Spring, Questions, and Research

This past week has been beautiful.  Azaleas are blooming everywhere, the mornings are cool, and blue skies throughout the day.  With everything growing so well, I find myself with lots of questions.  I've been reading a lot about plants online, checked out some books from the library, and bought a couple books off Amazon that I know I want around as references.  Here are some books that I have enjoyed.

The Gardener's A-Z Guide to Growing Organic Food

Secrets of Plant Propagation: Starting Your Own Flowers, Vegetables, Fruits, Berries, Shrubs, Trees, and Houseplants

Plant Propagation A to Z: Growing Plants for Free

These books have been helping me get ideas for my vegetable garden and with identifying which plants I can take cuttings from.  I've also been starting a lot of random seeds lately.  One example is Red Maple seedlings from seeds I've found around my yard.  I also plan on taking some Japanese Maple cuttings from a tree at work during the early summer.

I emailed my locate agriculture extension today asking about the Wisteria blooming around town.  I'm not sure if it's native American Wisteria or highly invasive Chinese Wisteria.  I'd love to start some native cuttings and plant them around my ditch.

Here's what's going on around my yard:

Yellow prolific straight-neck squash about to bloom

Very healthy Red Potatoes and tomato seedlings

Seven sister rose bushes growing rapidly and starting another bloom (last week I wrote about how I start these from cuttings)

Day lilies starting to bloom

Neighbor's amaryllis by their mailbox

Giant swallowtail butterfly on our massive dianthus

This Eastern Redbud was a stick for months

Bald cypress growing needles

I found this 3 gallon Coral Honeysuckle in a "make offer" section of a local garden center.  Hope I can get it to bring in some hummingbirds.

And our male bluebird catching bugs for his babies...

Railroad Tie Raised Garden Bed

Just when I thought we were in full blown spring, the temperature drops to 35 degrees.  It looks like everything survived and we don't have any more cold weather on the forecast, so I believe I can officially say that it's finally spring!

The last couple weeks I've been working on building, filling, and planting a raised garden bed out of railroad ties.  As stated in a previous post, I received these railroad ties free from someone offering them on Craiglist.  The previous owner used them for a playground border.  Now I'd like to share my experiences with setting up this garden.

I picked up eight foot long railroad ties and cut two down to use on the ends with a circular saw.  I had to cut all 4 sides of the wood and then use a hand saw to finish the edge so that it was smooth.

The next step was deciding what to do with the grass.  Since this area of grass was so thick, I found some large boards to lay on the grass to kill it before putting in the soil.

I picked up a cubic yard of garden soil and shoveled about 20 cubic feet of soil into the garden.  The grass wasn't entirely dead but I did cover half of it with a fabric to see if it prevents weed and/or grass growth better than no barrier at all.

The filled garden was looking good!

My next step was planting some squash plants that my little girl and I started by seed in the seed-starting tray on the right.  We also planted some carrot seeds in rows by the popsicle stick.  I'm waiting on some bush beans to get bigger to transplant them in the open area of the garden.

Luckily I put pine straw around the seedlings before the cold front came through.  I really hope this protected the squash plants!  So what do you think of the railroad tie raised garden?


Here are some other things going on around the backyard garden:

Red potatoes, herb seed planted, and tomato seedlings.

Cleaned out the butterfly garden planted our lemon tree, and mulched around the citrus trees

Spiderworts blooming in our flower garden.

Mother bluebird leaving her house!  We are excited for our first spring in the new house!!!