Random Thoughts about Life on a SC Farm: Plenty of Things to Do in the Yard and Garden

Now that the weather is starting to cooperate and the ground has warmed up, we have been putting most of our time in to cultivating and planting vegetables in the garden. The asparagus bed has been the most prolific and earliest bearing ever. It is now five years old and maybe is just now coming into its prime. I have been eating asparagus for several weeks now. I have to pick it every day or it will get too big overnight. I love to roast it in the oven. I put the oven on 400 degrees and lightly coat the asparagus spears with olive oil and seasoned salt. I let it cook about 15 minutes and sprinkle parmesan cheese on it when I take it out of the oven. I usually don’t start making asparagus casseroles until I am tired of eating it steamed, roasted, and grilled. I am already making asparagus casseroles so it is going to be a long growing season! I will never look at my asparagus bed without thinking about Hollis and Dixie McSwain, longtime residents of Lake Bowen, now both gone to their Heavenly home. Dixie was in the ladies Sunday School class I have taught off and on for twenty years or so. She and Hollis were great gardeners and loved to share their bounty and their love of gardening. Hollis brought me 8-10 baby asparagus plants in a grocery bag one afternoon. I stuck them in the ground for several months and then Harry helped me construct the bed they are in. The bed is about 4 feet wide by 8 feet long. I love to give the seeds and plants away. But if I were to do it again, I would make the bed about 2 feet wide and 12 feet long. My bed is just a little hard to reach the middle. One one of my trips to Mount Vernon and Monticello, I saw the asparagus beds there. They were in long mounded rows in the garden. If you do make an asparagus bed, be sure to put it where you want it to be for a long time. Asparagus lives a long time in the same place. And for the investment, asparagus is one of those vegetables that really pays off! I like to note the price of asparagus in the store or at the restaurant. A side of grilled asparagus at Outback is $3.99!

We have planted all the usual vegetables in the garden this year. We have Texas sweet onions that are really starting to take off. I planted English peas in late March but I am very disappointed in them. They are just sort of “sitting” there and really haven’t taken off. English peas don’t really do well once the weather gets hot so it they don’t hurry up and start growing and start producing peas, I will have to pull them up without getting a crop of peas.

We haven’t planted corn in our garden in a couple of years but we did plant some this year. It is a yellow sweet corn. There is nothing better than fresh corn on the cob or creamed corn!

Harry loves his tomatoes and we usually plant a good many. I love to can them for soup and other uses in the winter. And we basically live on tomato sandwiches in the summer--made with Duke’s mayonnaise, of course! One of our favorite varieties of tomatoes to eat on sandwiches and with our vegetable meals is the German Queen. It is an heirloom tomato that has a pinkish flesh and a wonderful flavor. It will make a pretty good sized tomato and a slice fits just perfectly on a piece of bread! We also planted several varieties that are new to us. We planted a tomato called “Arkansas Traveler” and “Abraham Lincoln”. We shall see how they turn out. I also planted Roma tomatoes---the nice pear-shaped tomato that makes great marinara sauce and is great in salads. My go-to canning tomato is Rutgers. It is an old favorite, high acid, and really great in soups and stews. I will usually can 20-25 quarts of tomatoes.

We also have eggplant, cucumbers, broccoli, yellow squash and zucchini. I went crazy on the zucchini and planted 8 plants! What in the world was I thinking? One or two plants will give me all the zucchini I could possible want or use. My friends will be gifted with fresh zucchini and zucchini bread out the wazoo!

In the last couple of days, we put fertilizer on the raspberries and blackberries. The raspberries are really starting to grow and fill in the space and some of the blackberries are blooming.

I have spent most of my time when I wasn’t helping Harry in the vegetable garden working in the rose bed, planting zinnias, and just generally cleaning up left over winter branches and leaves. The most fun I have had was “broadcasting” that good horse manure around bushes, plants,roses, and in the flower beds. I can already see that the good stuff in the horse manure is working on the plants. Everything is very healthy and green. The knock-out roses are already blooming and the hybrid tea roses in the bed are going to be beautiful. Roses really like cool spring weather and plenty of rain so they will really be beautiful in just a couple of days. I can’t wait for the perennials to start blooming. I have several large areas of daylilies, bee balm, several colors of yarrow, iris, foxgloves, and phlox. Bee balm is also known as monarda, bergamot, Oswego tea. I have always called it bee balm. It has a wonderful smell and if you like essential oils, you will recognize the smell as bergamot. It is a very beautiful plant, good in cut arrangements, and the bees and butterflies love it. I have several colors but mostly mine is the wild common version you see growing wild along the road in the mountains, red and purple.

We finally finished the rock wall! We had a good bit of rain over the last few weeks that made working in the area really hard to do because of all the mud. Once things cleared up and we could get the Bobcat back in the area, Harry put some good dirt in behind the rock wall and I worked to get things filled in. I have moved some daylilies and candytuft along the top of the wall. I have also planted some Cosmos and wildflowers long the base of the wall. There is a very nice garden area in front of the wall and I planted sunflowers there.

I love zinnias and I always plant several beds and borders of them all around the house and yard. I love the colors and you can’t beat them for an easy cut flower to arrange. But most important to me, the bees and butterflies love zinnias. I try to have as many things blooming for the butterflies and bees as possible and I am very careful about the sprays and pesticides I use.

I have friends ask me how I grow zinnias with so much success. Really, they are the easiest flower to grow! And the return of beautiful, showy blooms until frost is all worth it.

One thing I do every year is buy new hybrid seeds in different varieties and colors. The seeds that come up as volunteers every year will be pretty but they will usually be a pale lavender color and will not be the same shape. These are pretty, but because they are not hybrid, they won’t be but one color. So, I go to the expense of buying a good quality seed every year.

Below are directions for planting zinnias and having a wonderful border of flowers sure to attract bees and butterflies.

How to Grow Beautiful Zinnias and Attract Butterflies and Pollinators to Your Garden

Growing zinnias is very easy. You can have beautiful blooms for cut flowers from mid June until frost and attract butterflies and bees to your garden. Zinnias are some of the easiest flowers to grow and give the biggest return for beautiful blooms to cut as well as providing food for many insects and bees.

Step One: Prepare the flowerbed. Decide where you want your zinnia bed to be. Zinnias need full sun but can take some afternoon or early morning shade. Borders around your house or walkway work well or just a dedicated flowerbed for the zinnias will work. Prepare the soil by turning it with a spade or tiller and smooth it out. The surface should be smooth and free of rocks and debris.

Step Two: I use the side of a rake or hoe to make a very shallow trench no more than an inch deep. Make the rows at least 2 feet apart. Most varieties of zinnia will get large and showy. They also need plenty of room for air to circulate so powdery mildew won’t grow on them.

Step Three: Plant your seeds about 6-8 inches apart. You can thin and transplant them when they come up and are about 4-5 inches tall. (I like a variety of colors all mixed in my beds so I put all the seed packet contents in a bowl and mix then up before planting. You can plant all one color in a bed or mix it up.)

Step Four: Very gently take your fingers and just lightly feather the soil over the seeds, being careful to cover them but not too deeply. If your soil is slightly sandy, cover the seeds with sand.

Step Five: With your hose or garden can, very lightly sprinkle water over the seedbed. Do this every day for about a week. In about 7-8 days, you should see seeds begin to come up!

More tips for growing beautiful zinnias:

*Once the plants have come up and are about 4-5 inches tall, you can thin them to about 1 foot apart—yes –1 foot apart--but remember these plants will get big over the summer.

Then you can take the plants you thinned and put them other places in your garden. Just remember to water them everyday when you transplant them so their roots can be established.

*To transplant zinnias, just take your trowel and dig it deep enough to lift the whole little plant with some soil around it. Then just plant the whole thing where you want it.

*Fertilize with a product like Miracle Grow for Flowers and just follow the directions.

*To have beautiful zinnias all summer, keep the blooms that are dying cut off, or “dead-headed”. This insures more flowers.

*In late August, I usually stop deadheading old blooms and let the plants start going to seed.

You will be delighted to see all sorts of birds, especially Goldfinches, eating the seeds from the blooms.

I love to let the birds have their time with the plants before I pull them up in late September.

Next spring, you will have “volunteer” zinnias come up in your bed. These will not be the beautiful variety of plant you had because they are hybrids. If you want really beautiful, showy plants, you will need to buy new seeds each year. The zinnias that will bloom from seeds as volunteers will be pretty but not have the large showy flowers and they are usually just a faded lavender color.