more stuff...

Look away if you're squemish! Japanese beetle death camp! otherwise known as organic pest control... soapy water! they die really quickly...

I found a good organic weed killer online...

• 4 cups of white vinegar
• 1/4 cup table salt
• 2 teaspoons of dish soap
Mix spray on weeds in sunshine if possible.



Pods! I looove seed pods! Leave it to the little old ladies to pass on Papiver soniferum, AKA Opium poppy... we're going to water them really well and milk them by cutting little slices into the pod, the laytexy milk dribbles out and almost instantly starts forming resin.


I noticed this little roma tomato plant from the free tomato give away has already formed baby tomatoes!


Yippee! It poured down for almost an hour yesterday! We need some serious rain badly!

stuff...

After breaking my back a few times potting things up out of soil in the wheelbarrow i realized I had the perfect potting bench in storage... This used to be half of my kitchen in my last (and smallest!) Brooklyn apartment. There was literally 2 square feet of counter space and I looove to cook so I got this little rack to add to my countertop real estate and storage... and now poof it's been transformed into a super stellar potting bench! And yes, the wine rack on the bottom will most definitely still be used for wine! Yet another great aspect of being the boss... European lunches and 5 o'clock cocktails (since I don't close until 6!)


My most coveted gardening tool. the horihori knife, a japanese digging/weeding/dividing/everything tool, was um... accidentally left on top of the car last week when I was transplanting some flowers on the side of the nursery fence... Then when I left a little while later and got up to speed - 55 mph - it promptly flew off the roof and smashed in the street! Thank goodness no one was behind me! so I turned around (horrified) and picked up the pieces... the handle had just cracked in half along the rivets so I got out my wood glue and some clamps and fixed it up... Sorry little horihori knife - I really do love you!


I got my first order of potting soil this week! A customer ordered what turned out to be half a pallet, so I got to keep the other half! I also got some great plant fertilizers, rooting hormones and neem oil for spraying bugs!

This soil is the best out there...


I chopped up all of my philodendrons and made babies... they are really great house plants - very forgiving and don't need too much light. Aren't they cute?!

KJ's craaaazy yard!

One of my dearest friends. Kelly Jo, lives in a really cool log cabin home with her man and their baby, and upon buying this place she inherited a wild but wonderful landscape... This clematis is really striking, such a vivid purple...


KJ is a very knowledgeable herbalist and so it makes sense that this Achillea millefolium, Yarrow, grows with such wild abandon... "It opens the pores freely and purifies the blood, and is recommended in the early stages of children's colds, and in measles and other eruptive diseases." I love the umbel flowers swaying in meadows... I have some varieties in the nursery with red or pink flowers, it's great in full sun and can take little water once established...


'Thou pretty herb of Venus' tree,
Thy true name it is Yarrow;
Now who my bosom friend must be,
Pray tell thou me to-morrow.'



Also Stachys byzantina, Lamb's ear, is everywhere! all down the slope and happily seeded into the gravel path... it is so soft and pretty! Also great for super sunny dry locations!

poppy portraits, pt. 2

I think this plant must be more mature than the one in the previous post, having these crazy raggedy petals inside the bloom... maybe she's just got her party dress on!




Had to call in my professional for sign assistance, math tutoring and electrical rewiring!


I'm learning how to keep ferns indoors, something I don't always agree with on a horticultural/moral level. Ferns just don't seem suited for indoors, maybe a greenhouse or wardian case, but not the dry forced air of a typical home... I have always struggled and they have always died... however, time to get up and over that mind set and now I grow ferns (I think I can, I think I can - that little train had such a hugh subliminal influence on my childhood and obviously now later in life)... proof being this happy little fiddlehead. Jeez, if not for any other reason, grow them to be able to say that word "fiddlehead"...

Poppy portraits, pt. 1

I looove poppies! Their crepe paper delicacy is like butterfly wings...

Have a beautiful day!

tomato overload!

Something had to be done... I've sold and given away as many tomato and pepper plants as I could, but there are still so many and in 2" pots! Yikes! Today I transplanted them into 4" pots and next week is "Free tomato and pepper week".



repotted and fed with some fish emulsion


These little stinkers were raiding the echinacea! Into the soapy water with you! stinkers!

Announcements!

The sweeeet new green nursery flier thanks to Kevin, my design wizzard!


You'd never guess what is going in the third studio space next to keith - A TATTOO SHOP! and yes, it is very "country" as in REDNECK! I met the guys yesterday and they seemed nice enough... I'm just wondering what it's going to take to get this place to pass a health inspection...

... maybe they should start by getting rid of the disgusting old mattress! Shucks, if this place was in NYC it would be a squatters' paradise!




It's almost blooming! Who says you can't transplant a poppy! This one dug out of one of the garden club ladies yards is about to busta move in the front flower bed... Life is good!

making babies...

I had a whole bunch of out-of-control jades and other succulents (my nerdy friend Mark loves this plant classification - purely for the word "succulent") desperately in need of potting up and cloning... I call it cloning, basically I mean cutting up the branches or leaves and making new baby plants...


Here are the mamas in their new pots....


...and the new babies in their new pots...


I also put these "wandering jewels" (the purple ones!) and Swedish Ivy into hanging pots. I had made these babies from big giant mamas who had come from Brooklyn, and now reside on our porch. Very much happier from being trimmed up!

Around the nursery...

Sempervivum throwing up a flower spike!


Japanese Maple, Cunningham Fir, Pieris Japonica "Mountain Fire" and a varigated Hydrangea everyone loves but is afraid to buy!


One of my most favorite ferns, Sensitive fern, Onoclea sensibilis, is actually quite tough... I often drive past a really great patch of it in full sun and then it was mowed and *boom* back and raging! Might I say...
FERNTASTIC!


This is a garden salvia I transplanted into one of my flower beds in the front... these butterflies (I'm not sure of the species) are everywhere & everyday I have to capture and release several who get caught in the nursery, banging themselves silly against the window.


At first I thought petals or blooms from another plant were falling and getting caught in this Dwarf mondo grass (dwarf mondo - how's that for a botanical oxymoron?!) but no... it's actually blooming!

Wesley's garden

My first real design gig in Asheville is for my old boyfriend Wes. He owns a very cute bungalow in town which he has completely renovated and he has also built large stone terraced gardens and patios in the back. We started on the front, since that's the first impression people get when they pull up... It's part sunny, more shady closer to the house.
Here you can see: Oakleaf Hydrangea, Cimicifuga racemosa, TN Ostrich fern...

... Mahonia, Cornus Kousa, Seersucker sedge (a native here!), hakonachloa, maidenhair ferns, varigated polgonatum...


...Epimedium, dwarf polygonatum, aruncus...

stuff...

We found this cutie sleeping on the side of the house! I think I woke him up while taking these pictures... bats are so great for eating massive amounts of bugs every night!

Ironically, my dear friend Diana got me this rain gauge in the middle of a crazy heat wave/drought! We haven't had rain for weeks! However, as I write this there is some booming thunder outside and Bandit has run off to hide in the bathroom under the sink... I told my roomie, Rob, we need to learn some rain dance moves! He waters his farm with rainwater collected from a gutter system set up on one of the outbuildings.

I pass this crazy moment in excavation every time I drive to my friend's trout farm & I love it! It's literally on the edge... What the hell happened here?


Uh-oh... any last words pal? He was squarshed immediately! On my zinnias that little f*%$@r!


ooooooo... Cosmos "Bright Lights" also planted around the nursery fence.