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twoeleventhis morning, the temperature was unseasonably warm – the high was 55° – for a few hours, ahead of a powerful cold front. so i got in a little more gardening.
i brought in some anti-antler-rat netting i'd forgotten to bring in before, and went back to pruning the broken bush. once the cold front arrived, the winds were expected to pick up – they did, they're gusting to 40 kts – and i wanted to clear out any more damaged branches and dead wood before the wind brought it down.
now that i got into the center of the bush, i found that there was even more dead wood than my previously-raised estimate. so, most of that was cut out. i also trimmed a bit more live wood that was shading another bush.
fundamentally, this bush matches the pollyanna-ish definition that a weed is a plant out of place. it's a vigorous bush with small evergreen leaves. it's a fine architectural plant.
10% of it being out of place is due to company that built our house. they planted it next to the house on the west wall, with shade to the south of it. so, the bush, like most of the plants in that garden, wants to grow away from the wall. this makes it grow over a slow-growing pine tree and an azalea.
the other 90% i attribute to me just not keeping up with pruning the shrubbery. there's always more pressing outdoor tasks here: sowing, weeding, watering, mowing the lawn. and they get out of hand quickly. an overgrown bush? not really. it took 25 years for the bush to get this way. but now i think i've got it under control: i'll do as much pruning after the first frost and before the last as i can.
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one of the seed pushers i buy from mainly sells to large gardeners and small farmers. their catalog just arrived. they seem to have realized that flowers are a high-margin crop that their clientele grows, but that they don't grow them by the acre.
so, not only have they greatly expanded the variety of flowers they sell, they're now selling flower seed by the ounce or half-ounce in addition to by the packet and quarter-pound and up. a packet of seed contains tens to hundreds of seeds, and might fill 10-20 square feet. a quarter-pound is usually tens of thousands of seeds, and will fill a good fraction of an acre. an ounce is high hundreds to thousands of seeds, and tens to hundreds of square feet. that's a much better match for my gardens.
also, because of labor costs/economies of scale, a packet of seeds is typically around $5 these days. but a (half-)ounce is only $10. much better. so, i'm going to order seeds for next spring and the spring thereafter, or for some of the short-season flowers, sow successive waves of seeds next spring.
i brought in some anti-antler-rat netting i'd forgotten to bring in before, and went back to pruning the broken bush. once the cold front arrived, the winds were expected to pick up – they did, they're gusting to 40 kts – and i wanted to clear out any more damaged branches and dead wood before the wind brought it down.
now that i got into the center of the bush, i found that there was even more dead wood than my previously-raised estimate. so, most of that was cut out. i also trimmed a bit more live wood that was shading another bush.
fundamentally, this bush matches the pollyanna-ish definition that a weed is a plant out of place. it's a vigorous bush with small evergreen leaves. it's a fine architectural plant.
10% of it being out of place is due to company that built our house. they planted it next to the house on the west wall, with shade to the south of it. so, the bush, like most of the plants in that garden, wants to grow away from the wall. this makes it grow over a slow-growing pine tree and an azalea.
the other 90% i attribute to me just not keeping up with pruning the shrubbery. there's always more pressing outdoor tasks here: sowing, weeding, watering, mowing the lawn. and they get out of hand quickly. an overgrown bush? not really. it took 25 years for the bush to get this way. but now i think i've got it under control: i'll do as much pruning after the first frost and before the last as i can.
– – –
one of the seed pushers i buy from mainly sells to large gardeners and small farmers. their catalog just arrived. they seem to have realized that flowers are a high-margin crop that their clientele grows, but that they don't grow them by the acre.
so, not only have they greatly expanded the variety of flowers they sell, they're now selling flower seed by the ounce or half-ounce in addition to by the packet and quarter-pound and up. a packet of seed contains tens to hundreds of seeds, and might fill 10-20 square feet. a quarter-pound is usually tens of thousands of seeds, and will fill a good fraction of an acre. an ounce is high hundreds to thousands of seeds, and tens to hundreds of square feet. that's a much better match for my gardens.
also, because of labor costs/economies of scale, a packet of seeds is typically around $5 these days. but a (half-)ounce is only $10. much better. so, i'm going to order seeds for next spring and the spring thereafter, or for some of the short-season flowers, sow successive waves of seeds next spring.
no subject
Date: Dec. 30th, 2025 05:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Dec. 30th, 2025 05:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Dec. 30th, 2025 05:51 am (UTC)It was a good day for gardening here too. I got lots of iris dug up, divided and replanted. One whole area had tiny, not very happy plants that haven't been divided for decades. Plants were growing out into the path. Now I have buckets of little plants that need a new home. There is also another 20 feet of bed in the back of the garden that needs the same treatment. Happily my favorite iris is now 7 favorite irises!
no subject
Date: Dec. 30th, 2025 05:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Dec. 30th, 2025 05:57 am (UTC)i should probably lift and divide my irises too.
no subject
Date: Dec. 30th, 2025 06:05 am (UTC)and they have a few other things i want to try, but buying them by the packet from other places seemed too expensive.