Life is an Ongoing Process » Gardening

Spring Break

Carol — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 20:41:27 +0000

I thought I would take a break from political posts to share some photos I took this morning. I received my Mac version of Photoshop yesterday and installed it right away. The switch from the PC version to the Mac version was completely painless.

I love my new set up. It is so easy to take photos, plug the camera into the Mac, download and edit the photos, upload to Flickr or our server, and post to my blogs from anywhere where I can get a wireless connection. Very cool!

An early morning walk with the dogs and Ron this morning provided a perfect opportunity for taking some photos of the gardens. I selected some of the best shots to share below. There are many more on my Flickr page, and the full sized jpegs are there as well if you want to see the large, detailed versions of them. I think the close up below of the Grand Primo narcissus is my favorite of the bunch.

Close Up of Narcissus

This Indian paintbrush is also a nice shot.

Indian Paintbrush

Every year we seed wildflowers along our driveway. There are several nice stands of bluebonnets, daisies, and coreopsis finally starting to get established.

Wildflowers Along the Driveway

Click here to see the slideshow of the whole set. You will see the bluebonnets, paint brushes, and other native Texas wildflowers that are growing in the wildflower area on the north side of our land. There is also a picture of my dog Duffer – a very large golden-lab mix. There are close up shots of an Indian paintbrush, our new red passionvine, the Grand Primo narcissus, and a Mexican buckeye bloom spike. There is a feeble attempt at catching a hummingbird at the hummingbird feeder, and a shot of the water lilly in our stock tank water garden. Finally, there are some views of the new garden beds in our front courtyard area featuring the rock garden area, the new copper canyon daisies grouped around a boulder, a shot of my larkspurs, the Mexican buckeye, and a couple of others.

What’s Going on at Lost Valley Gardens

Carol — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 14:28:19 +0000

Spring is just around the corner here in central Texas, and it is time to get the Lost Valley Gardens nursery and plant production operation back into action. Our landscaping business has been steady, even through the winter. Ron has been working on a deck for the past few months. That project continues to go well, and pictures will be forthcoming shortly. Meanwhile, here are a few photos of what we have growing here in our gardens at the end of January, and the new seed starting setup that I will be using to propogate plants this spring.

There are still a few hardy plants growing in my herb bed just outside the kitchen on the west side of the house. These plants were covered in ice for several days during the ice storm that we sustained several weeks ago, but they were not damaged at all. In the back of the bed I have kale, fennel, thyme, clinatro and dill. In front of those herbs I have arugula and lettuce, and there are several mealy blue sage plants and a yarrow that are still hanging on since last spring.

The greens beds are still thriving. The bed pictured above has spinach, chinese cabbage, red ursa kale, mustard greens, and red cabbage plants that were planted last December.

It’s time to get my early spring seeds germinating, and I just received my new seed germinating setup. With Ron’s help, I got it set up today. I also purchased a new type of seed starting tray that will enable me to start alot more plants at one time, and is designed to allow for quick and easy transplanting. I will provide more details about this setup, and how well it is working, in the days to come.

Check the Lost Valley Gardens home page soon to see the varieties of flowers, herbs, and vegetables that I have selected to start this spring. There are some new and exciting varieties such as the pink Laura Bush petunia, that I am looking forward to testing in our gardens this year.

The Circle Garden

Carol — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 22:43:38 +0000

The circle garden began as a water garden, which we constructed when we moved to this property eight years ago. A large circle, surrounding a native persimmon tree, was excavated to a depth of 2 to 3 feet, with a width of about 5 feet in most places. The pond was then constructed using a heavy poly liner and rocks of various sizes. The pond was visually pleasing, but the design was flawed in that the pond was located on a site that got too much runoff and collected too many live oak leaves during the spring. Hence, the pond was a maintenance headache. Here is what it looked like when it was first completed.

I had held out hope that I could somehow salvage the pond by redesigning some of the more problematic aspects of it, but this past spring I decided that it would make the most sense to use the space as a growing bed instead, and to construct an entirely new water feature on a better site. The result of this recycling of the pond to a planting bed is what I call an ‘inverted raised bed’. This bed was created by cutting drainage holes in the pond liner, filling the bottom of the pond with river rocks and pea gravel to facilitate drainage, and backfilling the rest of the hole with Geo Growers Thunder Garden mix.

I began planting in this bed in early June of this year (see the first picture below), using plants that I had started in the greenhouse during the winter. The selection of plants includes tropical sage, yellow yarrow, mealy blue sage, mexican bush sage, native ruellia, anaheim peppers, sweet basil, jalapeno peppers, poblano and bell peppers, purple coneflowers, portulaca, kong mosaic coleus, rudbeckia, oriental mugwort and salvia greggi. The photos that follow show various aspects of this garden. The results have been fantastic. I only have to water this bed half as often as a normal in-ground bed or a raised bed, and the plants are thriving.

I continue to make updates and additions to the Plant Catalog page, and I have plans to add content to the About Us page soon.

Cheers,
Carol