Gardening In Lewisburg

To my amazement I discovered there is a lot of gardening blogs out there.

It impressed me the creativity of some and the great information of others.

It made sense to me to journal about my garden on line so I can remember my failures and successes and have pictures and information I can look back on.

Without bits and pieces of information all over the place in many journal books of my past. Paperless one location, what a time saver and space saver.

Eric and I moved to Lewisburg in the summer of July of 2004.

We have done a lot since we've moved here 5 years ago this coming summer.

So I will pick it up from here "Gardening In Lewisburg".

I fell in love with the garden before I fell in love with the house. The house was a fixer upper. The yard was heaven to me and acre with establish trees and unique at that. An acre to play in with a great view of the fields of Lewisburg outside of Corvallis, Oregon.

In the front yard we have

3 hazelnut or some may call them filbert the squirrels call them food for the winter.

3 almonds the squirrels don't eat these, and the shells are thick due to the fact we live in a cold climate not sunny California. So it takes a slugged hammer to break them open. I brought home an almond from the Tulare farm show and planted it near the other 2 existing almond trees.

1 large walnut tree has great walnuts but the 2 squirrels get them before I do (I call them Chip and Dale). These squirrels are larger than my cat.

When we first moved here early in the morning the golden finches all over that walnut tree the sights and sounds were amazing. But when we adopted a homeless Abyssinian kitten named Sushi she took out my fine feather friends.

It broke my heart and Sushi and I were at odds for a while but I've grown to love her despite her appetite for birds and anything that moves snakes, moles, voles, mice, bugs and even squirrels.

I planted many types of mints under this tree it seems that planting them there keeps the mint under control.

A grape vine arbors with several types of red, golden and purple grapes unfortunately they are under shade trees so they don't get the sun they need for better production. But I enjoy a bowl fun of goodness.

A paw paw tree that I called a mystery tree till year before last when it fruited with 3 large fruit. It hasn't fruited before or since. I guess I need another Paw Paw tree to keep it fruiting. I learned that they have all the parts they need to produce but they need a certain bug or another tree to pollinate.

Weeping flowering cherry tree that is full of gorgeous double pink blooms in the spring.

Several white birches of various sizes. The birds seem to enjoy them. I like the bark but not the debris that I constantly pick up like little branches.

A fig tree that has had wonderful fruit in August the year before last it had about 15 lbs. of figs, and last year none due to the freak weather. So I made a lot of Kiwi jam and it is wonderful stuff on ice cream or toast.

My favorite feature of the front yard is the Kiwi arch that draws you to the front door. The year before last we had 5 gallons of Kiwi. Last year none because the female Kiwi died due to us replacing the old rotted arch with a new black custom steel arch built by Lewisburg Ironworks along with a new iron fence along the driveway and beautiful garden gate with iron vines with rusted kiwi leaves. For Christmas my husband bought me a female Kiwi from ? on Peoria Road on the left an old nursery with an old nursery man. I guess he grew up there and took over his father's business. His prices are reasonable. We planted the Kiwi today. I hope it flowers and that in a few years we will be back into production.

Old roses and one new bed, there was twice as many when we first moved her but on one April morning several deer took them out. That's when we put in a deer fence around the whole yard. The new rose came from www.heirloomroses.com this summer called "victorian spice," when we took the Forbes to visit. We walked around the garden and sniffed around for what we thought was the best smelling rose. Heirloom roses doesn't have this rose on line but you can buy it at their location. I found a site that has this rose on line "David Austin Victorian Spice."

Near the front walk is a Heather patch it use be larger but we took part of it out to make room for a future pond.

Herb bed thanks to my daughter Lissa and her husband Nate. For my birthday they treated me to a gift certificate to Tom's garden center in Albany. So I bought little 3" pots of herb plants. So I bought oregano, sage, fennel, thyme, lavender, ginger, bay leaf, marjoram, lemon grass, lemon balm, scallions.

I have had other herbs like catnip and basil but they didn't last due to Sushi's fine taste in the culinary herbs herself.

If you click on the dark green highlighted words those are links to find out more about that particular plant or place.

In the morning I love drinking coffee or tea only to look out the kitchen window and see the birds chirp and play while the squirrels gathering nuts and my cat Sushi playing in the grass. I sit at the kitchen table made from an old butcher block counter that use to be part of the original counter in the kitchen. We since gutted the Kitchen. The table is a reminder of what the kitchen use to be and the only thing left that was part of the old kitchen. At the table I work on my next BSF lesson then check my emails and enter a new blog entries http://lifeinlewisburg.blogspot.com or http://GardeningInLewisburg.blogspot.com

In the summer I enjoy mowing the lawn with a mower I have had for 21 years,it was a gift from my father in law Vern. My goal is to see how long I can make this mower last. Eric converted it to a mulching mower last year by putting a mulching blade and bunging cording the back opening shut. The mulching blade works great and was an inexpensive way of getting a mulching mower. Mowing the lawn with a push mower is the only real sweat I get on a regular basis, it generally takes me and hour to an hour and a half to mow the lawn now that we converted it to a mulching mower. Before it would take me 3 hours, because I constantly had to empty the lawn catcher. The house came with a rider mower but we sold it on Greg's list because I didn't want to use it. The rider mower took up too much space in the shed and it wasn't easy to operate. We took the money we made from the mower to buy a used rototiller.

I drag hoses all over the yard with sprinkler heads and slowly each year I had soaking hoses. Someday when I settle on what is where and I'm not constantly changing things I might consider a sprinkler system, but that won't happen for a very long time. The dear fencing we put up and new fencing and gates seem to keep the deer out. Things are growing again. We can still see the deer walk across the berm and driveway from the kitchen window and that is OK by me as long as they don't come in the yard. I added some hydrangeas and some other plants last year to the front garden bed and still trying to identify existing plants in the yard. It would be nice to know what all is around here someday.

When we first moved here I took out the old diseased pines along the old fence because you couldn't see the front door and people would come to the side door. I also took out the junipers and the barberries along the fence. I wanted to be able to create an openness and pathways. I took out the old rodies because they looked sickly and I took out the blue forget me nots because they were intermingled with so much wild garlic. I love forget me nots but not wild garlic taking over. I moved the Shasta daisies to the side yard for a cutting garden. I took out the dahlia bed that was in the middle of the lawn because I didn't want to mow around them and moved them to the cutting garden, but they didn't survive. We moved the blue spruce tree in the middle of the lawn and put it in the back and it's doing well. The first year we moved here we barked all the bed's because my sister was getting married in our back yard and we wanted things to look nice for her wedding on July 4th. Since then it's disintegrated and could use some freshening up. I've panted an almond tree making it 3 in the front yard and added some grapes to the grape area. I painted the grape arbor black to match our new black iron fencing. We've prune trees and added bricks around some trees in the front with white alyssum flowers in side. We get free sawdust mixed with horse manure from a local horse boarding place up the street which I use everywhere. Someday I would love to build a pond in the front right outside the guest rooms. Nate and Lissa helped us build a gravel path along the front of the house to the side yard. We have a lovely yellow green maple tree with red bark outside the guest bedrooms with large stones rambling along the small hill.

There is so much I dream to do yet I enjoy the work in progress. I hope to widen gravel paths, and create new ones. I dream of putting slate stones over the old concrete sidewalk and entry area. I would love to level or terrace the front lawn so it's not such a dramatic drop and would be a much more useable space for gatherings. A sprinkler system in the lawn would be nice. Cleaning up the berm and planting wild flowers now that would be nice.

Taking one day at a time and doing what I can is great and if I can do more that is even better yet.

We have done a lot already "We've only just begun" to live the "Impossible dream".

The Garden

This is a work in progress for sure. When we moved here there was old wooden raised beds but the wood was rotted. There was and old chain link fence that was tacky but was useful for keeping the dog out. The old owners had a large dog. We don't have a dog, the back neighbors were glad to hear this news because the previous dog barked all day and night. 

The fruit trees badly needed pruning there is one pear that is sad looking so we pruned it down, 2 apples that we will take out this summer (don't worry we have 2 healthy apples in the backyard), we also have one yellow plum that is consistent year after year in producing great fruit, one red plum that did well the first year and hasn't produced since, 2 italian plums that do well every other year and are great fresh or dried and 2 black cherries one that Is in bad shape and one that isn't. The location was perfect for a vegetable garden.

So I pulled out all the raised beds and chain link fence with the help of Eric and Calvin. We hauled countless dumpsters to the Corvallis dump. I discovered behind the large spanish pine trees the previous owners dumped old fencing with nails still attached and piled them behind the trees. 

Eric bought me a hobby greenhouse called the Enthusiast   6' x 8' with 4' extension kit, and a 10' x 8' 60% green shade cloth and one automatic vent opener, for Valentine's Day one year. He built a deep gravel foundation to place the green house on and we spent several days putting it together. I added plastic stock shelves from Home Depot.

We started to build raise beds out of concrete blocks, concrete, rebar and wire fencing to place inside the bed. Filling the bottoms of the beds with old leaves and twigs and topping them off with compost and loam. We have 6 done and hope to put in 4 more this summer. Eric and Terry put in a drinking fountain and I covered the pipe with broken dishes I've collected over the years. 

Eric also built a nice gravel path to the green house. The first year we moved here Eric bought me a compost tumbler as a welcome to Lewisburg gift. It sits behind the green house. 

A few years later he hired someone to build a garden shed. 

We go to the Tulare farm show every year and one year I brought home a cherry tree and a fig tree. 

Nate and Lissa gave me berry bushes for my birthday and Eric built me a trellis to train the berries. 

Terry put in two watering faucets in the garden area making it easier to water things. 

Eric and I have pruned the trees a couple of times so we have more sunlight for the berries and the garden. 

It's a work in progress. I hope to have herbs or gravel for the paths between the beds I haven't decided yet. We hope to hook up the fountain this summer and get it flowing with water. 

I'm looking forward to starting seeds in the green house. 

I've planted 2 pink peonies in front of the green house and 3 blue hydrangeas on the side of the greenhouse and a cherry tree on the backside of the green house that was given to me from the Tulare Farm show. And 2 star jasmine bushes in front of the gate. I planted a fig tree from the Tulare Farm show, near my side neighbors fence and transplanted english ivy from the side yard to the back fence. We have rototiller many times adding amendments of loam and compost. We use to rent a rototiller and then we bought a used one from united rental store in Salem. The money came from selling the rider lawn mower on  Craig's-List. It works great I also purchase a mantis tiller for smaller areas.