Living in Northern New Jersey

8/2/2011 – Second Season Garden means planting a late summer/fall garden. Today 8/4 i sowed seeds for Bonanza Hybrid and Green Goliath Broccoli plus Igloo Lettuce. I have some heirloom leek seeds, leeks can be planted in August but i thought the growing season at 3 months was long.

8/10/2011 – The broccoli germinated in about 5 days which was surprising because the package said up to 3 weeks for germinqtion. The igloo lettuce has not yet broken the soil surface, again mislead in the opposite direction this time, there germination time was 10 days. I planted cucumbers in late June and harvested one today. Lots of flowers on the cucumbers seem to indicate a good yield. The cucmbers sre located where they get late afternoon shade. I will break ground for the leeks today next to some squash plants sown in late June.

9/1/2011 – The lettuce never sprouted, a little disappointing and i din’t get around to planting the leeks. The broccoli after germinating suspiciously quickly seems be stuck in the cotyledon sprout stage without much growth. I think that some of teh problem is with the lack of sunlight in my yard. Looks like quite a few cucumbers are growing and finally i have a few tomatoes now, hoping they will ripen soon, the weather is turning a bit cooler.

Morning Glorys are great flowers that are easy to grow, easy to collect seed and propagate. Morning glorys are vines so I try to use it to grow on trellises, mailbox and sign posts if I can. nother idead is a rock wall near my font stairs. This year i planted seeds for purple and white Morning Glorys in some rock walls. First I used some ptting soil to make platforms for the seeds to grow and root on, then I watered using a watering can with diffuser. I thenb ade the seeds to the wet potting soil and covered with additional protting soil and watered again. Seeds from morning glorys are easily recovered from dried flowers and are rather large and easy to collect. I planted a patch of morning glories a few years ago and they are a perenial garden, every year purple flowers appear in the summer months.

I planted fox glove in the front yard which gets morning sun. I started them in seed trays and planted in late June. The first year thee were no flowers but the next year, many foxgloves reappeared with tall stalks full of flowers. This is aa beautiful perennial for deer country as it is deer resistant. So far I have not had any problem in an unfenced area of the garden where the Foxgloves grow.

I have some hybrid tea rose I bought at the local supermarket a few years ago and put them in my backyard which doesn’t get much sunlight. I haven’t maintained them at all and they haven’t grown very well as a result. Last year, I built a trellis/bird shrine to protect the roses. This helped in the winter as they were less trampled by the dogs, and generally as a support for the rose branches. This spring I decided to prune what i could from the roses. First I bought a good quality pruner shear, put on some leather work gloves to protect my hands from thorns and set to it. Emboldened by the knowledge that roses are hardy plants, I cut off all the dead wood first using diagonal cuts, cutting until the cane was white inside. Pruning should be done at a forty-five degree diagonal to the cane. On the branches with buds, I cut just after the bud diagonally. I was being fairly conservative, but did manage to trim all the canes, so hopefully this will promote new growth. When trimming, white glue can be used to seal the cuts buy dipping the end in glue, I didn’t do this but it helps make the plant less susceptible to insects and disease.

Maybe the most important piece of gardening equipment is a good pair of garden gloves, I like the PIP WA4215A-AMZ Brahma Men’s Large Glove Leather, Palm Grey, 3-Pack. Leather work gloves are great for protecting your hands from prickly branches and things you don’t want to touch with bare skin (…if you know what i mean…biologicals: dead animals, live animals, poop, bugs). You can double up with a cotton garden glove and wear the leather work glove as an outter layer, this works particularly well. The leather gloves last a while, I usually leave them out in the rain to get clean and dry them on fence post in the sun, usually I will get a couple of seasons out of a pair.

In addition to cleaning up flower beds and shrubs, a big part of my garden is lawn. There is only one thing to do with that and it is to rake, rake and rake more. Besides leaves and twigs from the winter months, the most important thing is to rake out the dead grass and thatch. Removing the dead leaves and thatch allows the healthy green grass to show through and thrive. After raking, I will use a garden spreader to add puverized lime to adjust the pH befoe seeding. A good time to add lime is before it rains so that the lime i washed into the soil. Not to forget about a good pair of garden gloves, I like the PIP WA4215A-AMZ Brahma Men’s Large Glove Leather, Palm Grey, 3-Pack. Leather work gloves are great for protecting your hands from prickly branches and things you don’t want to touch with bare skin (…if you know what i mean…biologicals: dead animals, live animals, poop, bugs). You can double up with a cotton garden glove and wear the leather work glove as an outter layer, this works particularly well. The leather gloves last a while, I usually leave them out in the rain to get clean and dry them on fence post in the sun, usually I will get a couple of seasons out of a pair.

Rake, rake, rake! I put down about fifty pounds of pulverized lime with a small garden spreader on the front lawn, It looked like a bit afterwards, but luckily the next few day the rains washed it into the soil and the grass gre in tall and green, just about ready for the first lawn cutting. Also I have been throwing around alot of sun/shade grass seed.

As soon as the winter snow is gone from your garden, its time to inspect your landscaping for winter damage and make a check list for an early spring cleanup.  the advantage to starting early is that weeds and undesirable plants are not yet starting to grow. If you have perennials that bloom early, that is where you want to concentrate your first efforts with an eye toward protecting new growth. if you have a large garden, its a good idea to break it up into manageable sections that can be tackled in several two or three hour tasks.
My garden is approximately 8000 square feet about equally divided between lawn and shrub/flower beds. Early blooming plants include lilacs, azaelea, two dogwood trees and some large irises. These are the areas I will work on first, I chose to start with the azaelea plants first, so i grabbed my garden gloves and rake and empty trash barrel and set to it.  I raked all the dead leaves. removed small trees/large weeds growing within the azaeleas.  In this area is an overgrown lilac.  Lilacs need to be cut back quite a bit and mine had not been trimmed in years and grew to about twenty feet tall!  generally you should cut branches two inches or more in diameter.  At first, I was going to just trim the lilac overhang atop the azaelea.  A tree brach fell on the lilac bush and drove it into the azaeleas.  The branches that needed cutting were approximately four to six inched in diameter, so i decided to cut them back nearly to ground level using a tree saw.
I will revisit the lilac and trim more, Rome wasn’t built in  day afterall, probably not good to stress the plant too much at once. Next was the Flag Irises bed, green shoots are just begining to appear and since this flower bed is in a corner bordered by large rocks, it collected a great deal of leaves. There is also some Virginia Creeper that has grown in the are so i removed as much as possible with hedge shears.