lisa October 26th, 2007
I liked my water barrel so much that I decided to put in a pond! I got a pretty cheap second-hand liner (~260 gallons) from a guy on Craigslist and proceeded to dig. Siting it was difficult - it’s going to be a garden pond rather than a fish pond, so I needed to put it in an area with good sun exposure, but at the same time I didn’t want to encroach on possible future veggie garden areas. I also needed to leave some room for the annual plant sale staging, which happens on my property every May.
In the end, I placed it next to the new driveway at the far side of the veggie garden. It was one of the few open areas left without a lot of tree roots, but close enough to the driveway that I knew I wouldn’t put veggies there. It’s still pretty shaded in that spot - gets maybe 4 hours of sun - but we expect to be cutting down some of the trees that are currently shading it, so it won’t be so shady forever.
Digging the hole was really hard - trying to get it deep enough in the right spots took forever. If I ever do this again, I’ll use a piece of flexible liner rather than a pre-formed liner.
Eventually I got the hole dug, then backfilled and put compost around the edges so I could plant some chamomile and clover seeds. Filled it with water and added a variegated sweet flag, a mint, and some water hyacinth. The mint was just a typical mint plant, not a water mint, and it didn’t do very well. Eventually I moved the plants from the water barrel garden — blue corkscrew rush (Juncus inflexus ‘Afro’), lizard’s tail (Saururus cernuus), and chameleon plant (Houttuynia cordata) — over to the pond,
since they’ll be happier there over the winter (actually, I think I have to bury one or two of them). I also found a floating solar water fountain on eBay, which has a battery and a light at night that’s quite nice. The solar panel is as much in the light as I can get it for now. The fountain only runs for a few hours a day, but hopefully that will be enough to keep the water from being too stagnant.
Haven’t seen any frogs yet, but the birds and squirrels seem to like it! Next year I plan to add some cattails and American lotus, and maybe some arrowhead.
lisa June 19th, 2007
I’ve been wanting to make a water feature for a while now, but being a thrifty soul, I was looking for an inexpensive method. Here’s what I ended up doing.
First, I took a plastic half-barrel planter that someone gave me for free a few years ago, and measured the drainage holes that were in the bottom. I picked up some rubber hole plugs from the hardware store (something like these) for about 75 cents each, and pounded them into the holes. One of the holes was leaking a bit, so I used silicone sealant around that one.
Then I made sure that the barrel held water by filling it up and letting it sit for a week. I added 1/4 of a mosquito dunk to keep the skeeters from breeding there.
Today, I visited New England Nurseries and got a few water plants. The barrel is now planted with three perennial aquatics and an annual water hyacinth…
The copper piece is a rain chain that my mother gave me a couple of years ago and that I absolutely love. Unfortunately, the welding is really crappy and it keeps falling apart, which is appalling considering how much it cost. Mark keeps soldering it back together for me, but I’m getting pretty fed up with the whole thing. I’m thinking about trying a different system to connect the lily pieces…
PS This site has some other ideas for half-barrel water features.
lisa May 20th, 2004
The house is coming along. We are trying to refinance. Got some great news from the appraiser today — house has increased in value to almost twice what we bought it for. The mortgage guy is coming on Saturday and hopefully we’ll be closing soon.
The first floor is pretty close to done — parlor, great room and dining room are about 95%, but kitchen and mudroom are next. Upstairs we’ve done two of the bedrooms and the sitting room, but the bathroom, our bedroom, and maid’s bedroom/study are still incomplete. Outdoors, I’ve not planted any veggies yet but the flower beds are looking quite pretty. Bought some Jacob’s Ladder and a new delphinium last weekend. Earlier this spring I went absolutely bonkers for pansies and bought a ton (almost 100 plants). My newest thinking is to put an asparagus patch in rather than bothering with annual veggies. I also want to put in blueberries and maybe a kiwi. Or a paw-paw!
Anyway, the strawberries a friend gave me last year are overtaking that patch. Quite fun! We put up a fence to try to keep at bay whatever ate them all last year. We shall see…
lisa July 7th, 2003
My garden is suffering from a lack of rain, so I’ve had to water all the new plantings quite a bit to help them through. I love this red beebalm. The tomatoes and cukes both have blossoms so there will be fresh veggies soon. Unfortunately, I hear that some tomatoes won’t set fruit when it’s over 85F during the day and 72F at night. Luckily it’s still getting down into the sixties at night. The daylilies on the east side of the house have started blooming and are putting on a good show. Those are just ordinary orange lilies that came with the house. The hybrid fancy ones that Dorothy gave me haven’t bloomed yet.
lisa May 19th, 2003
Have finally finished transplanting all my seedlings to larger pots. I am pretty tired of seedlings at this point. I don’t think I want to do this next year - if I have the money, I’d rather buy plants. The amount of work that goes into seedlings is just too much for me.
Anyway, I’ve started hardening off and hopefully next weekend will be the big planting weekend.
This past weekend I laid out the irrigation for my vegetable bed and planted some carrot seeds. It’s really too late to be planting carrots, since they are 70 day vegetables and they spoil above 80 degrees or so. Maybe I can rig up shade cloth or find a cool spot for them and make them work anyway. We’ll see. The second crop this fall will probably be better. I’m not exactly sure how the fall crops are supposed to work, but I’ve got the rest of the carrots, some lettuces, and broccoli for the fall. Will have to calculate carefully in order to get them in at the right time.
lisa April 29th, 2003
You know my huge, giant hydrangea that I had to move last November because it was in the path of the new gas line? The one that I really hacked the hell out of? It’s alive! It’s totally busting out all along the trunk and branches with buds! I’m so stoked.
And you know my trilliums? The rare, protected wildflowers that I was so excited to find in my back yard last year? The ones I was sure had been covered by a pile of dirt and rocks from the basement that one of the workers made last fall? They live!!! White and red ones! A big ol’ clump of healthy, happy trilliums.
And my daffodils that I planted? They are gorgeous and have multiplied exactly the way they were meant to. And the tulips I planted? Are about to bloom! And all the other perennials I put in last year appear to be coming back from the dead exactly the way they are supposed to and I LOVE SPRING!
I just spent three hours out in my yard and I’m so damn proud of my garden I could burst. The best thing about gardening is this sense of accomplishment. Triumph! Success! I can’t wait til later this year when I pick my first carrots and cucumbers.
lisa April 21st, 2003
We did a ton of work in the yard this weekend. I finished preparing the new bed in the front, and we rented a stump grinder and got rid of the stumps in the side yard, so now the property is cleared out from the house to the property line - an area about 80′ x 40′, I think. When we bought the house there were probably 25 trees there - weedy maples. Now there is just a lilac, a honeysuckle, and the big evergreens (arbor vitae and two pines). I am thrilled because it’s nice and sunny there and perfect for my veggie patch.
The whole backyard is covered in crocuses (almost done blooming) and scilla and glory-of-the-snow. I couldn’t figure out which type I had for the longest time, but now I understand - the glory-of-the-snow is lighter blue and opens upwards, while the scilla is a darker blue and cupped downwards. They’re both really cute.
My daffodils are looking pretty good, though I don’t know what happened to the paperwhites I planted the first fall - they bloomed last spring but I haven’t seen them yet this year. I bought three blue hyacinths at Home Depot on Saturday and now I want a dozen more because they are gorgeous!
lisa April 16th, 2003
I got 7 cubic yards of topsoil delivered this weekend, and I plan making a new bed in the front where the backhoe tore up the yard when they put in our new gas connection. I’m going to expand out into the yard so I have more area to plant sun-loving plants - I don’t want to put down grass seed. Grass is boring. And that topsoil will come in handy for the expanded veggie beds, too. I’ve started the cucumber now, and the tomatoes are getting big. I’m going to wait until the fall, I think, to try planting lettuce, since by then the tomatoes, cucumbers, and carrots will be ready. As for the broccoli, I should have put it in last month, but I’m going to go for it anyway next weekend and if my heads flower because it gets too hot, I’ll cut them off and get side sprouts.
lisa December 15th, 2002
My fingernails are dirty from doing a little gardening - yes, even though it is the dead of winter, nothing can stop me! I went outside this morning and did some major cleaning up in the woods - using my nice loppers to cut down some volunteer maples and a bunch of burning bushes. Then I came in and mixed up some potting medium (peat moss and perlite) and tried out my new seed starting tray from Lee Valley. I sowed some gloxinia seeds from Park’s Seeds that I got in the mail last week. I got a lot of seeds from them this year and I’m really looking forward to trying to get all of them to germinate and seeing where to put things.
Seeds I will be starting this year: a shady wildflower mix, euphorbia, cupid’s dart, lavender, butterfly bush, foxglove (yellow), cyclamen, candytuft, poppy, erigorn, hellebore, and the gloxinias and a bird of paradise for inside. For vegetables I’m trying 2 kinds of lettuce, asparagus, carrot, cucumber, broccoli, and 4 kinds of tomatoes. Most of these seeds won’t be ready to start until February or March, but that will come sooner than it seems.
Last Thursday was my garden club’s annual winter party and yankee swap. I got a nice garden design book in the swap, which has lots of good ideas. Another thing I bought from Lee Valley recently was an irrigation system, because I am a big fan of making things easy on myself and saving water, too. So this winter I will be laying out an irrigation system and planning where I will put all these plants. I have ideas for where most things will go, but we still have to clear out some more trees so I have room and sun for growing.
lisa August 13th, 2002
Hurrah! I picked my first ripe garden tomato today (?Heat Wave? was the first variety to finally ripen). And I harvested a bunch of basil and oregano. Too bad I don?t have a kitchen. Ah, well ? I?ll do my canning over at the in-laws? place, and freeze or dry the herbs for later.
I liked my water barrel so much that I decided to put in a pond! I got a pretty cheap second-hand liner (~260 gallons) from a guy on Craigslist and proceeded to dig. Siting it was difficult - it’s going to be a garden pond rather than a fish pond, so I needed to put it in an area with good sun exposure, but at the same time I didn’t want to encroach on possible future veggie garden areas. I also needed to leave some room for the annual plant sale staging, which happens on my property every May.
In the end, I placed it next to the new driveway at the far side of the veggie garden. It was one of the few open areas left without a lot of tree roots, but close enough to the driveway that I knew I wouldn’t put veggies there. It’s still pretty shaded in that spot - gets maybe 4 hours of sun - but we expect to be cutting down some of the trees that are currently shading it, so it won’t be so shady forever.
Digging the hole was really hard - trying to get it deep enough in the right spots took forever. If I ever do this again, I’ll use a piece of flexible liner rather than a pre-formed liner.
since they’ll be happier there over the winter (actually, I think I have to bury one or two of them). I also found a floating solar water fountain on eBay, which has a battery and a light at night that’s quite nice. The solar panel is as much in the light as I can get it for now. The fountain only runs for a few hours a day, but hopefully that will be enough to keep the water from being too stagnant.
