Saturday, October 17, 2009

still no frost; moving and planting

I'm amazed that I have yet to get a killing frost here.  The historical first-frost date is September 31, so this is quite extraordinary.  Given that our last-frost date has been pushed back by two weeks, it means we get an extra month of gardening.  (Not that this doesn't mean troubling things for our planet.)

I pulled the last of my tomatoes, peppers and parsley a few days ago, and moved my lettuce underneath my little cold frame to try to get a few more weeks out of them.  

Today was a big moving and planting day:  I'm planning on a new raised bed in my front yard (since it gets more sun), so I had to move a bunch of plants, including phlox (david), boltonia, ox-eye daisies, joe-pye weed, a veronica spicata, one bee balm, and a hydrangea.  I turned everything over (including the hundreds of annoying ox-eye daisies starting out), threw a hundred alliums (cowanii) and about ten garlic cloves around the area, then put down some soil and compost over it all, and watered it in.  I also watered all the plants I moved.

I also had time (though the days are getting short!) to plant more spring bulbs, putting in some squill, tete-a-tete daffodils, and allium bulgaricum around where I had planted them last year.  I still have to plant my chiondoxa and anemones, but I imagine I'll have more time to do that.

3 comments:

  1. Wow! I am amazed that you haven't had a frost yet. We had our first frost in the Grey-NG area back on Sept 26th and had several more over the past week. Wasn't it a beautiful weekend to work in the garden? It was chilly, but once you got moving it was ok.

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  2. Yes, it was beautiful, but I still have lots of Fall garden chores left to do, so I hope we have more good weekends ahead of us before the snow comes.

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  3. Big D,
    Great one here - lots of neat info baby! My lettuce is getting sun, but still isn't growing too too much. Thought it was a cold crop? Germinates at 32F, so should grow now right? Great pics you've had too Big D :)
    -Joe

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