A Beautiful Day With A Sad Goodbye

Today was a beautiful day to be outside in the garden. Moderate temperatures with a slight breeze, blue sky and fluffy white clouds made for a picture perfect gardening day. This Butter and Sugar Siberian Iris new last year had only one blossom this year, but it is spectacular.

There is much to do, weeding, planting mowing. Ed did some of everything. I mostly stuck to weeding. If you stayed near the fragrant Dianthus, you could barely notice the freshly spread manure on the hayfield of the neighboring farm. Maybe it's me, but I think manure smelled better before they started using the lagoon fermentation process.I'm not saying it smelled good, mind you, but better. It still comes with country living as part of the deal.

Today we did the depressing job of digging up the "tulip fire" infected tulip bulbs. We had lilies planted with them, and because they were damaged so severely from the frost, and looked decidedly unwell, we tossed them in the trash along with all the tulip bulbs that Ed could find. Some of the bulbs seemed to be gone. Clouds of small bugs seemed to be congregated under groud in the area of the tulip bulbs. I have no clue what they might be. It was a sad goodbye, but we are glad to have that job finished, Ed threw his gloves in the garbage can with the bulbs, and I wiped down his tools with antiseptic wipes.

Tired and a little sad, we both headed inside for dinner and a little down time. Tomorrow we will be back out there again.

Who Stays And Who Goes?

These tulips have been in the garden for more than 15 years. I bought them in Buffalo when Amy was in college, and I'm a little sentimental about them. The leaves look good, but I think I see a little brown on the flower. I've already begun digging up fire infected tulips, and disposing of them in the trash. I wonder if these old friends will have to go?



Ed's garlic needs tending. Even though he planted buckwheat here last summer my pink poppies are coming up like crazy. Although we did not plant a poppy cover crop, this looks like one. Wind blown poppy seed overcame our defenses. Usually the garlic beds are nearly weedless. That is not the case this year.




Growing great garlic in upstate New York faces weather challenges. Early summer thunder storms bring heavy rain when the garlic should be drying down. Last summer brought rain nearly every day. Bulbs had visible water inside the wrappers at harvest. Despite our best efforts only one half of the planted bulbs have produced plants. None of our eighteen varieties failed completely but three have produced few plants. Harvest is nearly sixty days away. We hope for rain and warmth now and a mostly clear July.

I had a very fleeting sighting of a male Indigo bunting today. What an iridescent blue he is. His mate must be all a twitter. I know he does it for me!

FIRE In The Garden?

It's so much nicer to post pictures of beautiful flowers like this Trillium. Much of the time if we treat our plants well, give them the soil, water, and planting conditions they like, everything is , well, rosy. I try to do this, and would be the first to admit that I don't know a whole lot about plant disease. Like the ostrich with his head in the sand , I avoid the plant disease section of my gardening books.It's are way too scary. With page after page of dreadful diseases, I find it too depressing to read. I prefer to think my healthy plants will avoid all these mysterious plagues.



But conditions are not always perfect. As you can see occasionally my plants look sick.Sadly my tulips drove me to the dreaded section on plant disorders. As near as I can tell they have tulip fire, a Botrytis fungus. So what can be done? When the rain stops, I will head out with my nippers and Clorox wipes and get rid of the sick looking plants.They are to be burned or banished to the landfill. Some of the flowers look pretty, but probably the best choice is to destroy the bulbs, and either remove and change the soil or never plant tulips in that spot again. I think for me Boytrytis is a four letter word. I just hope it ends with the tulips!