Walking around Salem - part 2

Here is "part 2" of the photos I took on my walk around the neighborhood yesterday. I've barely begun to discover the details around me, and with a new camera on the way, expect a lot more of this!  See the Jan. 2 post for Part 1.  

Part 3 tomorrow - 

Velvety Wisteria Seed Pods 

PLEASE !

More tomorrow ! 

Walking Around Salem, Part 1

Here we go, sliding headlong into 2014. It has been dry and somewhat mild for the last couple of weeks here in Salem, Oregon. Today it's in the mid-40's and overcast - good walking weather. I don't mean to sound unsympathetic to our neighbors to the east (and just about everyone in the country is east of us!) who are being blasted by serious winter storms, but I am so glad to be here, and not there. I grew up in Chicago and have lived through some brutal winters, so I do sympathize. It was a good place to be FROM. This nice dry weather is a mixed blessing, though, since it comes with a cost. 2013 was the driest year on record in Salem, (since records began to be kept in 1892) - 23.50 inches, compared to an average of 39.67 inches. The driest year to date, up until 2013, was 1985.   

So I've been out walking today, camera in hand, exploring. Our neighborhood is full of charming houses, little garden niches, and surprises. The next few posts I make will be mostly photos. There are too many for one post, so I'm spreading it out. 

So come on along, and join me on my walk around the neighborhood. 

(If you click on the first photo to bring it up, you can get a slide show of the pics at a larger size) , 

       

Cute House 

Heading over Mill Creek

Ducks on the creek today ! 

Finally got all my ducks in a row ! 

To Rake or Not to Rake -- 

Cute House !  

Corner post ? 

Yard Art 

MORE TO COME SOON  

Christmas Eve Show - Talking to Local Gardeners

We have one more little bit of catching up to do - so here is one last Christmas, 2013 post before we slide headlong into the New Year. 

Here is the link to the podcast of our Christmas Eve Show. In this show, I asked 5 local gardeners about something that they really liked in their gardens this year. Jerry talks about some favorite shrubs that have winter interest. Kris tells us about her dwarf fruit trees. Beth shares the building of a special private niche in her garden, JJ discusses Vaccinum (the Blueberry family) and Alice discusses the ways that her garden has contributed to her personal growth.   

Down in the Dirt with Diana - Christmas Eve Show

 

Cornus sanguinea 'Midwinter Fire'

"Smaaaak" 

MASON BEES, A LOOK AT SALLY’S PERENNIAL BORDER IN WINTER, COMPOSTING, AND POINSETTIAS.

So, okay, I got a little behind in my posting, but I don’t want to neglect the last couple of "Down in the Dirt with Diana" radio shows on KMUZ 88.5 FM. So here is the information on these shows, and links to the podcasts, then I can get to more current posts.    

About the Nov. 26, 2013 show:  

To hear this show, click this podcast link: 

Down in the Dirt Diana"  KMUZ 88.5   Nov 26, 2013

This episode of ‘Down in the Dirt with Diana’, broadcast on 11/26/2013, was so much fun. My first guest was Carol Horning, ‘the Bug Lady’, from the Marion County, Oregon, Master Gardener program, talking about raising Orchard Mason Bees. These little black bees are one of our native species and very hard working pollinators for about 6 weeks in early spring, just when most of the fruit trees are blooming. And they are industrious, buzzing so fast from flower to flower that one bee can do the work of 100 honeybees! Because they carry loads of pollen on special hairs on their abdomen, instead of in packets on their legs as honeybees do, they are 95% effective at pollinating the flowers they visit, as opposed to the honeybees at 5% effectiveness. They are also speedy, visiting twice as many flowers in a day than honeybees do.   

Mason Bee

image courtesy of wikimedia 

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Orchmason.jpg  

They are solitary bees, setting up their home alone and laying their eggs in any convenient tube-like hollow about 6” deep and about 5/16” wide. They are easy going, cute little critters, and do not sting, so they are easy and fun to raise and to keep around. There are easy ways to make appropriate nesting tubes to keep them where you want them. Carol talks about their life cycle, their needs, and how to make nesting tubes for them. If you are in the Salem area, you can see how the mason bee houses are constructed at the Marion County Master Gardener demonstration garden at 3180 Center Street NE, in Salem.

One way to make a Mason Bee Box 

For more information on Mason Bees and what you need in order to raise them, try one of these sites, or search out more on Google.   

http://county.wsu.edu/king/gardening/mg/factsheets/Fact%20Sheets/Orchard%20Mason%20Bees.pdf

http://clackamascountymastergardeners.org/10-Minute%20University/10-Minute%20University%20pdf's/Orchard%20Mason%20Bee.pdf

http://www.oregonlive.com/hg/index.ssf/2010/02/with_some_other_pollinators_in.html

My second guest on this show was Sally Herman. Sally is an extraordinary Salem gardener, both in the organic vegetable line, and in ornamental gardening. She is an extremely knowledgeable plantswoman, a collector of unusual plants, and so not much is in ordinary in her garden. The topic of our discussion this day was her long curved double sided perennial/shrub border. She is of the garden philosophy that it is best to leave the plants to die back naturally, letting the leaves and seed heads lie, mulch it all, but wait until spring to do the major cleanup. By this time most of the leaves and stems, etc., will have decomposed to become a healthy soil addition and to help feed the plants for next year. I like her thinking. She does cut back the seed heads of some particularly problematic reseeders like Ligularia, but, for the most part, she just deals with reseeding when it comes. And because she has a fairly dense covering of plants, most of the perennial and weed seeds never have a chance to germinate. There is always something in bloom in her garden. The day that I was visiting, there were Camellias, Daphnes, and some beautiful bright yellow Mahonias in flower. As of this writing, we have just come out of an extended deep freeze. Before this freeze occurred, I would have said that Witch Hazel  (Hamamelis), Garrya (Silk tassel), Edgeworthia (a Daphne relative) and Wintersweet (Chimonanthes praecox) would be in bloom soon. Now I'm not so sure. It will be interesting to see what buds have been damaged beyond repair. For sure, the Edgeworthia and Winterweet buds are frozen, based on previous experience.

Hamamelis (Witch Hazel) flowers  

 COMPOST AND POINSETTIAS

Click here to hear the podcast of this episode :  

"Down In the Dirt with Diana" - Dec 10, 2013

Our first guest on this episode was Beth Myers–Shenai, Waste Management Coordinator for Marion County in Oregon, and a compost specialist. She gave us some great information on what compost is and how to use it. We will be talking about compost frequently on this blog and on the radio show.  

Compost pile in the snow - 85 degrees inside the pile, 25 degrees air temp. 

Our second guest was Ellen Egan, the owner of Egan Gardens, who told us all about Poinsettias. Listen in and learn!  

                         

Mulch Mode, Lasagna, and Daffodils, Oh My

I took a trip to Seattle this week to give a talk to the Seattle Chapter of the North America Rock Garden Society on ‘The Sex Life of Plants’.

What a great and receptive group of people they are. It feels like my 3^rd home (after Salem and Battle Ground). I spent the night with my good friends Judith and Vanca in Judith’s beautiful log home on 5 gorgeous acres studded with giant Sitka Spruce, Douglas Fir and quirky artwork, on the Skykomish River, in Gold Bar, WA. Judith Jones, as some of you might know, is the proprietor of Fancy Fronds Nursery, one of the premier fern nurseries anywhere. In fact Judith herself is one of the world’s experts on ferns. If you are interested in ferns, (and really, can you have too many?) check out her informational web site at

http://www.fancyfronds.com/ 

She knows her stuff and won’t steer you wrong !

I’m in mulch mode. The wind and rain has finally knocked all the leaves off the nearby trees. The house next door sits empty for now and that property is where most of the leaves are coming from. I can only hope that the new occupants will be as generous with their leaves as the last owner. They never minded that i would help rake them and haul them away. Perhaps the new owners will be gardeners and want to keep all the leaves for themselves. But that would be good. There is certainly no shortage of leaves around here. Over the weekend, I picked up 8 giant black plastic bags full of Linden Tree leaves that someone had set out by the curb for pickup. I will probably set some of these aside for next summer when leaves are not so easy to come by and I will be needing some for my compost pile.    

  

The borders and beds are all covered now, to a depth of 3–6“, but I already see the leaves compacting. What I didn't use on the beds are in one of my several compost piles. There is one under the front window hidden from view by the Scarlet Runner Bean trellis, and one in the back corner of the garden by the vegetable beds. My hot compost pile will be in the back under the pear tree. I have been holding back some of the bags of coffee grounds I picked up at Starbucks, along with kitchen scraps, and bags of grass clippings for about 6 weeks now, and I will be making one big pile all at once, hopefully by the end of this week. These, along with the leaves from the pear tree and from the neighbors English Walnut tree that hangs over our fence, and a few big sacks of the Red Maple leaves and the Linden will go into making a ‘hot’ pile. The last few years, I have been able get the pile close to about 130 degrees, but this year I am aiming higher.   

I’m trying an experimental thing with the mulch of Norway Maple leaves along the fence line. There is a little dip there, so there is an extra thick layer of leaves. Maple leaves like these take longer to break down, (unless you run them over with a mower first, or shred them in some way) but if not, they usually have just barely begun to decompose by spring. So, I took a couple of buckets of kitchen scraps and added a layer of them in the mulch, and I am also going to be adding some handfuls of alfalfa meal. Alfalfa meal is a concentrated  source of nitrogen, and the intention is to see if this makes the pile break down faster. I will report on how it has worked. 

There are 'Heavenly Blue' Morning Glories blooming inside our sun porch!  Apparently one of the stems wormed its way through an opening in the window earlier this year, and it took off, now it's growing up against the inside of the window, full of buds, and every once in a while one opens. The plant is rooted outside by the corner of the house but we are expecting to get our first real frost of the season this week, and I'm guessing it will knock the whole plant out. It is another experiment.         

So, big news! The first episode of 'Down in the Dirt with Diana' (the radio show) on KMUZ 88.5 FM, aired last week, Tuesday, Nov. 12.   

A quick summary :

My first guest was Dan Fahndrich, a landscape designer and co-owner of Farwest Gardens, a design/build company in Salem Oregon, in the horticulture business since 1976, discussing sheet composting, also referred to as Lasagna  gardening. See his work at his website:    http://farwestgardens.com/

Lasagna gardening, sheet composting, whatever you call it, is a great way to start a garden bed were there was not one before, even on a grassy or weedy area, without tilling. Once you have decided on the dimensions, you can either build a frame for a raised bed, or just mound it up. If the ground is compacted, (and usually it is) take a pitch fork and poke the ground in spots, rocking the tines back and forth, just loosening the ground a little for better drainage and to let the water penetrate. Make sure the soil is moist before starting the layers. Of course this is usually not a problem at this time of year. Think of sheet composting like making a big flattened compost pile, but without ever having to turn it. 

First lay down a thick layer of overlapping newspapers, about 6-10 sheets, or a thick piece of cardboard. This will kill the grass and weeds beneath it and add a lot of organic matter to the soil as the grass and weeds decompose. On top of this layer add alernate layers of what, in the compost world, are referred to as 'browns' or 'greens'. The microorganisms that are responsible for the breakdown need a combination of a carbon source (the browns) and a nitrogen source (the greens). On top of the first layer of newspaper or cardboard, add alternate layers of the same ingredients you would add to a compost pile. ‘Browns’ are anything that have a high carbon content, like leaves, newspaper or straw, and the ‘greens’ are vegetable scraps, grass clippings, coffee grounds, manure.  Add them in layers about 2–4” deep, making the brown layers about twice as thick as the greens, moistening each layer as you go, until you have reached about 2’. Add a few shovelfuls of soil or finished compost occasionally - this helps to stimulate the breakdown by adding some necessary microorganisms. Finish the pile off with a layer of leaves or straw, then just let it sit. Cover it with plastic or groundcloth if the leaves start blowing away. By spring the layers will have broken down and compacted enough to plant directly into the pile. If the newspaper layer is very thick, or if you used cardboard, this first layer may not have broken down completely. To overcome this, just take a shovel or a pitchfork and cut down into it in spots, or dig a hole under the starts you are planting to give the roots of whatever may plant there a place to easily penetrate. 

We will be talking more about the benefits of no-till gardening in upcoming segments.    

Steve Vinisky, my second guest, is the proprietor of Cherry Creek Daffodils at  http://www.cherrycreekdaffodils.com/  and an internationally known expert on bulbs. He told us that the Willamette Valley is one of the 5 best growing areas in the world for bulbs. He breeds Daffodils, mostly miniatures, and explained to us that daffodils are such great garden plants, for one, because they are ‘critter proof’ – deer, mice, voles, all steer clear of them. The three things to remember when planting bulbs are full sun, well drained soil, and no summer water. However, some bulbs are more forgiving in this area, and can take some watering in a garden situation. .  

Daffodils are easy, almost fool proof. They increase well, but only need dividing when you notice a decrease in flowering. Daffodils (as many other bulbs) do extremely well in containers, as long as you keep the bulbs from freezing. This is as simple as bringing the dormant pot into a garage or basement, or digging a hole and plunging it into the ground. For an extra show, try making a  'Superpot" - planting up a container of daffodils or other bulbs in layers. In a large 10"-12" container, add about 6-8” of soil, place a layer of bulbs with the sides touching, then add enough soil to cover the bulbs just to the tips. Add another layer of bulbs alternating with the first layer. You can stop here or add another layer. Try mixing varieties or even types of bulbs. I'm going to try this one ! 

For more information on Daffodils check out the American Daffodil Society website at 

http://www.daffodilusa.org/

There are lots of bulb-related festivals and events in spring, and I will be listing them on the garden event calendar as they come up, but a very special one to keep in mind is the Amity Daffodil Festival.

https://sites.google.com/a/amity.k12.or.us/amity-daffodil-festival/  

This festival has been on-going since 1995, and is totally organized and run by the students of Amity High School in Amity, Oregon in cooperation with the American Daffodil Society, as a part of the Hospitality, Tourism, and Recreation Program at the School.  

And in case you were wondering, Daffodils and Narcissus are the same thing (the number one asked question). Narcissus is the scientific name for what we commonly call Daffodils.   

(Nomenclature note: The Narcissus was named for the beautiful youth in Greek Mythology who drowned while admiring his own reflection in the water. After he died, the gods took pity on him, and since they could not restore him to mortal life, they made a beautiful flower out of him that would bloom every spring.)  

Until next time - 

Happy Gardening !

Diana