Dogs in Compost, Again!

I don't get it! My dogs love to get into the compost pile. I don't usually put anything in my compost that they would eat. Apparently, putrid smells make the veggies and coffee grounds much more appetizing. I blocked the dogs from jumping in the pile by stapling construction netting over a coldframe lid, placing the netting lid over the piles, and placing an iron chair on top of the lid to keep the dogs from being able to get enough leverage to break through the netting. Well, they managed push the lid to the side and crawl down into the bins. They must have put forth a lot of effort. I supposed that I will have to attach the frame to the fence as soon as the weather warms up a bit.

January's Garden To Do List

This month is about catching up on garden tasks that I put off and preparing for the new garden year.  I have already ordered my seeds from Jung's and Territorial Seed Company.  I also have some tomato seeds that I saved from my favorite varieties from last summer. I have a lot of extra seeds that I saved and packaged. I will mail them to Trudi at www.wintersown.org. She will redistribute them to gardeners for free.

In addition to ordering seeds, I need to plant two sacks of daffodil bulbs that are sitting on my clothes dryer.  I intended to plant them last month but we got an early snow. Nothing says "happy holidays" like standing out in the middle of the first ice storm of the year trying to plant daffodil bulbs before the ground becomes too frozen to dig. The weather forecast for this week suggests that we will have a couple of days with above freezing temperatures.  Maybe I can use this opportunity to plant the bulbs in my garden.  If not, I can always pot them up, put them in the garage, and force them in April.

Some clean up tasks are also on my agenda.  Since we had an early snow this year, I didn't get a chance to finish cleaning up my yard.  I need to tidy up the garden a bit and I definitely need to mulch the north side of my house.  On the north side, I don't get much sun, so very little grows there.  I have dogs and they like to run through this area, which I call the dog corridor, to get to the front part of the house.  They like to bark at people and other animals that like to walk on 'their' sidewalk.  Unfortunately, since there is no ground cover to speak of on the north side of the house, it becomes a muddy mess whenever there is a thaw.  I usually place large chunks of pinebark mulch to cover the ground on this side of the house.  The mulch keeps my dogs from loading up their fur with mud and tracking it into the house.  The mulch is thin, so I need to add a half dozen or so bags to cover the thin and bare spots.  Today looks like it might be a good day to get all of this done.

Outsmarted by a Cocker Spaniel

One would think that I could outsmart my dogs.  Cockers are not known for their intelligence. It's a good thing that they are so sweet. As I posted last month, I'm having problems with my dogs running along the fence that borders my alley. In the past they haven't done this, but now they have this new destructive habit.  They have been trampling my oriental lilies, bee balm, and delphinium.


Last month, I rearranged the bed to create some daylily speed bumps. I was hoping that the day lilies would provide enough of a barrier that my dogs wouldn't beat a path at the back of the bed.  I was wrong, and Stevie from Garden Therapy was right. Her comment to the posting was "Good luck! I hope they don't see it as an obstacle course now!" My dogs totally see the day lilies as added fun. Maybe Stevie is a garden dog therapist : )

My new plan is to install hurdles. I bought some cheap garden fences at a home store and installed them throughout the back of my perennial bed. A few years ago, Peanut, the dog picture above, could have easily cleared these hurdles.  He's older now with a little arthritis, so he's not much of a threat. Marci could never be coordinated enough to jump the hurdles. She is rather clumsy and has been known to fall off the bed. I really hope that this new idea works.  I don't want to have to restrict my dogs' access to the back yard.

Strawberries in Pots

I didn't get nearly as much accomplished as I would have liked to this weekend. It was raining so much that I was only able to get my strawberries planted. It was too wet to work on my lawn and weed.

I have a small urban backyard, so I don't have a lot of space. I also have dogs that have free access to the backyard through a doggy door and who also love strawberries. The first year I grew strawberries in pots, they kept disappearing. I thought that the birds were getting the berries until I smelled strawberry on the breath of my dogs. I should have known because the sneaky little snots are also tomato stealers.

Last year, I grew Ozark, an everbearing strawberry, in two strawberry pots but I never got enough at any one time to do anything other than snack.  Only a few of the plants survived the winter, so I have to replace most of the plants.  I left out the pots in a sheltered place on the side of my house over winter.  I should have protected them better. This winter, I will probably overwinter the pots in my garage. Maybe more plants will make it through the winter.

I decided to try a June bearing strawberry so that I can get more strawberries at once. The plants will produce fruit for about two to three weeks in June. I decided to try Honeoye, which is supposed to produce a lot of sweet fruit.  I bought 20 bare roots of Honeoye.

First, I took the roots out of the package and soaked them in water for about an hour.

Then I removed the dead strawberry plants form the pots and replaced them with the Honeoye. When I planted the strawberries, I dug out as much potting mixture from the holes as I could and replaced it with with a mixture of used potting soil and compost.

When I planted the pots last year, I used a blend of compost, coir, and old potting mix from the previous year's containers. I also placed a PVC pipe with holes drilled in it in the center of the pot so that I could get more water to the bottom plants. I was losing too much water through the drainage hole in the pots, so I stuffed a plastic grocery bag in the bottom of the PVC pipe and that slowed down the drainage without blocking it off completely.

Speed Bumps in the Dog Superhighway

The dog superhighway

I have a problem with my dogs running along the alley fence. In years past, this hasn't been a problem, but starting this year, they seem to have this new habit. They have trampled down some of the emerging perennials. 

The speedsters

New speed bumps

I decided to add a few speed bumps to their highway. I added some daylilies and iris since they are tall and fairly trample-proof.  I also took the opportunity to dig out all the ditch lilies that were in the middle of the bed. I hope that the new plantings will protect my bee balm, delphinium, and lupine. This solution seems to be working so far. While they did go back into the bed to lounge near the daylilies, they weren't running along the fence line.

Naughty Baby Bunny Killers

When I was out working on my perennial bed in the backyard today, my dogs found a rabbit den with baby bunnies under my hibiscus bush.  Before I realized what had happened, both dogs had baby bunnies in their mouths.  I managed to make one of my dogs release his bunny, but my other dog killed hers.

Baby Bunny Killer

I confined both dogs inside the house.  I found the bunny that I made my other dog release hiding along my fence.  The other babies escaped, so I assumed that the bunny was injured.

Then I went to a business owner, Jan, whose shop is across the street.  She's an earth mother type of person who would likely know what to do.  I was in luck.  She had some experience with wildlife rehabilitation and said that she would take care of it.  She lives on a wooded 5 acres of land, so she's going to take it to her house.  She thinks that it's old enough that it will survive so long as it's not too injured.  She said that she will find a sheltered place outside and make sure that it has plants to munch on and water.  She said that there are a lot of bunnies out at her house.

When I returned to the back yard, the bunny was still in the same place, even though neither my dogs nor I had been in the backyard for about 10 minutes.  I found a large tub and put straw in the bottom.  Then I put on some garden gloves, and gently placed the bunny in the tub.  It could move around some, but it didn't try to flee.  I took the bunny to Jan.  By the time that we got to her house, the bunny had burrowed under the straw for safety.

Since my dogs destroyed the den, Jan suggested that I find a sheltered nearby spot outside of my fence to 'suggest' a safer place for the bunnies to relocate.  

The destroyed den

My suggestion for a new den

Jan said that I might be able to encourage the bunnies to relocate to a place outside my yard if I find a fairly close spot that is sheltered and move a shovel full of the hair and dirt from the hold nest into the new.  Along my alley neighbor's fence is a climbing hydrangea that could provide some shelter and a nice hidden spot.  I found a tucked away spot, dug a little with my shovel, and placed some of the hair and dirt from the old den in the new spot.  I hope that they build their new home outside of my yard. I really don't want my dogs to be able to get to them.

Potting Up Plants for the Plant Swap

Earlier, I wrote a post about the Central Indiana Plant Swap, which is an opportunity for gardeners who live around Indianapolis to come together to give away their extra plants and receive new plants.  There is no charge for this event.  This year it will be at Holiday Park in Indianapolis on May 16th at 2pm.  For more information, click here.  Please join us.  The more people that come, the better the plant selection will be!

As I'm cleaning up my yard this spring, I am potting up divisions for the swap.

I just load up my wheel barrow with potting supplies

and dig up stray and overgrown perennials as I encounter them.

Since my garden is maturing, some of my plants are 

growing in to each other.  Here you can see my hardy 

geranium and a viburnum sucker spreading into my iris.

I'm taking the geranium and viburnum sucker to 

to the plant swap.

So far, I have potted up
3 lamium (either pink pewter or purple dragon)
6 sweet woodruff
3 hellebores/Lenten Rose (either pink or cream)
6 monarda/bee balm (Jacob Klein-red)
2 purple coneflower
1 salvia (May Night-purple)
6 short bearded reblooming iris (yellow, purple, or light blue---probably purple)
3 hardy geranium (pink)
1 stargazer lily
1 daylily-probably blacked eyed stella, but I'm not certain
1 snowball viburnum

I'll post a list of the plants that I dig up for the swap and maybe some photos of them in their summer glory after I dig them up, so check back over the next month to see what new additions I will bring to the swap.  I still have my back yard perennials to pot up and I'll have some extra vegetable seedlings.

Here's what I have for the swap so far.  These plants are 

from my front yard.  I haven't started on the back, yet.

Marci reminded me to water the plant swap plants.

Here are photos some of the plants that I will take to the plant swap:

These iris are about 18" tall and bloom 

in both the spring and fall in Indiana.

You can see the red monarda that I'm bringing to the

swap in this photo.  I haven't seen how the other plants

are growing yet, because some of them are just starting to 

emerge, but I will likely also bring some liatris (bottom 

left), some Helen Von Stein lamb's ear (bottom right), and 

heliopsis (top right).

Purple coneflower
I'm not sure which variety the cone flower is,
because something, probably a bird, sowed
several of them in my yard.  They were a
wonderful gift, but enough is enough :)

Sweet woodruff (on the left)

Hardy geranium

Planting in the Rain

I was excited this morning to sow my greens and carrots in the alley bed.  As soon as I stepped outside, I felt a couple of raindrops.  I thought that I could at least get some of the seeds sown before the rain started to come down hard, and if I were lucky, the rain would remain light.

I really wanted to sow my sweet mesclun mix, gourmet mesclun mix, herb salad mix, spinach, kaleidoscope carrot mix, and nantes carrots.

So, I loaded up the wheel barrow which already had soil from edging the beds in it, and I wheeled it back to the end of the alley.

I got four rows in before the rain started coming down hard and I was beginning to feel soggy.  I gave up and will have to finish the sowing tomorrow.

I was able to take off my wet clothes, but unfortunately my garden helpers have to stay in the laundry/dog/mud room until they are dry enough to come into the rest of the house.  They are NOT happy about it, either.