winter gardening

winter gardening is not for everyone.  it is cold and damp and the soil is often too hard to work

with.  that gives living in nashville a definite advantage.  we very rarely have long stretches of cold weather that allow the soil to freeze solid. never the less, we do experience enough cold weather hours to produce some fruits like cherries and apples and to promote the germination wild flower seeds outdoors.  this fall, i selected a number of wildflower seeds from a website and added those to seeds we collected and we began to plant a wildflower garden.  The main purpose of this garden is to attract butterflies, bees and birds to our yard but the best part, the plants will be tall and will hide the unruly yard next door (for more on this, read the previous entry on privet).  we also planted a california wild flower garden in the front yard in our little lasagna bed.  linda sent us a bag of seeds that were simply labeled, california wild flowers and we added new layers to the bed as well as some of the seeds.  everybody keep their fingers crossed and let's see if we get some pretty flowers to show off out front.

here is the first new layer going on, leaves.  we always collect the leaves in the yard and place them in a large pen out back.  during the year, darry uses them as the brown component in our compost.  as the year progresses, they begin to break down and form leaf mold.  

the next layer was finished compost from the pile out back.  we always have at least 3 piles. one that is complete, one that is aging and one that is in the beginning stages with new products being added to it regularly.  we do not have a lot of sunshine out on our piles so they take longer and aren't quite as hot as some but they are still good for the garden.

we sprinkled the seeds generously over the compost and finished it off with a layer of grass clippings.  in the bed is our cardoon plant.  we decided to move it from the side of the house to the front where it will be a centerpiece in the bed.  only time will tell if this was a good idea.

here we are in the back yard where we have begun to build the wild flower bed.

we began by staking out two large rectangular areas.  darry dug random holes through out the areas.

i followed behind him placing random selections of seeds that i mixed.  some we bought and some we collected.

we then covered the seeds lightly and added some compost.  now we wait for spring.

the string should help us keep track of the area and ensure that it doesn't get mowed until we can identify the plants.  if we are lucky, we will have big tall flowers that hide the mess next door and attracts many butterflies and bees.

killer view

we have a large yard-2/3 of an acre that is mostly sloped and has a nice population of old trees.  we also have three neighbors bordering our corner lot.  our neighbors uphill keep their yard closely clipped and neat.  our neighbor behind us likes to garden and has a nice deck and landscaping.  unfortunately, our neighbor downhill does not have any interest in aesthetics-he won't even mow his yard.  at this point, only a bush hog would cut through the shrubs that have taken over the yard. 

when we stand in our back yard, this is the view we have of our neighbors yard.

the property line between the yards is obvious; we mow regularly, he does not.

the entire yard looks like this, front and back.  this is the view down the line to the street.

in one section of the yard, there are hundreds if not thousands of chinese privet plants growing.

it might not be so bad if they weren't such an invasive non-native plant.  they quickly spread and can easily choke out the native plants.  we have them coming up in our lawn as well as in a flower bed in front of the house-all unwelcome volunteers!

a view of the privet forest.  behind the tree is the ever expanding bamboo/river cane forest, another unwelcome and invasive  species that will eventually work it's way into our yard. 

chinese privet usually have an abundant crop of small black berries.  these berries sprout easily and new plants come up everywhere.  unfortunately, birds love to eat them and they tend to spread the seeds in their droppings.  this allows the plants to spread even more.  we will never be able to get rid of the shrubs but we hope to at least control it's invasion.