April 2011 gardening tasks

Area	Upkeep:	New plantings:	Plans
Zone 1 Kuan Yi garden	weeding seedlings
Zone 2 Left garden		Planted sweet potato vines from two sweet potatoes sprouted in pantry  The lettuce in my planters with their auteurs (love that word!) grew nicely in March and is now shot.  Turns out that cuke vines and lettuce CAN'T coexist
Zone 3 Right garden	lookin' good!
City strip	weeding		mimosa keeps filling in
Zone 4 Sunflower garden	keep picking the sunflowers, otherwise they are everywhere and leggy
Zone 5 Backdoor strip & lemon tree & roses		Planted Carl's ivy along the fence strip, and filled in with various cacti where the sprinklers leave barren gaps
Zone 6 sunny backyard		Ooowee roses upon roses!
Garage mess		Thanks to Carl, I have an incredibly gorgeous potting shed!

Passion vine as monarch caterpillar entree

Four years ago I bought a passion vine at a garage sale. It established pretty well the first year, but by the third, it was popping up all over the yard.  And I mean all over the yard.

No need to worry about implementing a Passion Vine Control Program!  I kind of snicker when I see them popping up where I don't want them, because I know a very hungry monarch caterpillar is heading their way. Circle of life, Passion Vine! My yard is full of butterflies.

Hand to hand combat with spaghetti squash

Bethia Marie told me she loved spaghetti squash, so, always on the lookout for a good veggie, I bought one of the unattractive footballs and brought it home, where it lived in my fridge for about a month before I decided that too bad, I evidently wasn't learning to love spaghetti squash by osmosis and pitched it in the compost.

The same compost that I then added to my vegetable bin. This year I didn't have the energy to cultivate my vegetable bin.  But I didn't have to.  Looks like I'm going to be getting another chance to learn to love spaghetti squash!  It won!

return of the ground peanut!!!

What a surprise!  I sighted this ground peanut in a nursery last year, where it was gorgeous and flourishing. Planted it in my front yard and ooooh, not so flourishing.  Every day, a little more dead.  I'd forgotten all about it when this morning, as I was weeding, I witnessed its return from the dead.

Ornamental Peanut is an attractive, low-maintenance groundcover, that blooms bright yellow flowers from spring to first frost. This drought-tolerant, hardy perennial requires no supplemental water after it is established. It is in the peanut family, thus it makes its own nitrogen. This eliminates the need of nitrogen fertilizers. It has no known pests or disease which makes it an excellent ground cover of choice!

(From Sunset Ground Covers)

mermaid roses at last

I really was sure that John Starnes was a big fat liar for assuring me that he had gorgeous branches of mermaid roses.  Five years later, I have them too.  Unfortunately, my family doesn't believe they are roses -- thinks they are some inferior plant type because they have only five large petals. I hope my neighbor nicens up to me for sharing, because they're climbing right over to her sunny side of the fence.