I had so much planned to accomplish this weekend. Originally it was supposed to be mid 80's on Saturday and then overcast and 70s on Sunday. But, some front switched around or some pressure system shifted or what have you, I'm no meterologist. The latest update? Tomorrow is going to be 96 degrees. It will tie with the highest temp for this date last set in 2001. Sunday? Not much better, 91 degrees allegedly. The high temps supposedly end Wednesday with a high of 80.
So, I will be starting gardening at 7 am and hopefully back indoors by 10 am when it should still be low 80s. When I saw the update at 4 PM today, I skipped making dinner and right after work went out and potted up the latest iris arrivals and watered my potted plants. Instead of planting the beds in order, I'll hop around a bit and try to get the most temperature sensitive in the ground first. Hopefully this is really the last of the heat.
Last year, I would save all my gardening for the weekends and basically had to spend 8 hour weekend days in the garden all summer. This year, I'm getting up a bit earlier and doing an hour of gardening before work and an hour or two of gardening after work so I can get away with just a few hours of gardening per weekend day. That really worked well for the littler tasks that you can do a bit here and a bit there. Potting up plants, making new labels, pruning, weeding, topping up mulch, all nice and easy to do in bits and pieces here and there.
I do think I'm going to have to cave and use a couple vacation days the moment we get a couple cool days in a row. I need to spread a couple large sections of weed barrier and while the yard staples will hold for awhile, if the wind kicks up with no mulch on the barrier, it will just whip around and blow away. I basically can't do it in bits and pieces, it has to be done all in one block of time and shoveling and moving all the mulch is so time consuming.
I was really, really hopeful to do that this weekend. I'm really looking forward to this bed because I've been working towards it for a couple of years now. I started buying the roses for it last year. What I want to do is a long, 100 foot row right along the front of the property and this will be my rambler row. Currently, those roses are planted temporarily in my regular rose garden- but, of course, being ramblers they are already getting big despite starting as tiny band roses last year. I got in my roll of 5' wide weed barrier last week. The plan is to put in basic trellises - three posts and a length of fence panels - in basically 6 foot long sections down the whole thing with a gap between each section for ease of maintenance. The roses will get planted on the inside of the fence so they cascade over it. Because of the direction of the sun, they will cast afternoon shade on the sections in front of them. The plan is to use them almost like a privacy barrier and then running along that whole row on the inside will be a whole length of irises and mixed perennials for later summer interest.
I have three more 10' by 10' beds to get solarizing, but, to do that, I have to lift the tarps off the beds they are solarizing now and, you guessed it, replace them with weed barrier and mulch. That will finish the grid pattern I've been working on to go around the round garden. After that, I'm going to take a year off from adding any additional beds and see what it's like to just maintain these and replace dead plants. I'll work on pavers and paths and obelisks and all that other fun stuff that really defines a garden.
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