Need to find a Gardeners Anonymous chapter.

Hi, my name is Irene and I'm a gardening addict.

* I spend money on gardening that I should use for other things.
* I often garden alone.
* I frequently overdo it and suffer the consequences the day after.
* When I'm at work, I think about plants, and if possible I do some gardening as soon as I get home.
* I'm often outside gardening first thing in the morning.

However, for the 12 step program to work, the first step is realizing that you have a problem... I figure that this particular addiction is better for me than, say, playing video games (although more expensive, at least initially!), and certainly yields more tangible benefits.

If you're one of the three people reading this blog, be prepared to hear a lot about plants. Whenever I actually get around to posting, that is.

I plan to start blogging about my gardening projects, in part for the sake of keeping track of what I did, what worked, what didn't, and so on.

We moved into our house 2 and a half years ago, in January 2007. Having bought the house without knowing anything about the yard except its size, its trees, and the deck in the back, the first year I was mostly interested in observing. What would come up where? How would the sunlight fall? What color would the azaleas bloom?

But of course I wasn't content to just observe. I also undertook two small projects, both of which turned out to be... educational.

First, I bought some native plants at the Bartram's Garden plant sale, and planted them in a shady spot in the back yard, near the shed, along with some hostas that had been growing by the mailbox, but were getting choked by grass. I'm not sure I remember all of what I planted, but I think the list looked something like... wild ginger, crested iris, Meehan's mint, shooting star, Goldie's fern, Jack-in-the-pulpit. I remember thinking that since these were native plants, they should be carefree and grow happily where I planted them - especially since I took care to amend the soil with some store-bought stuff. However... what I failed to understand is that the soil in my yard (especially in that spot) is heavy orange clay - nothing like the rich, humus-y mature deciduous forest soil that most of those species prefer. I also didn't water them much during the second half of the summer; I was in my first trimester of pregnancy by then, and feeling quite miserable enough without venturing out into the heat and humidity. Here's a photo of this area, taken a week ago.


The best success thus far has been the wild ginger. From a start of just one 2-leaved plant, it has started to spread, and it bloomed this year. The flowers are easy to miss; they're low to the ground, and purplish-brown.

The hostas aren't happy - I think it's actually too much shade even for them, and maybe not enough drainage, plus they're getting eaten by slugs. The Meehan's mint and shooting star have vanished without a trace, sadly. The little iris shoots are spreading, but I think they're not getting enough light to bloom. Although it's hard to make out in this photo, the Goldie's fern has survived and is sending up some new leaves, and a lonely, pathetic-looking Jack-in-the-pulpit is coming up.




The other project I started that first summer was a vegetable garden. I picked a (fairly) sunny spot, dug up the grass, worked some packaged garden soil into the clay, and planted some tomatoes, bell peppers, and strawberries. The tomatoes got nibbled by deer, the bell peppers produced a grand total of one pepper, and the strawberries were underwhelming both in quantity and quality. Here, too, I think that the clay soil was the main culprit - I didn't add nearly enough organic matter.

The year after that, I didn't do any gardening at all - newborn Annika was keeping me very busy. So this year, I have a year's worth of pent-up gardening energy. It's getting late tonight, but in my next post, I'll describe what I've done so far this year.