What's up at the garden club

Summer is our season of working on our gardens and other gardens around the community as well as club sponsored activities. We have no formal meeting scheduled until our annual potluck in August.

Our June 20 tour in the Spooner/Hayward area was cancelled due in part to weather. We got a much needed rain that day. We can reschedule for those who are still interested in the tour. Possible dates include Saturday, July 11; Saturday, July 18; or Sunday dates could work as well. Please let Pam know if you would like to reschedule for one of those dates or another date.

• Spooner Ag Station Display Gardens Spooner WI
• Yellow River Gardens, Spooner WI
• Winter Greenhouse ,Winter, WI

Winter Greenhouse display gardens

Spooner Ag Station Display Gardens

Annual Plant Sale: We had a beautiful June day for the plant sale except for a bit of wind that took down our canopy. Final numbers are not in yet but preliminary numbers indicate that we made about $600.00 for the club. Thanks to everyone who helped make this a successful fund raiser!!

The Grantsburg Hwy 70 sign garden: Please be sure to check the weeding schedule for your appointed week. Do feel free to stop by and weed whenever the mood strikes you!! Or you can stop by and water if its looking dry. It would be handy to bring a bucket or length of hose to help with watering as the attached hose is short. There is a longer hose but it has two screw ends and the coupling adapter is not accessible without some kind of a grabbing device to reach down in the sign base where the hose is stored. Last time I stopped to water, the zinnias were not blooming yet. The nearly dead ones are coming back but are small. All in all the garden needs some TLC.

There are bare spots in the garden and overgrown spots. We've talked about making changes to the garden but no plan has emerged.  If you have perennials you would like to add to the garden or want to thin out the over grown plants and take them home, please feel free. If each of us adds something or rearranges things, we could come up with a new look!! Could be fun!

The Memory Lake flagpole garden: This garden is coming along nicely. Plants are maturing. Next year we will probably have to move some things and thin some. The marigolds from last year reseeded. I can't wait to see if they bloom! The zinnias are blooming but have a way to go to get showy. Stop by to weed and water. To avoid having to park at the camp ground and walk to the garden. Take Olson Drive to Oak Street (turn left) then to Jackson (turn left) then to North Park Street (left again). You can drive right up to the garden on the grass to work on it. We are watering from the lake which is not ideal. It is hard to get at the water and the weeds make it hard to fill a bucket.

The Grantsburg Library Garden:  Georgianne did a great job on the planter, with help from Linnea to select plants. We used a liner so that the planter won't need to be flipped in the fall to keep from cracking over the winter (my fingers are crossed!). The staff, if they choose, could put in some boughs for winter interest.

Planting of perennials is almost done. I want to dig some hosta from home to add and it would be great to put in some spring bulbs this fall. Otherwise, it's looking good though immature. I can't wait to see what it looks like next year!! I put out a bucket for patrons to weed if the mood strikes them. Otherwise, maintenance of this garden will be up to the Library staff once it is established. Hopefully some civic groups will volunteer to weed and water. Georgianne and I will continue to look after it this first year to be sure all goes well and will probably do spring cleanup next year to make sure everything survived the winter.

The Annual Local Garden Tour is our next club sponsored event to be held on July 16, Thursday, at 6:00 PM. We will visit:

• Sandra Harmon's Gardens, one year later. We visited Sandra in 2014 and saw the great job she did her first year. We will return again to see what she's been working on since!!
• Sharon Danielson gardens on Hwy 87 south of Grantsburg
• Dean and Sue Faulhaber (of Wood River Garden Center) residence gardens

Refreshments will be provided by Sandy Hinrichs, Jen D, Jolene M, Kris H at Dean and Sue's
Carpool from Grantsburg High School 5:30 PM for those interested or meet at Sandra Harmon's and carpool from there.
Detailed directions will be provided closer to the even.

As with everything the club does, we are open to the public and we welcome new members at every meeting or event!!

Join us for a tour of 3 gardens in the Spooner/Hayward area on June 20

Our next garden club activity is our annual car tour of gardens and nurseries of interest. This year we a planning to go to the Spooner/Hayward area.  

June 20, Saturday 8:00 AM 

• Spooner Ag Station Display Gardens Spooner WI
• Yellow River Gardens, Spooner WI
• Winter Greenhouse ,Winter, WI
• Bring a picnic lunch or buy lunch own our own.
• Carpool from Grantsburg High School at 8:00 AM 

Use the links to check out these places. 
Since we are not going far and will be getting an early start, we should be home by mid-afternoon. 

Volunteers to drive would be great. We will need room for our purchases as well as passengers!

Please RSVP to Linnea soon so she can plan the day. June 20 is only 10 days away!!

Zinnias Killed by Frost at the Sign Garden and....

All our hard work at the sign garden seemed for naught when I went by the following Sunday to water. Every single zinnia was dead! I was beside myself, I was so upset trying to figure out what happened. Was it something in the soil, was it something in the water, was something wrong with the plants. Then Charlie asked why I didn't just go with the obvious. What's the obvious, I asked. Frost, he said. Sure enough some low lying areas got hit by frost that weekend.

To avoid having to pay for more zinnias, we decided to keep back the zinnias Georgianne had grown from seed for the plant sale. They were very tall and healthy so it was a perfect solution! Kris met me at the sign this afternoon, fresh from the hair dresser no less, to help me plant. Well, low and behold, some of those little dead plants were struggling back to life. We thought we'd give them a chance so we planted around them and watered everything well. We also went over to the Memory Lake flagpole garden and planted some zinnias there, weeded and watered.

Thanks so much Georgianne for the zinnias and thanks Kris for helping get the replanting done.

Now for the weeding schedule for 2015! Our favorite task!!

Names with (? ) behind them are members who have not had an opportunity to confirm that these dates work in their schedule. If you have health issues or scheduling issues, please let me know.

June week 4    Kris Henning, Ruth Anderson
June 28-July4 Mary Griesbach (?) and Jacki Bedworth (?)
July week 1    Pam Davies and Wanda Bjorn (?)
July week 2   Georgianne Kleiss, Linnea Seume (?) and Rosemary Burkman (?)
July week 3   Becky and Tim Tessman and Sandra Harmon (?)
July week 4   Teresa Halls (?), Janet Byers and Marilyn Nelson (?)
Aug week 1   Audrey Edmunds and Lisa Slater
Aug week 2   Barb Blume (?), Sue Augustson (?) and Darcy Kolander (?)
Aug week 3   Jolene Meyer (?), Jennifer Doornink (?) and Sandy Hinrichs (?)
Aug week 4   Georgianne Kleiss, Cynthia Leonard (?) and Deb Norling (?)

The water spigot is turned on and I will make sure there is a hose over there so if things are dry, please water.

The sign garden is the weeding priority but if you have time it would be great if the Memory Lake flagpole garden got weeded as well. Watering there is a bit tricky as there is no sources except the lake. That means bringing a bucket. If we get regular rain it should not need watering. If it looks really dry and droopy, let me know and I will bring water from home.

Thanks everyone.