Tuesday, May 31, 2011

In the final week of Spring Quarter

In the final few days of spring quarter. Many of the plants are developing nicely. Notice the progress of the chamomile bordering Area One. This has been one of the coolest, wettest springs in the recent memory of local farmers so many of the plants are slow to take off. On the bright side, even the ones that are slow have not died. The challenge for them now is to get into a robust growing stage before they are ravaged by insects. Today I checked the plants and many of them, such as the purple basil, are getting eaten by bugs. I did a weeding also since the Morning Glory is thriving, as predicted.
The calendula is blooming nicely. One lesson learned is that I got more height out of the chamomile and less height out of the calendula than expected. I thought I would get more of a drape effect than I did from the chamomile and the calendula was stunted by being in seed pots too long, waiting for the early spring rains to let up
Though you cannot see all of them in this picture, the plants in the garden are (starting in the corner of Area One and moving outward): Sunflowers along to fence, amaranth, dill, echinacea, calendula, chamomile. To the left of the door is a patch of phacelia. The path is white clover. To the left of  path is hyssop and anise hyssop. In front of the chamomile is purple basil with a few poppies in the corners. The bench circle is planted with white clover and surrounded by more claendula, anise hyssop and hyssop. Along the outer border is fennel and the border under the bamboo is planted with lavender.