As a 'Merican, isnāt that just what weāre supposed to do? Mangle foreign languages? To Zee Jardin!
As for the composting, it hurts me to know of all that good vegetable matter going to the dumpāthereās got to be a way that resource can be properlyā¦wait for itā¦harvested.
In Seattle we now have official food waste bins and they all go to a giant compost heap that I am not sure how it gets distributed back out. I think it goes to a commercial outfit that just sells it but I honestly donāt care as between that and all the recyclables in the other bin the actual trash is minimal.
Lots of coffee houses though will put out the used ground beans for anyone to take home for their garden.
The shade thing is a huge problem for me. Very little plants that require full sun grow at my house. I have one bed that is full shade. I did find a couple of plants that do well in the full shade, and a few bulbs.
Astible I like a lot.
I put some milkweed in there last year and it looked great but I have read that sometimes it can overtake a bed. Weāll see.
A lot of my neighbors use Hellebore and it is pretty and grows well, but for some reason I donāt like it for my own garden.
Iāve tried Foxglove but without a lot of success. I love how it looks but it dies quickly. Maybe a soil thing?
I have this new one thatās done well in the shade; Iāll research it to remember the name of it.
It seems like itās becoming a thing. There are several places here in southern California that have started recycling compostable food waste and other organics separately from other garbage. Itās the law as of April 1st 2016 starting with the largest producers, but apparently it is not being enforced yet. Smaller producers and home users will be phased in over the next seven years. Our local trash hauler already provides separate containers for that-- there are financial incentives if they recycle >50% of the waste they haul.
IIRC (I asked last year), my local coffee place already gives away their used grounds to someone else for compostingāI think itās a commercial gardener, but Iām not sure. In any case, my two friendly diners have already overwhelmed my compost pile with good stuffā¦and I donāt have any more space to begin another pile, otherwise Iād take it on.
Awww!
Our tulips are out too, but not as nicely arranged as yours.
I know some Starbucks will give out free bags of used coffee grounds, and we have a local chocolate factory (one of the few in the country that works from actual raw cacao pods) that sells low-priced bags of broken up cacao shells as nutritious and wonderful-smelling mulch.
My last all-shade garden had a lot of Astilbe and Hellebore, and also Trillium, including some that are on the endangered list so itās considered a particularly good thing to grow them in our area to try to bring them back.
If you want something big as an anchor in 100% shade, oak-leafed hydrangeas are excellent bushes for that.
Doing a little research into composting in the city, I came across no less than four different services that will pick up your compostable materials for ~$25/mo and then sell the composted material back to the public. Jobs are probably being created from this, but it strikes me as yet another thing monetized for the gain of The Man Behind The Counter.
Damn, thatās pretty! Is the stuff with the white flowers the Trillium? I like it.
I had prepared a garden in the backyard after we moved in, but the deer kept getting into the hosta. I put up a net (like a fence), but snakes would get tangled in it and die (and I figure Iād rather have the snakes as opposed to whatever theyād be eating). Finally the deer knocked down the net. I moved the hosta into pots so I could put them up on the deck, and left the ferns (which grow naturally/natively ā I just moved some out of the woods). Also pulled out a ground-cover rose which never really bloomed (because of the shade ā donāt really know what I was thinking in the first place).
Iāll have a look at those other plants, thanks! Although I thought milkweed needed full sun. (Tried it out front last year, but something got it ā either the deer or the whistle pig.)
Iāve got some choice names for groundhogs, but whistle pig aināt one of 'em. (I had to google that, never heard it before.)
Iām pretty sure this is the product my hubbie occasionally sprinkles around. It helps.
Iām not sure why we donāt get hit worse by the deer because we do have hostas on our property plus all the bulbs. I think itās because my neighborās garden attracts them even more than mine. We have a lot of squirrels, too, and they are constantly digging up the bulbs. I think I just have so many bulbs now that I can feed the squirrels, too. There are bellflowers all over the property and they have divided, so if they eat their fill of those bulbs, it probably helps keep them away from the beds.
Yeah, that was the term my grandfather used and it stuck with me. We have 2 or 3 show up every year (neighbors have already spotted one). Sometimes a car will take care of 1 or 2.
The earth under our front porch has eroded, and they will dig under the front to lodge underneath the concrete. I gather that they can tell itās open space under there. (We also had a stray cat take up residence and give birth to kittens under there one year.) I built a retaining wall in front of the porch about 5 years ago; when the whistle pigs dig a hole Iād plug it up with a leftover brick. So far they havenāt bothered to move them and there are few gaps left where I havenāt placed one of the bricks.
Havenāt tried that ā Iāve been spraying Deer Off on the plants; it seems to help somewhat IF I can keep up with it after it rains.
No, Trillium is close to the ground:
The image in my previous post is of an oak leaf hydrangea bush. Theyāre huge and rangy.
I have another idea for you - not sure it would help with the deer but maybe the other things. I lust for this product, but donāt really have the $ or need for it.
http://www.gardeners.com/buy/elevated-garden-beds/vegtrug-raised-beds/
Iām in the middle of moving computers, so my photos are not accessible, but groundhogs can climb. I have a photo of one in a tree. I had no idea they could, but I think he was after the mulberries.
For keeping them out of the tender stuff, I had the best results with an electric fence about 8 inches off the ground.
ā edit to add ā
An old folks home near here had some of those put in, and they were a HUGE hit. Everyone who wanted to, could get into the dirt.
whoa. nice. that looks like it should be very possible to build for less than the purchase price. I should look for plans for something like that.
Iāve got a back patio now (largely shaded though) that isnāt currently very much in use. Something like that looks way nicer than the rubbermaid bins I was planning to stick out there
When I was out driving the other day, I went through an older neighborhood, where the houses are on good-sized plots. One of the houses had a little stand out front, selling lemons. Their next door neighbor had an area stacked with 5-gallon buckets of compost for sale. I thought that was pretty cool (and it made me wish I had a garden instead of a little balcony).
