Wildflowers for the pollinators and honeybees.

I love honeybees. I want to do everything I can to encourage them to pollinate my gardens, and to give them a safe organic source of nectar and pollen. I decided to sprinkle Westcoast Seeds Pacific Northwest Blend and Bee Garden Blend wildflowers on my gardens where there isn't too much else growing.

Bee Garden Wildflower Blend

Pacific Northwest Blend

Front garden taking shape

The front garden is pretty much done. The plants just need to mature and flower. Hydrangea Nikko. They are such a beautiful blue. I cannot wait to see flowers. Amanda and I moved mulch and wood chips into the front garden to finish it off. Next we planted a perennial fuchsia. 

I bought a plant about 30 years ago that I grew in a hanging basket and I just stuck in the garden when it was fading. I have no idea why. It was supposed to be an annual, but it is still growing every year. I took several cuttings in the fall and that is the plant we are planting. All we needed was a lovely hosta to finish off the garden. Mission accomplished. My choice was Winter Snow. Right size, right colour. It will be lovely. For now it is tiny, about 8" tall. can you even see it??

What the hydrangea looks like now. 

  

What it will look like!!

Chore list for the weekend

I had a super busy weekend!! I'm surprised that I got as much done as I did. Here is my to do list. I will update it as I go. 

Seed flats of:

Sunflower

Squash - DONE

Flowers

Reseed beets - DONE

Plant the 5 new lavender Hidcote's

Transplant mint, oregano and chocolate mint - DONE

Rake up dead twigs that have fallen - DONE

Plant and stake almond - DONE

Plant and stake last Apple - DONE

Plant the fig where the Fir tree was - Did some reading and a fig should not go that close to the house either, so it's off the to do list. NOT DOING

Remove the cool bench. DONE

Put the spare Tulameen raspberry in a pot in case we need it. DONE

Put the Bay plant in a larger pot - DONE

Clean the entryway - DONE

Pull the Lily of the Valley - DONE

Buckerfields for Wildflower Seeds - DONE

Planting beets when there is a thick mulch layer over the soil...Back to Eden style.

In a Back to Eden garden planting seeds is done differently. The very thing that keeps a BTE garden pretty weed free, makes it impossible to plant in the usual way. Simply put, seeds cannot grow in wood chips. So here is the process I used to plant my Winterkeeper Beet seeds.

First, use a hoe or a rake and make a trough through the chips down the the soil. In my New BTE garden, that is down about seven inches. 

I then sprinkled a layer of bone meal and spread the seeds down the trough. When I was at Buckerfields the other day I picked up a bag of Sea Soil for this planting. I then covered the seeds with about and inch of Sea Soil. I then watered which reduced the sea soil depth to about the 1/2 inch it calls for. 

As the beets start to grow, you just gently push the mulch (my layers of wood chips and horse manure) into the trough little by little. Easy peasy. 

Planted a few plants around the new garden...Hosta, cranberry, lavender and thyme.

I went to Marigold Nursery today to spent time with my mom and look at plants. We both needed potting soil and we both found a few bedding plants. 

I picked up a 'Winter Snow' hosta. It is just unfurling, so not ready for a photo opp. This is what it should look like. 

I bought another cranberry. Mine is limping along. It was in our very shady back yard for the past two years. It is now in the sun, so I'm hoping it will come back. 

I planted another larger Hidcote Lavender. My favorite. It is a really purply purple, and a good edible. I use lavender to attract bees. I also put in two more English Thyme. You can NEVER have to many thyme plants.