This Fall 2022 Garden Kalendar is composed of edited excerpts from my daily, hand-written garden journal entries from October 1 to December 31, 2021--accompanied by occasional commentaries on those passages. The journal records my work in four gardens:
• The Alumni House Garden at Coe;
• A half-acre vegetable garden on a small farm adjacent to the Wickiup Hill Outdoor Learning Center near Toddville (a garden typically identified as the Wickiup garden);
• The gardens and landscape at Buffalo United Methodist Church, a small church not far from Mount Mercy College;
• The gardens at my home on Elmhurst Drive in Cedar Rapids.
Kalendar excerpts have in previous years concentrated on journal entries dealing with the Coe and Wickiup gardens. The residential gardens on Elmhurst Drive, prior to the August 2020 derecho, were minimal-care, perennial shade gardens populated with several hundred hostas. The wind storm, however, profoundly changed that landscape, destroying all our shade trees and inspiring a dramatic redesign of the gardens around the house. In the past two years a substantial portion of my gardening (and writing about my gardening) has focused on these new gardens in our front and back yard.
This Kalendar constitutes about 50% of my journal entries in the fourth quarter of 2021. Here are links to simple maps of the back yard garden on Elmhurst Drive and the Wickiup vegetable garden. The Alumni House Garden map is posted on the website’s “map” page. As for the italicized quotations inserted between journal entries, they come from Page Dickey’s A Gardener Reflects on Beginning Again, one of the most enjoyable gardening books I read in 2021. Because of the length of this document, the complete Fall 2022 Kalendar is posted as a pdf. ~Bob
I am one of those odd creatures who actually enjoys weeding. I find it utterly absorbing,
on my hands and knees stirring the earth, pulling out interlopers, looking at flowers
and leaves up close, their patterns, their fragrance, familiarizing myself with their habit
and what they like or don’t like. And then, standing up, as I need to do often now,
I have the instant gratification of seeing what I’ve accomplished. ~Page Dickey
Excerpts from Garden Journal, October-December 2021
1 October. Two nights ago I did my fall bulb order, a bit late. My favorite tulips, Blushing Lady, were sold out, but plenty of tulips and other bulbs were still available. At two websites, I spent about $1,500 on bulbs for Coe, Buffalo, and home.
Colorblends Order
1500 Tommies crocus (for Buffalo and Coe landscaping)
200 Spring Loaded Tulips (Coe’s “D” & “J” beds)
100 Sun Disc Daffodils (soft yellow and gold for front yard)
200 Top 40 Daffs (for front yard and Buffalo)
100 Judy Beauty Tulips (multi-colored for back yard)
250 Fortune Daffs (yellow with soft orange, for Buffalo and home)
100 Stop the Car Tulips (purple and orange, for back yard)
25 Morel Daffs (yellow with orange, for front yard)
25 Frosty Snow Daffs (white with yellow, for front yard)
25 Joyce Spirit Daffs (white with orange, front yard)
25 Pipe Major Daffs (yellow with orange, front yard)
50 Tripartite Daffs (pale yellow with yellow, front yard and Coe)
200 Vernal Jewels (undecided)
200 Rainbow Coalition (undecided)
200 Glory of the Snow (Coe, Buffalo, front & back yard)
50 Allium Purple Sensation (Coe & home)
100 White Cubed Tulips (Coe & Buffalo)
Van Engelen Order
200 Allium Moly Jeannines (Coe & back yard at home)
100 Eranthis Hyemalis (Coe & back yard)
15 Fritillaria Imperialis (Coe, “D” & “J” beds)
50 Narcissus Actaea Daffs (front yard)
50 Narcissus Gigantic Star (Coe)
50 Narcissus Lemon Beauty (Front yard)
Almost 4,000 bulbs, a lot to plant in the next 4-6 weeks; my two student assistants can help plant the Tommies at Coe.
[All the bulbs got planted and in most instances they ended up where I intended. A few proved very successful. All the tulips were winners, particularly the White Cubed and Spring Loaded Tulips at Coe--a nice sequence of blooms with dynamic colors. Among the daffodils, the Gigantic Star were very late to emerge, but they produced large, long-lasting blooms; very impressive. As for disappointments, many of the Tommies never emerged, perhaps because of squirrels. Only a few Sun Disc daffodils survived the winter, and as usual a relatively small number of the Eranthis hyemalis produced any flowers–but I’ll keep experimenting, trying out new locations, hoping I find locations where they will thrive.]
As for gardening today, it was all at Coe, mostly the garden’s east end. I began the day by moving the black metal privacy screen from the “H” bed to the walkways between the “A” beds. My current plan is to place the screen in front of the apartment wall, breaking up that sterile background. But before I can put the screen in place, I need to move the Northwind (or is it “North Wind”?) switch grass that I planted in the “A2" bed a couple of weeks ago. I woke up this morning, convinced the grass will not receive enough direct sun in the bed next to the old student apartments. The best option is to move those four grass clumps to the “H” bed, where I just ripped out the goldenrod and dogwood. Today I turned over the soil in the “H” bed and removed all the white bindweed roots I could find. Tomorrow morning I’ll move the grass to this new location–and try to find an appropriate shade-loving shrub for the back of the “A2" bed. There is a Joe Pye weed volunteer and a redbud in that area; both are potential candidates for saving.
2 October. Major event today was driving to Kalona to the bakery, where we bought a half-dozen donuts, several bags of granola, and a wind chimes for the Buffalo Labyrinth. After listening to all the larger chimes, we settled on a green Corinthian Bells, $500 model, with beautiful bass tones. This evening, after our return from Kalona, I took three boxes of veggies for distribution at the church tomorrow and mowed the Labyrinth path, the first time it had been mowed since the August 5 dedication. I should not have been surprised at how overgrown the path had become. It was occasionally hard to follow the original path. The difficulties were exacerbated by the taller grasses lying on the ground, covering the pathway. Another issue is that the Labyrinth has many large dandelions and thistles, free to grow over-sized since they are no longer being mowed every week. It’s going to be a real challenge digging out those bullies.
Earlier in the day at Coe, I moved the Northwind switch grass from the back of the “A2" bed to an area in front of the gazebo in the “H” bed. I was pleased to see the grasses all had fresh root growth. This new site will give them more sun, and they’ll add an appealing complement to the nearby miscanthus.
3 October. All gardening today was at Coe. In the morning I worked in the “G” bed, removing gooseneck, horsetail, grass, and vetch along the rain garden’s north channel. Slow going. Many roots creating a dense web below the soil. While digging out the roots, I’m trying to save the random daffodil bulbs I encounter. I still have a lot of vetch to remove from the west end of the channel. Removing the river oats from the east end will be another challenge. In the afternoon I switched to the front of the “D” bed. I removed goldenrod and sorrel, dug out several wild milkweeds growing among the stonecrop, and pulled up a dozen or more Queen Anne’s lace, a plant that thrives in this area.
Link to complete Fall 2022 Garden Kalendar