducks. So another reason for putting them inside her fence. I want to do that some day! Tulip, hyacinths all the things! Just makes me smile and giggle like a little kid. Can't go back and see what she will have planted in the summer because it's google maps and they sometimes don't get back to an area for a couple of years.

I've seen some satellite photos that are current but when you get to street level it could be anywhere from last year to ten years old. Oldest one I saw was 2012 and there was a big difference just on the one property from then until now with the current listing photos. A short row of Cypress or tall juniper lined one side of a driveway with a Blue Spruce at the street end in 2012, current photo, they had all been taken out. Paint colors can change, landscaping in that amount of time will definitely change.

Ch, ch, ch, changes!

I asked my coffee drinking sweetie to save out his coffee grounds in a baggie so I can use them in the garden. I forgot how little he uses since he has a single K cup type. Maybe a tablespoon or two of grounds for each cup. He only has one or two cups of coffee a day so I let them sit in the kitchen this morning and will put them out when there's more. In other households where you may have a full pot with a cup of grounds, that's worth putting out in the garden. If I had remembered this a few months ago I would have mixed them in with the soil before planting. As a general rule coffee grounds are a bit acidic and high (ish) nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous. Putting them directly in the ground around plants is not usually a good idea, if you dump them on. Since I have slightly acidic soil already with high iron but low on everything but nitrogen, I'll be dropping them into the compost heap. Might sprinkle them around the potatoes and work them in, will figure it out. I just might do a nutrient check on the grounds before I put them in!

Speaking of the compost, it's got a good mix of 'brown', 'green' and soil in there. Old brown stems from the weeds and tomato, the weeds that I dug up, seedlings I have pulled and tossed on there, (oopsie, tossed a mite infested tomato leaf there), and there's evidence of worms working it all in the bottom so adding the coffee grounds is considered 'green' because they're high in nitrogen.The pile really won't be ready to use at all for probably another year. I toss it about once or twice a week to get everything mixed good.

I helped a friends dad years ago in his yard, just tidying, cleaning things up and stuff. He was a bit old and well, was a bit of a hoarder. Digging in his yard I found coffee grounds with the filters in the rose garden and told him to please not put the filters out there. The roses had to be at least twenty years old if that, then in the back yard I was weeding out the iris bed and kept digging out tin can lids. Sigh. You see, he put them out there because he still thought the iron in them would help the yard. Good thing I was using a rake and cultivator with gloves or something nasty would have happened. He had three full grown avocado trees that had never given fruit at that point because they were all grown from seed. Again, likely twenty some years old and then the lemon tree was maybe six feet tall and eight feet wide.

Oh yes, and the lovely flowering Four O'Clocks, can rapidly turn into a problem as in his yard. They drop seeds vigorously (seeds look like tiny black Eureka lemons or grenades) and will overwinter as a tuber in the ground. I dug one up as big as a sweet potato!. They're a lovely little flower and hummingbirds love them as well as some types of moths, but plant them in pots unless you want a perpetual bed of them that take over.