Urban gardening

[lblanchard]

I planted a few things in my next-door neighbor's tree pit today. She has moved to Cleveland and so far has done nothing about selling or renting out the house. It's been a year and a half.

The soil in the tree pit smells like raw sewage. She had a sewer problem a couple years ago so I suppose this could be residual sewage. She doesn't want to hear about sewage smell. There's nothing wrong, she says. I don't touch the soil.

A couple of plants that I put in one quadrant (where the smell is the worst) have died. I scraped down a good six inches and replaced the stinko soil with potting mix. I installed a feverfew and two marigolds. Disposable plants.

I planted a oenothera thinning in one corner and a couple pieces of creeping jenny here and there, and a few more marigolds. I watered everything in and the neighborhood smelled like an open sewer for about 20 minutes.

(I started the marigolds from seed in late March, a couple dozen of them. I gave half of them to Sybil, my neighbor two doors up, along with three rooted cuttings from my broadleafed evergreen. She is using those plants to replace three boxwoods that had bad winterkill this last year. She also gave me cannas last year. And she got some hosta thinnings from somewhere. We are being Crazy Plant Ladies, spreading cannas and iris and hosta hither and thither in the untended tree pits.)

I planted the remaining marigolds in my window boxes and then went in and scrubbed my hands thoroughly for about two minutes.

Out back I planted my basil seedlings, some more parsley. I moved the mint to a bigger pot. It was acting like it needed a change. I brought out some hippeastrums -- the Class of 2011, the Gervase, and the Exotica. I plan repot Gervase and Exotica in larger pots, then zap everybody with a combination fertilizer, fungicide, and systemic insecticide. None of the aforementioned are showing any signs of the dread virus. The sick plants will stay inside this summer, in quarantine, until I can heat treat them this fall.

I'm down to five varieties of coleus and that's fine with me. I'll pot them up tomorrow, or next week.

Comments

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

You have to wonder where the sewer smell came from and why it would last so long if she watered with sewer water. That should fade away quite quickly once it's fixed.

I love plant exchanges.
:)
But as I mention in my other comment today, I buy pelars from good sources. Nobody here in Spain knows anything about them and the ones I get here are grocery store no-names. Which are fine but if I want a Marquis of Bute I have to order it.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

As a rule, I don't buy plants -- in fact, it's a point of pride to me that my total expenditure on plants in my back garden, over sixteen years, is less than $100. I've spent some money on containers and potting soil, but everything else was either started from seed or acquired as a cutting in trade or whatever. Oh, and a few rescues, like the $1 flat of pachysandra from Wal*Mart. It was after I broke this self-imposed rule and ordered to Name Brand hippeastrums that I wound up with the dreaded virus -- karma getting me, perhaps?

The neighbor didn't water with sewer water. The sewer line is a couple feet from the tree pit and there was once a leak that bubbled up into said pit. I suspect there's still a leak. But she swears (from Cleveland) that I must be smelling dog poo. As if I couldn't tell the difference...

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't think I'd be touching the soil, either...