Look here at my little dogwood tree blooming already!!
The flowers just glow, don’t they?
A few other flowers have been blooming too, now that the sun is out.
The succulent plants have also taken off, and I noticed this one falling out of its hole in the strawberry pot. Since the one above has crowded over that hole, I decided to repot the one that had fallen out. I got out the Miracle Gro Succulent and Cactus mix and filled the little green pot. I had the pots on the plant stand waiting to get other succulents to put in them, so this worked out fine.
These pots were waiting on the plant stand for succulent plants. Note the bee waterer at the top.The new bee waterer. I replaced the glass marbles with some stones. And I have resolved to keep it cleaner than I had been!
Lots of stuff happening in the yard now that the summery weather has arrived! We got all the yard decor set out, just have to get the yard mowed before I take photos to show you. More updates forthcoming!
Since my large succulent plant in the top of the strawberry pot died, I have replaced it with a new plant. I found this plant at Lowe’s, where they still had a number of succulent plants left. I have decided to name it, and am calling it Frank.
This is Frank.
You can see that the other succulents are doing very well, as are the thyme plants.
Baby plants are growing.Thyme plants are quite fluffy.
At the vintage show the other day someone was selling succulent plants in decorative planters and each plant had a name. The names were printed on labels made with an Dymo labelmaker like this:
And the labels were stuck to nice metal garden labeling stakes like this:
I decided my plants should also have names, so I went looking at label stakes on Amazon and I think I’ve settled on these:
Now I just have to come up with names for the other plants! Comment with any ideas you might have!
My poor little garden…it went all wonky while we were on our backpacking trip. The succulent with the pink flowers croaked completely, and two of my lavenders lost half of their plants.
I think the Hubs may have overwatered them while we were gone. It got very hot and he probably just thought he should douse all the plants every day, but the lavender and succulents don’t need that much water. I cut out all the dead stems from the lavender plants – the ones that are left on the French lavender actually have some new growth on them so I left them to see what would happen. And actually, last year the lavender plants did the same thing. I will definitely not water them much in the coming weeks so they can dry out and sort of get back to normal.
The rosemary and rosebush, however, both look very healthy and happy. I will be buying a new succulent plant this week for the top of the strawberry pot.
In the meantime, though, I will share with you this wonderful concrete statue I got at the estate sale last week!
My little bear – please ignore the dandelion farm.Here is how he looks on the patio.
Isn’t he adorable? He weighs about 300 pounds, ha. The Hubs says he will never move it again! I think Little Bear adds a lot to our patio area.
I’ll update again when I get the new succulent plant for the strawberry pot. The other succulents and the thyme plants are doing great in the pot, so I hope a new succulent will grow happily there.
At our house, the Hubs and the Girl are in charge of the vegetable garden, and the Hubs is in charge (very reluctantly) of doing most of the yard work, since I am allergic. My part is a container garden of herbs on a little corner of the patio. I can almost always remember to water my happy plants and for the past couple of years they have been growing pretty well. Today I got my new succulent plants put in, and they will be a nice addition to the space.
As mentioned in prior posts I decided to plant some succulents in a strawberry pot, and after cleaning and disinfecting the pot yesterday, today I got to work getting the plants in.
Sand, potting soil, pot
First I mixed two bags of Miracle Gro Cactus, Palm, and Citrus Mix and about 2/3 of a bag of Perlite together in the wheelbarrow. I started by filling the strawberry pot with about 2 inches of sand, hoping that will help with drainage since I don’t have any good gravel or pottery shards to put in the bottom. Then I used a red Solo cup to scoop the soil into the pot, because that was one of the few scoop-shaped thingies I had in the house.
As I went along, I pushed soil into the little “mini-pots” around the sides of the pot. When it was full, I planted the large, pink-flowering succulent in the top. This plant was just labeled “hen and chicks”, but it is quite different from the ones I usually think of as the hen and chick variety.
The flowering succulent in the top of the pot.
After planting the largest plant, I put thyme plants in two of the “mini-pots”. The rest of the hen and chick plants came last, and I squeezed them in the spaces as best I could. I am a little concerned because they were all sitting in very wet soil in the pots they came in from the store. And I hope they don’t fall out of their “mini-pots” before they take root! Below you can see the finished product, and how it looks with the rest of my garden.
The final resultMy little garden – not much to look at but easy care and smells awesome
My silver Spanish lavender is a great bee-attractor right now, so I put a little bee waterer in the pink lavender plant in case the bees get thirsty. The bees living here in the Pacific Northwest are probably not having problems finding water right now, but this will be nice for them if it ever gets hot this summer. The other plants are a French lavender (lavender is my favorite!), a Tuscan Blue rosemary which I just repotted into a much bigger pot (I am anxiously waiting for it to do something spectacular), and a mini rosebush the Girl gave me for Mother’s Day last year. It is going great guns even though it was drowning all winter long! The Dr. Seuss-y plant with the pink pom-pom is a Dreamland Armeria. All the plants like full sun and don’t need a lot of water, and that works great for my little corner.
So, will the succulents survive and thrive? Stay tuned for later reports!
Pink lavender and bee watererPink lavenderFrench lavenderSilver Spanish lavenderMini roseArmeria
As noted in a previous post, I got this nice strawberry pot at an estate sale for $2.00. It was dirty and still 1/2 full of potting soil, and since I don’t want to plant my adorable succulent plants in someone else’s dirt (and bacteria, God forbid!) the Hubs dumped out all the old dirt and I set out to find the best way to clean a used terra cotta pot.
After reading an article and watching a video about cleaning terra cotta pots, I decided that I would start by using an old nylon dish brush and some warm water with Dawn dishwashing detergent to clean the outside and inside of the pot. I also could have used a scrubby sponge to scrub off the green and black spots, but I wasn’t trying to get it looking perfect. I like a little grunge, as they say on HGTV’s Home Town.
Cleaning the pot
To disinfect the pot after cleaning, I filled a bucket with a gallon of water. The video and article I saw both said to mix 1 part bleach to 9 parts water, but I noticed my bottle of concentrated bleach had instructions to use only 1/3 cup bleach to 1 gallon of water (which is 1 part bleach to 48 parts water, I think. Isn’t it? Mathing – sometimes I got it, sometimes I don’t.), so I added the 1/3 cup bleach to my bucket of water. I scrubbed the pot inside and out with the bleach water, being careful to get in all the little planting holes on the sides.
After cleaning and scrubbing with bleach water. Still a nice chippy vintage vibe!
After cleaning and disinfecting the pot and rinsing thoroughly, I am leaving it in the “sun” to let any bleach that might be left on the pot evaporate. I say “sun”, because we are having an atmospheric river such as the state hasn’t seen in 80 years, and we aren’t sure if the sun will actually come out at all this month! The video I watched said that to make sure there is no bleach left in your pot when it’s dry you should sniff it, and if you smell chlorine you should rinse it again and let it sit some more.
So, tomorrow after sniffing my strawberry pot to make sure there is no trace of chlorine left, I will plant my new plants! Now, off to decide which plants to plant where!
Marnie was talking about succulent plants a few weeks ago, and I thought it would be nice to have some to add to my little container garden. My idea was that a strawberry pot would work nicely to display some hens and chicks and other drought-tolerant plants. Then I found a strawberry pot at an estate sale for $2. Score!! It’s a little chippy and has patina, but that’s what I like. Not sure if I’ll scrub the patina off or not though.
Marnie was gone on a road trip for a couple of weeks, and since we both wanted to get some succulent plants we planned to go together to The Home Depot to find some when she got back. Yesterday we did that, and after much decision-making I came home with these little guys:
There are 9 spaces in the strawberry pot plus the top space to put plants. I also have two small thyme plants I will add in , since they also like well-drained soil and don’t need a whole lot of water.
I have plans to get the new plants in the pot very soon, so I’ll post photos when I’m done. I’ve always wanted to have a beautiful cottage garden, but since I don’t have much of a green thumb I will be satisfied with my containers of herbs and succulents and my one little rosebush!
every day's just like starting over 