Mas Espana

Sagrada Familia

Inside view of the massive ceiling

On the road to Valencia

Back side entrance to Sagrada Familia

Front view of Sagrada Familia

Tree hugging

Senecio coccineiflorus

My Garden 2010

New Vegetable Plot

New Rock Garden

Although we have the new Student Exhibition Gardens, we are still keeping our gardens at the row, which I think is great. It has been such a good learning experience and a great chance to experiment with things. This year I changed my vegetable garden around a bit to allow for better hose accesibility and just to change things up in general. I’ve changed my ornamental garden as well this year. I left most of my perennials and moved them around a bit, planted in some Amsonia hubrichtii and an Aquilegia canadensis, and the rest of the circular path I had last year has been transformed in to an ampitheatre style rock garden. I have been really interested in trying out some mosses and succulents which are filling in the rock spaces. I am really happy with the way it turned out and I think it will also be interesting to see if it can stand the test of low watering needs. I anticipate the succulents will need less water than the mosses but that is the fun part…now I get to play around with them…

It’s Been A Little While…

The past few weeks of school were absolutely crazy. But all went well; which is really important! We had finals, our final presentation to the advisory comittee, final projects for greenhouse management and of course our plant sale. It is such a relief to have everything turned in. The plant sale was good too, we had a nice little display outside of the Betula room in the Horticulture building where we had our sale and had a good amount of customers. I think the preview sale we had on thursday turned out to be quite a success and we almost matched our sales on friday as well. This week I cleaned out my garden again so that it would be in tip top shape for the PGAA picnic on Saturday. Last order of business was putting together my fall container which turned out decent. We will be getting graded on our fall containers in a few weeks so I wanted to give everything some time to settle in and grow a bit. My fall container consists of:

Spilanthes oleracea ‘Peek-A-Boo’
Pennisetum glaucum ‘Jade Princess’
Capsicum annum ‘Black Pearl’
Juncus ‘Twisted Arrows’
Isolepis cernua ‘Live Wire’
Viola x wittrockiana ‘Halloween Mix’

Take Time to Smell the Flowers

Cleome hassleriana

Whew! The past two weeks have been a whirlwind of events: exams, design presentations, insect collections, night classes starting, evaluations, crop projects…my head is spinning! But after all of our hard work and dedication I think we may have reached a day or two of much needed REST. Evaluations went well and we had a nice meeting with Joyce Rondinella on friday to go over our plant fact sheets and set up a time for a blog class. I am really looking forward to an opportunity to take a rest, see what’s new in the gardens “proper” and do some weeding in my vegetable plot. Currently I have just been enjoying the fresh look of my garden from the cleanup last week.

Garden Evaluation

Ready for Evaluation!

Tomorrow is our first garden evaluation with Joyce Rondinella. So today will be seriously busy; I have a few things I’d like to pull out/weed. I am disappointed in the performance of my Thunbergia (not fast enough of a climber) so I’m pulling it out. I am also going to cut my Asclepias wayyy back because it is top heavy and not responding well to any staking. It is also time to replace my container, but I have to leave the one I have now until evaluations are over so I’m going to do some pruning on the Cleome and deadheading on the Nicotiana. Not too impressed with the Nicotiana; I expected a little more proliferation from it. Other than these minor details, I will be weeding, edging, replacing labels and applying a new (and thin) layer of mulch. I believe this is a simple way to refresh your garden and have it looking crisp.

‘Tis the Season…for Blooms!

Things are really starting to come together in the garden. I am pleased with the way everything has grown. As I have said many times before, I wanted to grow things I hadn’t grown before and things that I had grown in North Carolina and see what the differences were. WOW. I have noticed that most things seem bigger, but then there are other things, such as my Gaura which are smaller. I definitely attribute this to the differing climates. I was pleasantly surprised to find that aphids did not attack my Gaura-which seemed to be a recurring problem we had in North Carolina. My Euphorbia and Vinca are extremely happy! Sometimes it is tough to tell if things are really bigger, or if I am imagining they are bigger because I am in such a small space!

Vegetables

And so I’ve decided, my sweet potato didn’t make it-very upsetting. So in place of the sweet potato and to fill in some space, I planted some new crops this evening. Tonight I planted Radishes ‘Big Zesty’; Carrots ‘Petite and Sweet’; and Sweet Basil. I’m not sure how they will perform, but since I have already fulfilled my required crop list these will be an experiment. I have never grown Radishes or Carrots so I am excited to see what happens!

Turning Over a New Leaf

Eggplant

Mildew on right squash

Beans, Peppers, Eggplant

Ornamental Garden

Mum Crop

‘Peek-A-Boo’

Ornamental Garden

Yesterday I made some changes to my garden, I pulled out the squash that had a vine borer and I noticed that you can see the mildew damage in the same photo I had up before. I pulled out the brocolli and cabbage that was spent, and I harvested the remainder of my onion crop. I am so upset about being so excited that I hadn’t had many pests yet…and then BAM! Under attack is a good way to put it and I’m attributing this to the wet weather.

I did harvest some eggplant yesterday which were just beautiful! I am impressed with their progress, I swear, the eggplants did NOTHING for the first three or four weeks and then they exploded. So I guess its kind-of a win/loss situation: lost a squash plant, but gained some nice eggplants!

Whatever was eating my ‘Peek-A-Boo’ seems to have stopped for the time being. Luckily, they have mainly targeted the three plants surrounding my yellow sticky card; now I know they are attracted to the color but may be too big to actually get “stuck” on the card. Still collecting clues in my little crime scene! I’m just thrilled that they haven’ sheared my crop yet, and it is still putting on new growth.

About Being Jinxed…

Well, I spoke too soon. My beautiful squash has been a victim, of many things. I mentioned last time about the possibility of a vine borer, and it’s a sure thing now. I believe it is time to pull out the plant before it travels to another one. It also appears that my squash has either powdery mildew, or downy mildew; possibly both. I conversed with Harold though and I am going to let this slide. Apparently, the mildew will eventually kill the plant but as for now it is still producing so I will let it alone. It is also time to pull out my brocolli and cabbage. Unfortunately I was unable to sell a few of the cabbage, and I left one cabbage to bolt because I wanted to see what it would do (first time growing these both). I think I will replace these with some carrots. I had planned to put in an indeterminate tomato plant that was given to me and some potatoes, but today we recieved confirmation that both of these crops currently in the student garden had succumb to late blight, and I have been advised to hold off on this intention. Bummer.

My ornamental garden is doing just fine, still working on a solution for my bent Cleome and my busted labels. The only other worry I have at this point is for my ‘Peek-A-Boo’ crop in the greenhouse. It appears that at least one thing has been munching on it. There was evidence of some chewing and also evidence of stipling, this is something I will be keeping a very close eye on, the thought of losing that crop terrifies me! I searched the plants but the only evidence I found was some frass on one plant. I will need to do some night scouting as well. Some suspects are: thrips, caterpillar, cockroach, or maybe even a cabbage looper….I’ll be watching!