Tiller and more

Jacqueline and I decided to buy this tiller. We were inspired by the 20 year old 4 stroke beast my mother in law owns. The lightweight model on amazon received great reviews, and we were on a budget, so we decided to give it a shot.

The assembly itself was a total pain in the rear. Apparently the plastic crossbar holding the handles together was labelled backwards (front is back, back is front). This ended up causing 2 reassemblies and a lot of head scratching. Finally, we decided to follow the stickers, which I think are now incorrect, and this causes the power cable to hang free instead of fitting in the clip. Screwing this crossbar into the handles is a pain too - it requires lining up a hole in the metal handle, INSIDE the crossbar, with the hole in the plastic. I don't think we ever got this aligned, or the holes aren't the right size to accommodate the screws. Our screws are hanging halfway out of the holes right now.

After we got it assembled, we took it for a spin. Its lightweight and electric, which is nice, but also caused problems. The cord is always in the way, which I expected, but it proved to be more annoying than I thought. While I was excited about the lightweight aspect, it proved to be too light - it skipped off the ground and tried to bolt away continuously, rather than digging in. I felt like I had to grip and torque with my hands and wrists with all my might - something in entirely different from the beast of a tiller we used, which you just fought to keep straight.

So we're trying to till out this hard, rocky patch for a vegetable garden. The tiller is bouncing off the ground and away from me, barely digging in. We decided, after all the initial assembly, we must have the handles backwards. So we swapped them around. Big mistake. My wife said "now you need to flip the base to the other direction, right?" Well I was confused about it all, so I listened. Big mistake. Again, the machine tried to run off across the surface, but we had it reversed, so it drove straight at my feet. Thank God for the dead man trigger - atleast that worked - no injuries.

We flipped it back around again, and gave it a go in some less rocky, moister soil. With some serious torque applied, I was able to get it to bite in. Once it started actually churning, it did really well. I was able to just hold it in place, and all its force was directed down, rather than away. We then took it to the backyard to build a new bed for some iris transplants - it worked well here. Of course I was used to it by then, and the ground was nice and soft.

So in short review, this thing needs to be heavier, or built so that I can better apply torque with my arms. At the price I guess its ok, maybe a 2 out of 5. I would not recommend anyone to buy it, unless their yard was already tilled :)

Happy Baptism Mattie!

Jacqueline and I spent a beautiful after with her brothers family, for our niece's baptism. Congrats to the Urda's, and thanks for the ham!

Afterwards we booked it over to Lowe's, who were having a 3 for $10 perennial party. We grabbed 3 of each of the following:
Dragon's Blood Sedum
Rosish One Dianthus
East Friesland Salvia
Plus something else that I already lost the tags for. Jacqueline, tags are your job!

We added on to the mulched areas we added yesterday. We're planning a little path up to the street from the front door, since that is how everyone walks in anyway. Eventually we'll put some flag stone in there, and plant all the way up.

We also swapped our dying hydrangeas with our dying azalea's from last year. I'm hoping its a too much sun / too little sun situation, and they both grow big and healthy. Odds are they'll be toast tomorrow.

The entrance way is really coming along. This time last year we were frantically planting all sorts of random stuff, mostly in the wrong places, without amending the soil, and no forethought to layout. This year we are still doing mostly the same, but acting like we know what we're doing. Atleast we're playing with cow poop and soil conditioner.

We took a few pictures, hope you like!

Long day of work

Yesterday we spent most of the day working in the yard. Jacqueline made two trips to haul back 30 bags of pink bark mulch, and we picked up a few new perennials as well.

Splendens Common Thrift, Grace Ward Lithodora, and Silvermound Artemisia went in by the mailbox. Another silvermound artemisia went in on the walkway by the front door. Then we mulched *everything*.

Stuff from last year is finally coming up - Jack in the pulpits, lots of hostas, a couple oddly planted day lilies. Oh ya, I tried splitting our favorite hosta, by the new part i split off looks droppy and sad. We watered it well, I wonder if its going to make it. I hope so.

Finally, we started a small patch outside the kitchen window for our blueberry bushes. The ground was orange and rock solid, so we dumped in quite a bit of cow manure and soil conditioner. Hopefully they take well.

Hurray for window boxes!

Today Jacqueline and I put in our first window box. Well, rail next to the stairs leading up to the front door box. We shopped at Pikes - I can't figure out why, they're so expensive - and picked out a nice wrought iron trough box. Hope I spelled all that right. So we bought some unnamed Caladium for the thriller, 8 little 'Prelude Rose' Begonias for the filler, and something I have been lusting after for a year, 'Tahoe' Iberis sempervirens for the spiller. We used potting mix (not soil) plus a few pellets of slow release fertilizer for the dirt. Water gently after. I think the caladium will probably bite the dust, its nearly full sun there right now. It will be less harsh in a week or two when the big trees get some leaves out. Same torture the hydrangeas are going through - which are almost dead by the way. So much for the tent.

Oh ya, and Jacqueline actually had *fun* today! She told me I can even post that.

So Happy Gardening!

Weekend Work!

Sorry for the terrible layout, not sure how to get the images in the right locs.

Today Jacqueline and I got quite a bit done. We put in our two new 5g camellias, to keep our other camellia company. Three different varieties, but all have white flowers. Lets hope we can keep them alive. We kept the rootball exactly even with the surface, and mixed in some soil condition and composted cow manure. After we watered them, we added some root stimulator. Good luck plants!

We also built a little tent for our poor hydrangeas. Immediately after planting them they started shriveling. Hopefully this will keep the afternoon sun off them, until the trees above start leafing out. We built it out of landscaping weed control fabric, a few of the stakes intended for the fabric, and a couple 1x2's cut like vampire stakes.

We fed all the azaleas, roses, and flowers we have scattered about, as it is the first of the month.

I took a few photos of the blight(s) on the camellia we have. let me know if you can identify this, and propose a solution. Thanks!

Soil Acidifier and whats on my plant?!

In addition to the hydrangeas that we put in today, I also added soil acidifier to the azaleas that we put in yesterday. I think the recipe was 1 tablespoon acidifier to 1 gallon water. I ended up using 4 gallons / 8 capfuls to 5 azalea bushes. Following the directions, I watered before and after. Hope that was right. Tomorrow I plan to check the pH and see if it drops. Oh ya, I already lost my pH meter.

So at the right you see our hearty camellia. It shouldn't have lasted. While its brother was doing *ok* two years ago, this thing was brown and brittle. We actually thought it was dead and considered digging it up. It ended up making it through while its brother died. Now it has this stuff on it. Is it rust? If you know, please chime in, and how to fix it. Never mind, no one reads this :)

On another note, we have this poor jasmine vine (I think) next to a downspout. This spout gets about 50% of the water from the front roof. We watched it the other night during a thunder storm, and the base of this plant was completely underwater from the runoff. I'm trying to figure out what to do here - move it - raise it into a box - direct the output of the spout elsewhere - I just don't know. If you look closely at the picture, the plant looks unhealthy. Root rot? I don't know.

Hydrangea Planting

When Jacqueline and I first started working on our yard two years ago, we decided to start with a Gardenia and a couple Camellias. Jacqueline loves the smell of gardenias, and I love the way the old south Camellias look, with their mature, stout trunks. Since then, one of the two camellias died, the gardenia died, and the camellia we expected to die actually lived. No idea what happened.

We chose the old Gardenia location at the front of our house for two new Glory Blue Hydrangeas - 1 gallon pots. Location is just off our porch, about 10 to 12 feet from 4 large hardwoods. I'm worried about them, I know the roots suck a ton of nutrients. Not much we can do though, as our yard is covered in trees. The spot should be good for light, as the sun lands there during the morning, and from midday on, the trees provide shade. After breaking up the top 4 inches of soil, I spread out a big mound of half soil condition, half manure. We planted the root balls so they were even with the surface, and then watered. I hope we can get these guys to last.

Any tips on hydrangeas?

PH Meter

I went to Pikes with the intention of buying a pH test. I was imagining the old litmus paper test - get some moist soil, smear it on the paper, wipe it off, compare it to a chart or something. It turns out they have these fancy electronic ones now. Being a techie, I'm always a sucker for buying the latest gadget, and this was no exception.

I ended up picking up the Digital Soil PH Meter. It works well - feels sturdy, and reads a pH almost instantaneously. I checked the area we just planted the azaleas - 6.5. I think thats too high, I read somewhere that 4-5.5 is ideal. I guess I need to get something to work into the soil, plus some pine bark mulch or pine needles to mulch with. I found out that hardwood bark mulch (which we used last year) raises the pH. No wonder the existing Azalea lost its color and looked sick. Apparently at a high pH it can't pull nutrients from the ground.

I also bought some potting soil for some Camellia cuttings - we're going to try to root them. Got stimulator for them too. I'm not expecting too much from that experiment, but wouldn't it be cool to wind up with 3-4 baby Camelias?

First Post

So Jacqueline and I started our third spring together. Our third year of planting, arguing about what should go where, how this and that should work or look, and our third year of dead bushes. So far in three years, we have killed a Gardenia, a Camellia, 2 Azaleas, a bunch of who knows what kinds of annuals, and I don't know what else.

Today we just planted 4 Hino Crimson Azaleas in the front yard by the walk. They have a nice deep green foliage and dark purple to red flowers. There is already a leftover white azalea of some sort next to them - a leftover from a group of three, two of which died when we moved in. We compromised on breaking up the small bed so the white azalea doesn't look out of place. Hopefully it works, otherwise I lose yet another foothold against my designerly superior wife.

We first pulled all the dead grass out of the bed - a bunch of seeds washed down from the yard last year. Then we busted it up with a hoe and one of those four pronged earth churn thingies. After that, we mixed up a batch of 1/3 bed dirt, 1/3 soil conditioner, and 1/3 cow manure. The nice lady at Home Depot recommended this mix, although she said "your clay" in place of our bed dirt. Hopefully its the same thing.

We planted the azaleas with the root balls approximately 1"-2" above the surface. My designer wife said it looked funny and complained, but alas I prevailed. I guess the idea is that the rootball needs to breath, so it needs to be uncovered. I've heard of making a ridged wall around the planting to direct water to the plant - we didn't do that this time.

The ground here gets a little dry at one end, being so close to the house. I guess we'll need to keep an eye on the water.

Other stuff to do this week: mulch the bed, add some smaller perennials and annuals around it, plant several 1 gallon baby azaleas, a 3g camellia, 2 blueberry bushes, and 2 hydrangeas.

Happy gardening!