Out with the Cauliflower, In with the Tomatoes

I finally finished harvesting all the cauliflower last Thursday—15 of the 16 plants formed heads, four of them medium-sized and very well-formed, the rest a little "loose", but all have been delicious. Some I steamed, some I baked with feta and pasta, and some I probably need to freeze soon.

Now that the cauliflower are out of the way, I planted the tomatoes that I started from seed back in April.

I usually grow only three varieties (cherry, paste, and beefsteak), but this year I decided to go with four, primarily because my paste tomatoes were such a disappointment last year. I'd say I lost at least half if not more to blossom end rot.

I've read that blossom end rot is caused by a calcium deficiency, but I use an organic fertilizer that includes extra calcium. Plus, the problem tends to occur more frequently at the beginning of the season than at the end, and you'd think that there would be more of any nutrients in the soil at the beginning of the season, before the plants have used them up. I'm guessing that the problem is with accessing the calcium rather than its absence, and I'm not quite sure yet how to resolve that, but I'm going back to a cut grass mulch, which I used years ago with much less rot. I think it keeps the soil more evenly moist, which might help with calcium uptake. (Plus, the nitrogen boost couldn't hurt.)

So it was because of the blossom end rot problem that I decided to try 'New Yorker', which is a medium-sized tomato that's supposed to be resistant to blossom end rot. I'm also growing 'Saucey' as my paste tomato, 'Ponderosa Pink' as my beefsteak, and 'Small Fry Hybrid' as my cherry tomato. I got all of them from Totally Tomatoes, which is a new resource for me. The Ponderosa Pink is an heirloom variety, so if I like it, I might try saving the seeds.

I generally grow determinate varieties, and tomato cages typically provide adequate support, but the Ponderosa Pink is indeterminate, and I'm not sure the cages will be enough for them. I suppose that if I suspect I'll need tall stakes, I should add them now, while I can still see between the plants, and can get them in without damaging the root systems.

One deviation from my usual practice has been where I place each plant. I used to put them in rows, but this year, I decided to put the four Ponderosa Pinks in the middle of my 4x4' raised bed, with a cherry in each corner, and a medium and paste tomato on each side. One of the leggy cherries broke off when I planted it, but I stuck it in the ground anyway, on the outside chance that it might grow roots from its stem, as tomatoes are wont to do. But just for good measure, I tucked a couple leftover seeds into the soil next to it.

Run for the Roses

In our household, the "run for the roses" has to do with racing, but nothing to do with horses—it's that time of the year when my husband and I rush out each day to see what has started blooming in the beds.

We have 24 rose bushes in our yard, encompassing 19 different varieties. I have already written about Blanc Double de Coubert, which is the only rugosa rose we have, and the only kind of rose that we have more than one of. The rest (excluding the two of uncertain parentage that were here when we moved in) are almost all old English roses from David Austin, which we favor for both their form and fragrance.

We have five rose bushes in the sunny border, although in this photo you can see only three because two (Falstaff and Ambridge Rose) didn't make it through the winter, and their replacements (William Shakespeare 2000 and Scepter'd Isle) are still fairly small and have not yet started blooming.

The one in the front right, Alnwick, is a perfectly serviceable pink rose. It has a nice enough form and color, but doesn't have any characteristics that I find particularly striking or differentiating. Pleasant, but not exciting.

The one in the middle of the back row, Benjamin Britten, is a bright red, so bright that my camera has a hard time correctly rendering the color up close. (The color in the photo of the whole bed is more accurate.) It really pops in the border, and it's very floriferous.

My one complaint about Benjamin Britten is that I get a lot of funky shoots, possibly from below the bud union, but it's hard to tell. The flowers seem pretty similar, but the canes are starkly different—much, much thornier, and with much more red to both the branch and leaf. (In the following photo, you can see the interlopers on the right and left; the green cane in the middle with the more sparse thorns is the "normal" part of the plant.) I've been debating whether to let them go, because they're extremely vigorous, or cut them out because I don't care much for the look of them. (Why it is that I don't mind the dense thorns on the Blancs, but do mind them on Benjamin Britten, I couldn't tell you.)

My very favorite in this bed is Eglantyne. I love the delicate cupped form and pale pink color (even if it's not as visible from afar), and the fragrance is absolutely heavenly, like a rose-scented soap.

The heartbreaking flaw in Eglantyne is that it's very susceptible to fungal diseases. We tend to be a little lazy about our roses; we deadhead and prune as needed throughout the summer, and we give them protection in the winter, but don't generally spend time spraying them. (That's one of the reasons we don't mess with hybrid teas—they seem to require too much maintenance.) But I can't bear to see Eglantyne drop so many leaves, so this year I broke down and got an organic fungicide from Gardener's Supply. And I'm actually using it, not just letting it sit in the garage! So we shall see if this helps.

Along Came Lonicera

The Lonicera (honeysuckle) that we grow up a trellis in front of our house is 'Graham Thomas'—a flowering vine not to be confused with the awful honeysuckle bushes that are invasive and rampant here in Ohio.

We used to have some of the icky honeysuckle shrubs at a former home here, and decided to pull them out to make room for more desirable plants. Well, my husband was able to cut them down and made good progress digging around the roots, but couldn't quite get them out. A friend who had a jeep with a winch offered to pull the remaining stumps, and so we tied them up and started the winch. We were all staring at the roots, trying to figure out why they weren't moving, when we realized that the jeep was being pulled in closer and closer! My friend had to sit in the jeep with the parking brake on and make sure that it stayed in one place until the winch finally did its job! Talk about a tough plant!

Anyway, this honeysuckle vine was another "save" from our New York garden. My husband loves fragrant plants, and this one has a mild, citrusy scent, although you have to get up close to notice. Of course, it's halfway between the Sweetbay Magnolia and Philadelphus (mock orange), so it's got some pretty heavy competition.

Even if it isn't all that fragrant, it does give vertical interest, and the clusters of off-white and cream flowers last about six weeks, from mid-May to late June.

Sweet Day for a Sweetbay

A comment about my post on Magnolia 'Jane' said that in the South, magnolias are considered trees, not shrubs, because they get so tall. And it got me to thinking—how do we decide what is a tree and what is a shrub? I'm not sure height is the main criteria. After all, a Japanese maple might get to be only five feet tall, but I would still consider it a tree. I tend to think of trees as having just one central trunk, but a birch usually has several trunks, and I still consider that a tree. So is a magnolia a tree? I'm still not convinced, but I will admit that my beloved Magnolia virginiana (or Sweetbay Magnolia) is a good-sized plant.

I don't have a very sensitive nose, and yet I can smell its beautiful flowers from 50 feet away.

Unlike many magnolias, which bloom in the early spring before they put out any leaves, the Sweetbay Magnolia doesn't bloom until late spring, after its leaves are well developed.

On the one hand, the delayed bloom time means that you never have to worry about losing the display to a late frost; this year the flowers opened on May 15, and last year they kept going until early July. On the other hand, the show isn't quite as spectacular as other magnolias, since the presence of the leaves detracts somewhat from the impact of the flowers, but I still think it's lovely, especially up close. And I wish I could bottle that fragrance!

Peas in a (Sugar) Snap

Sugar snap peas are one of my "best bang for the buck" veggies. This year I grew 'Super Sugar Snap' from Burpee, and so far have been pleased with the results. I planted the seeds on March 7—a little on the early side, but the weather was cooperative that week. It took them seven weeks to go from seeds to sprouts...

...but less than four weeks to go from sprouts to tall, flowering vines.

And now the flowers...

...are turning into dinner!

Last year, I grew 'Sugar Sprint', and got almost six pounds of peas, so I'm keen to see how well these guys do!

Close Shave for Bearded Iris

When we moved into our house here in Ohio, there was a huge hedge of forsythia along the south wall. My husband is not a big fan of forsythia, and I wanted the space for a veggie garden, so we decided to have the shrubs removed.

But before we did so, I noticed some blades among the bushes that were definitely not forsythia leaves, and closer inspection revealed that they were clumps of bearded iris. They had no doubt been planted in between the shrubs when they were still quite small, and were long ago crowded out. So I transplanted them into the back bed and crossed my fingers.

I'm not very experienced with iris. I know that the rhizomes need to be near the surface, but I'm never quite sure if I'm planting them too high or too low. And I didn't know if the back bed would get enough sun. But I did the best I could at the time.

In 2008, I didn't get any flowers from them, and didn't expect any, figuring they would need a little time to get established in their new home. This year, however, I was happy to see a few stalks produce purple and white blooms!

I'm pleased to have rescued them from obscurity, and I'm hopeful that they'll form a large colony in the years to come!

Making Head-Way

Last Sunday I harvested my first cauliflower head, about two weeks after they started to form.

I meant to put something in the picture for perspective, the way I use toothpicks to give scale to seeds, but couldn't come up with anything. Where is a baseball when you need it?

It wasn't a huge head, just enough for the two of us for dinner. I may have picked it prematurely, in part because I was so eager to try it, and in part because I just wasn't sure when it would be past its prime...it's kind of like when you get directions that say, "Turn left before you get to the old barn," and you have no idea where the old barn is until you've already passed it.

Anyway, it was mighty tasty! I did bind the leaves over the heads to help keep them pearly white, and was intrigued to see that unlike the cauliflower at the store, the stems remained ever-so-pale green.

So now that I've had my first home-grown organic cauliflower, I might let the next one go a bit longer to see how big it will get before it passes the old barn. And unless we want cauliflower every day for the next two weeks, I've got to figure out how to preserve the stuff!

Hi, Hibiscus!

I'm pleased to report that our hibiscus has finally broken ground, which was a matter of concern in our household for a couple weeks.

Hibiscus is a perennial that dies back every year, but has extremely tough, woody stems. I use a ratcheting hand pruner to cut it back in the fall, but the stems are so thick that I can't get it all the way to the ground, so I always have a few stubs sticking up—not the most attractive arrangement, but at least I always know where the plant is.

We typically have a local landscaping company mulch the beds, and this year after they finished, I noticed that my hibiscus stems were gone! The folks that we use know plants, so I figured they had just done a better job than I did of cutting the hibiscus back, but it wasn't until I saw the new shoots poking up that I felt completely assured that it was still there.

The first time I ever saw hibiscus was in a friend's garden, and how could I miss it? The flowers are practically the size of dinner plates! So I started some from seed at our previous home in Ohio, although I no longer remember the variety (maybe 'Disco Bell Pink'?) They grew like gangbusters, so much so that when we had to sell the house, our realtor gently suggested taking them out, lest a prospective buyer be dissuaded by the "jungle" along the front walk. Of course, I couldn't do it, especially since they were just days away from blooming and putting on a fabulous show. (We were able to sell the house, hibiscus and all, although the new owners did pull them, along with a gorgeous old viburnum and a wonderful callicarpa. Moral of the story: Never go back to a previous garden to see what the new owners have done to it.)

At our current home, we grow Hibiscus 'Kopper King', which is distinctive in that its leaves are bronze rather than the standard green. I don't know if it's possible to grow it from seed; we got the plant from a local nursery, and have been quite pleased with it. Isn't it amazing—from those little shoots to this in like six weeks!

Reseda Didn't Re-Seed, Huh?

I didn't mention Reseda (mignonette) in my R.I.P. post about plants that we lost this past winter because technically it did come back, but just barely. Dave's Garden says mignonette is an annual, so maybe it would be more accurate to say it didn't self-seed well, but I would swear that the few flowers we've got this year are blooming on last year's growth.

Mignonette was yet another plant that my husband had to nudge me into trying, and last year I thought it went a little crazy, taking up more space than I had originally allocated for it. But now that it hasn't come back, I'm in a Joni Mitchell frame of mind: "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone." Looking at the pictures of the cottage garden from last year, I have to admit that the tall, white spikes looked good in front of the hollyhocks and malva, which came into bloom just as the mignonette was starting to exit the stage.

The flowers themselves aren't going to win a beauty contest, but they ostensibly have a nice fragrance. (I don't recall any myself.)

I ended up putting the hesperis seedlings where the mignonette was—another tall plant with white flowers, so we'll see how that looks next year. And if I really miss the mignonette, I can always see if the leftover seeds we have squirreled away in the basement are still viable. Or buy more—what a concept!

Dicentra 'Benjamin Button'?

I love Dicentra spectabilis (aka old-fashioned bleeding heart). I love the way its gracefully arching branches dangle pink and white heart-shaped flowers like so many trinkets on a charm bracelet. So I really wanted to get one for our house in New York, land of eternal shade. But when I went to the nursery, a clerk talked me out of it. "Dicentra spectabilis? Why would you want one of those; they just die back after they flower. Why not try Dicentra luxuriant 'King of Hearts'? They flower all summer long!"

Well, I got one, but I wasn't happy with it. The foliage wasn't nearly as light and airy as Dicentra spectabilis, and instead of dangling its flowers along its branches, it jammed them all at the end of the stem in an awkward cluster. Sure, it bloomed a lot longer, but where was the grace? Whither the charm?

So the next spring, my husband indulged me with a Dicentra spectabilis, which happily nestled among other plants that filled in the gap left after it died back for the summer.

And then we moved to Ohio. Since we had a few shady spots in our new yard, I decided to get three Dicentra spectabilis and plant them under the Cercis canadensis 'Forest Pansy'. In 2007, the year I planted them, they looked quite healthy.

In 2008, the Dicentra didn't grow nearly as large as they had been the year before. Had their root systems been damaged by the moles we had that year? Did they not like the soil composition? Were the light or moisture levels not quite right for them? I just don't know.

By 2009, only one of the three plants came back at all, and it was much smaller than the previous two years—as if it was aging in reverse, like Benjamin Button, going from a mature plant to a mere starter.

I can't bring myself to pull it—as a cock-eyed optimist, I have to believe that it might yet recover. Or it might keep growing backwards until it's just a seed again. Time will tell.

Family Cercis

The first redbud we ever planted (in New York) started out literally as a six-foot stick, and I was amazed at how quickly it branched out, given that redbuds are generally considered slow growers. The next spring after we planted it, there was a modest display of flowers, and we moved before we got a chance to see it get better established.

Here in Ohio we decided to try Cercis canadensis 'Forest Pansy'. This time we got a more established tree to start with, and its second blooming season was reasonably flush. The buds appeared at the beginning of April, and the flowers wrapped up by the end of the month. (By the way, that's not a flowering branch at the base of the trunk in the second photo; I had planted a Dicentra spectabilis in front of the redbud, and the branch belongs to that plant, about which I will write later.)

What distinguishes 'Forest Pansy' from other redbuds is not its flowers, but its leaves. They have the same lovely heart shape as other redbuds, but a deep purple/maroon color. In our yard, it makes for a nice contrast against the dark green needles of the white pine behind it, and the bright green leaves of the adjacent river birch.

Eggplants plundered!

Cabbage and cauliflower are not my only veggie garden experiments this year; I have also never grown eggplant, and decided to give it a try. They take a lot longer than tomatoes or peppers to get going—eight to ten weeks. I started these in mid-March, and probably could have seeded them sooner.

So last weekend I set 16 little eggplants out in the garden, and a few days later I noticed that one had been snapped in half, and another two were completely gone. I didn't think it could have been rabbit damage, since the veggie garden is fenced, but I did find a small gap that I subsequently blocked, and felt reassured that my eggplants would be safe. The next day I noticed that a couple more eggplants were missing, and one had been pulled up and just lay withered on the ground. This time I suspected a new culprit: birds, most likely robins, who tend to scavenge around in the garden looking for bugs and worms. A rabbit would have at least eaten the plant; only a bird would simply pull it out and then discard it.

Why would they do such a thing? One of my co-workers (and a fellow gardener) theorizes that the birds are smart enough to realize that the soil around these new transplants is soft, and that perhaps when they pull the plants up, they might find a worm attached to the root ball, or at least have an easier place to scratch around in.

I'm not sure if that's true, but the bottom line is that I now have only nine eggplants left. And since it takes so long to start them from seed, I decided to go down to a local garden center and pick up some more plants to replace the ones I lost.

Now I have to admit—I am...what's the polite word?...thrify. I initially started growing flowers and veggies from seed because I couldn't afford to buy plants. Now I do it because I enjoy the process of watching things sprout and grow, and I can try a wider variety of plants than I can typically find at a nursery. But when I saw that $2.99 sticker price on the eggplants, the thrifty side of me kicked in. "Three dollars for a single plant! That's what I pay for a whole packet of seeds!"

And then the rationalizations began. What would I do with 16 eggplant plants, anyway? I've only recently begun cooking with them. What if there are like four or five fruits per plant? What am I going to do with all that eggplant? I've never seen it frozen or canned. What was I thinking?

And so I didn't buy any more. I did put a row cover over the seedlings that remain, just until they're big enough that the birds won't be able to pull them out anymore. Maybe I'll stick something else in the empty spots. Or maybe I'll just leave the gaps there as a reminder that the best laid plants of mice and men oft go awry.

Grand Fothergilla

My husband introduced me to fothergilla when we lived in New York. I had never heard of it, but was willing to give it a try, and it turned out to be a nice choice. It's a compact shrub that handles both sun and shade, and blooms in the spring, when the foliage on the branches is just starting to develop. The form of the white flower gives the plant its nickname: bottlebrush. We ended up planting three when we moved to Ohio as well.

I'm not very good at juxtaposing complementary plants that bloom at the same time, so it was pure serendipity that in New York I had planted bright red 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' tulips in front of the fothergilla. You really can't get the full impact from these pictures, but the two looked fabulous together. (I don't dare plant tulips with the fothergilla here in our unfenced yard, because I know what the deer will do to them!)

The variety that we grew in New York turned a stunning yellow in the fall; I wish I had a picture of it. Here in Ohio we grow 'Mt. Airy', and this past autumn the edges of the leaves were tinged with deep scarlet while the interiors remained green—a very nice effect.

Our three small fothergillas were nibbled by deer the first winter after we planted them, but the critters seem to have left the plants alone this past season, giving them a chance to get better established. It seems to grow slowly, but that's fine. I'm in no hurry.

Erysimum's the word

It seems to me that erysimum (wallflower) has been a well-guarded secret—I had never seen the plants for sale at any garden center until this past weekend. For years, I have grown them from seed that I get from Thompson and Morgan. I'm under the impression that this plant is more popular in the UK than it is here in the US, and I'm at a loss to explain why. It blooms nearly two months, from late April to mid-June, and offers some unusual colors for that season—deep red, dark yellow, rusty orange—perhaps shades more associated with fall than spring. I even like the buds. This particular variety is Erysimum 'My Fair Lady'.

Some say wallflower is biennial, some say perennial. It definitely acts like a perennial for me. In fact, it's practically evergreen. Here's a picture of it from last December—a little frostbitten around the edges, but hanging in there. (This is the same cluster of plants shown in bloom above—you can see how much it grew in one season!)

We did have a bitterly cold February, and I lost a couple of the plants, but started more seeds again this spring.

They won't bloom this season, but I expect to have a nice display again next year. And I'll try to remember to give them more protection (maybe drag out the row covers) if it looks like the temps are going to go way below freezing with no snow coverage.