WEEDY BED Transformed to Beautiful Garden for MEADOW HOME - Ep. 123
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- Опубликовано: 23 сен 2022
- It took several weeks of work throughout the last several months to get this bed to where it is today-and it's still not complete! But at least we've gotten it into a place where it can rival the beauty of the newly renovated (yet still a work-in-progress) Meadow Home, which had been an old nursery office up until two years ago.
This episode is brought to you by Espoma Organic, which is a fourth-generation family-owned and operated company focused on providing gardening products for the home gardener.
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I mention the "Tiny House Build" in this episode, which was in process when we were filming this video. If you want to see how the process of that timber frame tiny house build came together, you can view the video here: ruclips.net/video/nIvp6PkXd9A/видео.html since it's now out. :)
That pinus strobus loves life now. You saved it and gave it a new chance!
I love the work you are all doing on your land, including planting this bed. Regarding Mexican Feather Grass, while beautiful, it is highly invasive and self sows everywhere. When you can remove it and plant some native grasses local to where you live, including for the wildlife, that would be optimal.
Thanks 😊
Speaking of mulch... we have a ton of huge leaf maple trees across the road from our property and we rake the fallen leaves off the road and mulch our garden and under our fruit trees every fall. The soil is just so incredibly lush and rich after over a decade of this practice, full of earth worms and our plants just flourish. Do you ever do this kind of mulching? I got the idea from the book Lasagna Gardening, which talks about creating a "forest floor" environment to build healthy soil. We've also added ash from our fireplace, leftover scraps from our kitchen veggies/fruit, seaweed (we live near the ocean), and alpaca pooh from a local nearby farm... I love that it suppresses weeds quite well too, and holds in moisture over our dry summers.
Leaf mulch is THE BEST! I would prefer that. My hope is that the beds just mulch themselves after.
Love the fog. It makes it so much more whimsical. I wish we got fog here.
Wow the new bed is looking so beautiful the foggy morning looks so mysterious, thanks for sharing Summer!!!
❤ the blue shadow fothergilla! I hope its roots made it through the year alright. It will be interesting to see how it overwintered and how it’s growing
I'm with you on the fabric. My mom had installed fabric on a large bed and years later mulch and what not had made a good 6-8" layer on top of the fabric so I still had tons of weeds plus it was really hard to plant through. I too removed all the fabric and your right it was not easy! I will never ever use that stuff in anything I do. PS the bed looks beautiful you guys did an amazing job.
I love your thoughtful, artistic attitude toward plant selection with respect to color, texture, and wildlife support. Something sticks out though - there are many beautiful red-leaved native alternatives that tick the same boxes as Euonymous alatus, an invasive shrub here in NY. It seems like a confusing choice here.
I love your approach to gardening. You’re very in tune with what the plants want.
I enjoyed the video.
glad you enjoyed!
Steady progress on the Meadow Home garden is a joy to follow ~ beautiful specimen plants and trees. You've worked wonders with the pinus strobus ~ it looked so forlorn before, and now looks so healthy! I notice in Japanese gardens that an alternative support system used (to counteract snow weight) is the use of poles set into the ground with horseshoe shaped cups to gently support the branches from directly beneath. I see it here in Kew Botanical Gardens though it's used mainly for very old prized specimen branch support.
If your looking for white flowering shrubs look into a mock orange bush. It has beautiful single white flowers that the pollinators love. Plus the orange blossom scent is heavenly. I have found it blooms late spring, after lilacs in Vermont.
We actually have the native one: Philadelphus inodorus that we'll be planting in an upper garden bed. Underrated native plant!
If you add ephemerals to the bed here you might consider Camassia angusta as one. I think the purple blooms and purplish tinted green stems will go well with the other stuff you have there. Project looks like it's going great.
Oooh we brought in some native Camassia for the orchard this year, (which I hope will bloom next year). They are edible (but not to be mistaken) by a more deadly variety here!
The Plantsman near you guys has a great selection of native plants and trees that would thrive there. I’ve been making the hour trek down annually from Northeastern Onondaga County. I’m wanting to add a native oak (support up to 500 species of caterpillars), but don’t have much room. I’ve added golden rod, asters, milkweed, and native dogwoods. I’m reading Doug Tallamays work lately and learning so much about keystone plants and host plants for specialist pollinators.
Yes, we got some really lovely plants from them right in the beginning. Thanks for flagging them here.
Yes, Doug Tallamy recommends that each of us plant at least 1 native oak where we live, or more if we have room. Tallamy gives a wonderful talk on the amazing growth of native oaks using an example, a native oak he and his wife planted on their property as a baby oak. It was astounding.
I love my Abelia shrubs they bloom white/pale pink in summer here in NE….very airy smells sweet and pollinators love it and nothing bothers it.
I saw a multi stemmed tree which had over time, been patiently encouraged, plaited and woven to the shape of a lover's arbor with a raised bench, which had been added in at it's conception. A small carpet made it a beautiful seat in Summer, half enclosed over many years and shaded with a fragrant canopy. In Winter, the branches are bare and delicate, so our lover's arbor is given to be cared for, by Doves and Fairy Wrens.
Wow, that's so very poetic.
Nice.
@@gardengatesopen Very kind of you to say so, thankyou.
i really like the color choice you did on the house. the bed is looking great and will coordinate very nicely with the house. with our cooler weather i have been working outside almost every day still removing lots of invasive and over crowded stuff. had lots of fun today and was finally able to get to a massive stand of mountain laurel and clear out the dense dead growth at the bottom. it looks fantastic and is magical with all the contorted trunks and branches and they are so big you can walk all around inside. tomorrow i think i'll rest a little, sit under there and practice my finely honed super power of garden observation (aka procrastination).
thank you!
great tip regarding nurseries “juicing” plants up causing a shallow root system!
👍🏾😉
Looking forward to see the remodel for the meadow home! You have super thoughtful ideas.
Don’t forget lingonberries and low growing blueberries. Low growing ferns too.
Genius 💚💚💚💚you can gear up with an auger > makes hole digging super easy > the power of the torque can wrench your arm but overall better for your body > I bought one from proven winners and then got a Nikita paint stirrer sort of drill had to buy a battery too > my power tools set was Bosch but they had nothing that would work for the auger
You probably know about willow properties: chew on a twig end for the salicylate/salicylic acid/aspirin compound. Also, if you put a few twigs (artfully) in a vase, you can change out the water every other day or every few days and use that water as a rooting compound for seeds and starts. They will also root in the vase and then you can plant them out (until your husband forgets to water in their direction and they die). Just sayin'.
Haha. Luckily I don't have a husband (kidding). But yes, thanks for the added tips for folks here on the willows. Lovely additions and ideas.
In the Pacific Northwest, we have moles the eat the roots of plants. I have lost too many perennials to these creatures. So now, I am experimenting by planting the plant along with it's container inorder to prevent mole damage. Has anyone else tried this method?
The gentleman here before us would leave some of his plants in containers but we figured it was out of neglect more than anything else.
Fothergilla is often a shallow rooted plant that suckers a bit. I bet it does fine.
It looks great!
Yes, I wouldn't mind it suckering a bit here as a low-to-mid range groundcover. Anything taller than a Fothergilla, probably not.
The Mexican Feathergrass-
I'll be very interested to follow this plant in your landscape.
I'm in Texas, and of coarse, this plant does very well in our hot dry landscapes.
However, I did see one famous online gardener (whom we are probably all familiar with), Monty Don.
He fell in love with this plant and the "wispy grassy plains look" which it can create.
He dove in feet first by finding some seed and growing multiple trays of this plant so he would have enough to cover the floor inside his wall garden.
After painstakingly baby-ing that seed, and next the seedlings, he heavily amended the soil to give the plant just what it wanted.
He followed that by heavily underplanting it in one of his gardens to make sure he would have his grassy carpet nice and full.
He then waxed poetic with us sharing his vision of seeing the grass bending to and fro in the breeze.
Well, as the year went on, we never heard about how that grassy carpet was doing.
And then finally, he had to admit defeat in being able to grow this Mexican plant in England.
It just wasn't working.
Even tho he tried to give the Mexican Feathergrass the soil it wanted, and he never gave it extra water, or nutrients, it just wasn't working.
Whether it was the heavy,
wet, clay soil underneath the ammendments,
or
the amount of weekly rain they normally get over there in England,
or
the lack of super hot Mexican sun & temperatures,
the vision of his wispy grass carpet never did come to fruition.
If you've ever followed the progression of Monty's gardens via his weekly show, you'll see that he did finally end up showing us the result. Altho, I noticed he did sort of downplay the fail!
I mean, he admitted it, yes.
But I kinda felt like he took the fail quite personally.
There was only one segment in one show where he talked about it, instead of showing us updates thru the year.
And that one segment was much too short for me!
(But maybe that's just me...)
As I recall, he never did show the wide view of that garden before removing it.
The wide view of the Mexican Feathergrass laying down, creating a completely different type of carpet than he imagined, could've made a great garden learning moment!
Anyway,
what the plant ended up doing was definitely what Monty had expected.
And he was clearly disappointed,
the poor gardening guy...
Even with the plant receiving too much water, and probably not enough hot sun, the Feathergrass did NOT die.
Nope, apparently it's pretty tough no matter what the conditions!
Instead of it melting away with all that moisture, as many hot sun plants would do, it decided to make the best of the situation by growing an extra healthy set of roots, and making as many seeds as it possibly could!
Not a bad plan if you're a plant!
However, all those seed heads made the plant extremely top heavy.
And so, Wispy, it was NOT.
And probably the addition of continuous rainwater made it flop over. (I'm guessing)
And over there in England,
after a year of growing seeds into plants,
and another year of growing plants into a garden,
Monty stood,
in his good sized garden,
the garden floor covered with overgrown,
flopped Feathergrass,
all planted much too close together,
and really,
it just looked like a big stringy mat.
It was all so very thick, and laying down at the same time.
So yes, it was so thick and heavy, there ended up being zero "grassy plains" movement.
ZERO.
I really felt bad for him.
We've all had those times.
He had wanted that light, airy, grassy, movement as a living floor inside his walled garden.
He ended up with the exact opposite.
Poor Monty...
He did tear it all out.
I bet he's now thinking that maybe he could've left it in there for this last Summer (2022) since they had a big drought with very hot temps!
Oh well...
Timing is everything, isn't it...
So, ok.
THAT was what the
Mexican Feathergrass
did in a normal English year.
And now we all get to see how it fairs in upstate New York!
This is awesome!!
I bet you'll have better luck than Monty.
Simply because I don't think you get quite as much rain as he did that year.
And probably you get more hot sun than his part of England does?
At any rate-
this will be very interesting to see how the Mexican Feathergrass fairs waaay up North!!
Here's to garden experiments and pushing the borders!
I Love it!!
The large bed looks great....will you be putting in some berry bushes to contribute to the group's food income for all that work? Nothing like large clusters of bright red currents or purple tinted goose berries to feed people who are weeding every other week so that nothing gets a foothold to ruin the bed.
Always enjoy watching your videos.
❤❤❤ everything looks so magical and beautiful 😍
Thanks for sharing
Loved it
Love and Rainbows
Beautiful transformation! you did an amazing job!
If u love the fall color of the euonymus, which can be very invasive, try chokeberry, black or red. They have fantastic fall color but is also beneficial to our insects and is native. Give it a try! So many people plant what u plant that it would be wonderful to try not to plant non natives that can be invasive. I really enjoy your show.
Or/and blueberries.
I consciously considered the Euonymus. I wanted Sander to know that he was heard, given his affinity for it, but really only would consider it in a well-managed bed that is away from our other areas where we can tend to it. Given that it's regulated-(meaning it's legally available, planted and used here), people (including ourselves) need to be more aware of where they are planting it and not just plant it willy nilly next to more 'natural' spaces. Though I have not seen it spreading here in this part of New York, it doesn't mean it's not (or it never will). But that may be the case for many non-native horticultural varieties. Thanks for mentioning it. Also, we love chokeberry and are growing it in the interstitial and the orchard areas where it can freely sucker. Lovely, lovely wildlife plant with good seasonal interest. Thanks for mentioning. Planning on bringing in a Zenobia into the bed (also Ericaceous) vs blueberries here. We think the leaves and leaf shape and color would work nicely here.
@@FlockFingerLakes totally reasonable. So much different in an area where you see them all over the woods. Where I am (Westchester co ny) Euonymus, barberry and multiflora rose are everywhere and quickly being covered by porcelain berry(!). So I rarely use them when I create a garden (sometimes clients insist, but I don't put these forward). I have a strange hope that the encroaching of the spotted lantern fly we are starting to see here decides it loves these plants and eats them out of the woods... I can dream I guess.
Always a lovely video
Thank you for sharing with us. 🎉
so I live in a rented house with a large green area very woodsy in some parts, and in the front of the house there's a giant pine tree and someone had backed their car into it and it was sapping so much when we moved in so I thought I'd use some copper pesticide on it (on the cherry trees too where the branches were very very dark and sickly) and idk if it was cause of the copper or not but it's a lot better now and the cherry branches look very healthy too. I love everything about this 😍💚 also same with the lawn cause of the rain hahaha but I'm happy it's raining
Love your channel. It’s useful and smart. You’re doing great things there.
Omg! I just had my first chipdrop and parasol fungi popped up like immediately but I didn't know what they were. I always learn so much from your videos!
Awesome!
I would love to see a Q&A about your project in general (ex. how did you decide to buy this place? how many people are gonna live there? how does one get to live there?) if that's something you're comfortable in doing
We did a number of those questions back in the early videos of the channel: ruclips.net/video/QY90Yofz3Mo/видео.html, ruclips.net/video/HQW7uwpcj_s/видео.html, and a few others in case you haven't seen those.
Have you considered a collaboration with Roy Diblik? A very knowledgeable guy. Love to watch his RUclips videos too😊
Not aware of him but will look him up. Is he in the Finger Lakes region?
We Got flooded in nyc from that generous rain
Looks so good!
Love the video!!! I love verbenas,
Great video!!!
I love the leaves of fothergilla. Unfortunately mine didnt last very long in my heavy clay soil and too much sun.
We had some deer move into the fenced area and they seemed to eat ours, so we'll see if it comes back from the cutting!
Summer you will love that salix! I have 6 and I absolutely adore them. Love your color choices here.
Had that intuition! Good to hear it from another gardener. Thanks for that Alannis.
When you do projects please tell us the costs for them. Even though my own properties are private, while you have investors in your group who require accurate info about their investments, it would be really helpful to have an idea if I was to replicate your projects. I have all of my carpentry tools for building but don't own big machines such as you rent with an operator for your projects that your ATV (all terrain vehicle) can't do with S. working as his contribution per projects.
i've seen those sorta tent things used here on a smaller scale a lot for evergreens in various settings here in massachusetts, or just burlap tied around to keep the structure in. really wanting to get so many trees but even bare root is just adding up quick, not even to mention shrubs, wish native or even nativ-ars were much more common and accessible for a wide variety of native species instead of a select few
That is beautiful. When does the photo calendar come out into our world? Reminds me of a place where I resided long ago, especially seeing the morning haze and dew drops.
Was wondering where you'd stash some verbena. Grass and verbena are the best!
I'm quite sure Verbena 'Bampton' is hardy in your garden. I live in Sweden with cold winters and I've had it for years without problems. It will self seed as well.
That's super good to know! What growing zone are you in Sweden? Some of Sweden is in zone 7 (Stockholm) whereas others are a bit colder zones. We are equivalent to Zone 5/6 and 'Bampton' says hardy to Zone 7....We'll see I suppose after this year!
Thank you for your videos, you give beneficial information ❤❤❤❤ps where did you get your overall?
What a beautiful garden you have got the trees and plants look way more happier and can now breath more easily
It looks like to me you got my favourite heavy clay soil I could be mistaken that is the most condemned soil in the world and why yes it takes a bit of work some manure mulch but over all it rich very rich it takes a lot less fertiliser than other soil and has way more bang for your buck
Don't be so afraid of your mulch it's fine you have done the best thing by removing the average car park plastic green area gardening this will make a great difference the wild life will take care of itself don't go planting to much of the same thing especially if the can be split learn this from my mistakes we can be over eager for immediate affect
The most important thing for your wildlife is water a small pond a simple bowl of water among the plants don't forget colour butterfly bees and birds love colour don't be so mindful of this plant is not a polonaise plant like button dahlia I find these plants there heads make a good resting area for insects the seem to like to snuggle in the petal of the flower and I find worms love them as they are soft and rot fast give a good mixture of everything
Roses I found your better of give more money for quality than those cheep grafted ones
And don't be to eager to clean up ladybirds love the inside funnel of stems and hibernating creatures
And the old rule of gardners is if you want ladybugs in your garden bring in the greenfly if you want hedgehogs and frogs bring in The slugs
And also bats a very important part of the environment are taught to have some strange colour night vision thing I noticed this when my Poppy's of various colours come up and my dahlias come around
God bless the work
Thanks for the added tips and encouragement Patrick. I really don't mind our soil. It's been really good to us thus far. There are far "richer" soil areas in this area-namely along the lakes and rivers, but luckily the gardener before us did somewhat work the land and add some additional organic matter. I find after a rain, the land is really workable.
Love the color of the meadow house! The barns would look beautiful in the same colors.
We're thinking of going with a natural wood color for the barn with some detailing that will tie in the colors of the Meadow House. TBD still.
Can you grow blue gramma grass? It has interesting "toothbrush" seedheads. I found the Mexican feather grass seeded all over the place in my orevious home un New Mexico.
Yes, that's actually planted in our 'low mow native lawn'. Beautiful eyelash-like spikelets ruclips.net/video/cWiLuVZ6cWg/видео.htmlsi=FdmK5JDmZhnvbNcO&t=1285 and ruclips.net/video/poktAYLl7UY/видео.htmlsi=4GYdDvtO-QTBq1o_
You v can buy seeds if Verbena Brampton from Avant Gardens.
thank you!
Willows are lovely and vigorous, but please be aware that willows LOVE to invade water and septic systems.
Great job! What was the second plant you gestured to, after the spirea? The tall one with the white clusters of flowers. Thanks!
I don't think we have any Spirea in the area. But there is Hydrangea and Physocarpus there.
The Verbena "Bampton" is from the U.K., maybe that's why you couldn't get it again? Also it's apparently Zone 7 & higher, so how will you go about keeping it alive over the winter? I'm Zone 6 & would love to have one but not sure if it would survive. Not too far from you in WNY. Thanks
It survived and appears to be hardy to zone 5
Do you have voles damage anywhere?? I'm completely overrun with voles losing my entire vegetable garden and over $2000 in perennial and Japanese maples, I can't even plant anymore without knowing the plant will be vole food, countless potted plants waiting for the day I can plant again
I have vole issues, use metal mesh protectors on all trees and bushes until older. Also keep areas clear around plants so they don’t nest near by.
Me too…I am trying metal hard scape cloth at the bottom of my raised beds. I trap them by using snap traps where I see holes baited with peanut butter and sunflower seeds and cover with old pots with weights on them (bricks) I’ve used fox and coyote urine, juicy fruit, honestly whatever I can think of because if you do nothing about voles and mice they will multiply like crazy!
@@lgarden7086 I'm having issues with them eating the entire root system of the plant!! They leave the base of the trunk alone so I don't think metal mesh would work for me but I've tried sharp tiny rock marketed for vole deterrent in the planting holes with little luck, I've done mouse traps but squirrles tip over every bucket and the voles are outsmarting them, I've killed 14 so far
I don't have voles,
(knock on wood!)
but I've heard those that do using both the metal hardware cloth under the roots, as well as using other animals to help keep keep them in check works decently well.
If you've got a lot of one type of animal in the area, that's an indication there's an imbalance in the landscape.
(Yes, just call me Captain Obvious!)
So naturally, the trick is to try and balance the area with some vole predators.
Doing the things to invite owls, or hawks, or even snakes into your habitat will help a lot.
Snakes help with these kinds of critters here where I am.
(I'm in Texas, we don't really have voles, but have rats & mice. And Texas is naturally snake country.)
I know people cringe at the thought of having snakes around, I did too at first.
But after I was educated about all the good they do, I learned how to live with them instead of feeling like I have to fight against them.
Of coarse, the ideal type of snake is a non-venomous type. You certainly don't want the venomous snakes hanging around!
Some people also use domesticated cats to keep the vole numbers down as well.
As long as you make sure to get "a mouser", which of coarse is an important factor when choosing a cat!
If you already have a cat, but it doesn't want to work for its food, well obviously, that's not going to be helpful for an overpopulation of voles!
This next idea is a bit out there-
But I've also heard there are people who will "rent" their ferrets to you.
They bring them over to your property, and let them loose to hunt those voles!
Then the ferret owners take them back home with them.
If you don't already have a cat, I've heard there are programs with feral cats that are helpful in vole situations.
People can adopt feral cats to come live on their property.
And somehow those cats stay around.
I know cats aren't the best option bcuz they will also kill the smaller birds, but at least the ferrel cats who are already in this world, after they're caught by humans, and they've gone thru a veterinary program to make sure they're healthy, at least there's some way to put them to good use, and continue to keep them healthy. I believe the idea is they end up being a lot like a barn cat.
Anyway, maybe there's some way for you to help balance out nature over there where you are. There's probably other ways to do that too.
I hope that helps a little?
Good Luck!
We have snakes on our property too, matter of fact I saw a small one in my garden today and he was going into a vole hole 🤞I used to be afraid of snakes but I’ve grown to appreciate their role. Voles really prefer root crops…parsley, carrots, parsnips. It’s so discouraging to see your hard work destroyed by varmints but a cat is the one thing I won’t do…don’t like them much although I’m sure they help. My neighbor hosts feral cats he has a barn and that’s where he keeps them. We have owls and hawks but still i need to do what I can keep it under control.
U must have a very strong back‼️
Where did you get your overalls?
They were one-offs that I got over 6 years ago at a place called Pilgrim
Hi babe 😘
What is your diet and exercise regimen?
Eat when hungry, don't eat when I'm not, and work in the garden is pretty much the routine.
what they going to do with the house???????
We don't have enough bedrooms here for everyone, so we are trying to get the Meadow House up and running so we can have one extra bedroom at least for all of us. Since there are renovations happening both in the Common House and the Meadow House, we're down a couple bedrooms, so if we don't finish, we'll resort to a mattress in the renovated chicken coop (hehe) and/or in the living room of the Common House.
It is called Euonymus c:
And maybe the species changed, but that is now called alatus, too
Thank you for the spelling mention.
@@FlockFingerLakes thanks for the cool videos!
Is this bed protected from deer
you must have missed our deer fence episodes! ruclips.net/video/rMccnDTTTyQ/видео.html, ruclips.net/video/ZyunSuno40E/видео.html, ruclips.net/video/k-zyKrsjF5s/видео.html and the one we learned about at Cornell: ruclips.net/video/aOLY1AIA9zI/видео.html
@@FlockFingerLakes Thanks!!
I love your channel and the information you provide, but you provided the wrong spelling (& pronunciation of) Euonymus….and agree with Sarah Lucas, it’s a confusing choice that you’ve opted to plant an invasive
Thanks for the correction on the name. I consciously considered the Euonymus. I wanted to know Sander was heard, given his affinity for it, but really only would consider it in a well-managed bed that is away from our other areas where we can tend to it. Given that it's regulated, as shared-(meaning it's legally available, planted and used here), people (including ourselves) need to be more aware of where they are planting it and not just plant it willy nilly next to more 'natural' spaces. Though I have not seen it spreading here in this part of New York, it doesn't mean it's not or it never will. But that may be the case for many non-native horticultural varieties.
Euonymus
thank you for the correction.
I would love to see more milkweed!
And a grove of wild black cherry trees the support like 33 species en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prunus_serotina
I would only use a plastic bag of compost for container plants. Your bed does not need more "life"added too it. / Fungi and microbes will migrate fine through a layer of weed membrane. I took some up in my garden and found tonnes of worms underneath. I think we overstate the concerns about membraine. / I would take pictures of the shrub with no roots and send them to the vendor and ask for another or a refund. You need to call them out on russbish sales. / Your muscles are looking very ripped!