Bean pole teepee update

Well, we did attempt to do a beanpole teepee, but we failed miserably.

We planted some seeds inside and were thrilled with how quickly they grew so tall. But they were much too tall before we were ready to plant them. We created a teepee structure out of twigs cut from trees in our yard but we didn't take the time to properly prepare the patch of ground where we placed it. Some of the plants broke during the transplanting into the ground so I planted some seeds directly into the ground to replace the broken plants. It did start out pretty good but it was quickly overcome by weeds. I did try to get rid of as many weeds as I could and I did add some bags of soil around the poles but I didn't do enough weeding or add enough soil. I also had trouble distinguishing between weeds and plants. The final blow was when we had a big wind storm and the structure fell over. I was disappointed but I will try again next year.

We're going to try to do a BeanPole TeePee!

I'd read about BeanPole TeePees years ago and always wanted to do one but didn't have the garden space for it.  Now I do!  In this video Anna shares a book that I used to introduce her to the idea of the BeanPope TeePee.




We have been working on our beanpole teepee and will be posting some updates soon!

Seed Planting Updates May 2012

Before I revived this blog I had started posting some videos to YouTube. I was hoping to do a video series with my 6 year old daughter about our attempts at planting seeds indoors and then eventually transplanting them into our garden.  Unfortunately I ran into some technical difficulties so the videoing came to a halt, but I am hoping to be able to restart them again soon.

Here are the videos we did so far about our seed planting attempts:







Episode three of Gardening with Anna wasn't about our seed planting but about a visit we made to a local greenhouse and garden store.

Come Tour My Yard - May 2012

Back in May I walked around my yard with my iphone in hand and did some videos of what the yard looked like at that time.  It is the first of I hope many video journals that will document the transformation of our yard.  I also have some pictures of what the yard looked like even before these videos that I am hoping to find and post.  Anyway, for now I'm just going to post the three videos I took in May.  At some point I want to edit these all into one video but I just don't have the gear to do that right now, so, I invite you to tour my garden in these three videos.

New home, new community, new gardening opportunities

After laying dormant for almost four years, I have decided to revive this blog.  In August of last year I moved to a new community and into a new house with a totally unlandscaped yard.  Our land measures 75x200.  Lots of space for a lovely garden.  I have hope that I may finally manage to develop a green thumb and be able to trade in my greenhorns.  I have the space to work on it and I have decided to document the process here.

I have no illusions that it will happen quickly.  I know it will be many years in coming for many reasons.  One of those reasons is my own lack of knowledge and experience but another reason is the state of the land at the present time.  While it is a big piece of land, at least in my eyes, it is also a big mess. The house is on some built up land but there are many sloping banks around it and they are not gentle slopes.  It is apparent that there is a whole lot of garbage under the ground as there is a whole lot sticking out of the banks.  Not a pretty scene. We are doing our best to clean it up but it will be a while. 

So, this sleeping blog is waking and it is here that I will share our attempt to turn our yard into something beautiful.  I am writing this for me, because I want to document the journey, but you are welcome to follow along if you want.

I finally have a camera again and I'm wanting to revive this blog, yet again, and work on that green thumb I want to develop.

I am not a gardener at all. I'm terrible. My garden consists of a small flower bed at the front and side of my house and a little corner flower bed in the back yard. I had big plans to do real good with these bed but once again I've let them grow over into one big mess! How do I fix it?!

My problem is I don't know a weed from a flower, so I hesitate to pull anything up in fears that I might be pulling up flowers, so instead I let every thing grow and before too long my flowers are over taken by weeds. Rather silly I know, but that's what happens.

I think the first thing I need to do is work on identifying what I have so that I know what to keep, what to pull up, and how to take care of what I keep. To that end I took a bunch of pictures a couple of days ago. I appreciate any help I can get because I really am clueless when it comes to gardening.

Here are some pictures from my side flower bed. I know some of them are weeds and some of them are perennials given to me by my aunt and my friends. Please help me know which is which. I'd really love to be able to name everything in my garden.

I'm pretty certain the white flower is some kind of perennial, but the pitchfork shaped leaf thing on the left I'm pretty certain is a weed.


I'm fairly certain this is a weed of some sort too.


I think this is a lovely ground cover of some sort. I believe it has pretty pink or purple flowers some time of the year. I can't remember if they flowered yet this year or not.


I kind of like this one, even though it spreads like wild fire. It has pretty white flowers for part of the year. I'd love to know how to make it look good all the time, instead of straggly, and I'd love to be able to control it somehow.


This one I do know! It's a hosta a neighbor gave me, but it is quite sick looking. I'd love to move it somewhere else, but I'm afraid to try.


I'm fairly certain these are perennials of some sort. They are quite tall. I like them but I don't think they belong where they are.


This is a close up of the flower of the above plant.


My front flower bed is totally overgrown. These flowers are part of it. I have no idea what they are. They are also quite tall and the have all fallen over and are almost touching the ground. It may very well be a weed for all I know.


This is my rose tree. It has beautiful white roses, but it is in desparate need of some tender love and care. It probably needs to be cut back or something, but I'm terrified of doing it. Any tips?


I don't know what kind of tree this is but I like it. A friend had one is his garden and he gave me a little stick to plant a few years ago. It had somem kind of flower on it earlier this year and now it has these little red berries.


Here's a close up of the leaves and berries of the tree above. The leaves appear to be diseased or something. Any advice?


Here's my overgrown corner bed in the back yard. It used to look realy nice at one time but now it is totally overgrown and it's hard to find the actual nice plants in it.


Here is one species of plant in it. It is a perenial of some sort adn they brown dried up bits on it are faded flowers.


Here's a different one. This one also has some kind of flowers on it. Rain water tends to bead up really pretty on this one.


I'm pretty certain that most of this is weeds, and it's a real shame because underneath those weed there used to be some really nice plants. I wonder are the saveable?


Here's one of the plants that is hidden in this mess. It has pretty purple and pink flowers for part of the year.


So, are my flower beds a total loss, or can I save them? What do I pull up and what do I leave?


This tree is one that I admire in my neighbors yard.


Now I have to do some research to try to identify these plants. Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.

So much for my big plans. Life got in the way. Our life has been so up in the air since FIL's illness that I haven't been able to fulfill the plans I had. I never know what is happening with us from one moment to the next. I had made plans to meet with some gardeners but ended up not being able to make it and then I couldn't bring myself to make more plans that I wouldn't be able to fulfill so I gave up. Maybe I'll try again next year.

In the meantime I'm not sure what I'll do with this blog. I'm not expecting much to happen here for a while, but you never know.

Well, I'm just about ready to move forward with some plans, but I'm still debating about others.

Today I finally took some steps to put in place a plan that's been brewing in my head for a while. I contacted a couple of local gardeners and asked if they'd be willing to have me contact them about once a week and share with me what they are doing to get ready for the growing season. I'm happy to say that they are as excited about the idea as I am. I'm still thinking about contacting a few more gardeners but now that I have a couple committed I'm ready to start. I'm still not quite sure how I'm going to go about it yet but it should mean that I will post at least one post a week telling about how local gardners are getting ready for the growing season.

The main thing I'm debating about is whether to move the posts from my old gardening newspaper column over here or to leave them where they are. If I knew how to move them over here and have them dated with the dates they were written, and fit into that space in the archives, rather than date them with the date I move them over, and have them show up as new posts, I would probably move them over, but I don't know how to do that so I think I will leave them where they are for now.

I can't wait to get the new idea rolling! It's hard to believe that with the piles of snow still around us gardeners are actually doing things to get ready for the growing season already, but they really are! I'll tell you all about it soon. :)

Spring is in the air! Well, not really. It's still winter, but it's a beautiful sunny day and my mind is starting to think about spring. This is partially because I am receiving emails from a site talking about signs of spring and also because a friend on an email list asked about growing zones. That really got me thinking and I decided to check out my old gardening blog to see if I wanted to revive it or junk it. Well, I've decided to revive it. It's been a long time and I need to make some changes and adjustments to this old blog. Stay tuned to see what happens. :)