Fun with Plants - Lake Style

At the lake, of course, we are totally surrounded by plants – with the views out each window looking for all the world like a commercial photo.  I have been buying boxes of tissues for the bathroom that have a photo of a wonderful treed scene in a deciduous forest and frankly it could have been taken from the window that the tissues sit below.

However – the plants that you have some control of are a totally different kind of fun.

This year has been interesting from a plant perspective.  I have plants installed in 4 main areas – septic bed, around the house, near the lake in a raised bed and in a couple of planters on the deck.  In terms of size the septic bed is by far the largest and has taken the most fiddling over the years.  In case anyone has never put in a septic (kind of like most people I expect) this is what it looks like when it is going in.  

Septic Bed 2012 - all sand

The effluent from the house first goes through a tank which is quite close to the cottage itself, and in the tank there are a couple of chambers where the effluent moves from one to the next, clarifying and breaking down.  Ultimately the fluids leave this and head off to the beds in the sand that you see in the photo.

Most people plant grass over top of the septic bed.  Plants to grow food are probably not the best idea ….  and we are really not into grass out here.  The idea was that the place is intended to be maintenance free – or at least maintenance minimized.  So – no grass.  We did however find a wildflower seed mix from a place called wildflower farms, that is intended to go directly on to the sand of a septic bed without a layer of soil on top of the sand.  Seemed like a plan!!  (http://www.wildflowerfarm.com/)

The actual planting of the seed mix is a bit of process including layering of straw atop (to retain moisture directly after seeding) and a few years of cutting and burning.  The results have been mixed.  We had the odd good-ish year, and plenty of lousy ones where the whole thing seemed like a really bad idea.  The worst was when, for whatever reason, the bed got totally infested with wild rose plants that never actually flowered.  Instead it filled up with leggy, thorny stems and leaves and also with a vine that seemed to want to strangle everything in sight.  That year we cut and burned it, and the next I conducted chemical warfare to ensure that those damned things did not come back.

This year glorious success – this is the same bed !!  Hard to believe.  

Septic Bed 2018

Same bed from the other side - Black Eyed Susans ablazing

There were Black Eyed Susan seeds in the mix of course, but not to this quantity.  I am thrilled and have decided to take credit (that said – I have no idea what I did right this year, but no one has actually asked that).  Quite the change.

Flowers and basil, and a pile of dirt tossed out by the chipmunks

The pots on the deck have been entertaining fun.  We have a lot of chipmunks here, and this year for some reason they are particularly plentiful.  I planted up a couple of pots with a mix of marigolds and herbs.  

I guess the soil (purchased) was attractive to these chipmunks, though I don’t know why exactly.  We watch them hop into the pot, wiggle around in the dirt enough that each day there is a pile off to the sides of the pot on the deck itself, and then dig down and emerge with their little jaws a munching.

They totally decimated this one

So far the pot with the basil seems to be hanging in, but the pot with the cilantro – not so much.  I guess cilantro roots taste good to a chipmunk.  Each day I clean up the soil from the deck, and every so often I refill the pot with a scoop or two.  Quite fun.  (as I write this, sitting on the deck, a chipmunk jumped into the pot with the basil, disappeared for a while, made a mess, and then left.  Cute, but slightly annoying)                                                          

Which brings me to the final two planting attempts – one a success, and alas the other mostly a failure.  The success is various hostas around the cottage itself, hopefully arranged to not look too manicured.  Luckily hostas are easy to grow and seem to like it here.  

So far so good because I have read that deer like hostas and we do have deer, but they are shy and do not get really close to the building, so my guess is that they don’t actually know that the hostas are there.  And I am not telling …

 

The other area is now more comical than anything else.  We had, what I thought, was a genius idea to hide or at least soften the look of the solar panels when seen from the lake.  We built a long, narrow raised bed, and filled it with raspberry canes.  Who does not love raspberries right?  And the place is sunny (clearly – it is where the solar panels were before we moved them last year) and right beside the lake so we assumed would be kind of self watering.  Okay – that last one was optimistic nonsense I now know. 

So the first year was fine everything seemed to grow.  Then one weekend we came out and, no raspberries.  And I mean no plants at all.  Hmmm, a hungry thief??  The next year (and the next) were filled with attempts to replant raspberries (now with a bit of a fence around it), and to try and grow other food plants in the bed.  It was quite embarrassing.  One year I managed to get 3 tiny food items – perfectly proportioned but in miniature.  New raspberry plants would not grow.  Stuff lingered and died.  I had pretty much given up.  This year on a whim I decided – one more try.  And to change things up, this time I would try to water the damned things – a lot.  Well – I am embarrassed to admit that watering a garden actually makes plants grow and produce.  Who knew?  Maybe there will be homegrown tomatoes this year (maybe)