Mamabluestem
Member since: Sep 11 | Last seen: Apr 13 | Years gardening: 30
Hi all! Finally logging a bit about me. I’m a ‘slightly older’ gardener with 4 grown children and a wonderful husband who tolerates my crazy obsession with dirt and growing things. He’s also my builder of stairs, decks, trellis, and anything else wood. (His vegetable beds, tho, were a failure sad to say.) We have about 1/2 acre in the middle of the city that behind the house slopes down towards a creek. Everything was weeds and brush when we moved in, but slowly we’ve been trying to terrace the back so I don’t roll down it someday and end up in the creek.
This last fall and spring we did a major overhaul of our west garden thanks to a grant from our local water company for storm water management, so now I have even more garden!
We have rain barrels, a huge compost pile, build hugelkultur beds to help with the terracing (my iris bed was built that way), a dog to help keep the deer out, garden organically, and garden for the birds, bees and butterflies that are all around us.
I’m a compulsive seed saver, saving every seed I can, even the hybrid ones if they’re not sterile. You never know what you’re gonna get. Organizing them is finally getting under control, but as each season goes on, there are seeds all over the house that again need to be organized so I can find them in the winter to sow, or in the spring.
Gardens
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!Everywhere and Anywhere garden
Zone 5b These poor plants should have wheels, at least until I’m done logging and can split them into their respective gardens! Either that or I can&...
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Zone 5b Below pond path left of stairs-of-death to wide lower stairs. The stairs-of-death are another story.
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Zone 5b Deep shade most of day under deck stairs. Definitely a problem spot.
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Zone 5b This is the path the deer take between the neighbor on our right and neighbor on our left, behind the fence. Needless to say, the fence is the dema...
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Zone 5a This is the area next to the street. The area that gets all the ice, slush, road salt, mud, and trash from the neighbors up the street. Even grass ...
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Zone 5b Not completely Zen, but a work in progress. Mostly hostas, japanese maple, some lilies. I’d like to make a small labyrinth below it to walk o...
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Zone 5b Raised bed garden facing southwest, but dappled sun from an old oak. Gets stronger sun on the northwest corner in late afternoon in summer. Morning...
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Zone 5a OK, weird name. But hugelkultur is a german word for a type of permaculture raised bed garden started with rotting wood, then adding organics on to...
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Zone 5a Berm-ish south side of sidewalk where the Redshift grows. And yes, as of October 7th, it is shifting!
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Zone 5a “Ruby” was my first official planting at our current home — however Ruby is no longer in Ruby’s bed. Ruby is a Crimson Quee...
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Zone 5b Large, teardrop shaped garden on northwest side of path. Surrounded by bricks and stones with a large, very wise oak tree on it’s east side.
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Zone 5a … kind of a misnomer because it’s actually on the southwest side beyond the fence, which I have to keep reminding the neighbor it’...
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Zone 5b Hopefully, where wishes come true! To date: Daylily ‘Bette Davis Eyes’ Doronicum ‘Little Leo’, Leopard’s Bane Eastern...
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Zone 5a Definitely right place, right time. History: we had two driveways (one was apparently for a previous owner’s boat?). And even with 4 teenager...
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