2009 No Shows (or Not Much to Shows)

At the end of the year, it's time to not only enjoy the memories of the plants that flourished in the garden, but also to reflect on those that didn't. Thankfully, the latter is a relatively short list, although there is one difficult loss there for me.

All of the seeds that we started germinated this year, but a few did not last long after being transplanted to the yard, including Phlox 'Peppermint Candy', which disappeared within days—not sure if they were eaten or simply did not get enough of what they needed where I put them. All of of the Zaluzianskya capensis 'Night Phlox' that I planted around the patio died quickly, and all but one that I planted in front of the Magnolia 'Jane' also bit the dust; the one that survived was too tiny to even photograph! I won't be trying either of these again.

I'm not sure if I should include the Alcea rosea 'Fiesta Time' among the non-survivors. I believe that some of the seedlings that I transplanted might still be out there—they're interspersed among the thriving Alcea 'Creme de Cassis', so it's hard to tell. 'Fiesta Time' might yet bloom next year, but certainly did not this year. Hollyhocks in general are purported to have short lifespans, so I want to get the next batch established before 'Creme de Cassis' putters out on me!

Papaver oriental 'Coral Reef' is another that I'm not certain about. The little seedlings hung on from March until July, but then disappeared. I don't know if it's common for poppies to go dormant at that time of the year, or if all the plants truly died. We have seldom had much luck with poppies, and it makes me think of Albert Einstein's definition of insanity—doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Are we crazy to keep trying to grow these flowers? Maybe so.

The Allium multibulbosum and Hemerocallis 'Pardon Me' put out leaves this year, but no blooms. I'm convinced that the Allium is in too shady a location, and I honestly don't expect even any leaves from it at all next spring. If they do grow, I really must dig up the bulbs and put them somewhere sunnier. 'Pardon Me' has no such excuse, and if it does not flower next year, I will not pardon it.

Colchicum 'Harlekijn' did not even put out leaves, and I wouldn't have expected any, except that 'Waterlily' did so very well, and they were planted at the same time. But they are different varieties, so I'll keep an eye out for 'Harlekijn' leaves next spring.

The plant that I'm sorriest to not see bloom in the garden this year is my hardy cyclamen—not sure which species it was. We started these from seed about four years ago while we were still in New York. The seeds were small, and after the first few months, the bulbs they formed were not much bigger than the head of a pin, with a single tiny leaf. We nursed them under the lights for a full year before putting them out in the garden—by that time, the bulbs were about the size of peas, and they had several leaves. I don't recall if they flowered in New York, but when we moved to Ohio, we dug them up and brought them with us, and they were quite happy back in 2007 and 2008, blooming from late August to late September.

Unfortunately, they did not flower at all this year, and I'm struggling to remember if they even put forth leaves in the spring. After nurturing them for so long, I hate to think they won't ever be coming back!

Garden Books Under the Tree

This Christmas we received an abundance of gardening books, including the following:

• Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening by Louise Riotte. Although this book covers a wide spectrum of plants and trees, I think the vegetable chapter will be of most interest to me, since I'm considering putting scallions and cabbages together in one raised bed next year. Will they be friends or foes? I shall read and find out!
  
  
• Black Plants: 75 Striking Choices for the Garden by Paul Bonine. Just flipping through the photos in this book, I see both familiar flowers (Alcea rosea 'Nigra') and exotic beauties (Dracula vampira orchid). I think the author cheats a little by including some very dark maroon and purple plants (such as my own Physocarpus 'Diablo'), but I'll still enjoy browsing these unusual options.
  
  
• Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother & Other Botanical Atrocities by Amy Stewart. I love the little headers above the descriptions of the plants in this book: Deadly. Illegal. Dangerous. Painful. Destructive. Offensive. Who knew gardening could be so perilous? (The weed that killed Lincoln's mother appears to have been Eupatorium rugosum—there's a very interesting blog entry about it on An Iowa Garden.)
  
  
• The Brother Gardeners: Botany, Empire & the Birth of an Obsession by Andrea Wulf. This story of plant-gathering in the eighteenth century sounds fascinating. As a modern gardener with relatively easy access to seeds and plants from other parts of the world, I often forget what an adventure it was for early horticulturalists to discover new plants. I look forward to seeing the world through their eyes.
  

Curling up with these books will help us pass the winter until we can resume our own gardening adventures again.

An Anniversary Thanks!

As my husband will tell you, I'm terrible at remembering birthdays and anniversaries (including my own!). And I just today realized that the one-year anniversary of my first blog posting was one week ago today!

So I wanted to take this opportunity to say a belated thank you to everyone who reads my little ramblings. I started keeping track of visits via Google analytics back on May 16, and since that time my site has had more than 1800 visitors from 71 different countries! Wow! (I want to say a special thank you to my follower from Poland, since I'm second-generation Polish myself, and to the folks from South Africa and Malaysia who commented on my last post. I am continually amazed at how the Internet makes it possible for people from all over the world to connect with one another!)

I also want to thank everyone who has commented on my posts. It is such a delight to read feedback from others and learn about your own experiences. I wish I had the time to follow the all of the wonderful blogs that I have read along the way!

Anyway, a new year will be starting soon, and I look forward to gardening with you all in 2010!

The Last Straw

For many years, it has been my husband's practice to pile up manure at the bottom of the rose bushes to both protect the base of the plants from the winter winds, and to fertilize them in the spring.

Well, this year, he decided to try something different. When I planted the strawberries in the veggie garden last March, I needed a little bit of straw as a mulch around them. Except that you really can't buy just a little bit of straw—you have to buy a whole bale, which was way more than I needed. And let me tell you—loose straw can make a real mess in a garage!

Last fall, I offered some of the excess straw to my neighbors, who have much more talent for decorating than I do, thinking it might be handy for scarecrows or as a backdrop for artfully arranged gourds or whatever. But I had no takers. When the weather finally turned, I added some more straw to the berry patch, topped it with a row cover, and resigned myself to the fact that it would take a few years to use it all up.

And then my husband decided to try it as a mulch for the roses.

I was not a big fan of this plan. I envisioned straw blowing all over not only our yard, but the neighbors' yards as well—not exactly conducive to good relations. So when we had 60-MPH winds the other day, I fully expected to see nary a stalk left in place. But to my surprise, when I looked out the window, there were the piles of straw, undisturbed! (In this picture, the straw on the grass was already there from the initial distribution effort. Did I mention that straw is messy?)

I'm not quite sure what we're going to do with the straw in the spring. With the manure, it was easy enough to just spread it on the ground around the plants and then cover it with the black hardwood mulch that we usually put on the beds. I don't think we can do the same with the straw. Will it disintegrate over the course of the winter? Will we have to take it up with the other debris when the weather warms? We'll find out. But in the meantime, the last of the straw is gone from the garage, and as Martha Stewart would say, that's a good thing.

Next Year's Experiments

With the onset of winter and fewer tasks to complete in the yard, I have the time to think about what I want to do in the gardens next year. And of course, the arrival of the plant and seed catalogs contributes to dreaming!

A couple weeks ago I started paging through the Vermont Bean Seed Company catalog, and was intrigued by the idea of growing my own garbanzo beans. I love hummus, and I'm very curious about what garbanzo beans look like when they grow. Are they like really big peas in a pod? They are called chick peas, after all.

Of course, when it comes to the veggie garden, the hard part is deciding what to give up. I have a finite amount of space, which means that if I want to try something new, I must relinquish an area that I typically use for something else. But what can I bear to give up? The tomatoes? The peppers? The cukes?

I toyed with the idea of doing container gardening on the patio, but I know I'll forget to water the pots; I already killed one blueberry bush that way. I did an Internet search to see if I could find a community garden with extra space to share, but they're quite a distance away. Or perhaps I could sneak some veggies into the flower beds, although those are getting full to the brim with flowers.

One bit of veggie/flower integration that I'm definitely going to try is interplanting garlic among the roses. I've read that that not only helps repel the usual suspects that eat the buds (rabbits and deer), but that it can also help with black spot. I'm very suspicious of that claim, but willing to try just about anything (anything organic, that is). And worst case scenario, I'll have fresh garlic for the kitchen!

Deranged Woodpecker

As I write this, my train of thought is being derailed every few seconds by the deranged woodpecker that is attacking the enemy he sees in our living room window.

(The guy in this picture is a Flicker, who attacked our windows last year. This year's culprit is a Red-Bellied Woodpecker.)

He usually starts around 8:30 in the morning and can go at it for hours on end. Just yesterday my son and I hauled out the ladder and put a decal of a hawk on the window, hoping that it would dissuade the woodpecker from throwing himself at the glass again and again...to no avail!

It seems late in the season for him (or her?) to be defending youngsters in a nest. Is it just pure territorial instinct? He sees an intruder on his turf, and must defend it?

I wish he would take a lesson from the cardinals. The other day we had six of them—six!—at the feeder. If they can manage to share space and resources with each other, not to mention the other birds, why can't the woodpecker just accept the presence of his own reflection, eat some seed, and go in peace?

Year-Round Blooms?

One of my husband's goals in life is to have something in bloom in the yard every month of the year, which is a bit of a stretch here in USDA zone 6. We had a particularly mild November, and he was rooting for the Geranium 'Rozanne', Daphne 'Beulah', and Rose 'Iceberg' to make it into December, and sure enough, they did! We finally had a really hard frost the other night, and the last of the flowers bit the dust. But it was in December!

Plenty of our plants start blooming in March—the Iris reticulata 'Gordon', Chionodoxa gigantea, Hyacinths, Narcissus 'Tete-a-tete', Magnolia 'Jane', and the Bradford pears. But what will grow here in Ohio in January and February?

One possibility for February might be Helleborus. Everyone that we've talked to who grows them swears that they're incredibly hardy and deer-resistant, and bloom very early. So we have no idea what happened to the Helleborus orientalis hybrid 'Winter Queen Strain' that we planted in 2008 (other than the fact that we planted it in the Bermuda Triangle of our yard, where only a few plants seem to flourish). This year we tried again, with three different varieties—Helleborus x hydridus 'London Fog', Helleborus x hydridus 'Mellow Yellow Strain', and Helleborus x sternii 'Hot Flash'. They haven't died yet, but they don't seem particularly happy.

As for January...I'm not optimistic that anything will bloom outdoors for us at that time of year. I'm going to have to try to convince my husband that the Amaryllis and paperwhites that we have on the windowsill count. I think the only thing that springs eternal in the garden is hope.