Summer solstice is a perfect occasion for taking stock of the season so far. We’re at a midpoint – at the start of summer – with a lot to look forward to and plenty to look back on with both pride and chagrin. We always like to try new things here and although I have every intention of talking about what works and what doesn’t, I seem to be much more likely to show off our successes (the pictures are prettier). So today I’m joining Susan over at Ink and Penstemon for her Solstice snafu day celebration for a virtual bonfire of disappointments, mistakes and failures.

We tried soil blocks this year thinking that it would be great if we didn’t have to use peat pots or the indestructible coir pots anymore. (Planting this spring we turned up more intact coir pots – it’s like an archeological dig around here.) It turns out that soil blocks are not easy to make. I definitely didn’t get the soil mix right – any suggestions for what works would be welcome. They took every shoulder muscle to jam soil into the maker and a lot of finesse to stamp them into the tray without breaking the fragile clumps. Ours – the ones that held together – were like cement and most of the seeds we tried in them didn’t stand a chance of germinating.

I count it is as a failure that we allowed Lilah (Weed Woman) to take a vacation this week. Not only would we rather be kicking back on a Block Island beach too but the weeds have suddenly taken off as if they knew they were safe. This particular patch of purslane, onions and Berggarten sage (Salvia officinalis ‘Berggarten’) is an example of an intentional snafu. Supposedly onions do not love sage. We want to see if they really won’t grow well or if it’s simply a silly idea to pair such excellent companion plants with each other instead of with plants they might benefit instead.

We were so excited to place the Gunnera manicata in our little cement pond. Gail and I both said, “It’s perfect!” especially paired with our other greenhouse behemoth (Agave americana) in a nearby bed. But then the gunnera started to wilt. My research has indicated that they like full sun to partial shade so I can only think that the poor thing is in re-potting shock. We’ve cut all the big leaves off and might make a last ditch attempt to save it by taking off the flowers too. It just doesn’t look stupendous anymore and I’m seriously disappointed. We might have to take it out and hide it just to keep from feeling so terrible about it.

Plant labels are something I would love to put on the bonfire. Just when I feel like I’m catching up printing them, the entire garden bursts into bloom, hiding the labels I’ve already placed and requiring about twenty-hundred more. The weekend garden docents must have fits trying to find plant names for interested visitors. At least I know which plants I put labels on… And in the last couple of years I never got a tag on this enormous lily. I know that if I’m dying suddenly to know its name, visitors must be curious too. We ordered Lilium ‘Gerrit Zalm’ back in 2008 but perhaps now it’s known as ‘Trebbiano’? Curious.

And lastly, our self-sowers might look to some like an egregious error of judgment but in the case of our pink peony poppies, we meant to have so many. We’ll be saving seed perhaps to sell in the shop. Plus, we and our visitors love them. I did, however, remove them completely from our big Display Garden bed. I have come to the realization that the reason self-sowers are considered such a nightmare is that it’s mentally challenging – heartbreaking and difficult – to edit out something you think is beautiful. But sometimes, just one (or twenty-hundred) will do and make the garden more fantastic than it might otherwise be.

Do you have any snafus to throw on the solstice bonfire? Confess it here and/or head over to Ink and Penstemon to join the celebration.

According to the calendar, we’re a week ahead of last year and even slightly ahead of May’s full moon, but we couldn’t wait another minute to start planting. And according to the temperature – hot! – we’re right on schedule. I do wish our timing didn’t seem to consistently coincide with the very hottest days of late spring… It would be much better for the plants to choose a week of cool, gray days. But it seems that when we turn the corner on night temperatures, we run headlong into the days of summer. We’re working against the clock of full summer heat all of a sudden.

We’re in good shape though because reinforcements have arrived – Cathy (Harvest Maven) is back to help Dick in the vegetable garden and Lilah (Weed Woman) completed her sophomore year at Bard and has joined our crew for another summer! They planted tomatoes in the vegetable garden yesterday and with the volunteers’ help, gave the weeds what-for.There’s room now for another round of vegetable planting.

Yesterday the Tuesday volunteers also planted the big Display Garden bed. For the last 3 years it has been slowly filling with perennials, shrubs and self-sowers but we have deliberately left plenty of blank canvas for painting a new picture every season – something the perennial plant addict in me can’t seem to do at home. This year Gail and I placed 300 annuals and tender perennials that we hope will grow to be a riot of deep colors and bold textures. It already looks night-and-day different from last year’s frothy haze of pale lavenders.

The Rockettes are planting annuals and tender perennials (dahlias!) in the North Garden tulip pockets as I write and, weather permitting, we’ll plant in the Rose Garden tomorrow.

But just because we’re planting this week doesn’t mean that by next week we’ll be finished and can go home. We aim to have everything still waiting in the greenhouse planted by the end of June even then there will be endless tweaking and editing to be done here and there. – The gardens are, in fact, a work in progress from here on out.

Are you planting this week too?

We’re currently experiencing the weather that your local nursery professionals warned you about. We haven’t had a frost here but I’m still glad that our tender plants are still safely tucked up in the greenhouse. The wind over Saturday night was fierce and brought distinctly April-like (a true April, not like the April we just had) temperatures with it. And those temperatures are here to stay for the next few days. There may be a little residual warmth left in the soil from the last few weeks but such chilly nights will likely set it back a bit again.

Just like most of you, we’re anxious to plant the vegetable garden. We’re even itchier to get into the garden than usual because it was recently redesigned. Blithewold’s director of horticulture, Fred and his able assistant Dan have given Dick, our vegetable gardener extraordinaire, four large quadrants to plant in. They even built an adorable log cabin support for a super abundance of pole beans. (We might just make up for giving them all to the deer last year.) The whole garden is fenced against the deer (though not against a hapless neighborhood pooch who will hopefully remember that it’s there the next time she takes off running. Then again, she is a lab…) and perhaps as soon as the beans go in, the garden’s gates will too. We’ll have to be careful to lock the woodchuck and rabbits out rather than in…

Gail and I have commandeered the center of the garden – we couldn’t help ourselves – and have plans for spokes of flowers – millions of nasturtiums (dozens anyway) – and some of our favorite ornamental vegetables. We also want to do a little experimenting with companion planting and Dick is game to try it too. Do beans really hate onions? Will aphids go for nasturtiums over broccoli? Why would peas love carrots? Have you noticed any particular successes or failures with companion planting in your garden?

Our tomatoes and basil (they are reputedly good partners, not just in salads) are growing on inside the greenhouse. The only things that we have planted out so far are the cool season crops – like peas – and our sweet peas, spinach, lettuce and cabbage. Artichokes, broccoli, cauliflower and kale are hardening off and waiting in the wings for another planting session with the volunteers this week.

Are you being set back by the weather or pushed forward? Are you planning and planting anything new and different in your vegetable garden this year?

I know I’ve said it before but it’s good to get out. Yesterday Gail, Julie (our education coordinator) and I went to the Perennial Plant Conference at UCONN in Storrs, CT and came back jazzed all over again about things like native plants and edible landscaping.

Rosalind Creasy has been advocating and demonstrating edible landscaping –beautifully – since at least the early 70’s and we have certainly been playing with the idea here for the last few years too. But now I’m all over the idea for my own garden – all over again. Truth be told, I haven’t been much into planting vegetables at home unless they’re exceptionally pretty. But I’m coming to realize that they’re almost all exceptionally pretty if they’re worked into the design in the right way. Not to mention the benefits of growing your own food. And she makes such a compelling case for replacing lawn (preaching to the choir) – I don’t even have kids but if I did maybe I’d already know they prefer a garden to a blank expanse of turf. Gardens are always more interesting. Plus I came home with her cookbook …

And Doug Tallamy who wrote Bringing Nature Home (a book I have mentioned being excited about before) made an even more compelling case for replacing sterile suburban wastelands (ie. lawn and other exotics). He of course makes the case for planting native species. Tallamy recommends “flipping the age-old landscaping paradigm on its head. Instead of designing where your flower beds will go in a sea of lawn, design where you need lawn for walking spaces and plant the rest of your property with native ornamentals.” And here’s why we should all do that:

As he puts it, “humanity’s life support systems are failing.” We have to remember that the ecosystem provides services such as the air we breathe, water management and purification, food, weather systems, carbon dioxide sequestration, waste recycling and so on, and we have to quit taking all of that for granted. If we lose biodiversity, we literally lose it all. 33,000 species of plants and animals are considered “imperiled” and unable to perform their function within the ecosystem. Not good.

Everything is connected (just like in Avatar) and “insects are key!”, says Tallamy. They convert the energy from plants into food for other animals. Did you know that 23% of a black bear’s diet is insects? (In my family we always joked about all the protein we were getting every time we accidentally swallowed a bug. Turns out to be true.) Trouble is, most insects are specialists who will only eat certain native plants. If you worry about planting things that will just become defoliated and ugly because of all the insects, he says that doesn’t actually happen – and has the data to support it. Something always comes along to eat the insects. That’s how it works – and why it works. Here are his lists of great natives listed in order of how many butterfly/moth species will be supported by them.

I could go on and on … but instead I’ll just recommend reading his book yourself if you haven’t already. And in the next few weeks, take a look around and make a note of what is leafing out. Asian species are generally ahead of the natives by a week or two. Do you need a few more natives in your yard? In my own garden I have decided to evict a few things including a favorite young styrax tree. For one thing I know it can escape cultivation because mine had originally planted itself where it didn’t belong. And for another, it supports a whopping zero native caterpillars. I’ll also be evicting more lawn for vegetables… You too?

There is definitely something to be said for the fruits of the fall garden clean-up labor: As the bumper sticker puts it, “Compost Happens”. We have been chipping away at the gardens adding more and more debris to the Mother of All piles. At home my compost scares me a little. I can work for an hour, easily filling one or more wheelbarrows full of weeds and debris and then wonder where the heck to put it because my bins are already long past full. It’s hard to believe now that when I’m ready to use the compost there won’t be enough. Part of my problem is my chosen method. Bins – even big ones – are too small, too confining for the kind of compost my garden – probably any garden – is capable of generating unless I was very very diligent about snipping debris into smaller bits and then turning it regularly. Being a lazy gardener at home, I am rarely diligent about anything. I also have trouble keeping myself from adding fresh debris to the bin that’s nearly finished. (There’s space in that bin!) But even though I am willing to fill up a truck with town compost whenever I don’t have enough of my own, I’d rather keep my own debris in hopes of not having to borrow from the town again. (I know what goes into my own compost – and what stays out…) So now I have piles by my bins and piles by the piles and a deep desire for an easier system and better discipline. What do you do when your garden generates more debris than you have space for? Have you settled on a compost method that works?

Here at Blithewold we make giant piles as opposed to filling bins. Piles are a perfectly acceptable method, though a little unruly/ugly for most home gardens and on the slow side unless they’re also turned regularly to aerate and speed up decomposition. But if you’ve made it through the first 18 months or so waiting for black gold, you’re golden for good as long as you keep on heaping on. Fred and Dan, using the tractor’s front-loader, periodically turn and shift our piles and I wish they’d come to my house too. Our piles are rarely hot – we don’t make lasagna layers of brown and green debris or pay any particular attention to ratios – so weed seeds do tend to survive and I’m noticing that fact much more now that I’m using the compost in our potting soil mix. A layer of black plastic for a few months covering a nearly done pile might do the trick though, we’ll see.

Another bonus fruit of garden clean-up labor is the harvest of, in the case of our Display Garden potager, the Mothers of All beets (Bull’s Blood) and cabbage (Deadon Hybrid). Many thanks to Cathy “Harvest Maven” for providing scale and making sure those final harvests didn’t go anywhere near the compost. Happy Borscht season!