Middle of March in the Ontario Garden
Middle of March here we are.
Starting last week I rejiggered the Tallgrass prairie. It felt a little too overdone, not quite wild enough. So instead I seperated my seeds into heights - Indian Grass, Big Bluestem, Switchgrass and Little Bluestem and then added their seeds and the appropriate height forbs to one envelope so it was a mixed seeding like they were blown in on the wind. Sort of.
The Indian Grass got mixed with Cup Flowers and Ironweed. The Big Bluestem had Common Milkweed and Stiff Goldenrod added to it. Then the Switchgrass was put with Dense Blazing Star, Smooth Blue Aster, Grey-headed Coneflower, and Purple Coneflower. These were planted along the west fence and halfway down the north fence every foot in three rows. I saved the Lance-leaved Coreopsis and Butterfly weed to blend with the Little Bluestem for the fourth row, but I haven’t planted that height yet because there's still more rejiggering to do.
The Tallgrass Prairie will start in the Northwest corner and follow the back fence line until it hits the midpoint of our property. From there it will grow into a native hedgerow with as wide a variety of bushes for birds and bees and butterflies as I can get my hands on.
This way a good third of our property will be converted into native plantings. Plus the chickens and turkeys will love the fruit bushes and grasses because it’s more food for them. And they truly do believe it’s all about them.
I planted the Broccoli and Cabbage seeds as I intended and planted more pepper seeds.
My Rosemary clippings have finally started rooting so they can be potted up soon. I’m considering taking clippings of my lavender plants and trying the same with them.
The onions seem to be alright, no sprouting yet. I’ll let you know how the winter sowing turns out.
Josh cleaned out all of the birdhouses to get them ready for this spring’s occupants. Hopefully we’ll have some nice birds inhabit them that don’t get harassed by House Sparrows or Starlings. One had a little boy Downy woodpecker check it out and do some excavating to make the hole larger. They will be loud, but so cute. Josh is also building a couple more smaller sized boxes for Chickadees or Wrens. I love Wrens!
We haven't started spring cleanup yet because it’s still too cold and all of the lovely bugs and bug babies are still hiding in the leaves and stems of the garden. It’s best to wait until it’s consistently around 10 degrees outside and everyone has woken up before you clean up. I found two Cecropia moth cocoons on one of the hydrangea bushes and I’m so excited for mid May, early June when they hatch out. They are beautiful!
I’m considering a couple hardscaping projects while I’m waiting for the Spring rush to get going. I thought some wattlework to edge the Tallgrass Prairie will look nice as it gets started. It will take 3 years for it to really mature. This way it won’t just look like messy grass and have people wondering why I don’t cut my lawn.
Orange thread shows the outline of this year’s planting of grasses. I’ve gathered some sticks from the cut down ash tree to use as stakes and then I’ll gather swamp maple branches and dogwood and whatever else I can source to use to weave for the wattle work.
To the South are our two old Black Ash trees and the vegetable garden beyond that. The stump in the foreground is one of the Black Ash we lost to the Ash Borer Beetle. Hopefully we won’t have to lose Castor and Pollux because we love them.
The hens are getting pretty grumpy with the current nesting arrangement because a couple girls just like to sit there - for hours. So I’m thinking some more nesting boxes would be a good idea. I had to sort out a free alternative to my turkeys flying the fence to come see me where I was planting the grasses. They can fly pretty far and believe that you’re only ever outside to play with them and pay attention to them. But then while you're in the middle of something they make a dash for the road or something else ridiculous. And if I hear Tom freaking out I know there’s trouble somewhere, be that Cuddles has come for a visit or the girls have hopped the fence again. Fortunately most of the fence I could place branches that we had pruned from our Crabapples tree in spaces and that made it impossible to fly up to the top and rest there while you’re trying to figure out how to fly back down. On the back fence though, there were no such spaces. So I had to weave some Swamp Maple branches through the fence and then weave grapevines through them so they could no longer fly up to the top board. So far, so good.
And the pruning of the peppers! Be still my quaking heart!!! It would feel like decapitating my children. I let them go way too long and they are quite big now so the pruning would be … a lot. So I asked the Google and you know what?
Sandia Seed told me I didn’t have to. Now they may get massive and I may have to top them just for reasonableness sake but so far as I could see you want to pinch blooms, not the plant before you plant it out.
Maybe I won’t prune after all. Why do something that doesn’t need to be done?
Change my mind 😉
