Garden Update | March 2020
I’m a firm devotee of BBC’s Gardeners’ World and especially Monty Don’s weekly garden updates. Peeking behind the curtain at what Monty is doing every week and watching how his garden Longmeadow changes throughout the season is one of my favorite things. And last year when he installed a paradise garden? Complete heaven of before, during, and after. The only thing better than a home reno show would be a garden reno show (come ON, HGTV)!
In the spirit of wanting to document what’s going on here at Welcomecroft on a small scale, I’m starting a monthly garden/outdoor update series. The garden is a laboratory, a learning process, a living thing. Since March just ended, I’ll summarize a few things that happened last month before we focusing on April.
Seeds inside: I sowed seeds indoors both in mid-February and at the beginning of March, and the seedling trays been under lights in my cellar for the last few weeks. The first round in February was mostly slow-germinating, slow-growing perennials: penstemon, hyssop, verbena, scabiosa, monarda, and digitalis plus some of the warm season veggies with the longest time from germination to maturity: tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. The round in March consisted of a final wave of greens to go into the garden once my current batch finishes, plus beans and annual flowers like cosmos and zinnias.
Seeds outside: I direct-sowed seeds at the beginning of February - sugar snap peas - and then another wave mid-March: carrots, turnips, radishes, and some patches of cool-season herbs like cilantro and dill. It’s been so fun to see the peas start to climb the fence that will function like their trellis, and the other little rows to start sprouting.
Potting on: I potted up some of the seedlings from their initial starter cells into bigger containers. Tomatoes grow especially fast and need quick transplanting to allow room for developing roots! The bigger veggies are now outside in flats, getting real sun and making room for everything else inside under the lights. I’ll pull them when the temperature drops too much. But ultimately, after the last frost date mid-April, it will be safe for them to go right in the ground!
Chicken coop: We got day-old chicks in February from a hatchery in Wisconsin, and they’ve been growing by leaps and bounds. By far our biggest project in March was finishing their mobile chicken coop. It’s an A-frame format on wheels that will be moved every day to a new patch of grass - a win-win for everyone. They get fresh forage and no one spot in the yard will be picked bare. The girls are on a similar timeline to the seedlings: after the danger of frost is past, they’ll go outside in their new home!
Flowering plants: We planted out a few new fun flowering things for this season: old roses, phlox, astilbe, butterfly bushes. I also planted out my dahlia tubers that survived the winter. Last fall was extremely hectic, and I didn’t store the tubers according to protocol… and many of them didn’t make it. Lesson learned, for sure. I planted out the few that still looked ok, and we’ll see if/how they do. This might be the year of fewer dahlias while we focus on some other things. But since I love them, I’m sure I’ll add more back into the plan next year.
Privacy plants: This has been a recurring theme for the last three years. We live on a corner lot near a very busy road, and a major goal for us has always been to establish really solid privacy planting on three sides of our property. It’s both an investment in our time here and important if we ever decide to sell. This month we planted up the last major missing section with a combination of evergreens like arborvitae and cryptomeria, as well as sections of bamboo. It may sound crazy to purposely plant bamboo, but I did a lot of research on non-running types that are good for our climate here in SC, and landed on Bambusa multiplex “Alphonse Carr.” Since we’re battling some challenging conditions like soggy ground, partial shade, and other aggressive plants on a neighbors property creeping in, bamboo is one of the few things that has a chance to still thrive.
Fig espalier: Two summers ago, I took cuttings off a giant old fig tree in a friend’s garden and rooted them. For the first year, the new plants stayed in our nursery. Last year, we planted one against the west-facing brick wall of our garage with the hopes of espalier-training it, which basically looks like pruning a tree or shrub so that it stretches out against a flat surface. The fig grew so much last summer that this year we knew we’d need to upgrade our stakes in the ground to horizontal wire supports to begin tying the biggest branches in.
Nursery cleaning: This is a twice-yearly major task. Somewhere within the last two years, we started to collect plants. Many of them are native plants that we’re keeping and growing for a family project up near Lake Jocassee, a few of them are things I’ve propagated (like more figs and Japanese maples that I grafted) and some of them are plants that do have a long-term destination out in the yard somewhere, but the bed isn’t established yet or I’m just not sure where. Now we have a full three aisles of plants, nursery-style. Twice a year I move them all, weed out and prune whatever needs it, clean up the area, and move them back. We won’t always have so many (I hope) but I think we’ll always have some kind of nursery setup.
Miscellaneous things: deadheading (I’m one of those who dead-heads daffodils unless they’re in a very natural area), weeding - because weeds grow here like crazy even in the winter, and pruning of shrubs and small trees. The timing of pruning is especially important. Not everything needs to be pruned every year, but a quick turn around the garden at this time of year when everything is just starting to leaf out is a great time for many plants. The branch structure is still visible, and they’re actively growing so will recover quickly from any pruning cuts.
