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...

Pollen is in the air... and my nose.

It's Spring!  Well not officially, Spring starts March 20th, but plants started blooming and birds are making nests.  Our bluebirds are back checking out where I moved their house.

My Eastern Redbud tree is starting to show life again and my maple tree looks very cool with all the red seeds hanging.  Does anyone know if maple tree leaves make good mulch for around the base of trees?  I usually just use pine needles.

 

I added some amaryllis and spiderworts (I think) to my flower garden.  I still need to mulch around them to keep the weeds from growing.  I've decided that this area is where I'll plant things that people give me.  There is an odd collection already in the garden including aloe, milkweed, ivy, Ox Eye Sunflower, and more that I haven't identified yet.  

This was a spur of the moment project.  I was working in the yard and got an alert on my phone that someone was giving away railroad ties.  I heard about how people make gardens out of them so I thought I'd give it a try.  These are pretty old railroad ties that have rotted some, but the garden frame ended up looking good.

Now I need to find around 20 cubic feet of garden soil to fill my new railroad tie garden.  So far I have a quote of $35 dollars for 1 cubic yard (27 cubic feet) but the soil is in Wakulla.  Does anyone know of a place in or around Tallahassee that has good quality garden soil at a decent price?

This is an area of my yard that I'm trying to plant all natives.  So far under the pine trees I've planted 3 Arrow-wood, 1 Spicebush, and 1 Crabapple that were purchased as bareroot trees at Native Nurseries.  Do you say "bareroot", bare-root", or "bare root"???  I also planted 3 'Little Gem' Southern Magnolia toward the back of my property line.

Here is a closeup of the Crabapple. None of these trees are very big but my goal is for them to fill out the area covered in pine needles and give birds, insects, and wildlife food and shelter.

Sun setting over my future native filled landscape...

The time springs forward this weekend so that means more time in the yard!!!  (if my wife lets me...)