Fertilized, planting seeds, new asparagus

 Happy 2024!

The star jasmine climbing up trellises on either side of the garage was looking a little sorry on the west side. It has done this before in winter and fertilizing seems to help, so I gave some Osmocote to them plus other flowering shrubs and potted plants in the front yard.

I've been waiting for bare root asparagus to come to the nursery to get some for our new raised bed in the backyard. The nursery flyer said they were in, so I went there with my mom this week. Sadly, they sold out fast. I was able to get 2 small potted asparagus, which I planted as the first plants in the raised bed. The tag says "Asparagus Millenium" and "Aspargus Officinalis". I put an old container, missing it's top and bottom, as a plastic tube around the plants with wire spikes coming up through them in hopes of protecting the plants from critters. Fingers crossed.

I also bought a Scented Geranium called "Sugar Plum" hoping that it might discourage squirrels in the backyard. I'm thinking it will avoid direct squirrel damage but fear it won't deter them. I'd really like some vegetables to survive in our back bed but not sure how to achieve that exactly. One way I know will work is to enclose the whole bed in hardware cloth on a wood frame, as they did at the community garden. It may come to that, but I'd prefer to avoid that. Anyway, we planted the geranium plus I took some cuttings to root some more plants from it. We've also planted some vincas from the fall to edge the back yard.

In the new bed, I buried some old pumpkins, as I do each year with that line of miniature pumpkins. The first ones I buried were from fall 2022 and had been explored by animals, so I'm not sure how they'll fare. We're still enjoying the fall 2023 harvest inside, but those will go out in the coming months.

I was going to plant some milkweed seeds to get starts to plant around the yard this year. The ones I had last year, I never planted. I had caterpillars and butterflies, and sometimes lent them to a friend for her use in a school library. They were in flats and shuffled around for a long time such that few survived. So, I need a new batch. I got the flats all ready but discovered I'm out of milkweed seeds, so that will have to wait for another day. Instead, I started a few California Poppies.

Fruit Trees, Worm Castings, Milkweed

 I finally got more fertilizer for the fruit trees today, so I applied Gro Power to all the fruit trees. We also put worm castings from our very full bin on all of them last weekend. The citrus trees also received some Citrus Grower's blend. And the little, struggling mandarin got all of that watered in with a bit of kelp extract. I removed a couple fruit from that one, so it wouldn't put too much energy into production.

Speaking of production, this was a big year for peaches on our little tree, meaning it has 8 fruit! 3 of them have fallen off in the last couple days. They're about the size of an apricot and still look green. I'm hoping they'll ripen a bit on the counter, but I'm not confident these will be the peaches of my dreams. I remember a peach tree I planted in Maryland, gave about 2 fruit it's first year, but they were delicious. This isn't looking like that.

I've been having some fun this summer with the milkweed I planted last fall from seeds a friend gave me. Due to life chaos, those poor plants are still in the little 6-pack style pots (can I call them pots?) I planted them in. I hope to get them in the actual ground someday. This hasn't put off the monarch butterflies, who find them anyway, lay eggs and the caterpillars demolish the plants to a leafless state before we start the cycle over again. I haven't found a lot of chrysalises in the garden, as a friend of mine does. I'm not sure if they're walking away further than I'm looking, if I'm bad at finding them, or what, but this is a good start. I'm hoping it will be better once the plants are in the ground.