The Bunny Nursery

New raised beds, bunnies could still reach the morning glories, chomp, chomp.

My RED pepper plant pepper

 I really love bunnies, even though they have eaten a great deal of my garden this year.  I love their cute faces, how they love to run around, they are very good at evasive moves.  Even though I love bunnies, I don't want a bunny nursery.  I have that now because we put up a small fence on the west side of our yard to keep rabbits out.  Because the adult rabbits were so familiar with me it was easy to round them up and out the gate, but I was left with a few babies.  Eventually they will get used to me and I'll be able to round them up too!  Meanwhile, they have obliterated the foliage on the Asiatic lilies, my new prairie clover, new aster, all my morning glories, hyacinth bean, runner beans, and so on.  Fortunately, some of those can rebound, but a lot was lost.  So, it has been a summer of fencing, screening, replanting, and replanning!

Unfortunately, the drought continues for us, we did get an inch of rain last week, but that's been it for some time.  We have 19 new trees and shrubs, but the soaker hoses help a lot, and the new trees and shrubs don't need a ton of water to keep them going.  Sometimes, even though it is not measurable rain, the rain barrels refill thanks to our large roof.  I rarely have to use city water for the vegetable gardens and can often water all the new shrubs and trees with rainwater.

My new East side raised beds are doing well, not sure the fabric is the best, dries out quickly.  I like it being higher, so I may invest in some metal beds.

Because of some fungus, and poor condition of phlox under the maple tree garden alot of plants have been removed.  I have planted a tiger's eye sumac, but I'm not sure that is a good choice.  I'll have a better idea on how it does next summer.  My new elderberry seems to be struggling a bit, but I'm not seeing any outright disease on it.  Unfortunately, my new sand cherry shrub has been struck with brown cherry spot, it looks horrible, so I think I'll have to remove it.  I've been spraying everything with fungus spray as a preventative.

All things considered it has been a good summer so far!  Time for photos!

new grass for the garden?

love my sage

tough echinops

balloon flower is great!

beans doing well, peas were mostly eaten by bunnies and fried by heat.

happy monarchs with all the butterfly weed

hanging in there, Greenie

Is It Over Yet? (winter). Maybe Next Week? (spring)

It is definitely the Year of The Rabbit, the rabbits killed our apple tree, the rabbits ate my new Nannybush, the rabbits ate my Honeysuckle shrubs, my new Weigela shrub, and they even ate the new Vanderwulf pine tree!  It now looks like a Pom Pom tree with one Pom.  We didn't even get a chance to try and save the apple tree because they girdled it completely in one night, pretty amazing.  I never would have thought that they would eat bark from a tree that size.  I was not the only one to experience the damaging nibbles of a cute furry animal, with the extensive and prolonged snow depth in Minnesota this year, it is a state wide tear jerker.  The garden centers are happy$$.

I'm not going to talk about the long miserable Winter, because Spring is bad enough.  We've been below normal in temperatures and sun, but the upside, we are out of last year's drought!

My assistant, Larry has already removed the apple tree, which will be utilized for meat smokers, garden beds, and sculptures.  We have planted a peach tree, and we will take down the old cherry tree once it is done blooming.  We have not decided what will go in to replace the apple tree, maybe another apple tree. We are planting a Black Hills Spruce to replace the old cherry tree.

On the upside, my parsley and oregano plants survived the winter, lots of insulation!  I see signs of asparagus, the Prairie Smoke and tulips are starting to bloom, the new cherry tree looks good, the new Elderberry shrub looks good, and Fred and Ethel showed up!  They were a little later than usual, but we were happy to see them!  

I have 2 new beds for the East side of the house, which will probably contain flowers and vegetables. I haven't given it too much thought yet. Greenie

my grow box assembly helpers

a window strike death- a pretty female red bellied woodpecker

Our birch and crab apple trees touching the ground.  They didn't break!

Fred and Ethel

                                                       First Butterfly of Spring, a Sulphur!

The girdled apple tree stump.

Bright and Beautiful

Even though many parts of the garden are in loss and rejuvenation stage, the garden still looks beautiful!  I love to see all the different bees, and butterflies perusing their choice of nectar.  Every year I try to add more and varied pollinator friendly plants, and more shrubs and trees for the birds.

Unfortunately, we removed two of our large junipers along the fence, and may remove the third one too.  Even with consistent watering they just were not thriving, and may have been suffering from a disease.  Although, I couldn't see evidence of that, we didn't want it spreading to any of the other evergreens or the apple tree.  Fortunately, the apples and tree looks great, just wish the squirrels and sparrows stopped their pilfering and pecking.

The bean plants are healthy, just not producing much.  I need to stick with provider or blue lake beans, they always seem to produce in abundance.  The basil all looks great this year, and the cherry tomatoes in bags are doing so so.  I replanted the pea and onion beds with beans so if we have a warm Autumn we should see more beans.

For new plantings I put in another Ninebark where a juniper was removed,  I put in a dark leaved honeysuckle in my dead zone area behind the small pond- good luck plant!   I still need to put in a tiny clematis I purchased.  My goal is to get a small tree/large shrub for near the patio, maybe a smoke bush or hydrangea, and probably a tall hydrangea for the west fence where the juniper was removed.  Also a small evergreen to put in near the old cherry.  The old cherry will probably be coming down this year or next. Time for photos!

A silver Ant! I've never seen this before, invasive?

A very pretty Green Bee.

A little Red draws the Hummers!

I love the sage and Native Sand Coreopsis combo!

Drip line Magic!

Yay! Monarch!

Next time, jumbo Bumble Bees, hummingbird Moths and Swallowtail butterflies!

Greenie

Teeny Tiny Bee on Bee Balm

Honey Suckle in the Dead Zone🙏

Mellow Yellow

The purple spider wort is done blooming, and all of the yellows have arrived.  The low walker mint and large pink blossomed geraniums and salvia are all still in bloom providing back drop to the yellows.  Looking at my photos I realized I would like some white in there, maybe mellow the yellow a bit more.

The peas and green onions are doing great with lots of consistent watering, the keeper onions not so good.  I think next year that area will be a raised garden bed, maybe for squash or potatoes.  The green beans are doing o.k, I think the trick is not to over water the bags, especially now that they are double bagged they are retaining more moisture.  Even my little tomato plants look o.k., one even has lots of cherries on it.  Speaking of cherry, our poor old cherry tree just can't produce fruit.  We've tried extensive watering and fertilizing.  The only thing we can think of is, it is either the large spruce tree roots, or the cherry has some disease.  I just hope our new little cherry doesn't succumb to the same problem, but it should be far enough away from the spruce trees.  Our little Honey Sweet apple tree has lost a lot of small apples, but there is still quite a few on there, and so far I'm not seeing any disease, but I will probably spray neem on the tree when the wind has calmed and temperatures cooled.

The garden flowers are short and stocky this year again due to our lack of rain the last few weeks, fortunately even a tenth of an inch of rain fills the rain barrel halfway so I can put that on the beans.  I did get all the soaker hoses set up but one, just need to decide who will get that.  The soaker hoses are fairly inexpensive so I'll eventually put them everywhere!  I've also used the pump in the rain barrel and that worked really well, now we just need rain! The upside to my dry straw lawn is that the rabbits have left for greener pastures! 

This isn't a complaint just the facts, our state is heating up and getting a lot windier, which will also create drier soil.  I have dry soil to start with so I need to think more about alternatives to my gardening.  Mulch and straw and drip lines all help but maybe adding a compost layer would be helpful too.  Something to explore.

Like last year I started putting in more drought tolerant perennials and shrubs.  Some are doing well, others not so great, but they need to get established and hopefully I'll be able to reduce watering.  The large Maple tree is also a thirsty tree so of course that area is always a challenge.

As a footnote, I have covid right now and feeling a bit miserable, hence the downer feel of this post.

yellow primrose, always shows up to the party!

experimenting with freezing green onion stalks, works with chives!

mellow yellow

Good pea harvest!

Greenie

Taking it Easy

POND PUMPS IN, WATER LILY IN.

SUPER SIZED GERANIUM

SWEET WILLIAM

BAPTISIA

FLUFFY PAX SEED HEADS

BIG BUMBLE BEES LOVE BAPTISIA

From my perspective I am taking it easy this week!  I've got the crops in, the pond pumps in and water plants in, I've got the last soaker hose set up so we shouldn't get any dry spells this summer, the asparagus is almost done producing and I've just got three more native plant to place.  Then no more digging until next week!  

I still have a lot of bare spots, problem areas, and encroaching shade into usually sunny spots that all need attention, but my plan is to plan, fewer "experiments".  Well, I guess I have learned a few things along the garden way.  Oh, I'll still throw caution to the wind on occasion, because there is always a spot open in the garden!

Greenie

No Complaints

It is a new World, a different country. An unthinkable war in Ukraine, and in our country, one million souls, probably more, lost to covid.

There will be no complaining of weather, growing progress, amount of sweat equity, rabbits, bugs, plant choices, or excessive winds, just reporting. 

It is a glorious day today with temps in the 70's and wind.  The yard looks great, the dandelions are going into full bloom, the fruit trees all have lots of bees busy at work.

So far I've moved a small juniper to a new location, planted a Nannyberry shrub back where the lilacs once resided, and Larry and I got the arbor finished and in place.  Now I need to decide what vine will be planted, I may just plant some morning glories to grow on the arbor this year.  I don't want to rush into anything!

I will be planting some more shrubs at the back of the yard along the fence. We had to prune up our big Spruce trees for the neighbors fence, and now we have a lot less protection for wildlife. So, we will add those shrubs and a couple of shrubs in the garden to add another dimension and some height plus more love for the birds. Birds love shrubs.  I'm considering American cranberrybush, dogwood, summersweet, snowberry and butterfly bush.  The fence area will probably be snowberry since that will tolerate shade and dry soil.

The old cherry tree looks good, full of blooms, hopefully that will result in cherries.  I did fertilize again this year, but it didn't seem to help last year, time will tell.  We are hopeful that the young 'sweet cherry pie' tree will do well with fruit, it is small but loaded with flowers. 

I'm in no rush to plant any more edibles, the weather will be wet and cool in the coming week, plus we've been getting lots of asparagus to eat.  The snow peas look good too, up a couple of inches.

We started Spring with four baby rabbits, but I'm now just seeing one bunny at a time in the yard, but maybe they take turns...

I'm hoping my little red squirrel returns, he was here this winter on and off, but I haven't seen him in several months.  It is fun to watch his antics, especially when he chases the grey squirrels.

I think we have a nesting pair of Chipping Sparrows, and they don't seem to mind me.  They are so tiny!

Time for some photos.  Greenie

View of new Nannyberry shrub and area for more shrubs

good start on snow peas!

My lovely Pasque flowers, I'm slowly adding more from seedlings!

My day brightener wild tulips. The yellow ones bloom first, now the red, orange and pink blooms!

I love all the blooming trees, just got to get me some other color, a little chartreuse, pink?

A Time for Everything, Now a Time to Stop. Well, Slow Down.

After digging out and replanting most of August, it seemed like a "good" idea to remove some of our over crowded and diseased lilac bushes.  We wanted to hire someone to do that, but the tree removal companies just wanted to grind them down, but without chemical killer those roots would be vigorously re-sprouting.

Larry, with a little bit of assistance from me, started digging, and it really didn't seem that horrible, until our backs, and my hip, said NO.  So for the last few weeks Larry's been tackling the 4 stumps with persistence, and has succeeded.  So far we haven't had to go to the doctor, but we have done a lot of ice packs on backs.  

We hope to save one clump of lilacs, it is a good privacy screen, but time will tell if it is healthy enough to save

ugly green service box

.  Until the fate of the last lilac is decided I probably won't be planting in that corner, well maybe a small bush to hide the ugly green service box.

Now, I just need to lay down some more landscape fabric, and mulch, clean out the ponds, harvest the runner beans, clean my tools, roll up my soaker hoses, reconfigure my raised beds... Happy October!

Greenie.

The Last Lilac Stump!

Beautiful non blooming Morning Glory

Larry's Arbor!