The Results are in!

Rose race 2010:
Distant Drums (pictured), Clotilde Soupert, Winchester Cathedral, Heritage, Cornelia, Fantin Latour, Russelliana. Sweet promise doesn't have any buds on it but it looks really good- the foliage is gorgeous. Ghislaine de Felagonde is out of the running due to her cushy winter indoors. Hippolyte and Charles de Mills actually have a few buds. I wasn't expecting much from them this year as they bloom on old wood. Heritage has 52 buds on it this year! I don't think I've ever seen more than 4-5. I've been making compost tea and alfalfa tea. I think that little experiment can be considered a sucess.

The veg garden is in. So far so good. Onions and Beans are up. I was worried about slugs (using the Ruth Stout method of mulching with leaves) but they haven't been a problem so far. It's been pretty hot and dry so that's probably helped a lot. Most of the tomatoes are in. I have to make 1 more SWC (I made one this weekend for the Champagne Cherry/Coyote experiment) for Matt's Wild Cherry and Jaune Flamee. I also have an extra Red Zebra and a jalepeno plant that need to find homes. The tomatillos are blooming, Champagne Cherry has blossoms on it, Hungarian Hot Wax has some buds. Things are coming along!

I thought I'd give Ruth Stout a try...

Since DH is in graduate school as well as working full time and digging up the entire garden on my own in a timely fashion while working full time probably isn't realistic, I decided to try the Ruth Stout method of gardening. Before I ever heard of Ms Stout I decided I was too lazy to drag the leaves to the curb last fall so I shredded them and piled them in the veggie garden and flower beds instead; figuring I'd turn them over with the soil in the spring (or wonderful husband would do that for me when the semester ended). Then I read about Ruth Stout and got excited- I don't have to wait for him to turn over the soil! (I usually get 1/4 of the garden done in the time it takes him to do 3/4 plus mow the lawn). I can plant stuff when it should be planted, not when the garden is ready! I won't have to water! I found her book "No Work Garden Book" on Ebay for a reasonable price and I started reading it today. Checking out the garden forums I frequent, there are clearly 2 well defined camps with a lot of middle of the road people: the Enthusiastic Tillers and the Enthusiastic Non-Tillers. Since I don't have a tiller, I'm going to join camp #2. A garden fork isn't much of a tiller and I'm lazy so I think I'll feel right at home with the Enthusiasic Non-Tillers, I can be pretty enthusiastic about not forking the garden in the spring- I hate dirt filled blisters. Should be a pretty interesting experiment.

About the pic- I have no mulch-related photos so this is a picture of a bunch of roses I picked from my garden just before a major rainstorm last year. You might be able to see some of the rain drops still clinging to the petals. It was worth getting wet to save the flowers.

Oh shoot...this is supposed to be Wordless Wednesday...I blew it...maybe I'll be quiet next Wednesday.