I remember walking to school in the fall with a beach-comber’s lurch looking for the most beautiful leaf. When I found it, I memorized it and then kept looking for a more perfect one. I don’t remember ever making anything from my found leaves – some people probably like to press them or make wreaths – I just kept them as bookmarks until they faded to boring or disintegrated. Now that I have a digital camera I collect only pictures of leaves and I have to say it’s not nearly as gratifying and I end up with way too many to look at when just one perfect real one tucked in a book would do.

I also remember that the most strenuous garden chore I had as a kid was raking leaves and I thought that the whole point was to make a giant pile to jump into (preferably before the dog noticed it). It’s funny, the whole raking leaves issue. Why do we do it, really? This article from the Fine Gardening E-newsletter makes the claim that raking is actually unnecessary. The author, Terry Ettinger, recommends mowing the leaves into little bits and leaving them to break down on our lawns and in our gardens. I can think of two reasons not to do that. 1, I have had it with mowing by now and 2, the neighbors already give my garden the hairy eyeball for looking a little wild. I think tidiness is the main number-one reason we all collect leaves and I’m pretty sure Fred and Dan, now into their second or third pass with the blowers around the property, would agree. It’s bred in the bone. Gail and I also rake leaves out of the garden beds and our main reason for doing that is so that we can see beds as blank slates when we do our fall planting. Ettinger says, “observation shows that unraked leaves in planting beds don’t smother shade-tolerant perennials.” You know me – I’ll happily test that theory at home but here we’ll continue to mulch beds with shredded leaves instead which break down much faster than whole ones.

The great debate ends when all agree that collecting the leaves – not just one for a keepsake but as many as you can use in the garden – is what’s important. Whether they stay in bits on your lawn or in your garden beds, are added to the compost or shredded for mulch, we gardeners know that leaves are way too good of a soil amendment to let go of.

How do you feel about raking? And do you collect leaves too?

When Fred (Blithewold’s dir. of hort.) suggested that Gail and I start making our own potting soil, we were totally game.  We had already started looking into alternatives to our peat based mixes and were interested in trying out this coir stuff that everyone is talking about.  Coir (rhymes with foyer) is a coconut industry byproduct – when coconuts are harvested for the meat and milk the fiber (the coir) from the shells is used for all sorts of other things – like rope, doormats, the pots we’re now using instead of peat pots – and the coir dust makes an excellent soil amendment.  It’s on the slightly acidic side of pH neutral, has high water retention and slow release; it’s re-wettable, and biodegradable.  It’s also an easily and sustainably renewable resource.  Peat moss, on the other hand, grows back at a rate of 1-2 millimeters per year and must be very carefully harvested in order to remain at all sustainable.  And the amazing thing about peat bogs is that peat absorbs carbon dioxide and as it’s held in the earth, the bogs act as global coolers.  When the bogs are disturbed however, the gas is released which, as you know, contributes to global warming.  (Very uncool.)

Personally, I’d rather leave the bogs alone but peat moss has forever been every gardener’s go-to soil amendment.  In terms of feeding the soil though, there are much better alternatives – like shredded leaves, mushroom compost, and everyday garden compost – all three of which add nutrients while improving the texture, aeration, and water retention.  Coir is more like peat – it’s a nutrient sponge that retains and releases whatever is added to it. Its water holding capacity and re-wet-ability make it an ideal potting mix ingredient.  (Potting mixes need to be Goldilocks-perfect:  Not too heavy, too light, too wet, or too dry – but juuuussst right.)

The great people at The Good Earth in Hope, RI offered to share a pallet of Fibre Dust, LLC Coco-Coir bales with us – none of us needed all 990 odd pounds – so Gail and I packed my little car with a third of the pallet which should keep us going for a while.  One 12″x12″x5″ tightly packed bale puffs up to 2.2 – 2.5 cubic feet or about two thirds of a 32 gallon container.

For potting up transplants right now, we’ll add it to the potting mixes we already have on hand.  As we start work on potting up the container bed, we’ll mix it with screened compost.  And next year when we sow seeds we might consider trying soil blocks like the ones the Holschers make at The Good Earth – we could reduce our reliance on peat packs and then be very nearly, almost entirely peat free.

Have you used any coir based potting mixes?  (Do you make your own?) What do you think of it?

I’ve gone soft.  The thaw we had a couple of weeks ago has totally ruined me for the rest of winter.  I can’t go outside in the freeze anymore without complaining every bit as bitterly as the wind that has been blowing through my hat.  But when the sun is shining, it’s toasty warm in the greenhouse and I have every reason to stay comfortably happy (and a little soft) inside. – Because with the sun’s rise over the winter hump, the growing season is beginning in earnest.  There’s new growth on plants that have been sitting tight, biding their time ’til the sun came out and there has been a baby boom of aphids and white fly and scale  – they’re born to feed on all that delicious tender growth.  We are actually waiting to fertilize the greenhouse so that we can slow down the critters first.  (Mission impossible?…)

And it’s time to sow our first batch of seeds which need the night’s chill (60 and below) to grow and be happy.  We’ll be starting 13 varieties of sweet peas (Lathyrus odoratus) tomorrow – that’s down from 17 or 18 last year. – I was very restrained with our order this year!  In Annuals and Tender Plants for North American Gardens, Wayne Winterrowd talks at length about the proper methods for germinating sweet peas.  It’s common practice to nick or soak sweet peas before sowing them but we don’t do either one.  We simply sow them a 1/2″ deep in pots filled with a fairly fine textured potting mix (Metro 300 series with Coir).  We water them in, keep the pots evenly moist, and wait – usually about 2 weeks.

Mr. Winterrowd also mentions that sweet peas don’t like their roots disturbed at all when planted and we’ve been doing that for years too by pulling the peat pot off when we plant them.  The transplants do seem to take a little while to get going though I can’t say that we’ve ever lost any or had anything but a stupendous show at exactly their right moment.  Perhaps sweet peas are not as delicate and fussy as they’re made out to be.  That said, we have made a change in the pot department – this year we will be sowing them in pots made of coir (coconut husk – a renewal resource) which can be safely planted in the ground and will degrade much faster than peat which tends to take ages to break down.

Do you grow sweet peas too?  Do you generally follow a seed packet or a how-to guide’s instructions to the letter or do you work out your own methods?  Have you been successful even against the odds?

No rain in sight. The thunderstorms that have been in the forecast periodically haven’t materialized for us in Bristol since a month ago in June. It’s dry dry dry and even the pond has emptied already just as if it’s sprung a leak. The watering rotations have begun in earnest.

I feel sort of hyper conscious about water usage and whenever I suggest that the gardens are alright without a dousing, my co-workers* look at me like they might hiss “Blasphemer!” and start throwing stones. (*Lilah excepted – she doesn’t want to water either.) Admittedly my garden at home suffers somewhat. The blooms on my Clematis ‘Roguchi’ are half the size of the ones here and I almost lost a new Star magnolia last year due to an extended period of miserly neglect. I have a rain barrel at home that is still somehow miraculously half full although I draw exclusively from it to water my parched potted plants. I know the Blithewold gardens need to be on a rigid watering schedule to remain lovely and I know in my heart that mine at home would be happier for it too. The trick is to be careful while being generous. It’s best to water early in the morning – especially if you’re running a sprinkler so that you don’t lose too much to wind and evaporation – and to water really really well and deeply. Here we water whenever we can and most of the gardens are done by hand under the blazing sky which is hot and awful but affords plenty of time for daydreaming and wishing. I wish for a rainspell and a new hat with a fan attachment…

The trees on the property are watered by sprinklers and the web of hoses running around the property amazes me. I’m glad the guys take care of all that because I can’t be trusted to remember to turn off a sprinkler once I’ve turned it on… Blithewold recently received a grant to service and utilize the network of cisterns on the property and yesterday we heard the new pump working for the first time. Drawing water from a large cistern in the enclosed garden the guys were able to run 2 sprinklers on the Giant Sequoia and one on the Katsuras for a total of about 6-7 hours. Unfortunately it’s only a drop in the proverbial bucket since the ground under the Sequoia is still dry deeper than 2 inches or so from the surface. We need more rain to really drench that ground again – and to fill the cistern back up. I think it’s really astounding that the owners of Blithewold had the forethought to conserve water and install these giant underground tanks. Hopefully soon, they’ll all be in working order again and we’ll hear the thrum of pumps occasionally over the buzz of the cicadas.

We are also watering with town water and from the wells on the property. The Pump House where we store our tools actually does house the pump for the main well. Dan and Fred used the new portable pump to finally tap the old well on the front lawn today (I don’t know how many years it has been out of commission).

Are you experiencing a dry spell too? What do you do to conserve water?

In other news: The house today has been a veritable hive of activity in preparation for the RI Federation of Garden Clubs’ Flower Show. There are gorgeous arrangements and horticultural specimens displayed all around the first floor of the house. They all look like winners to me – despite some cutting criticism from the judges. Come see!

Anyone out and about today in this part of the world knows it’s a glorious day (condolences for anyone stuck indoors). And anyone who’s out and about at Blithewold today knows this is absolutely the place to be. Here’s a taste for any of you who can’t be here and a pre-weekend update for all who are thinking of making the trip:

(As always, hover over images for the caption or click on them for a larger view)

Have a fabulous spring weekend and hope to see you here!