Some days’ work are just less exciting than others like today’s which simply involved weeding. Weeds wake early and always seem to have a toehold long before I have much interest in pulling them out. One particularly weed prone area is the region of our perrenial bed where our Echinacea (coneflower) are.

At one point we had echinacea angustifolia, echinacea pallida and echinacea purpurea though I would need to peek at a garden book to tell which is which right now.

Echinacea are one of the few flowers we get to grow. By that I mean that the general plan of our garden is that everything, well, nearly every thing is “useful,” that is, a plant used by someone at some time for food or medicine or some other practical purpose. (Even the old lilac bush, I’m told had a purpose since it was supposedly located next to the outhouse.) Other folks make gardens with only one color like those grey-green “moon light” gardens while other folks specialize in different varieties of the same plant. Ours is a kitchen garden that we’ve tried to make as pleasant to look at as possible. One way is to somewhat stretch our concept a bit to get a few flowers. So though the Romans used the roots of Valerian as a sedative, we don’t intend to. I know that Echinacea tea is supposed to be a popular herbal remedy… but I don’t even know which portion is supposed to be used. And according to the wikipedia article, it doesn’t sound llike I’m alone.

The Plan: We had let this little area go, not just this year but last year too, so long that it almost felt like a psychological block. We decided to see how much 20 minutes of focused weeding could accomplish.

The major enemy that we fought was something I thought was called was “witchgrass” but now that I settle down to investigate, it doesn’t resemble any of the descriptions of that plant. Suffice to say the our adversary here was some kind of grass that sent long spear-sharp “roots” sometimes out a foot or two under the mulch or soil before they erupted into another plant. It was delicate kind of destruction to pull these long strands out.

But it was worth the effort. In addition to rescuing several tiny echinacea plants, we found a little patch of garlic chives and a little stand of valerian.

Today we addressed “the ruined bed.” Oh what a lament could be intoned about this patch of ground. Instead, we hit the ground running.

The Plan: We decided to view this area as an opportunity to make a dream come true. We’d always wanted a backyard orchard and, if we’ve paced it out correctly, we believe we can fit two more dwarf fruit trees in this area. We are quite finicky gardeners, and are even more picky when the choices involve perennials. For our first apple tree, a Roxbury Russet, we ordered it in advance from Trees of Antiquity, a place that specializes in eccentric, antique varieties. (What’s the point of going through all the effort of growing the same kind of apple you can just buy in a store?) It’s far too late now to order a bareroot tree so we’ll just set out place holders and build the garden around where the new trees will go next year.

There was plenty of “grunt work” to be done. We moved the bricks leftover from the old garden and hastily assembled a three course, running bond brick “wall.” No mortar of course. These are scavenged bricks from here and there, not exactly the ideal kind of brick for a garden but the color provides a gentle contract to the green of the foliage. The foundation for the wall is a ring of cinder blocks we had around the outside of the the old bed. We had heard a few years ago that cinder blocks could be used as the edge of a garden because it both marks the lawn from the bed and because the holes on the sides of blocks can be used as highly durable pots. So we tried. Our verdict is that the capacity for these “pots” are quite small and irredeemably ugly. So ever since our experiment, this bed had a wall of scavenged brick layered on top of the block to hide it.

That is of course until the bulldozer and backhoe scattered the brick and pushed the block into the ground. Initially, it looked daunting but a couple minute’s worth of work cleared the area quite well.

We chose to put asparagus in and around the orchard. We already have a patch of asparagus… sort of. It’s another tragic tale. We had a very well established bed of ‘spargs that was producing so well we even bought a special asparagus steaming pot. We had enough success to develop a serious taste for fresh asparagus. Then I went and added a layer of compost I got from another gardener’s compost pile. I don’t know if it had herbicide in it, or if it was the wrong pH or if I just smothered the poor things but I killed half the bed. What’s worse, is that when we planted more crowns in that area, most of them died as well. A new spot without so many bad memories — that’s all the ‘spargs need.

I bought a clump of crowns on a whim at the local garden store. To be honest they didn’t look TOO lively but, heck they weren’t expensive. We can always plant more next year. We dug holes 18″ deep as the instructions say, and added a shovelful of compost. We knew the crowns point up but we didn’t know if the roots should be splayed out or whether they should be more vertical, like a tap root. We opted for more vertical like a tap root. If they don’t thrive, well, we can always plant more next year.

We were able to dig down just to the point where the hole met into the soil of the old bed. I think this is a probably a good thing. But this was a very exhausting 20 minutes. We tidied up and came inside.

These were the notes on the clump of crowns:

Asparagus — Jersey Knight — Large spears tipped with purple tints. Good Disease resistance.
–needs at least 5 hours of sun
–plant in a trench 18″ deep, place crowns 12-18″ apart. Leave 3-5 ft between rows
–cover crown with 2″ of soil. Fill in as shoots grow, but never cover tips.
–after first year, fertilize with 6-24-24 or similar when growth starts in spring and again in July
–don’t harvest the first year
–harvest a small amount the second year
–big harvest begin the third year
–harvest from May to June
–25 ft row yield 7-12 lbs
–leave ferns until they brown