Winter Stillness

On a weirdly warm New Year's Day, there's a stillness over the garden.  No loud colors, no scent, just simple shapes, the slanting light, and lots of tan and green.

I hadn't noticed how much saxifrage 'Whitehill' had filled in the gap between two pieces of tufa this year.  It's always done so well for us that I kind of take it for granted.

Saxifrage longifolia has also thrived on tufa in a trough.  I'm waiting for the neighboring ramonda to grow up and push back.

Chamaecyparis obtusa 'Lemon Twist' is getting kind of big to remain in the trough after 6+ years, a common problem with even slow-growing dwarf selections.  I love it this time of year for the light it brings so it will stay another year, at least.

Arum italicum always looks fresh in the winter.  Thanks goodness for this plant.

Dwarf nandina from a friend.  I transplanted it mid-November so fingers crossed it makes it through the winter.

Heuchera villosa always looks good.

My friend sent an image of her gorgeous winter arrangement in one of my troughs.

Thanks Hilary!

Bubblewrap Trough

I liked the round bubblewrap planter so much that I cast a rectangular one also.

I used my regular (favorite) mold, but wrapped each exterior piece with bubblewrap.  The collapsible  inner core of the mold is not shown in this photo.

Detail of the interior corner of the mold.  The blue pieces in the bottom of the mold are 2" rigid foam wrapped in shrink-wrap.

The trough as it came out of the mold.  I didn't do much to it except soften the rim with a wire brush.

Bubblewrap Planter

Three-footed round planter with bubblewrap surface texture that I cast in July.

The mold is a 24" diameter chunk of thick sonotube, lined with bubblewrap, with a piece of 2" rigid foam in the bottom.

No inner core, I just keep the hypertufa mix dry enough to not slump.  I have a belt clamp around the tube because I'd already cut it vertically with a jigsaw to guarantee that I'd wouldn't have to destroy the mold to release the planter.

Hypertufa Basket

When my wife finally threw out her broken wicker laundry basket, I knew just what to do.

Mine is a little heavier, but it's going to last longer.

Wait, what happened?

How is it mid-October already?  It's been a ferociously busy four weeks, full of PTA volunteering, scouting, camping, a monumental birthday, and the weekly rhythms of cycling and gardening. I can't really call it gardening though, more like just getting the bare minimum done before the season passes.  Throughout it all, I've had the weekly pleasure of unwrapping new hypertufa troughs that I cast over four or five consecutive weekends through August and September.  I let them cure for four weeks, wrapped in plastic and stashed under the deck, like some weird, slow bread oven.

I still get a little thrill of satisfaction when I unwrap something that I made a month earlier.  

Some of the new troughs are sold already, but about a dozen remain up for grabs.  Let me know if you need one.

Mid-September Good Things

Summer seems to have moved on without the normal 6 weeks of heat with no rain.  It's been dry, but not terribly so, and relatively cool.  The garden and I are both relived that August is in the rearview mirror.

Above is a late hyacinth bean flowering on the fence.  I look forward to the burgundy bean pods every year, and diligently collect the huge seed for the next spring.

Ilex verticillata 'Red Sprite' is having a great year, despite being grown in a hypertufa planter.

 The kirengeshoma is opening on schedule.  Although the flowers don't last long, I love their puffy firmness.  They remind me of those orange circus peanut candies we had as kids.

Hardy begonia livens up the shady side of the garage.

Thanks to Matt Mattus's suggestion on his blog, I started using organza drawstring bags to protect the dahlia buds from the earwigs.  As ridiculous as it looks, the bags guarantee that I have pristine dahlias to cut for the kitchen table, and less kids freaking out about earwigs at the dinner table.

It's cooled off enough that I've been making hyptertufa troughs for the last three weeks.  These are only some of the planters curing under the deck.  I'll start opening them next week and will deliver the sold ones in October.

Be sure to let me know if you're in the north Jersey area and are interested in a trough.

Almost Too Hot to Blog Edition

Back from a week at the beach we find it's too hot to do damn near anything in the garden, but hey, that young crepe myrtle looks so nice backlit by the morning sun...and I love those white orbs of the rattlesnake master floating on the right.

Before I retreated to the (relative) coolness of the house, I unwrapped the last three hypertufa containers that I made 4 or 5 weeks ago.  They are the darker ones in front in the above photo.

If it doesn't cool off I'll be researching 'dwarf tropicals' to plant in them!

Random Summer Bits

Like the bees on the magnolia flowers, we've been busy.

I took the kids to the Cloisters in upper Manhattan.  It was their first visit (I know, what took me so long?) and I was excited to show them my favorite museum.  Plants and medieval art and architecture...what could be better? Maybe tacos....?

We took a few days vacation and drove up to see friends in Vermont.  Above is photo from the top of Mount Greylock in North Adams, MA.  We drove to the top to show the kids the (imaginary) location of the American version of Hogwarts.  We spent the day at MassMOCA, another great museum.

Quarry near Dorset, VT.  

I stopped by the side of the road while I was cycling near Pawlet, VT for this photo.  This Iowa boy was so happy to see and smell cows again.

One of eight pizzas I made for dinner with our friends.  This one is local Vermont cheese, tomatoes, garlic scape pesto, grilled new onions, bacon and an egg.  

My garden at work survived nearly three weeks without substantial rain.  There's no water nearby so whatever lives, I plant more of the next year.

This opuntia at work could care less about being dry.

Our front yard is doing its English Border Thing.  I went for interesting color and texture in choosing the plants for the flower boxes this year and kind of regret that they're not more showy right now.  Lablab beans will soon cover the trellis by the door. Yes, I planted the hellstrip too.  Couldn't stand mowing ANYTHING out front.

I have lots of empty troughs for sale for the first time in awhile..

...even curvy ones.

And it's cherry season!

Round Troughs

About a month ago, I cast a pair of these 16"w x 9"h troughs for my friend Noel.  The 2"h feet are separate, of course.

The troughs are cast around a 12"w x 7"h piece of sonotube filled with sand.  I cast them upside-down.

I used the hammer drill to make some drainage holes once they were cured.

And yes, it rained a couple inches this week and cooled off about 10 degrees.  

I cast a couple more large troughs yesterday and planted some mums in the garden today.  I'm back!

Mid-August Already?

Yesterday we got back from a gorgeous week in Avalon, NJ.  Can you tell they replenished the beaches with sand from offshore?

Last night I had to unwrap and clear these two beauties out of the garage so that I could cast a couple more troughs this morning.  I got up at 6AM to beat the heat.  It didn't really work, of course, but at least I was done by 9:30, before it got into the 90's.

Taller Quatrefoil

I added 2" in height to the quatrefoil trough mold from this spring, so that it's 9" tall now.  Above is the first cast.  It's a subtle difference but I like it a lot.  

Quatrefoil with rectangular Wilson trough above.  Both are only a month old; the gray color will turn a lighter brown-gray as they age.

Above, in the previous incarnation, with the same rectangular trough for comparison.

It's the small things, ya know?

Two Highlights of a Hot Weekend

One of the delospermas blooming in a hypertufa bowl, with the bladder seed heads of silene uniflora 'compacta' visible behind it.

Two large rectangular troughs that I cast yesterday morning when it was still relatively cool.  I took them out of the molds and scrubbed them with a wire brush this morning, when it was NOT so cool anymore.  I'll seal them in plastic for 4 weeks until they're fully cured and ready for delivery.

New Hypertufa

A friend in my NARGS chapter recently asked me to make a couple new planters for him.  We discussed many designs when he stopped by but settled on two that I don't make often.  The first is an oval bowl.  For this I made an inner mold of laminated layers of 2" rigid foam glued together and shaped with a utility knife.  The hypertufa bowl was cast upside down, packed onto the dome-shaped mold, with gravity and diligent packing with my hands helping to make it tight and uniform.  Keeping the hypertufa mix on the dry side is very important as if it's too wet it will just slide off the mold.

Before casting I wrapped the mold in shrink-wrap as a sort of release agent.  It also gives me something to pull on once the bowl's cured and I need to remove the core.

The finished trough is pretty good-sized at 24 x 20 x 10 1/2" high.  Those are my boots for scale.  

My friend admired an organic looking planter on my deck and asked if I could make a similar one. I probably made that planter about 6 years ago, with cardboard boxes as a mold.  Almost all of my molds are rigid foam or plywood now, and it's been a while since I've done one with cardboard boxes.  Above is the mold after I cast my friend's new trough.  The outer carton has the flaps folded down, with shrink-wrap around it for safety.  The inner carton is filled with sand.  The best and worst part of using cartons for a mold is that they begin to fail as you cast the trough.

The trough was thicker than normal, since the outer carton started sagging outward almost immediately.

I trimmed the inside walls with the sharp end of my brick hammer and then scrubbed the outside with a wire brush.  It's 21 x 21 x 14" high.  It definitely has that organic feeling that my friend wanted.

Now they need a few weeks to cure.