New Hampshire | Massachusetts | Arizona | California
I lived a one bedroom apartment on the second floor of a converted house in downtown Nashua. The apartment had three rooms, not counting the bathroom; its most impressive feature was the kitchen that took up half the square footage of the entire apartment, with a large picture window overlooking the backyard and a entry to a screened-in porch.
The house's backyard contained that infamous New Hampshire-native soil: Heavy clay interpersed with large rocks. And each year the rocks grew. Both in size and number. Knowing nothing but more rocks was prone to take root in that soil, when the gardening bug hit, I headed for my porch.
I had been using the porch as a workshop for one of my other hobbies, furniture refinishing, but figured once I cleaned it up, I'd enjoy sitting out there with Wacky and my plants. So the goal: Sit and enjoy plants. The first task to accomplish: Garden furniture, for the sitting part.
My budget at that time was pitiful. I wanted at least two chairs and two tables but could only afford speding $100. Lucky me: I found a discount furniture store that had a set of wicker containing two chairs, two end tables, an oval coffee table, and a loveseat for $89. I never will forget that price. Yes, it was new. Scaled a bit small, not really made for heavy use, let alone outdoor use, but I liked the look of it. I could actually fit the pieces into my car (my trusty 1985 Ford Tempo). I took them home, then made cushions with the brightest flowered fabric I could find. I was thrilled; comfy chairs, a place to put a tasty beverage while sitting in the comfy chairs. Now on to task two: Getting plants.
Again, being budget minded, I decided to buy only plants I couldn't grow from seed, then start seedlings for the rest. It was already late summer, so I had several months' reprieve. I bought geraniums, and splurged on a fuschia, then set to finding places to put the plants. Off to the hardware store for hooks and lengths of chain, to the junk shops for old plant stands. Other than schlepping water from the kitchen sink to the porch, it was an easy gardening summer. But I knew better: If it was that easy, it wasn't really gardening.
I stored my geraniums in my entry hall to winter over, and "borrowed" a book from my mother (which I still have and use today - "Floss & Stan's 'Why are my leaves turning yellow and falling off?' Answer Book" by Floss and Stan Dworkin). Great info on how to do apartment gardening, including mixing your own soil and composting on a small scale. On my porch, I started a compost can.
And that following March, I started zinnias, tomatoes, some herbs, all from seed. What I didn't figure was that spring wouldn't really get started until June, with summer coming fast on its heels in July. I pampered the plants in the house, thinning and replanting until finally, in late June when all threat of frost was over, I put the plants out where they grew and bloomed nicely...until I went on a week's vacation. When I returned, spider mite had gotten to all the zinnias and herbs; no amount of soaping could bring them back.
What I learned:
New Hampshire | Massachusetts | Arizona | California
My next apartment was a really charming one bedroom on the third floor of a converted house (see a theme?) in West Medford; it must have been the attic at one time. All eaves, except for the living room and kitchen, perfect for a short person (smile). The kitchen had mostly straight walls, but it was a square donut - the chimney venting the first and second floor apartment fireplaces came straight up through its middle. The most amazing things about this apartment were the storage doors in the shortened walls below the eaves, the shared basement for even more storage, and the door in the kitchen that wound down directly to the backyard.
This backyard had the lousiest stuff mascarading as grass that I had ever seen. My landlord came out faithfully every week with his environmentally-correct electric lawnmower (and a very long extension cord) to hack at the brown and green stubble; he also occasionally tended the three overgrown forsythia bushes. When I showed up to view the apartment, he was planting an el cheapo rose bush in the back of the one planting bed (about 10x3) next to the house's back porch. I knew from that moment I wanted to live there and get my hands on that real estate back there, hang some baskets on the front porch, get some perennials going, some bulbs, ground cover under the oak tree...
I moved in during late July/early August, going between Nashua and Medford each day accompanied by Wacky, to paint the rooms and woodwork, and strip and re-paper the bathroom. Once that was completed, what was I to do but garden, huh?
I had discovered, in the sad planting bed, a few runners from some strawberry plants; poor things, they'd survived with no food, hardly enough water, and definitely no attention except from the ants. I trimmed back the dead ends, leaving a spindly, but growing, softball-sized clump. I planted another rose bush since the one looked kinda lonely. I arranged my potted geraniums from New Hampshire on the wooden steps leading down to the backyard. And I bought for the first time what are now my favorite grandiflora petunias, the Ultra hybrid with big, rich, velvety flowers: Ultra Blue (deep dark blue), Ultra Sky Blue (soft pale blue), Ultra Plum (purply burgundy), and Ultra Pink (warm rosy pink), planting them in alternating colors along the edge of the bed.
I watered and dosed everything with Miracle-Gro. Every day. The roses grew nicely (alas, no blooms that year), the strawberries actually bushed out, and the petunias went crazy. Absolutely nuts. Over the edge of the bed, a deep, wide river of petunias the entire length.
The following spring I started digging out a new bed on the lefthand side of the garden, approximately 20 feet long and 2 feet wide. What did I find for soil? Construction fill - with glass, paper, and heaven knows what else; I decided then to replace it. From mixing potting soil, I figured I knew what I needed. I had found a great garden center in lovely Winchester, the next town over, and made trips there for 40 pound bags of topsoil and composted cow manure, 4 cubic feet bales of sphagnum peat moss, and 10 pound bags of lime. I dug along the fence, before work each morning, and after work until dark, to a depth of 18 inches. The old dirt I piled in the shady, barren corner on the right side of the garden; then I filled in the bed, mixing with a hand tiller (remember the garden weasel?). I still remember walking the bed in my bare feet, feeling it between my toes, that beautiful, rich smell of good, clean, healthy soil. It was wonderful; I felt connected to the earth.
After creating the one bed, I figured why stop there? I continued along the fence, creating another smaller one perpendicular to the new bed to complete an upside down L. And that summer, I planted cosmos, marigolds, pansies, lilies, and irises in the long bed and herbs - lavender, rosemary, chives, and lemon grass - in the short one. I discovered a spindly, untrained Jackmanii clematis along the lefthand fence; thank goodness there was a concrete footer for the fencepost at its root, or I probably would have dug it up and thrown it out earlier that year.
At the garden center, I had fallen in love with all the varieties of mints, so I planted peppermint, and lemon and chocolate mints in the herb bed. As I child, my mother and I had sown lemon balm seeds in the cracks between the pavers in our backyard; in remembrance of that, I also put in lemon balm. Little did I know what trouble I had made for myself, putting these killer plants directly into healthy ground; I found out the next year.
Since it had worked the year before, I again put my Ultra petunias in the bed alongside the house. For veggies, I planted tomato, bell pepper, red pepper (not to eat, but because they're so pretty!), and eggplant seedlings in 18 inch pots and sat them on the soil behind the petunias, between the strawberry runners. The geraniums had wintered over in the basement; these I repotted and placed back on the stairs.
And of course, I watered every day. Seeing that it would take much too long to do by hand, I got an impact sprinkler, and set its radius to cover the entire backyard, stairs and all. Each day I put the hose flow control as close to the door as possible, released the valve, and let it rip; most of the time I could get out of the way fast enough (smile). Then I fertilized with the Miracle-Gro hose-end sprayer, making sure everyone got fed.
The clematis sprang up and bloomed profusely with startlingly blue blooms; it climbed the height of the fence and had to be trained out. My landlord, seeing the vine, asked if I had planted it; he had never seen it put out more than a handful of flowers. As for the grass, he was stunned. "What did you do to make it so green and thick?" he asked. My answer: "Water it."
I was SO happy! I had wildlife: butterflies, ladybugs, earthworms (hooray!). Thing is, the flip side of good wildlife is, well, the undesirables. And my undesirable, my public enemy number one, was slugs. An invasion of them. Fat, finger-sized ones. All in my new bed, coming from the untamed jungle of the neighboring house to feast on my lovely plants, luxuriate in my beautiful soil, and slime up my garden.
First I went the most environmentally safe way: For a week I placed pie tins of beer at intervals in the bed. In the mornings, I'd find a few that had stayed at the party too long, but nowhere near the number I thought would get caught. I then decided to catch them in the act, see where the majority of the beasts were coming from, and put the pie tins directly in their path. I went out one night with a flashlight and saw... the slugs getting in and out of the plates as if they really were at a party, and I had catered it and brought the booze; they were going home sloshed and bringing friends and family back with them the next night! I thought , "Okay, that's the way it is; these fellas are so big, they don't drown," and buried mayonnaise and pasta sauce jars in the bed, filled halfway with beer. "Just see if you guys can get out of that." Indeed, a good number of the wino slugs fell into the jars, but the teetotalers stayed away. And in the morning I had to empty out the jars of fermented slug beer; I can't find words to describe how disgusting that was. Other organic resources recommended going out at night and squashing them in the act; not pretty and not for me (I was having a hard enough time with the slug beer.) I still think they are talking about doing this to tiny worm-sized creatures, not the fat, obnoxious buggers I had.
Enough with the kinder-gentler approach. Time for full-scale engagement. No more catering the party. I bought some Slug-Getta and put it along the fence line; it worked like a charm (except I still had to gather up casualties in the morning.) My plants were finally safe.
TBA: the following summer... another rose, hydrangea, heuchera for shady ground cover, digging the pit for the tomatoes, the hammock, feeding the birds and squirrels, six flats of impatiens, the pig, and more slugs!
What I learned:
New Hampshire | Massachusetts | Arizona | California
Coming soon...
What I learned:
New Hampshire | Massachusetts | Arizona | California
Coming soon...
What I learned: