The past several weekends have been spent in the garden creating raised herb beds, (at long last) constructing our compost bin and transforming the hard-packed, sod-covered, weed-choked corners of our yard into Harpoon Gardens. While our worm bin has been able to handle some of our kitchen waste, the addition of a new compost bin was long overdue and well-timed for the declining fava bean plants and pea vines that have just come out of the garden, as well as the scraps from all of the summer produce that we have been lucky enough to eat out of our front yard and the farmer’s market. We constructed a simple wooden frame with chicken wire sides to allow our future compost pile to get lots of oxygen, and placed it near our back deck for easy access from the kitchen.
One consequence of adding footings to stabilize our pergola was that we no longer had a fully plantable strip between the structure and the north side of our garden. Since we have a fairly small lot to begin with, and about half of the lot is shaded by the large tulip tree on the east park strip, we are attempting to leave no sunny spot unused. Our solution was to build two 32″ raised herb beds. We have incorporated many herbs into the front slope of our yard, including rosemary and thyme, as well as annuals like basil and cilantro into our vegetable garden. With the addition of our two herb beds, we now have room for French tarragon, anise hyssop, lemon thyme, marjoram, winter savory, oregano and garlic chives. We also added a layer of soil and planted chamomile in between the beds, as well as blue hyssop, which have edible blue flowers and help attract bees.
We have noticed many ladybugs around the garden lately, which are a welcome sight. Unfortunately, they may be more present because we have an abundance of aphids - a source of food for ladybugs. Our neighbor pointed out that the honeydew that we have noticed the past few days on our back porch is caused by the aphids that have taken up residence on our tulip tree. For the next few weeks, we will try hosing down what we can reach of the tree with a strong spray of water every few days to see if that helps.
Ladybug feasting atop a cardoon bud.
Soleil explores the semi-feral parts of the backyard.
We built the deck of our solar house around a tulip popular. The deck was always sticky and discolored. Come to discover that if you have tulip trees you WILL have aphids which exude a sticky excretion (honeydew). Our bees loved the tulip poplar and we got great honey but we had to cut it down because everything around it as covered with stickiness most of the time. The aphids are not transitory; they are permanent.
We got some similar advice from the Urban Farm Store… Because of how huge and old it is, Portland’s urban forester tagged the tree as one that has to be protected. Not that we’re prepared to do anything drastic to it anyways. We had good success with releasing a few bags of ladybugs this summer, so I think our plan for now is to just apply ladybugs every few weeks through the spring and summer next year as a preventative measure and see what happens. Hopefully that’ll at least keep the aphids at a somewhat manageable level.