Good morning from the garden!

Recently I came to the realization that I need to quit whining about my garden and its jumping worms, pathetic lilac hedge and all the plants that died over the winter.

I’ll admit that I was worried earlier this spring.  Especially when we came back from our trip out east to find the garden bone dry, with plants that were very slow to break dormancy, and weeds everywhere.

But as it turns out, it was the freakish hot and dry weather while we were gone that was the problem, not the jumping worms.

Flash forward a month and add in some much cooler weather, a fair amount of rain, a few plant replacements and a bit of weeding and things are looking really good right now.

If you aren’t familiar with my gardening style, I like to call it ‘jam packed’.

I prefer not to leave any space for the weeds to take hold.

I know not everyone likes this look, and I also know that it can lead to problems with increased insect pressure and plants that get crowded out.  But it’s still my preferred style.

Most everything in my shade garden is doing well, and this is the spot where I found the most worms last year.

As I mentioned recently, the Forget-Me-Nots (low ground cover with blue flowers in front left) are having their best year ever.  Clearly they aren’t being impacted by those pesky worms.

Neither are the hostas.

Although I did lose a few hostas over the winter, and there are another several that are coming up very slowly, the rest are looking larger than ever and super healthy.

FYI, that plant in the background that looks sort of like a Japanese maple (seen from both sides in the above two photos) is actually a Morden Golden Glow Elderberry.  Laura of Garden Answer recommended elderberry as a good substitute for Japanese maples when you live in a cold climate.  Visitors to my garden often do think it’s a Japanese maple.  Some elderberries can grow to 10′ tall, but this variety is more compact and only grows to 4′ to 5′ tall and wide.  Also, since I have this in full shade, it will likely remain somewhat smaller.

My Lakeside Dragonfly hosta is looking especially nice right now.

I am trying a few different things to mitigate worm damage in this bed.  First, I fed everything this spring using Espoma’s Plant Tone.  It’s an organic, all purpose plant food and I simply sprinkled it on top of the soil early this spring before the plants were up.  For best results you are supposed to work it in to the top 4″ of soil, but in existing beds like mine you can just sprinkle it onto the soil around the dripline of plants and then water it in.

Second, I’m mulching this area using cocoa bean shells.

There is some anecdotal evidence that jumping worms don’t like cocoa bean mulch.  The pros to cocoa bean mulch; it has a nice dark color and it makes your garden smell like a chocolate factory.  The cons; it’s expensive and it will get mildewy in wet weather (which is definitely what we are having this week).

Finally, I’m hand pulling worms when I find them.  And yes, that’s as gross as it sounds.  The recommended disposal involves sealing them in an airtight container, setting it in the sun for a bit and then tossing it.  So I’ve been stocking up on empty mayo jars, sour cream containers, etc all winter (with the help of nnK and her mom Judy).

Hopefully one or all of these extras will help my garden stay happy this summer.

You may remember that I mentioned in an earlier post that most of my lamium didn’t survive the winter.  That was a bit of a bummer, but it gave me the opportunity to fill in some bare spots with annuals this year.  So I added some bright pops of color with some impatiens.

I know that a lot of the popular gardener influencers consider impatiens to be passé, but then I’ve never been one of the cool kids anyway.

But wait, now there is one small patch of that lamium coming back!

I’m so happy to see it since I’ve been scouring the nurseries trying to find more to put in and haven’t had any luck.  Sure, they have lots of other varieties of lamium, but I can’t find this fabulous chartreuse variety.  I had two different chartreuse lamiums in my garden, the Lamium maculatum ‘Lemon Frost’ which has a more pronounced white center (and so far none of that is coming back).

And I believe my older plants were Lamium maculatum ‘Aureum’.

As you can see in the photo below, I had lots of it last year.

I plan to baby that little patch that is coming back, and hopefully I can start to divide it and spread it around again soon.

With that I’m going to head out into the garden now to pull some weeds.  But hey, if you have any tips on controlling jumping worms, please be sure to leave a comment!  And even if you don’t have any tips, let me know how your garden is looking so far this season.