A New Excuse to Drink Wine

I enjoy my daily, heart healthy glass of wine as much as the next gal, but after a while all those wine bottles start to add up.

During an Austin Organic Gardener's meeting, the speaker, Lucinda Hutson, showed a cool slide show featuring her use of glass bottles to edge a garden bed.  She even used cork as mulch, and I thought this would be a great way to use our excess wine bottles and corks.

Here's my interpretation of the wine bottle edging project starting with prepping the bottles.

Removing Bottle Foil Ring

Rinsing Bottles to Remove Labels

Clean Bottles Ready for the Garden

The wine bottles lined up below will be replacing the low dry stack stone edging to the right of the picture.

With the stone removed, my darling assistant dug a trench to accommodate the bottles.  I was going to help, but someone had to take pictures, right?

After placing the bottles in the trench, we packed soil tightly on both the front and back sides of the bottles. Fortunately, we had some soggy soil that had been left in a wheelbarrow during some rain, and it worked great for this purpose.

Uh oh, we're a few bottles short of finishing.  I guess it's back inside for more wine...

So, a couple of weeks have passed and here we are... the finished product.

Looks like we'll be collecting cork for bit longer...

Big Challenges, Small Solutions

One of the big challenges with a large garden is filling it with plants. Dividing garden spaces into smaller areas, can make the task seem less daunting.  However, two acres is still pretty big, and some of my garden spaces are larger than the average suburban backyard.

Budget and lack of time have kept me from filling these spaces with plants over night.  But, that's okay with me, because creating these gardens has been a journey, not a destination.

In fact, these gardens have been created and recreated; done, undone, and redone again many times over the years.  Everything is a work in progress.  I continually reconstruct the garden as I discover plants that don't work, my own changing tastes, and my desire to try new ideas and new plants.  Here are some of the gardens I've been working on: 

• Roman fountain garden
• pond garden
• front yard garden
• disappearing fountain garden
• pool garden 
• backyard/dry creek garden
• vegetable garden

Dry Stack Rock Beds Surround Roman Style Fountain

Water Lilies and Parrots Feather in Garden Pond 

Spring Petunias Bloom in Front Yard Garden

Disappearing Fountain After Installation of Rock

Swimming Pool Area Overlooking Dry Creek and Backyard

Veggie Garden Spring 2010

As you can see, I still need a lot plants to fill in all the empty spaces. Over the years I've found that planting anything smaller than a 1 gallon size plant in my garden is a recipe for failure.  A little 4 inch transplant just doesn't have the root system to survive my infrequent watering  and weekend warrior gardening practices.

Still, 4 inch transplants are a good buy and an excellent solution for filling in empty garden spaces on a tight budget.  These days a 4 inch perennial costs about $2, and a 1 gallon perennial costs about $6.  That means, for the same $6, I can have 3 plants if I buy the 4 inch size.

So, here's one solution:  buy small 4 inch transplants in the fall/winter and grow 1 gallon plants in the greenhouse for transplanting in Spring.

Greg's Mist flower (front left), Texas Betony (front right)

Greg's Mist Flower Bumped up to 1 Gallon

Mountain Sage (Salvia Regla) Gets Bumped up to a 1 Gallon Pot

Sometimes I get lucky and find good sales.  These shasta daisies were .99 cents at Barton Springs Nursery.  I snatched up five and they were going fast.

Shasta Daisies (Front Left)

Shasta Daisy Moved up to 1 Gallon Pots

Two other small solutions for making plants are to propagate new plants from cuttings and divisions, and to grow plants from seeds.  Seed starting is one of my New Year's resolutions.  Seedlings, which have been started in the house, will soon take their place in the greenhouse.  The plant table in the greenhouse is filling up with plants, but I will soon have a larger storage shelf to accommodate more seedlings.  Yippie!  This is so much fun!

Greenhouse Plant Table

Epic Dry Creek Project

This year my husband and I finished an epic project that has been in the works for more than 10 years.  The project was to build a dry creek across our property.  The creek, which is over 500 feet long, starts at a high spot at the front of our property and follows the natural flow of water as it weaves around to a low spot at back.  

In the front, the creek uses flat New Mexico river rock.   

In the back, the creek is constructed from bull rock, gravel, and select river stones.

The primary purpose of the creek is to facilitate drainage by preventing water from slowing down and pooling at inconvenient places along the way.  The final segment of the creek was completed this summer.  

Our goal is for the creek to blend naturally into the landscape surrounded by native plants and trees.  Nature gave us a  good head start, but it will still be many years before our work is complete.  In the picture below, a glimpse of the creek can be seen curving in from the far left.

Since completing the project, there has not been enough rain fall to test the creek until today.  So what's the verdict?  With the exception of some leaf debris, which needed to be cleared, the creek works great.  

So now, we're singing, just singing in the rain... la da da da da da... la da da da da da.