Flower & Garden | Gardening in My Rubber Boots

Jan 16

I’m Considering a Composting Fence…

As you may know, I currently have a chain link fence running along the south side of my yard. To help hide the ugliness of the chain link, I covered it with reed fencing a couple years ago. Even though the reed fencing has made it more tolerable, I have a garden tour coming through this year and feel this is the one thing that makes my garden not worthy of the tour. Read more

Jan 15

4 Comments

What’s Blooming January 15, 2011

There aren’t many blooms but it sure is a beautiful 50º no rain kind of morning. Gotta love it.

Helleborus

Garden blog bloom post helpers

They don't like it when I'm this close...

At least she doesn't care how close I get!

Euphorbia

Following me around the garden

Heather

We spotted our goldfish yesterday - they're still alive!

Mickey wants to come outside and play

Now, if I could only get the groundcover to take off!

Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day takes place on the 15th of every month and all started with May Dreams Gardens.

Jan 1

2 Comments

Happy Frost New Year!!

Dec 26

1 Comment

My Chicken Coop’s Carnivorous Bog Garden

In early October I created a carnivorous bog garden outside my chicken coop. It’s a sunny spot that I’ve done little with in the past. Plus, we were having problems with flies because of the proximity to the chicken coop. I didn’t know much about carnivorous plants and frankly didn’t think they’d survive outside in our zone 8a garden. Once I knew more about carnivorous bogs, it was a no-brainer. I needed to have one.

Three things happened this past year that convinced me I needed a carnivorous bog garden:

I visited the new Master Gardener carnivorous bog demo garden at McCollum Park
When volunteering at the fair, our Master Gardener booth was next to the bog garden display
I learned all about carnivorous bog gardens during one of my perennial study group meetings

I do recommend talking to someone in your area that knows about setting up a bog garden. When I visited Odean’s Nursery in Snohomish, she gave me handouts on creating a bog garden and walked me through the process. It was a huge help. I can’t wait to see my new pitcher plants gobble up all the flies this summer. Here’s how I created my bog garden:

To start, I dug a big hole. Filled the bottom with sand and added a plastic pond liner. I also provided a water runoff to keep the plants from drowning.

I added a plastic tub to act as a water reservoir and collect rain water from the rain chain/gutter. I then filled the "pond" with peat moss and perlite.

Next I watered the bog using water from our rain barrel and planted my carnivorous plants from Oudeens nursery.

I also added larger stones to hold down the plastic and smaller drain rock to cover any remaining plastic.

Adding the carnivorous bog helps our garden be more sustainable. The coop and bog garden work together.

To keep the chickens from falling in the reservoir and add a bit of whimsy, I added glass pond floats. So far the chickens are leaving the new garden alone. .

Dec 15

5 Comments

What’s Blooming December 15

I thought about wondering around in the wet/dark/cold garden to find some winter interest (a.k.a dead plants) to photograph but decided to share something that’s actually blooming instead: