Adding 10 cubic yards of mulch, top soil, and compost to the gardens

Last week I ordered 10 cubic yards of mulch, top soil, and compost with an even amount of each material to my gardens. It took me about 30 hours total to use it up, and my main project was a flower bed full of mostly tree & itoh peonies, 2 musa basjoo banana trees, and 3 Asian pear trees.

Here's about half the pile as I've already used up the other half to improve the soil in my new flower bed.

Progress on the pachira aquatica money tree cuttings

Back on May 5th, I divided up my money trees because they were getting too large. Here's the old blog. http://stevespeonygarden.blogspot.com/2012/05/dividing-pachira-aquatica-money-tree.html

As expected some of them either made sprouts which means they are also rooting, and some of them rotted. It seems like the general trend is that older sections of wood are better at rooting than the new green sections.

Here is the progress as of June 12th.

Original trunks.

Bamboos leafing out 2012

With the earlier spring and warm weather this year, bamboos are leafing out much sooner than they usually do, and they are starting to look impressive. The biggest ones are going onto their 4th season and some of them have culms exceeding 1 inch, reaching heights of up to 15ft.

Phyllostachys parvifolia: This one is putting out a lot of 1 inchers this year with the tallest ones getting up to 14ft while the average diameter of the entire grove is an amazing 7ft even though over 100 divisions have been taken from it.

1 year old tree peonies have arrived

2 1/2 weeks ago on May 24th, I have received my order of 42 (1 year old) grafted Japanese tree peonies. I decided to start them all in 2-5 gallon pots depending on their size so I can get them well established on their own root systems before getting them in the ground.

Here's the 1st out of 2 boxes that came on May 24th.

Update on the sempervivums

Sempervivums usually reach their full size by around July, and start flowering over the summer if they are mature enough. So far, most of them have produced many offsets. Here's the latest blog from 5 weeks ago. http://stevespeonygarden.blogspot.com/2012/05/sempervivums-hens-and-chicks-waking-up.html#more

One way I have figured out how to prevent people from stepping on them or deer from eating them is to place rocks around these plants.

This is a very unusual one as it split itself into 9 large offsets instead of simply producing them.

My experience with growing blueberry plants after 3 years

I started growing blueberry plants back in 2009, and they finally started producing last year, and I'm finally starting out to figure out how to get good production on these plants. Here's the old blog on them. http://stevespeonygarden.blogspot.com/2011/04/over-view-of-blueberries.html

Here's a view from the distance on how all the plants are doing. I mixed in a lot of peat moss & pine mulch into the bed to acidify the soil so the roots can reach into the soil.

Thornless raspberry growth progression

2 months ago, I purchased 5 bare root thornless raspberry plants, and they have really taken off over a 2 month span. Since they are starting to fill out their pots, I have had to start planting them in the ground. This blog shows their growth progression over about 2 months. The sprouts that emerge this year should bear fruit the following year so I need to get them in the ground to make sure they have plenty of room to spread and make new shoots.

10 April

Update on the itoh peonies

It has been 2 weeks since I received my 5 large itoh peony tubers which can be found on this link. http://stevespeonygarden.blogspot.com/2012/05/unpacking-new-itoh-peonies.html#more

After dividing all of these guys into several pieces, they have since started to sprout leaves. It's not shown in these pictures, but after inspecting one of these pieces, they definitely have root growth starting as I've been watering them with clonex, willow tea, and really pampering them. They should start producing their own tuberous roots once the leaves are done growing.

One thing that I've noticed is that the larger pieces tend to be producing larger shoots which means that the size of the tuber matters a lot. They all still have plenty of growth left in them. These plants were recently watered with worm tea so the residue is still left on them.

Scarlet Heaven