When planting day arrived, Steve and I double-teamed the garden. I took seed duty, and he was assigned to bulbs.
I read other people’s blogs, and see pictures of their nice, neat beds, often edged with railroad ties or a nice little fence or stones or something. There are swooping arcs or precise corners.
We decided, instead, to just take a bare-ish patch of earth along the property line underneath the black walnut tree, dig around in it a little while, and plant the bulbs. No compost-adding. No soil-amending. Just working with what we have. And nothing to edge out the bed. We went totally free-form.
“This looks pretty good,” Steve said, flipping over the topsoil with the garden fork and exposing the rich, dark soil that the backyard is very lucky to have. “I think it will work.”
He set about planting the bulbs: three liliums, two dahlias that will allegedly be big and red, and fifteen gladiolas. Even though it was my resolution to plant more flowers this year, he seemed happy enough to participate in the effort while I worked on planting the herbs and the peas.
I have a hard time envisioning that little, scrubby patch turning into the home of a whole bed’s worth of flowers, but sure enough, not that long ago, shoots began to poke through. The bulbs are coming up, one by one, and they don’t seem to care whether the edges of their bed are aesthetically pleasing. That’s a good thing, since I have not yet progressed to feeling edgy about it all.
on May 18th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
It does look like you have nice soil! Lucky you! Black Walnuts can be tricky to plant under. Here’s a link (I’m sure there are more) to see some of the plants that struggle under them…there are many that tolerate it, too… http://web1.msue.msu.edu/msue/iac/greentip/blackwal.htm
Good luck with everything! I think it’s wonderful that you’re branching out….gardening is like that!
on May 19th, 2007 at 1:50 am
I’m sure the plants don’t care if they have a fancy edging to their bed or not…they are the stars of the show anyway.
on May 19th, 2007 at 5:35 am
You’ve gotta love that Iowa dirt! No edging is fun too, next spring it will be like a treasure hunt!
on May 19th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
Gotta Garden, yes, I learned all about Black Walnuts last year…and learned the hard way. Yikes. I decided not to research whether flowers could grow under them or not before planting the flowers, which I realize means I shouldn’t do much complaining if the flowers won’t grow. But we’ll see…
Ruth, it’s true — and the ones we picked to plant are pretty showy.
Michelle, Iowa dirt rules. No question about it.
on May 19th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
My bad! I’m glad you already knew…I read your link and I felt very sad…as I’m sure you did (then)…anyway, here’s to a new year of gardening and lots of good stuff!
on May 19th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
Gottagarden, it’s not bad at all — the more people who know about the Black Walnut Effect, the better!