The Deck Garden

Since I just finished moving all the plants back outside, after we had a cold snap and they spent more time inside, I thought I'd talk about my deck garden.  As of right now...

My deck garden:
3 x-large - potatoes
4 large - carrots
2 small cedars, 1 medium cedar (Clyde), 1 large cedar (Cecil)
3 dogwood
6 redbud
1 oak
1 buckthorn
2 hickory
1 black cherry
1 unidentified tree/bush

Plus, I still have 4 green peppers in the spare room that need to go into larger pots and go outside. I'm not even counting the tomatoes because I haven't bought the seedlings yet, but there'll probably be 6 of those. Woot.

The carrots are bursting up out of the soil, so yay. Those will need to be thinned soon. No sign of potatoes yet. If I don't see movement soon, I'll buy more taters and replant.

Of the trees, most of them are showing some signs of life after overwintering in the garage. The ones that aren't showing sings yet are one hickory, one redbud, and one dogwood. Those all might be dead. We'll see. The oak has the cutest, teeny-tiny leaves. If it had cheeks, I'd want to pinch them. (If you weren't already aware that I'm weird, you must be new here.)

The black cherry is actually three tiny trunks that I dug up together and planted together, not knowing what they were. When fall came, the leaves turned a pale peachy pink, which made me think they're black cherry trees. And now with their spring leaves, I'm like 95% certain of the species. Yay. I'll repot those into a bigger container and they'll spend another year being babied before they go into the yard.

Cecil the Cedar is the one I transplanted as an inch-high seedling I found in the garden back in 2021. That means he's probably 5 years old, maybe 6 if I consider he probably started growing in the garden in late 2020. (He had a pot-mate - Cedric - but it died.) Cecil is gorgeous and will go in the yard next month. Clyde was transplanted from where he was growing under the deck. He's kind of retarded, but I love him. He'll go into the woods to thrive there.

One of the redbuds and one of the dogwoods will go in the yard somewhere either this year or next. The rest will be transplanted into the woods. I need to put some out there sooner rather than later because I need their pots for tomatoes. Or I'll just buy more pots and nurture them for another year. I'm goofy that way. I'm trying not to be a helicopter parent to my trees, but after I lost Elmer the Elm to ravenous deer, I'm being more protective of my little trees. We'll see how it goes.

Anyway, those are the garden stats right now. I'll post more as things develop. Have a great rest of your day!

The Tree Project

So here I am in a new environment.  Six months now.  And we're still kind of settling in.  The things we could do, we did - like the landscaping project.  Other things - like new flooring - will have to wait until next year.  It all depends on time and fundage.  One project that didn't have to wait for fundage is something I'm calling The Tree Project.

When we first got to this heavily treed acre and a quarter, we had a good idea what some of these trees are.  Black walnut trees are pretty hard to mistake for anything else - especially when they start dropping smaller tennis ball looking fruits all over the place.  And an oak is an oak is an oak.

Except when it isn't.

We have at least 4 different varieties of oak in the yard.  And a couple different kinds of hickory.  So the first thing I did was pick up a copy of The Audobon Society's Field Guide to North American Trees: Eastern Region.  Which helped us determine that the big oak in front is a white oak and the hickory tree just outside the sunroom is a mockernut hickory. 

Using the internet helped, too.  Without online resources, I wouldn't have known that was a redbud tree in the front yard or that those were dogwoods just off the property line.  (Never seen either of those up close before.)

But a few trees still eluded me.

The other day, I went around the yard with my camera - snapping pictures of each tree's bark, the leaves, and any fruit they might offer.  (Stupid oaks weren't being cooperative and wouldn't show me their acorns - at least not on the tree and with all the squirrels, I can't just guess which acorn goes to which tree.)

Now I'm trying to catalog which trees are what.  Yeah, I'm totally geeking out.  But I have a burning desire to know.  And it's not easy. (Of course, it doesn't help that some oak trees are known to hybridize... those hussies... which would explain why the oak in back has traits of both the Scarlet Oak and the Shumard Oak.)

I even made a map of the yard and numbered the trees in red, so I'd know which pictures were of which trees.  (Yeah, I'm thinking way too hard about this, but that's kind of what 'geeking out' means.)  In the end, I'll have a good idea of who's who and what to expect from them over the years.  Who'll be dropping nuts, who'll be flowering, and who to watch out for in times of drought.  In the great scheme of things, it's not that important, but it's important to me.

What kinds of things do you geek out about?